Wesley Summers With so many creative minds in Nashville, it can become easy to get lost in the crowd, but Wesley Summers knows his graphic design business, Artistic W Designs, is different. “If I had to pick three words to describe myself, they would be altruistic, autistic, and artistic,” he says, explaining how these three traits combine to create a very unique approach to graphic design and allow him to use his gifts to help advance his clients’ passions. “Altruism is at the core of who I am,” Summers mentions. “I have a heart for helping people and using my art to do so. That is why I volunteer, with Chris Sanders, as marketing director for the Tennessee Equality Project.” Summers has also volunteered with OutCentral, Nashville in Harmony, and the Nashville LGBT Chamber of Commerce. “These organizations are the life blood of Nashville’s LGBT community and have a direct impact on helping people—that is my passion. My donated work has repaid me 100 times over, in smiling faces and changed lives.” Summers explains that autism and his art are really one and the same. “An autism activist, Temple Grandin said, ‘I think autistic people would make awesome graphic designers.’ She was right,” he says. “I am what is called a pattern thinker. We think in abstract images as opposed to words or feelings.” Autism can and has been a huge handicap in Summers life, but as a creative individual, he feels it can also be one of his greatest strengths. “I have been thinking in pictures from birth, and that completely changes the creative process from beginning to end, which produces great results.”
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