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The Designity community is a buzzing hive of creativity, each and every Creative adding their own special bit of magic to each project they touch
Each has their own story, but most are connected by a common thread: a love of art!
For many of Designity’s talented designers and illustrators, that passion for creating started with a pencil or a paintbrush and long before they ever opened their first copy of Photoshop.
And for Adam C., it was no different!
From painting mural art to building full-on brand identities, Adam’s creative journey is a classic case of chasing inspiration, staying curious, and turning what you love most into your career.
So, how did Adam go from rebellious graffiti artist to Designity star?
It’s time we found out! Today’s blog is a 1:1 with Senior Graphic Designer, Adam C., so you can hear his story, see some of his amazing work, and get a peek into what inspires him most!
How did you get into design? What’s your origin story?
Graphic design was introduced as an option to me in college.
I went to art school at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts — it was a very small school that had a very open program that taught both classical, and modern arts. It was based out of the actual museum itself and it partnered with Tufts University for all of their general education.
It taught all of the arts, so there was everything from oil painting and still-life drawing to more contemporary graphic design and even printing methods. There was even video and metal work and sculpture and stuff like that, so it was a very broad education.
As I took a few classes there, it started to open my eyes a bit on how my creative abilities could be used in a contemporary way and used it to build a life for myself. Because through that education — I had a bunch of classical training, but didn't really feel a connection with the environment around fine arts or galleries and museums, and although they definitely hold a very important place in creating, I wanted to find my work to be in a more practical sense and a usable application.
I also took financing and business classes and stuff to get into a bit more of an entrepreneurial mindset. So, that's kind of how I started to lean more towards graphic design.
What did you study in school before switching to graphic design?
I was interested in visually creating things.
And, actually, I was always around a pretty creative family. Back when I was in middle school, a few of my friends and I were a bit more rebellious and got into graffiti a little bit, and that kind of stuck with me for quite a while as a creative influence; kind of like a gateway into creating things that were larger than myself and putting these visions of beauty that I had into a space.
But I mean I kind of found that to be practical too, even back then, because instead of just hanging up a painting in your hallway, instead you go to the park and you see this whole mural with flowers or whatever.
I would look at that mural painting with more awe than I ever really would in a gallery or anything like that. That was the biggest draw.
So, before graphic design, I honestly wanted to paint murals.
What was your first creative-related job?
I got hired as a freelance artist by several people in the music industry to do cover art and more illustrative-type of work.
I had a few friends in that world (who are still great friends to this day), so I had those kinds of connections to work mostly with music promotion — whether it was cover art or even social posts and things like that.
It was more like graphics creation, illustration stuff, but that led to a few more commissions to do different illustrations for different companies' websites. At that point, I was still in college, so I was more experienced in illustration and drawing and things like that than I was in graphic design. I had small freelance gigs, one off kind of things, and then I was like, “Wait a minute, I can actually use these skills to make money. This is actually pretty sick!”
That kind of opened my eyes because I was working as a bartender at that point, and hated it and wanted a different job. And that's where the path came in — where I started to get that freelance perspective like, “If I push and I keep developing these skills and keep going, then I can actually make something of all of these skills I've developed over my whole lifetime.”
So, that was kind of the transition that led me more into finding out what the fundamentals of design were and following the principles, and learning those hard skills that can be applied really in any graphic design job.
How did your career lead you to Designity?
Actually, Designity was technically my first official company hire with a design job.
Before then, I was just doing freelancing; just kind of one-off here, one-off there, and kind of making those connections as I could.
But as I was doing that, my cousin, Alicia, was working at Designity as a Creative Director. I knew she also did graphic design, and we had talked about it throughout college and stuff. I had kind of picked her brain about different things.
But then she reached out one day — I wasn't working at Designity yet — but she knew that I was starting to get into a graphic design path, so she asked if I could help her on this project that she needed a Creative for since there was no one available at Designy at the moment. She was like, "I know you don't work here, but hear me out."
So, I said I’d give it a show. Because I hadn't really considered ever working for something like a firm. Designity was more of a structured design business that had never really crossed my mind before. And it was extremely eye opening, but a huge privilege that, honestly, changed my life in so many ways that I would never take back.
I've been here for a little over three years now, just working my way up.
What is your favorite kind of project to take on?
I've actually been getting more into branding projects.
The last couple larger projects I've done have been focused around rebranding companies or elevating the existing branding of companies that just need a little help representing themselves the way that they want to be represented, not the way that they could represent themselves.
Because often times people start a company and they have great ideas and they have great technology behind them, but if they don't have the ability to communicate that visually — like they want to be taken a certain type of way or they want to represent their product in a certain type of way and get this emotional connection involved, a lot of times they don't have the wherewithal or the resources to really develop that in the design process. Or to even consider a design team in their company.
So, I think that's a lot of fun because you're helping out these people who have great ideas and great passion to push their own future forward. And we're just kind of helping them see their vision out, which is great.
What do you find are your most challenging kind of projects?
I think there are sometimes where certain production processes kind of get a bit too repetitive.
I'm actually working on this one right now where I have to restyle a product catalog. And the way it was made years and years and years ago, they still want to keep the same format. So, going in and making those edits is several steps to do one single thing, and then there's a hundred instances where you have to change those things.
So, it's click here, click here, click here. That sort of thing — that repetitive stuff — can be therapeutic at times, but I feel like if there were anything that I would say can get a little old, I think it's stuff like that; more production stuff.
But honestly, those are kind of few and far between. So, I feel pretty lucky.
What is your favorite thing about working at Designity?
That's a good question. I think there's a few things; I can't narrow it down to just one.
But the biggest thing is the diversity in work that you get exposed to because there are so many different types of clients that Designity has and they have so many different needs. I'm on five clients and I could have five completely different things to do; one's a website, one's social media, one's complete brand development, one's doing graphics for an on-site event that they're hosting or something like that. I've had all of those be completely different things all at the same time. And it keeps work fresh in that way, and it feels really nice to not feel like any given day is just a grind on something.
Sometimes that can be a challenge in itself — having to context switch and bounce back and forth — but I feel like it's more refreshing than anything, because I can use a bunch of different inspirations to keep going on projects that are completely unrelated.
It makes it an adventure, almost.
How do you keep yourself up to date with design trends?
I try to keep my social media in a more creative atmosphere.
I know sometimes social media can be a nightmare or a hindrance if you start to follow certain things or these different trends that affect society in certain ways.
I try to stay away from social trends like that except for art and design stuff. So, I have a lot of different artists and designers I follow. I also follow a lot of the companies that make these programs — like Apple, Adobe, even Figma. So, when different updates come up, like new features here or new programs doing this, or maybe there's some artist who's using this other kind of unknown program to do this and that and it's got some really cool capabilities, I usually try to look for stuff like that there because it's so accessible.
I've been learning to use Figma quite a bit in the last year and it's been pretty eye-opening because these different programs oftentimes have very similar functionalities but because of the way they're made, and the way that the company who's making them prioritizes different functions, they kind of get pigeonholed into a certain type of work.
So, when you're doing web design or you're doing app design or something like that, it really lends itself to that Figma program. You technically could do it on Adobe, you could do it in Illustrator or Photoshop or whatever, but there are certain things where a job becomes a lot easier if you're just using the right tools.
And so to have your eyes wide open to the options of even new tools that maybe you've never even heard of before, could change everything because you could be stuck on a project, like “How am I ever going to redesign this person's website?”
But just using the right tools really changes everything.
Is there any insight you can give about current design trends and tools?
It might just be because of my newer introduction to it, but I have seen Figma really taking off in a lot of different design processes.
It's interesting though, because it seems like there are a lot of designers who have built their skill set around understanding programs — especially in Adobe because Adobe's been the standard for so long that's just what you come to expect and you can create a consistency and a workflow around knowing those programs. But I've actually been really impressed trying to move things that I've done on Adobe programs into Figma just to see if I can do it and, oftentimes, it makes the workflow so much easier for me and for the other people in the project.
So, yeah, that's been really eye-opening and encouraging to see that. I mean, I think Figma's been around for a while but my introduction to it has been more recent. That's been kind of blowing my mind a bit.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I think one of the biggest things revolves around video games.
I've played video games ever since I was a young kid in elementary school — I'm the youngest of four, so I was exposed to technology and stuff like that because of my older siblings. We had a PlayStation 1; that was the first video game I ever played. I played Crash Bandicoot and I barely could even press the buttons with my little hands but, being a younger brother, I would always want to hang around.
As time goes on, I've also have been inspired by video games a lot in my creative process.
There are a couple of games that I play pretty regularly with a group of friends; there's a competitive game that we always play called Dota 2. It's kind of like League of Legends but better in every way.
And then when it came out, I got Baldurs's Gate 3, and that's kind of one of the more story-driven and involved longplay kind of games. I'm usually interested in games that I can play with other people, so for that game, I've played it a few different times because you can play the story in different ways. I play it sometimes with my friends, sometimes my sister even hops on and starts playing with me, and then I've been playing with my nephew.
That whole game revolves around the universe of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and my nephew is starting to get into D&D and playing that with his friends, so I told my sister, “Hey this is right up his alley. He plays video games too, we might as well connect him and go from there.”
Is there anything else we should know about you?
I'm in the process of actually making my own video game in Unreal Engine 5, just as kind of a passion project.
It's just to use those creative juices that are flowing and put it into something that I have other interests in as well.
It might seem kind of crazy, but I had a dream one day and I woke up and it was the most vivid thing that I had ever experienced. I was like, “That was so unreal. How can I keep that as a tangible thing?”
And so I started frantically texting my girlfriend like, "Okay, let me just get all these ideas out before I forget!" And I just started typing. This crazy dream was about this character that went around this small town — just a generic, northeastern sea coast kind of quaint, nice town — and ends up uncovering some mysteries under this big lavish construction site. And as they go underground, her and her friends discover these artifacts that have been lost to time, just buried, and now are being uncovered by this construction project, which then releases an entire wave of drama and chaos of some other-worldly type of developments.
It’s a super fun and pretty light-hearted whimsical kind of game. But yeah, it just felt like one of those really unique times where you could say "Wow, this story could be told in a really engaging way."
And I don't really have the experience to make a movie or write a book or anything like that — the way that I would communicate that is visually; just drawing what these characters would look like. So, not even a couple days later, I had a full cast list of these characters that I had fully drawn out and started to build a world.
It’s going now; I'm in the coding phase. I'm getting the actual game processes going, but the whole story, and all the characters and levels are all hashed out. So, now it's just actually making it in the engine and developing it.
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Do you have any words of inspiration for other aspiring graphic designers?
I would say it's never too late to learn; either a new creative process or a new program or just get into new things.
Nowadays, things are so accessible. The internet is incredible, and you can learn so much from it.
I grew up in a little small town, and I didn't have people to teach me these kinds of things, and that's why I went out to Boston, to get into the city and get more stuff like that.
But not everyone can do that. And it's important to recognize that if you can get onto the internet and just be open to learning new things, you can do it. I know people in their late 30s and into their 40s that just started graphic design — like they literally just started, and they didn't go to school for it. Just had a complete change of career.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, you can always start fresh whenever you want or whenever you're ready for it because no one's timeline is the same.
