Creative Office of
JOSHUA GAJOWNIK
Not a blog.
It’s not always easy being an NC State basketball fan. But damn if they didn’t just win the ACC Tournament and advance to the Final Four for the first time in 39 years. To commemorate I designed a “Brick S” mark which stems from my affection for all the clay blocks on campus. MF Brick City! Go State!?!
If Yous Know Yous Know.
Come on 22.
Let’s just call 2020 a year already. Coronavirus, aliens, recession, reaction to centuries long systemic racism, forest fires. Not pictured: negligent leadership, a growing equality gap, explosions, murder hornets, mass depression, WFH like WTF.
I’ve tried to see the hot sanitizer in my center console as a perk of all this madness. Instead it was just a reminder of how twisted this year has been. Sayonara summer 2020. I take my sanitizer room temp, Eurostile.
Wishing you clarity in vision and diversity of perspective this year. Update: holy shit was I wrong about 2020.
I am so disappointed by our elected officials' unwillingness to address gun control. Half mast is becoming America's New Normal. The thoughts and prayers of politicians is not enough. We want change.
I found this truck and tried to make it better. Holy One God Goodness TruKing. I have a decade-plus long text message thread with a dear friend where we share the day’s findings in DIY naming, marketing, design. A constant source of inspiration and a reminder to not take our designer selves too seriously because people are doing it everyday whether they know it or not. “Somebody, somewhere, made this.”
Wish I had watched more of Dennis Smith Jr. when he was playing at my alma mater. Dude is just taking the NBA. Here's a visual I've often thought about for an NC State Wolfpack basketball opener. Would be set to Raekwon's House of Flying Daggers.
The NHL team of my adopted hometown, Raleigh, N.C. is also the team that rid the world of the best logo in sports–the FedEx logo of sport if you will–the Hartford Whalers logo by Peter Good. Until the Canes get a new logo I propose they simply license the Portland Trailblazers logo and add a puck. Spinning, hurricane-esque, and goes well with the new jersey stripes. Thanks Portland.
Went to Iceland to “Enter The Rough Nature.” Made this with a beastly logo from our KGM Korando rental, lava rock-hard muscles, troll teet waterfalls, a burgeoning magma dike, heaven and hell all around.
Never ready for election season.
Go Outward to Get Inward.
Born in 1981, I’m more Generation: Space Shuttle than anything else. The radical white spacecraft first lifted off that year, strapped to a towering orange fuel tank. As I grew up with shuttle launches I coveted my Micro Machine orbiter returning home atop its 747. The NASA “worm” must have been part of my primer to logotypes. In 2021, ten years after the last space shuttle flight I created a commemorative mark which portrays the iconic nose cone of the shuttle, piercing the Earth’s atmosphere, extending a human presence out into the universe in one thrusted motion.
Some say these reference bodega stickers. Others say country code stickers. Whatever the case, it’s running wild in graphic design land 2020. I get the sense that many designers employing them might not know what they’re referencing either?
My daughter’s name begins with an ‘M’ so as she is learning to write, naturally it is her favorite letter. She likes to sign things with a sequence of ‘MMMMMMM’ to which I saw a row of houses and a canal while we were on vacation in Amsterdam.
Does simply italicizing something make it more dynamic? Desirable?
Sometimes a change of course is in order.
I have a two year old daughter and if I could spend my days just relearning the world alongside her, well I would. I often hear designers say that having a kid has made them more creative. For me it's more that it changes the way I see the world. It forces me to think in simpler terms than strategies and timelines. At times it’s a reminder of the fundamental principles of design. Like repetition — here adding to the wonderful madness that is Cookie Monster.
An ode to Western Blvd. and a concept for two friends — coin laundry, car wash, check cashing, social club. Critter N' Miles Western BLVD Scrub-A-Dub.
Raleigh could use a good ramen place and I can see it in my head. Western Man Ramen — the "western man" who has no idea how to make truly good ramen, but with a fascination and appreciation of Japanese fascination with western culture. Maybe one day I'll have the balls to partner up and open this place.