LN: I’m a Graphic Design major, but mostly none of the works I have developed in class were anything I felt were worth keeping. I don’t feel like I have learned much from Mason Gross, I’ve learned more skills on my own.
TL: So do you produce works outside of class for fun or what?
LN: I have a lot of designs which I created for my job, I work for Student Life Marketing. I learned a great deal of design skills from this job.
TL: What do you do for your job? Like what is your title?
LN: I am a designer and photographer.
TL: Do you take any photography classes at Rutgers?
LN: I took Black and White Film my freshman year, it was a great class and I learned a lot. I later took Digital Photography, and I felt that class was okay, but I didn’t learn as much as I would have liked to because the class was filled with students both familiar and new at photography, so the pace was somewhat slow.
TL: Okay well let’s take a look at your works, are they all online?
LN: Yea I have them all on my website; none of these works are from class, they are my personal work for my company.
TL: What programs did you use for these?
LN: These were made with a couple programs, mostly Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I’m very good with Photoshop, I love it, and I have gotten better at illustrator over the years.
TL: Where did you first learn to use these programs?
LN: I learned most of the programs I use in high school; Mason Gross did not teach me much of anything new.
TL: I love the textures and patterns you use in this; there is a lot of overlaying of subtle transparent patterns within images and text. Was this all done in Photoshop?
LN: Well, I made the text in Adobe Illustrator, and them moved it into Photoshop to refine it and put it all together, everything else was done in Photoshop. I like to make scenery out of my work.
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LN: This is one of the biggest projects I have ever done; it was a flier for Newark. They wanted a flier to promote the reconstruction of the riverfront. I am pretty satisfied with it, although there are things I would have liked to have done differently, it’s too cheesy for me, but that’s how it had to be.
TL: Why did it have to be cheesy?
LN: They were very vocal about specifically what they wanted to see, so I didn’t have much choice.
TL: What did you want to do with it, what would you want to do away with?
LN: This boat scene here [in the front and center of image] I would have played around more with the way the images are cropped. They are ‘scrapbookish’, I would want them to seem more real, make it look like a believable scene.
TL: Yea I get what you mean, but at the same time I can understand how having ‘cutouts’ compiled in a scrapbookish manner would work better. If the images are cut out and thoughtfully placed, it can still look good even with images that are clearly edited. By making it obvious that the scene isn’t real it is clear that the work was intended to look as such, and it won’t be mistaken by viewers as a failed attempt by the artist to make a realistic and convincing scenery.
LN: Yea [nodding in agreement]
TL: But I like this, I enjoy graphic images and patterns, flat planes of color overlapping, and this cutout look does that for me. But that’s just personal preference.
TL: So what kind of work do you produce? Where is your market?
LN: I mostly work for urban promoters, people who want to promote their parties, I’m sure you have seen little posters around campus and on busses. Urban art is a majority of my work, but I try to stay away from the clichés of urban design.
TL: What do you mean, what are the clichés?
LN: Like, putting a nude girl on the poster, or using dirty fonts-because most of the time they are unreadable. People only use those fonts because they look cool, but I take what I have learned in designing and classes and apply it to my art.
TL: So are you like trying to converge the urban style with more ‘proper’ design you have learned?
LN: Yea, I take the skills that I’ve learned conceptually and apply it. I try to produce really good work because there are really ugly fliers out there. People just pick up Photoshop for the first time and call themselves graphic designers, and they get work because they will do it for cheap.
TL: So would you consider these people competition? Or are you not worried?
LN: I do consider them competition just because people still go to these guys because they are cheap. In terms of quality though, I am not threatened, I produce quality work which is worth paying for.
TL: How did you get into all of this?
LN: When I first started my company, I based it solely on photography. I would go to parties with my camera and take tons of photos of the crows and the party’s atmosphere for promoters. It was good money; I would walk away with $150 every event just for taking pictures. Eventually I was able to open up the design portion of my company because promoters started asking for specific designs.
LN: I did a Drake concert once, and I got a really good shot that was used on Hot97 and something called “Media Fakeout”.
TL: Hot97 sounds like a radio station, but what is Media Fakeout? Is that like a website or a blog or something?
LN: It’s a website about music and stuff, kind of like a gossip website I guess.
TL: How do you plan to incorporate your kind of work into your thesis?
LN: For thesis, I was thinking of going back to drawing, I really miss it. It will all be digital though, I will draw everything on a tablet in Photoshop. Then I will lay out these images to tell a story of a time in my life. For thesis it will be about my time at Rutgers; the struggles, the happy times, the frustrations with class, starting my company, and the parties.
TL: Is this your first time telling a story with graphic design and photos?
LN: This is the first time that everything will be from scratch; I’m only using my memories.
TL: So you are only memories, drawing photos from memory?
LN: Yea. Then at the end, the last few images before the piece ends I want it to fade to white. The story is not finished, so I can go back and fill it in. It will be of a four year span of my life, and years later I can go back and fill in another span of my life, fill in the gaps, and at the end of that segment I will fade it to white again so I can go back again later. It can be my never ending story.
Luis has a website for the company he started, more of his works can be found there: www.dainfamous.com
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