Hi. My name is Rick. I am a graphic designer and instructor of graphic design at the Oregon State University.

This isn’t a portfolio site, but I'll share works I’ve made, comps that did not get approved, and 1-2 ideas I tried to push onto clients. This site is more me thinking out loud about typography, work, and pop. If you are interested in the work on this site, send me a note, and let’s make somthing fun.

Part of my job as a college instructor is explaining to nervous parents what is graphic design (no one wants their kid majoring in art). The go-to answer is that it’s visual communication. Think of it as making things that everyone buys or recognizes: Books, magazines, advertising, logos and packaging. Your favorite album cover is a product of graphic design. It’s applying art, composition and communication to everyday things and experiences.

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Typography is one of the primary elements of visual communication. In college, I drew type with a Rapidograph pen probably at 16 points. That was hard, especially since I tend to make a lot of typsos. That same year, my classmates began working via Photoshop. This corresponded with the emergence of the Grunge movement in typography. My International Style-oriented instructors frowned at the reckless application of type, but to me— it was dynamic, new, and fresh. But the late 80s (beginning with work being produced in California) and stretching to the 90s was just so wildly different. It allowed for a more expressive quality to emerge from the Swiss-style. Paraphrasing David Carson— Just because it’s clear, doesn’t mean it communicates.

The instructors were predictably right. The principles that International Style espouses are rock-solid and hard to fuck up: Clarity, organization, and legibility are always keen adjectives to a well-designed page, screen, product.

I think there is a wide wide array of solutions and styles, and the solutions should be content-driven. The grunge aesthetic, while not always appropriate, brought with it a rich, dense, painterly-composition to page-layouts that when applied-well, is just really beautiful. These days, grunge just communicates ‘90s’ and is hard to read. Conundrum.