Queer Design Club

Specializing in book design for publishers, museums, and individuals, I am a senior designer at the University of Nebraska Press.

How does being queer inform your work?

Being queer enables me to understand authors better, when reading i can feel their emotions or thoughts as if these were my own. When written well, in print, and brought to clarity by a designer who knows reading, it can feel as intimate as an embrace.

What are your favorite pieces of queer visual culture?

Seeing the work of John Waters was an early introduction to an unfiltered view of queer life, one that was perfect for my adolescent years. There is so much more now as an adult I think I’m still figuring it out like the rest of us.

Which other queer people inspire you?

I’m inspired by classical artists, like Jeremy Denk or performative artists like Ross Schlesinger who performs as Plaque Blague. Like filmmakers, musicians are able express through a medium that can be experienced alone but also as a group. When music is performed live with an audience it is an experience unlike anything else. Musicians also always find their own inspiration in composers or other musicians and tracing those lines reveals inspirations in my life that that has informed my work as a designer more than my own identity.