It's About the Art

Design Studio

By Joshua Marquardt - Art City

I've always loved working with my hands and being submersed in color and shape. I was working for a sculptor in Minneapolis and was hoping to become more integrated into creative work and I started working for a design firm around 97', working on Macs using Quark Express and Adobe Photoshop to produce film negatives for all sorts of printing. I was the grunt and was amazed at the four-color process being able to produce so many colors, and I was exposed to digital cameras when one shot could take an hour. After feeling bored and uninspired by typesetting and creating proofs, I went to school for printmaking and received my BFA, focused on creating larger-scale fine art pieces. While attending college I worked at a local sign shop weeding, masking and bringing out the garbage; I loved the smell of the shop and the sound of the machines... I was almost hooked. I finally worked my way to a local beer distribution sign shop where my fabrication skills helped them catch up on production. This made it possible for them to teach me the foundations of Adobe Illustrator, how to create images that were scalable and how to save these as manufacturable files. This was also my first large-format printer/ laminator experience, the bait was taken. Really this was a breakthrough for me in my search

for the ability to transfer my ideas to scale and lead me to an awesome studio in Ft. Myers where they nurtured me to believe in my abilities. After leaving this studio I have pretty much lived off of the work brought through with Art City Signs, LLC., a small studio located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin where all we do is focus on the design, manufacture and installation of adhesive-based vinyl.

I still prefer to use an iMac computer with the newest Adobe Creative suite running Adobe Illustrator. I do LOVE the Wacam big tablets for drawing and feel they are an efficient way for me to process visual thoughts compared to using a mouse, just flows a bit more naturally for me. But really I'm most comfortable with a pencil and paper, markers and scissors. I gotta have music on when I work...any music will do, it just helps create a vibe in my mental space that I feel free to meander around in. The ability to be fluid and wander through a design, ask questions of the color/font/image/intent as I unfold the work is important to me and is part of the enjoyment. I am inspired by contrasting colors and unique patterns and find more enjoyment in less-perfect results.

Being able to translate photos and measurements from real life to design software with accuracy has been a valuable and difficult thing to learn. I have received work from designers that has incorrect measurements or is at incorrect scales so the final resolution is inaccurate. Slowing down to double, triple-check your work is not a bad thing. Our industry can get sucked into the trap of speed; "I need it now, I can print it fast, and I can wrap faster than anyone in the world!" Honestly, I don't care... I prefer my work to be paced and solid.

All the professionals I have met have trained hard and paid extra to gain the knowledge and the unique experiences they have. I have lost money on failed wraps, designed things wrong and printed them wrong, worked weekends to make up for weekday screw-ups, saved profits to study with others, missed time with family to be able to experience new types of installations at different scales, and have loved the whole process. It has been hard to chase the ideas that I love; family, music, color, scale, and art. If you invest in the future of yourself, you will succeed because this is a healthy mindset. It is my opinion that discipline like this is what sets people I admire like artists, skateboarders and masters apart...they are not scared to fail and they have done it all in their focused meditation. Enjoy the process of your work and set out to be inspired by the work you create, then share this work with others...and don't hang out with dicks, your environment is everything.