It’s Saturday night, and somewhere in the world, Francis is most likely in a dimly lit room sliding a blade across paper or pasting Letraset letters while a scanning bed casts their shadow on the wall. This is the world of Francis.
And while Francis is hard to pin down, their work does guarantee one thing: a commitment to craft and graphic design. More often than not, their work challenges the status quo of graphic design social media feeds through work that experiments with vulnerability and themes of heartbreak, depression, design criticism, horses, and dark humor.
What differentiates Francis from the rest of the crowd is their unapologetic nature in pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and being vocal about their thoughts on the current state of graphic design. Their response never falls short of direct and to the point. Francis specifically calls out how buzzwords such as design thinking and trends lead to work that fails to be interesting or original.
“Graphic design today is mostly boring and awful.It used to be great. But in today’s age, content is created to be instant.
Instantly visible. Instantly shared. Instantly forgotten. The result is a world of meaningless “stuff” where any ounce of craft is lost in a sea of sameness. Francis wants to go against this current. To root for the underdog. To BE the underdog. To fight. To bring beauty back into the world and create something memorable that lasts.”
— Francis
Francis has Chicago roots that trace back to the 1990s when they graduated from UIC with a degree in graphic design. During these years, they were introduced to a juxtaposition of Swiss design and post-modernism. Simultaneously, looking up to designers such as Armin Hofmann and Vaughan Oliver while subconsciously collecting inspiration that would inform the work that they continue to do decades later.
In recent years, Francis has found the confidence to break free from the design industry’s expectations and has embraced imperfection, honesty, and craft. Looking at their work, it is evident that their choices are driven by chance rather than meticulous perfection. Their embrace of accidents, messiness, and analog processes produce viscerally human outcomes and, most importantly, disrupt what they like to call the sea of sameness.
“Francis is not some new studio that is going to give you some fluff and horrible marketing language or the standard “about” page. Francis isn’t a fancy studio. It’s not even a studio. Maybe someday. Right now, it’s just an idea of someone or something who wants to do good work. Who is sick of trends and everything looking the same. Who takes the time and wants to make something worthwhile with creativity. That’s it…”
— Francis
And while their philosophy of graphic design is unorthodox and perhaps controversial, one thing for sure is that they’re rolling up their sleeves, working through the night, and pushing themselves to put graphic design before the noise that often plagues the design industry as we currently know it.
Francis always believes in the work. No matter how long it takes or how weird the idea, just do the best work possible and fuck what everyone else thinks.”
— Francis
In our latest episode of our podcast, Underscore, Francis speaks with host Christian Solorzano about their introduction to graphic design, approach to work, influences, and more.
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