Joseph Sweetser: Martin Venezky

A Designer of Nostalgia

Martin Venezky

“A few years ago I began collecting photographs of ‘drugstore cowboys’... Each one is a souvenir of surprising intimacy. These moments of dressing up, making believe, swaggering with a smile — costumes have given these men permission to play like children — touch me deeply.” – Martin Venezky

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Type studies prepared for Open Magazine � before it was cancelled (Left) Photos collected by Venezky (Right)

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Past & Future

Handcrafted History Martin Venezky introduces a human element to design. This element is seen throughout his work in the painstakingly handcrafted collages of typography and design, and previously discarded found photos. This element adds both an aspect to the history and time to his work. The carefully crafted collages show the life of each piece before its present moment; the pure physicality of the placed type speaking to the person and the time it would take to layout each piece. The found elements, mainly grainy or old photos, also add to this rich history.

“Unlike Andy Warhol, Martin Venezky does not want to be a machine. On the contrary, he wants every product of his design practice to retain the feel of handiwork, to be rooted in the tangible, unpredictable realm of reality.”

– Karen A. Levine

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Poster for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ����

Bittersweet Horizon His work not only exhibits the past, but displays a melancholy view of the future. The ripped or shredded found objects, abandoned or falling apart, suggest an impermanence of each piece. These ephemera bring out this melancholy feeling that each piece will not last, which draw into the human element of our own impermanence. People are always changing, people and things will go in and out of your life and eventually, all that is left is memory, which eventually fades away.

Adobe Systems: Drops from a Faucet into a Pool, ���� (Top & Bottom)

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Nostalgic Feelings The combination of these elements and feelings evoke an emotion of nostalgia for things that were once cherished.

The sense of having something so cherished and having only the memory left is melancholic, yet beautiful. Nostalgia is a feeling of positivity, towards something that will never be realised again. It is not a negative feeling despite the fact that it is something that you will never be able to experience again. This bittersweet feeling encapsulates the essence of ever-flowing time, and how everything will eventually come to an end.

“My life tips between trying to leave and trying to remain. It is the charge of electricity between change and stasis, hope and resignation. And like everything else, it is beautiful… then gone.” – Martin Venezky

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“Every Dog Will Have its Cake” Speak Magazine 17 (Top & Middle) “Camera Era” 2014 (Bottom)

Good Days Gone

Notes on the West, ���� (Top & Bottom)

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Adobe Systems: Drops from a Faucet into a Pool, ���� (Top) We Have Been Where You Are Going, Horizon Series, ���� (Bottom)

Time Capsules This encapsulation of time present in Venezky’s work is what is so attractive about his design. It speaks on a level of emotions that everyone shares, and that is characteristically human.

While making you look both to the past and the future, it draws your attention to the present moment and the beauty of it. Often people don’t realize the beauty of the present moment until it is already too late and is in the past. His work gives you a presence of mind about time, and how the things you experience today may one day share the same feeling of nostalgia that you experience now. This comparison of past, present, and future serves to make you aware of the impermanence of everything surrounding you.

Personal Impermanence We Have Been Where You Are Going (Horizon Series ����) Wall of collage from Venezky’s studio (Next Spread)

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Surrounded by the Past

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Collage Wall Venezky is able to achieve such a feeling by surrounding himself with found objects and design. In one of his old workplaces, he had pinned up over seven hundred pieces of found photography and design to his walls. This paraphernalia ranged from photos of drugstore cowboys, to old advertisements and posters, to even discarded scratch tickets and plastic shopping bags. All of these different objects with histories that had been abandoned are completely dismissed when alone. When placed in relationship to one another however, the walls of studio became like the walls of a museum, with each piece sharing and comparing its history to the objects around them. This juxtaposition of different abandoned objects from completely different origins against each other shows the large scope of how time affects everything. Not one thing upon his wall has been untouched by time. While so often we forget how time will eventually affect even what seems to be the most timeless things, this wall serves as a reminder to Venezky that time affects everything, and will affect everything, and letting this idea seep into his design.

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Colophon Designed and written by Joseph Sweetser.

Composed in Baskerville and Avenir, designed by John Baskerville in ���� and Adrian Frutiger in ���� respectively.

Copyright © ���� Joseph Sweetser, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art