Being A Hipster Has Made Me A Better Designer

Brandon Moore
Nov 6 · 4 min read

I’m a 34 year old American, so I’ve grown up with loads of shitty products. Cheap, mass produced, made in China, 2-for-1 at Walmart, frozen, processed, worthless shit.

Today, I like to say I’m a self identified Hipster, though I’m not sure if the label is accurate, because the joke is that Hipsters aren’t self aware.

What the label means to me though, (at least in terms of craft, profession, or hobby) is someone who rejects cheap conveniences in pursuit of the highest quality items and experiences. That’s probably not a popular view of Hipsters, but it’s what I see.

Yes, vinyl sounds better than MP3s and is more enjoyable because it requires a physical interaction of the product. Fixed gear bikes and manual transmissions in cars require more effort and result in a pleasurable connection to machine and road which is lost when everything is automatic or too easy. We Hipsters long for that connection to the real world because the digital life and late 20th century luxuries we’ve always known are boring and unfulfilling. If each generation rejects something that came before, the machine Hipsters have raged against is the lack of quality products and pleasure we get from quality products experienced from youth, and that’s what I associate with.

Make fun of Hipsters and all of their artisanal cheeses if you will, but you should try it. Its fucking delicious, and not just American made, but made in the back of that little shop there in Williamsburg, or on a farm not too far away. Local artisans making high quality products that “spark joy” is Professional Hipsterism to me.

I can hear my Hoosier family members now: “Why would I pay that much for cheese when I can get Kraft singles from Walmart for $3.28?”

As a whole, American culture doesn’t have the appreciation for quality that European countries do, and I don’t know if we’ve ever had a healthy association with pleasures and finer things of life either. We’re supposed to work harder and stay busy; no time for good beer and bike rides! Cheaper and faster is the value here.

“What are you up to?”

“Just working”

Vacation? For more than 2 weeks? You’re fired! Now you can have all the vacation time you want, you lazy sack of shit!

So, we buy the disgusting Kraft singles and make fun of the people working painstakingly to create a delicious piece of cheese. It’s this disconnect from quality and pleasure that makes me even more interested in chasing it. I want to create things that last and bring a bit of enjoyment to people’s daily lives in a way they’ve never experienced before. Or at least in my own. Maybe that’s more accurate; create the things to a standard that I want and assume others will like them just as much. And it’s not even that I actually believe I’m achieving it, but the pursuit is the point.

On To Design

The title says being a Hipster has made me a better Designer, which I believe to be true, but not so blind to know the possibility that I’m wrong. (There’s that self awareness thing again). Maybe I’m a late adopter that is slow to change and that’s actually hurt me as a professional Designer?

What I am certain of is what I need of my craft to be satisfied with it. I don’t know if I can articulate it well except to say that I want to create things that 1.) Requires some effort, which manifest an aesthetic that is my own, and
2.) Physically exist, so that it is a part of the real world.

There’s a desire to be hands-on and develop skills I don’t need a subscription for or have to worry about relearning hot keys for. I want my work to be classic, for my Logos to age like bourbon and value patience over speed. I think a mostly analog process achieves this. Pen and paper are more valuable to me than any digital tool. I want to draw at my wooden workbench with pen and paper because its really satisfying to do that, even if it’s a harder way, because I’m in pursuit of quality, personable outcomes which happens through a development of craftsmanship in timeless, analog process.

It’s not nostalgia, I don’t have a longing for a time of my youth where I believe past to be better than present. My point isn’t that everything new is bad, but that everything new isn’t automatically better and digital tools have no personal connection. I think its more like “Retro-ism” where in a timeline of certain products, discovering the best examples of them just come from another time and trying to recapture that best example to be able to improve upon it even further.

The quality I look for in purchasing items (and in turn try to inject into my own Design work) is not just defined by their function and build but they also bring pleasure and are enjoyable. Like, I just enjoy looking at a sign painted by hand more than one printed on a plastic banner. Fuck “Form follows function”, if you don’t have both in equal parts, then what’s the point?

“Good art is well designed, good design is artfully done.”

Graphic Language

Thoughts & opinion on graphic design & creating it.

Brandon Moore

Written by

Graphic Artist writing my thoughts & opinion on graphic design and creating it BrandMooreArt@gmail.com

Graphic Language

Thoughts & opinion on graphic design & creating it.

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