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One of the most important aspects of new media is its potential reach through the web. A Flash-motion narrative published to the web can be seen by anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world, at any time. This is changing the world of communication.




Random composition from "WMD"

With this potential reach in mind, I design interactive pieces that raise awareness of social, environmental, and political issues. How is the narrative transformed in digital space? Hillman Curtis talks a lot about story-telling and how it impacts new media. How do we tell stories on the web? Who is our audience? What has changed and what is the same?

I am by no means an anarchist, or anti-marketplace; I see a valuable, respectable, important place for the bulk of what is considered graphic design — but I believe that there is more to graphic design than selling low-carb, high-priced pizza to the masses. I wish to inspire students to ask, in the end: "How am I using my talents to add positively to the visual, as well as physical, environment in which we live?" I want to inspire them to see new media/interactivity as a new medium, craft and artform with potentials that go far beyond traditional print-based graphic design. But we can not lose sight of the past: Bruce Rogers, William Morris, the Fremont Indians who created highly sophisticated visual codes in places like Parowan gap (which is just up the road from us here.)

Many of my pieces have focused on informing an audience about an aspect of community life or raising awareness about a social, political, or environmental cause. In addition, recent interactive pieces for bornmagazine.org and collaborations with Professor Todd Petersen have made me think twice about narratives as they are realized in interactive, web-based media. How is the story structured? How is it realized? How does this relate to traditional models of graphic design practice as it was taught by Paul Rand or Saul Bass?

Recently, "WMD" explores the creation of random meanings related to the Iraq War. Images are selected, placed, cropped and layered via random programming. How does this effect meaning? How does this change or reveal the viewer's political leanings or biases, as well as the author/designer's?

I based “Voices on Dharma,” a unique artist's book, on conversations with members of the Buddhist community in Bloomington, Indiana; “Views of Home,” my MFA thesis show, explored the gulf between having a home that you love and appreciate and being a homeless unnamed shadow in America. “We Must Learn to Do without Nature: A Protest Song” was an early experiment in experimental website navigation, based on research on the transformation of the world into mega-cities surrounded by small pockets of nature parks, which seems to be bearing out. And “AIDS in Kenya,” an interactive Flash module for the Indiana University Foundation, detailed some of the facts, stories, and possible solutions to the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

The most emotionally engaging and lasting works of graphic design have at their core meaningful messages, messages that speak to the heart of human matters. The most compelling works are created in a spirit of artistic collaboration. There is much to be done, more ground to be explored. Graphic design is not brain surgery, but I do not take it lightly. It impacts and changes lives.

View selected works in collaboration.