When The Chicago Graphic Design Club began, it was called The Chicago Graphic Design Book Club, and solely focused on reading and discussing design books. In November of 2020, we invited our first speaker Jonathan Sangster (they/them) for a talk titled Experimenting in Graphic Design. Sangster shared their approach to working in analog mediums that, more often than not, were rooted in experimentation and play. Their work combining typography, textures, imperfection, and motion.
I first came across Sangster’s work on Instagram, proving that the algorithm sometimes does work in favor of building new connections. We began to interact through the occasional Instagram-like. Sangster’s work initially caught my attention because of the raw, rebellious attitude that it provoked. The aesthetic being secondary to the narratives it communicated. Clearly, Sangster was using design to respond to current events, in that time responding to the social injustice that gripped America in 2020.
Like most origin stories, Sangster’s introduction to graphic design was through music. In the 1990s hip-hop and comic books ignited a love affair and fascination with letterforms, ideas, language, and visual communication. And in the late 1990s, Sangster enrolled at Southern Illinois University to obtain a degree in Communication Design, it was here that they were introduced to technology and its relationship to design and printmaking. Years later, they received an MFA in graphic design from the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Today, Sangster lectures at the School of the Art Institute and works with (select) clients while engaging with the world through the lens of graphic design — merging digital and analog as a process of discovery and organized chaos.
Sangster’s creative process, as described by them, is starting with a concept, going through the process, and figuring out what is worth keeping and what is worth adjusting in the process — it is not A–Z.
In 2022, they co-founded MX.Studio alongside their creative partner KT Duffy (they/them), a designer operating at the epicenter of technology and design. KT currently splits their time between Chicago and Oklahoma, where they teach at OU.
KT’s introduction to design was in high school, through classes in art, painting, Photoshop, and Illustrator. But it wasn’t until college that they encountered a professor that introduced them to Queer feminism, which KT considered their gateway drug into technology.
Together they run Mx. Studio, a multidisciplinary, multifaceted, and imagination-driven studio. They focus on projects that involve branding, identity development, front-end web development, VR and AR environments, design, print, social media, concept development, video, and digital fabrication.
Their unapologetic nature in criticizing the design industry differentiates them from the rest of the crowd. They are unafraid to call out how design weaponizes buzzwords like design thinking, inclusion, and human-centered design, as means of exploitation and capitalism —calling out the hostility design organizations direct toward black, brown, femme, and queer people.
In episode seven of Underscore, our podcast, Sangster and KT speak with the host, Christian Solorzano and discuss their approach to design, breaking conventions, share their solutions to building an equitable industry that champions diversity of thought, and more.
We are digital gremlins and cyber-sailors. We’re kittens with big eyes, and puppies with a keen sense of smell. We’re scumbags and bandits. We’re idealists and realists. We’re a sleight of hand and a binding spell. We’re tailors, crafters, cobblers, and fighters. We fall asleep queer and cuddly. We wake up and choose violence.
And the most radical part of their manifesto is the final part, “we wake up and choose violence”, and by this, they mean that they are unafraid to fight back and stand up for their beliefs and values.
Together, they celebrate visibility, transparency, and the ethos of authenticity.
Today more than ever, we need criticism and velvet fists to challenge how things are done. Mx. Studio is doing just that.
Follow MX.Studio on Instagram.
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