Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Price.
Joe, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started off as the guy in a band that made the fliers and fell in love with coming up with the visuals and getting them printed. I met a Graphic designer by chance and discovered that’s what I want to do for a living. Long story short I figured out a way to jump in and learn as I went without design school. After a few years I of doing things wrong I learned a wealth of information that could be had about the foundations of design and typography in books and has been learning since then. I’ve been fortunate to work for a wide variety of companies and have seen a lot of different approaches to design solutions.
Has it been a smooth road?
I’ve heard people say it before about how some in design school have a supernatural talent and others have to work hard to get to the same place. I’m definitely in the later group, I developed a love of design and work really hard at developing it. The way I look at it is while many see our field of design as a competitive thing where one does the cooler thing than the next guy, it’s actually commercial art, not fine art and not a cool guy contest. We are being paid to visually communicate something, and completing the job in the most effective and appropriate way often doesn’t get you the designer noticed.
Who, or what, deserves a lot of credit for where you are today?
When I first started I was overwhelmed by the amount of awesomeness in the field and the energy in the air from the tech boom. It was also a time of a lot really bad design due to the new availability of design tools so it really took me a long time to sort out the importance of design fundamentals. I really found inspiration in designers like Paula Scher, Charles Anderson, and Michael Bierut and the older school masters like Paul Rand and Chermayeff & Geismar, in fact, I still run all logo work I do by these words I first read in Chermayeff & Geismar’s book “Identify”
“Is it appropriate?
Is it simple?
Is it memorable?”
I’m also in love with the graphic Illustration style of people like M. Sasek, Mary Blair, and Charley Harper.
Do you have a favorite type of client or project?
I have found the best work satisfaction can come from working with people and companies that understand the importance of good design. I love both redesigning a look and feel of an existing company and starting from scratch, also I love projects like the Yamaha Bolt catalog I did with my last employer Porchlight was really fun to see come to light.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I think I’m pretty lucky that I see my job as a pursuit of constant improvement and inspiration. I mean I wish I had a story like Micheal Bierut where he figured out what he wanted to do, went to school for it and got a job with Massimo Vignelli, but I took and am still taking a long way around and I’m fine with that.
Contact Info:
- Website: joe-price.com
- Phone: 404-200-8218
- Email: design@joe-price.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joepricedesign/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joepricedesign
Image Credit:
Yamaha Bolt catalog was created while employed at Porchlight. Photos courtesy of Porchlight.
