Christian Solorzano [00:41]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and on today's episode, I have a conversation with designer and educator Nathaniel Haefner, and together we explore his systemic approach to design, from crafting typefaces to building interactive websites and creating generative music. Nathaniel shares how these seemingly different disciplines inform his creative practice and teaching philosophy.

He speaks about his recent move from Austin, Texas to Chicago, His role teaching the next generation of designers and how embracing failure leads to authentic creative growth. Throughout our conversation, he offers insights on finding your voice in an increasingly templated-driven design world. This is a conversation about the intersection of design, technology, and education. And as always, if you find value in these kind of conversations, I really appreciate your support by following us on your preferred podcast platform, leaving us a rating, and sharing with your friends.

It really helps us reach more people in Chicago's creative community and beyond. So thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show, and I hope that you enjoy the conversation. Talk to you soon. Good afternoon, Nathaniel. How's it going?

Nathaniel Haefner [02:16]

It's going well.

Christian Solorzano [02:18]

How is your New Year's? This is the first episode that I'm recording in 2025. So are you a holiday person? Did you do anything for the holidays?

Nathaniel Haefner [02:29]

Oh, well, I'm not a huge holiday person, but I did just get back from Austin visiting some friends and family. Yeah, I used to live in Austin and I've been in Chicago for a little over a year now and it's still go back for major holidays.

Christian Solorzano [02:43]

So you don't do any like big celebration on midnight or any of that stuff? You don't?

Nathaniel Haefner [02:48]

Oh no, we went to— we watched the one from an hour ahead of time and went to bed. So we didn't even stay up all the way.

Christian Solorzano [02:54]

Okay. I was watching a on Instagram, the countdown in LA. This was like there's a group of people and they were in the streets and there's a billboard that says it's a counter of the number of deaths from cigarettes like this year. And at midnight it resets to zero.

Nathaniel Haefner [03:18]

So yeah, so everybody's back to square one again, huh?

Christian Solorzano [03:22]

Exactly. I thought that was like a pretty, different way to bring in the welcome in the new year.

Nathaniel Haefner [03:29]

Yeah. Different timer. Yes.

Christian Solorzano [03:32]

So thank you for being on our show. I've known about you for a while now because your you're gonna be featured in our upcoming publication, Faculty, and your Instagram handle is @_galore, and the name of this podcast is called Underscore. So we got underscore galore on Underscore.

Nathaniel Haefner [03:57]

Totally coincidental. I had, I had no idea. This design project that I'm doing, Underscore Galore, is a is actually the third of these projects that I've undertaken over the last decade or so. And so my process was just to— as a sort of formula for naming them. And so it's some sort of punctuation thing and then some kind of descriptor of it, right? So Grand Ampersand, and it has to rhyme. So Underscore Galore, Vast Asterisk.

That one's a little iffy, but those are kind of the way I thought about those.

Christian Solorzano [04:36]

Yeah, I like it. And I think I messaged you a while back, and I think all I said was nice username or something, and that's it. So one of the things that I want to call out for our listeners is that you have one of the coolest portfolio websites that I have ever seen. And I'm not speaking just for myself. I'm speaking for the people that I've also shared it with and have responded with like all uppercase WOW and what is this?

So can you tell us a little bit about your background? You're an educator, you're a designer, you do— I would call it development, like web development. You're a musician. You're also a very talented yo-yoist, or how do you, how do you describe someone that plays the— like that, not plays, that does the yo-yo?

Nathaniel Haefner [05:33]

We just call ourselves players.

Christian Solorzano [05:34]

Players. Yo-yo player.

Nathaniel Haefner [05:37]

Yo-yos. Yeah. Yo-yo player. I've done a lot of things in my career, or different careers even. I started out pursuing an engineering degree. So I was gonna be a mechanical engineer for a while. And about 2/3 of the way through that, I decided that I liked the designing of the presentations I had to do in school more than I liked the material I had to present. So I changed over to a graphic design degree major.

And that's when I really started getting into type and interface design and really technical sides of things that were less about artistic endeavors, but more about the exacting nature that design can have. And so that led me a lot into the web development, web design kind of side of design. And this was all around late 2000s.

And at the time it was like right when iPads first came out and there was this huge boom for new interface styles and responsive design and everything needed to fit whatever screen size there was, because we were kind of done with the 4:3 rectangle kind of format, fitting on a desktop screen.

And so I studied a lot of that in my undergraduate, and my first job out of school was— well, I had, I had like 3 jobs at the same time, but one of my jobs was doing web development for a company in Austin, Texas. And that's when I learned how to do all the front-end development stuff that I know how to do. Make sure that my website reflects my abilities.

And every now and then I redo the whole thing just to try some new kind of front-end development system or whatever.

Christian Solorzano [07:27]

You're from Texas. Were you born in Texas as well?

Nathaniel Haefner [07:31]

No, I was actually born in Kentucky, but I've lived in Texas since I was 5 years old.

Christian Solorzano [07:36]

Okay. And what was your childhood like? And did you always have an inclination towards making things and sort of being curious about well, yeah, I suppose so.

Nathaniel Haefner [07:49]

A lot of my childhood— I have, I have 3 older siblings an older brother and 2 older sisters, and they were more into like choir and band and things for their like electives that they took. And my mom is a well, they're both— my parents both retired now. My mom used to do like choir directing at churches and things like that, so she's very musical in my family. But I kind of went the art route. So in school, I took more art classes.

I kind of enjoyed that more and never really did a lot of formal music training other than just sort of what I picked up from, siblings and parents, just kind of being around that stuff.

But yeah, so when I was a kid, it was, it was pretty typical stuff. My mom, after she was doing music stuff, she became an elementary school teacher. So I spent a lot of time at school because I would go to the school that she taught at. And so lots of time to practice yo-yoing and things like that after school and things like that. So yeah, a lot of my interests that I sort of carry into adulthood still probably comes from being around educators and musicians.

Yeah, but with my own artistic take on it.

Christian Solorzano [09:04]

Did you have any influences growing up aside from your environments and your family? What were you into as a, as a child or well, I was big into skateboarding for a while.

Nathaniel Haefner [09:17]

I was around that era when, X Games and Tony Hawk was a real big propeller for a lot of kids my age. So I like doing some of those extreme sports, although I was never really any great at them or anything like that. But, there's always that artwork side of skateboarding, right? All the graphics on the bottoms of decks and things like that, catch my attention.

I remember when I was— when I, first got a skateboard that, my friends were already skating, and I finally got one, and I was kind of too scared to do tricks on it because I didn't want to mess up the graphics on the bottom too much, right? The artwork clean and nice. And there was— it doesn't matter, don't worry about it. I also for a while wanted to be an architect, and I was real weirdly into like Frank Lloyd Wright and stuff.

As like a middle schooler, maybe more than any middle schooler probably should be. And so I feel like a lot of his like pre-modernist kind of notions rubbed off on me a little bit that way too. Yeah, he was kind of Bauhaus before Bauhaus, he was in that same mind state but doing it over here instead of Germany.

Christian Solorzano [10:23]

I never became a skateboarder, but I did have a skateboard, and I also thought that it was too precious. To be used because I'm like, why do they put the artwork on the bottom? That's like, one, no one can see it. Two, you're going to get it dirty and it's going to get scratched up. It just doesn't make like any sense.

So I never— I don't think I think I used it like once or twice and then I let a friend borrow it and he broke it. And that was the end of my skateboarding phase.

Nathaniel Haefner [10:54]

That's how it ends, right? It's always the broken board and then Better than your broken arm, I guess.

Christian Solorzano [11:00]

So then, so you studied communication design at Texas State University, focusing on typography and data-driven storytelling. Can you talk to us, can you talk to us a little bit about how you, just your relationship to typography and sort of some of the ideas, or like, what were you exploring when you were at Texas State?

Nathaniel Haefner [11:27]

Yeah. So after my undergrad, I spent some time doing, laser cutting and design stuff at a makerspace that I helped with in Austin. And then after I did that for a while, I decided I wanted to go back to really start making tools for people.

Because that makerspace really led me to this idea that designers can build sort of fundamental components for other people to use in their own designs. And that's sort of how I perceive type and type design, is the type designer can build these sort of atomic units, designing individual letters, individual characters and glyphs and things that become someone else's tool.

So that's what really draws me to type the most, is, you never really know if someone's going to use a font that you make, but you never also know what they're going to do with it, right? It may be Outside of, what you intended it to be used for. But it also is totally, it's a tool. They can do what they want with it once it's created. It goes off and becomes its own thing.

Christian Solorzano [12:36]

And you've dabbled in typeface design. I was able to find one of your rounded sans serifs called Brayburn. Is that—

Nathaniel Haefner [12:47]

Is that how you pronounce it?

Christian Solorzano [12:49]

Yeah, from 2014.

Nathaniel Haefner [12:51]

Yep, I name all my fonts after apples.

Christian Solorzano [12:53]

Okay, why is that?

Nathaniel Haefner [12:55]

No idea. I mean, I'm just into apples. Makes sense to name them after whatever?

Christian Solorzano [13:01]

Yeah, the fruit.

Nathaniel Haefner [13:03]

It's simple, so no one can complain about it too much.

Christian Solorzano [13:06]

So how— so do you, do you find yourself still creating fonts? Is that something that you still explore?

Nathaniel Haefner [13:12]

Less so now that I'm doing more teaching and stuff. I do a project with students every year where they design a pixel font. So I churn out a few of those every year just to, use as demos and examples.

In fact, some of the work in my Underscore Galore project has one of the fonts that I use in that is one of my pixel fonts that I use. So mostly I just make real basic things. I'm not using the heavy software to make super fine finished fonts and variable typefaces and things so much anymore.

Christian Solorzano [13:50]

So given that you're such a, like polymath, like you do all these different you have all these different disciplines. One, how do you find the time to dedicate to all of these things? And I'm curious about how they, how you see them all kind of influencing each other, whether it's music, whether it's type Whether it's graphic design, teaching, how do you make it all work?

And maybe walk us through like a day in the life, like a typical day in the— maybe a week, a week in the life.

Nathaniel Haefner [14:30]

I need more than a day to do all this stuff. I would say, humbly that I do a lot of things, but I'm not a master of any of them. I dabble in a lot of things.

And the thing that I've always felt best at in my design and, any kind of career is sort of guiding people to become better versions of themselves. So teaching is what I'm best at rather than the actual designs that I create or the music that I make or any kind of thing that I do from the design perspective.

And so I learned a lot of that about myself when I was doing some of the makerspace stuff. I would, I would be at this makerspace 6 days a week and would teach people how to use the machines, help them troubleshoot, while simultaneously, creating some of the products that we sold out of the shop and running workshops and things. And so that's what really sparked me to say, hey, I'm actually enjoying more of this teaching side of design than the production side of design.

Or the commercial side of design. And so that's what led me to go back and become a teacher at Texas State, where I was teaching while I was getting my master's. Yeah, and then from then on, I took some courses that were like, hey, I need to get better at just teaching, pure teaching kind of stuff. So some education courses, art education courses. And so that led me to becoming a high school teacher.

And so Through all that teaching, a typical day would be something like, nowadays I wake up pretty early. I got school. School starts at like 7:30. So hop on the train, get to school, and then I teach 2 different classes right now, but I've taught 6 different subjects over the course of my teaching. Some of them were just pure typography and then the graphic arts programs. At Texas State. I've taught web development, web design, interaction design, things like apps and iPad design kind of stuff.

So, I'd go to school. Right now I'm teaching graphic arts, which is a kind of hybrid of digital illustration and graphic design. And so I teach a few periods of that, do some teacher meetings, that kind of basic stuff. All while I'm on my teacher meetings, I usually have a an app running that lets me make some music in the background for my own enjoyment.

Christian Solorzano [17:05]

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Nathaniel Haefner [17:07]

Oh yeah. So I do a lot of modular synthesis stuff. And there's an app called VCV Rack that you can use that's sort of a free plugin kind of thing where you can do it virtually. And so you can just patch a bunch of little cables together and Have it run automatically, and it's just generative nonsense music that sounds kind of neat sometimes. Okay. Depending on how much reverb and delay you add, it can sound better or worse.

And then, yeah, so I teach a yearbook slash photography class at the end of the day. And then the nice thing about teaching in Chicago is our school gets out at 2:30. So I can be home by 3 and free to draw, create, do whatever I want for the rest of the day.

Christian Solorzano [17:57]

That's pretty awesome. And then, so you came to Chicago, you're now living in Chicago, and I love hearing, one of the, one of the objectives, or like, not objective, but one of the aspirations for this show and the Chicago Graphic Design Club is that we love— we want to inspire people to come to the city. So like through a lot of the programming, like we hope that people will be like, oh, Chicago is like such a great place for creatives.

So I always love to hear the perspective of an outsider, someone that's not native to the city, talk about one, their first impression of Chicago. And maybe what were the things that like made you want to move here? I know you used to visit the Renegade Craft Fair, which is like very popular here in Chicago. So. Just what's been your 1-year Chicago review?

Nathaniel Haefner [18:51]

I don't see myself going anywhere else after this.

Doing the makerspace stuff, we had our craft fairs and our, trade shows and things that would, that would let me travel around the country a little bit while we were, selling our stuff. And like Renegade was one of the ones that brought me to Chicago, brought me to New York, brought me to Atlanta, lots of different places we went to. We went to San Francisco once, and I didn't get to go, but we also go to Portland sometimes for that stuff back then.

And so I got to visit a lot of different major cities, right?

Christian Solorzano [19:27]

Yeah.

Nathaniel Haefner [19:28]

And being from Austin, that's already a kind of crafty vibe, kind of a major city in terms of, sort of local businesses.

Christian Solorzano [19:37]

It's very—

Nathaniel Haefner [19:37]

There's a whole Keep Austin Weird kind of vibe where it's, meant to be local and not big global corporations. And, coming to Chicago, I knew pretty quickly after that I came here that this was a place that I would— one of the few places I think I'd move to outside of living in Austin.

It just has the bigger vibe to it that I like. There's a lot more stuff here. I live in South Loop now, and I purposefully picked this area so that I could walk to Field Museum, Art Institute, any, go to the aquarium whenever I feel like it. Yeah, all these things are, things that Austin doesn't quite have as big of a scene of. Chicago does. And that's sort of my biggest thing is it's a lot like Austin, but just on a bigger scale.

Honestly, I think the one of the things that I, that I knew coming here was I was gonna sell my car. Texas is sprawled, right? Everything you gotta drive to. I don't even have a car anymore. I sold it the week I moved in and I've been riding trains and buses ever since, and it's beyond what I expected it to be. Yeah, I'm heavily enjoying it. And like I said, I don't have any— I haven't run into any problems yet, which I'm happy about.

Christian Solorzano [20:59]

And you've been— and you've experienced how many Chicago winters so far? Is this your second one?

Nathaniel Haefner [21:04]

This will be my third. Some of the shows we did were in early January, so I've seen some snow before I got here, so I was aware.

Christian Solorzano [21:13]

Okay, so you know what you were getting into.

Nathaniel Haefner [21:15]

Yeah, but it weirdly, everyone that I've talked to has been like, oh, this is a mild winter, and I'm kind of thinking, well, maybe that's how they all are going to be from now on. But, I think there's a little people remember 10 years ago maybe, and they're warning me that maybe I haven't really experienced it yet.

Christian Solorzano [21:32]

Yeah, I don't think you have.

Nathaniel Haefner [21:33]

See?

Christian Solorzano [21:35]

Yeah, that's awesome. So like relatively new to Chicago, you're like, you've, like you've mentioned, like you're, you have all these different disciplines that you like to invest your time in. And I'm very curious about some of your music explorations. Like right before we were recording this, like you were talking about like synthesis, like music, musical synthesis, synthesizers. Being like an interest of yours. I'd love for you to maybe talk a little bit more about that.

Nathaniel Haefner [22:03]

Well, it kind of stemmed from, like I said, my brothers and sisters and my mom are big musician people. And I kind of missed out on that and doing the art side of things. So, I think one thing I noticed about them especially is, none of them really play music so much anymore. My mom still occasionally does, but, my brothers and sisters, they played, French horn and Trumpet and stuff in school, and who knows if they even still have them.

So I feel like since I kind of came to the music in my family a little bit later, that I sort of was old enough to really appreciate it a little more. It wasn't like forced upon me, maybe. Yeah, sort of explore where I wanted to go with it. And I really just wanted to play piano for most of it.

And so that's kind of where I started. I had a, our family had a piano and I, my mom taught me a little bit of basics on there, helping me work through some piano books and just learning how it works in general, go from 1 finger to 10 fingers, right? And so, after getting somewhat proficient with piano, I'm still awful, could never perform in front of people because it's too much, but yeah, I started thinking about how, what's the— what's that atomic unit again?

I think about with type, right? And then this is kind of that. You have these raw waveforms and things to sculpt them with, and with those basic building blocks, you can build really extravagant and unique sounds. Yeah, this is sort of the analogous to my typography in terms of music.

Christian Solorzano [23:41]

Yeah, and one of the— one of the things that you mentioned that I've heard you mention when you, in your submission to our publication, is that your work explores the connection between memory, identity, and failure. And I'd love for you to expand upon that and maybe break it down by what would these 3 words mean to you and how they unfold.

Nathaniel Haefner [24:08]

Yeah, so memory is, more evident. So in my, in my current projects, these 500-piece-long projects that I do where it's almost like a diary, right? It's a way for me to sort of record some of the things that I'm thinking about at the time, these weird little phrases or snippets of an idea, and then turn them into some sort of either typographic work or illustration that goes with it, or whatever thing feels best to go with the with the idea.

And I think the interesting thing about them is I, as I really make them in big chunks, like I'll sit for a weekend and I'll draw 40 of them or so. And, after that they pile up. And since I release them sort of sporadically, maybe one a day, sometimes 2 a day, just depending on how many I feel like publishing one day, I don't see them for a while after I've made them. So I make them, they're relatively quick.

They take me, anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes to make one of these drawings, and then I kind of forget about it. And when I go in the morning, I usually, after I'm getting ready for school, usually before I'm about to leave my house, I push one out onto Instagram or wherever, Pinterest, wherever. And I go, oh yeah, I remember doing that. That was a while ago.

And then it's interesting to see the meaning that I thought of when I when I thought about it, like when I decided to write that idea down, and when I decided to draw it versus what it means to me that day. So it's sort of like a little jumping off point. It's like, does it mutate? Does it change into something new depending on how I'm feeling or what I perceive about it that day? And, maybe it kind of lines up with what's happening.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. People can read into them almost little like memory horoscope kind of things like, oh yeah, okay, I could see how that relates to what I just did, this morning, you guys, something versus a month ago when I made it. Yeah, I think the biggest part of all those though, of my little ideas, is that idea of failure. I think that comes a lot from me being a teacher as well.

And I try to impart that on a lot of my students, especially since a lot of them are very new to design and art. One of the reasons why I wanted to be a high school teacher over a college professor and make that lower level downgrade, so to speak, but not really in my mind, is to get the kids before they, start having concrete ideas about design. A lot of the college students I taught, they've already had some training.

I usually saw them when they were closer to graduation, so they were, in the program for a little while. And a lot of them were, weirdly enough, set in their ways already as far as designers go. And I think that's a really dangerous thing. And I think people find some means for success, and then they cling to it and they stick to that. That way to create so that they don't fail, or it's harder to fail.

And when you have younger students that have basically never drawn a thing in their life, especially on a computer, or used any sort of design thinking, or, any sort of processes that we use as designers, a lot of those processes are meant to sort of root out failure and get rid of the worst ideas and narrow down to a better idea. And so part of my work that I do for this design stuff is I try not to filter myself too much.

And so a lot of the ideas that I see, even after I've made them, I go, ooh, never mind, I probably shouldn't have done that, or that one's not my best work. Or, I try not to really let myself, I don't, I don't try. If I fail, I fail. That's kind of my thing, right? And I think that's how we get better. We fail, we mess up. Those sort of stick with you a little bit more.

Those are the more core memories you have as a designer, not when you did something and it was really easy for you, but when you really struggled with something and you kind of had to really work to correct it.

Christian Solorzano [28:32]

So how do you define success then?

Nathaniel Haefner [28:34]

Whew. Well, that's tough because as a teacher, that's one of the things we're always trying to define what success is with our students, right? And, I think the biggest thing it always comes down to is, did you learn something from it? And, teachers are all about getting kids to learn.

And if I can show that a student has learned over the course of a semester or a year with me, then they're better off for having my class or, being one of my students. And that applies to me as well. If I'm learning something when I, when I make my work or when I'm making music or when doing any kind of thing. That's how I know it's successful, is if I take something away from it that's new.

Christian Solorzano [29:15]

Okay, so we've talked about memory and failure. What about identity? You talked about— Yeah.

Nathaniel Haefner [29:23]

So identity, this is, this is a tricky one for me because, being this kind of jack-of-all-trades kind of person, I kind of bounce around a lot from what I am one week or day to the next day. And so I think with my art, it's, a lot of these things are just what I was thinking at the time, right?

All these pieces that I've been doing recently and my art since I've sort of not been a commercial designer for a while now and I've been more of a teacher, my work has shifted more towards personal work than it has commercial work. I'm not making things for clients anymore. I'm making things kind of just for me. And I think as I notice these projects going on, I think fewer and fewer people are interested in them. And so they're really becoming just for me, right?

So I think there's that side of that. Oh, was it successful? Who cares, right? I'm learning while I'm doing it. But yeah, my identity is just, it's all littered in there. There's little pieces of me and all that stuff. And I think the, as a communicator visually, I don't think it's always necessarily clear who I am. I post these, they're kind of all over the place.

Christian Solorzano [30:42]

Do you believe that— what do you believe the role of design to be? That's a very big question. But what would you, what would you define as the role of design, of graphic design to be? Its critical role? What do you, what do you think is a— maybe a better way to reframe that question would be, what do you define as the responsibility of a designer? Yeah.

Nathaniel Haefner [31:13]

I mean, I've always thought it was like a problem solver. Designers solve problems. Just the way we solve them is different than other kinds of problem solvers, right? Engineers design things to spec to make sure they don't fall down if you're designing a bridge or something, right? We use visual design to solve some sort of problem that requires a visual solution.

And that can be very superficial. It can also be very technical. It can be, yeah, rooted in some sort of scientific backing. It doesn't have to be all just made-up stuff, but yeah, solve visual problems.

Christian Solorzano [31:47]

There is a previous guest on this show, I think almost 2 years ago now, and they defined they also mentioned that graphic design creates problems. And ever since then, I've also— I just, I take that into consideration as well. The graphic design sometimes creates a lot of problems as well. Would you agree?

Nathaniel Haefner [32:14]

Yeah, I agree. I think, I tell my students this a lot of times too, when, we're designing things and I really like to talk to them about how a lot of our work is ephemeral, right? It's very temporary. We don't need to be making monuments and, legacy and creating this lasting impression, every single thing you make, right?

We do have that slight commercial, application to our work where we do make something that we give to a client, and then maybe they'll have us make something else later, like it's just a quick answer to something most of the time. And I think that was, that was sort of my way of thinking more so before I went to my graduate level work, where graduate level work started focusing a lot more on designing human-centered stuff.

And so, going back a little bit to what you're asking about the, storytelling with data, right? A lot of that comes from taking real-life data that humans generate and turning that into something visual that can tell an easier story than a big spreadsheet full of numbers could tell. And so, I do think that design does get in the way a lot of the time. But then there are those times where it can be the answer, right? Where we can clear things up quite a bit.

Christian Solorzano [33:49]

And that's such a strong parallel to synthesis. It's like getting this raw data and then sculpting it to have it have some pleasant experience to evoke some kind of pleasant experience, like visually or Through like musically. So that's what, that's what I, that's something that I've also been thinking about is just like the strong overlap between like sculpting a sound and then also like sculpting like a layout.

Nathaniel Haefner [34:21]

Yeah, I think there's, that's really interesting you bring that up because I think one of the things that we learn early on in design is, to embrace the empty space, right? We leave that nice negative space in our artwork, and especially with type design, right? Type design is, Massimo Vignelli always saying it's all about the negative space, right? He's not even— you don't care about the letters, it's all the space between.

I just showed my students the Helvetica movie last— before winter break, so yeah, remember that quote from it, but or however it goes exactly. But, in music, I feel like, I'm, I am, I am confident that I am a far better designer than I am a musician by like a magnitude, tenfold, not even close, right? And so I think one of the traps that I fall into a lot when I'm making music is I gotta fill all this space.

Quiet is bad when you're, when you're starting out. I just wanna play all the notes I can. I wanna fill in all, oh, there's room for some, 10 extra tracks on this, might as well put something there.

And so I think that would— that's sort of my next journey in music is to kind of spread it out a little bit, like take some of these ideas that I have from visual design in terms of, flow and pacing and visual space and translate that more into a musical sense.

Christian Solorzano [35:48]

And are there any musical— like, I'm curious about what you listen to and whether you draw inspiration from that.

Nathaniel Haefner [35:59]

That's interesting too, because honestly, most of the music that I make, I probably wouldn't listen to it if I didn't make it.

Not that I don't like it, but it's not the stuff that I ever really liked when I was younger. I kind of make this, washy ambient kind of stuff that, doesn't have anything on it. I just never record my voice. There's never any lyrics to any of it. It's all just, piano with minimal drums and you know sort of you know I don't even know how to describe it. It's awful. It's terrible.

But yeah, the stuff I listen to is more you know hip hop kind of mainstream stuff. One of the things I do at my school is I is I run a music club for teaching how to do. Music production. So most of the kids that do that are very into hip-hop and stuff like that. So they're recording vocals and doing beats and things like that.

And that tends to be more what I focus my own listening to so that I can sort of aid them in their, in their quest for stardom and just getting their voice stuff out. So the stuff I tend to do when I'm at school tends to be more, hey, you guys can use this maybe for your next thing. And the stuff I do when I'm doing my own work is vastly different.

And sometimes when I play them stuff I've made, or they catch me working on something at school, between a class period or something, Mr. Haefner, what is that? It is not what we expected you to make. And so yeah, it's my influences in music is I try to avoid being influenced too much by the music that I listen to, and I feel the same way about design.

I try not to look at too much stuff from modern people because it tends to get stuck in my head a little too much and push me in the way that I wouldn't go without it.

Christian Solorzano [38:04]

Yeah, there's been a few designers that I've also heard express the same sentiments. About just like avoiding looking, for example, like on Instagram, like their inspi— like the For you feed, because it'll— like, things will just naturally get ingrained into your brain that when you're designing something, you're pulling from what you saw someone else do.

And I think, in my opinion, like sometimes it just creates this like My friend describes it, describes it as a sea of sameness, where kind of like everything begins to kind of look like itself. And I don't know, it's not that interesting if it's—

Nathaniel Haefner [38:50]

Yeah, I think that's something I noticed too, when I look through feeds of things. And, I think part of that is that idea of, you'll see a lot of stuff that's better than your own work, right? And I think that that's good when you're learning, is to strive to get your skills up so that you can really do anything that you want to, right? You don't wanna let the tools you're using get in your way. But you can also feel like there's that failure sense, right?

How come my work doesn't look like this? Why aren't, hundreds of thousands of people mimicking my style, right? Why isn't the AI algorithm being trained on my designs, right? And so I think that that's something I try to instill in my students is it's like, you can be a chameleon and make your work look like anybody's work, and that might get you one job. But if you wanna be happy with your work and really enjoy the work you're doing, it's gotta be your own.

It's gotta be that you make and you're the stem of it. And I think, they're worried that being that way might be a point of failure, right? Until maybe they get a little bit of attention their own for their own stuff.

Christian Solorzano [40:09]

I also build my own websites and I know the pain and agony of like something not working. And you can't even find a— you don't even know how to ask online. You're like, I don't even know what, how to ask for help. But then you troubleshoot it and then, and you feel some ownership over that thing that you made, even if it's super minor. Yeah. So how do you, how do you overcome that of sometimes not really knowing what you're doing, but doing it anyways? Yeah.

Nathaniel Haefner [40:42]

I don't know if it ever really goes away completely. I think, a lot of my projects, right, it, especially these 3 that are kind of all related, like this Underscore Galore being the 3rd of, there was, there was a lot of time between the 2 of them, right? Or this, the first one I did in like 2014 or '15, I think. I don't even remember exactly. 2016. And then, I went 2 or 3 years.

I was like, you know what, I think it's time to see how I've changed, right? It's kind of like a, what new skills can I learn from doing this next phase of this thing? And then, when I started this most recent one, I was thinking, hey, have I actually changed this time? I feel like I could see a bigger progression in my work from between the first and the second one.

I don't quite see that big of a change from the second one to this third one. In terms of artistic style, I feel like they're a lot more similar. This and the Vast Asterisk one were a lot more similar than the first one and the second one. And, part of me thinks that, maybe this wasn't something I even needed to bother doing. It's just more of the same, right? Do I really have anything interesting to add to this one this time around?

And I still think about that when I'm designing these, and I think the way that I design these projects, right, it's not just what I'm designing, but it's also a system, right? I'm very much a systematic designer where I think in terms of long-term kind of things, especially with these 500-piece projects that take up a good year. And then, At this point, it's too late, like I'm kind of stuck to it, right? It's the way it is.

I either stop it cold or continue it the way it is until it's done. And I think there is that sense of fear that, by the end of this, am I gonna feel any different about how I, is it gonna make me feel like I did something successful or useful? I don't know. And, for students, I feel like that's a tough thing to grasp, even more for them, because, at this point in my life, I can afford to fail, right?

They're still trying to find themselves and get to that stage where they can be who they are without worrying about if their art is accepted or not. And so if I fail, I fail on this one. If it's, if it makes anybody, side note here, I guess when I do think about these, I kind of picture some of them as being like somebody's dumb little office sign.

Like they're sitting in a cubicle somewhere and they printed out these and they put it in a little 8 by 8 frame and they go, they set it on their desk and some coworker walks by and has a little, that's neat, kind of little chuckle or something. I don't know if other designers do that where they sort of envision where their art would hang in somebody else's place or space. I don't know if anybody's actually doing that with my stuff.

Christian Solorzano [43:57]

I know it's always like what I experience sometimes is like some of the personal work that I put a lot of energy and effort into when I publish it, it's like crickets. Like no one, it's like very little engagement. Yeah, it's like the same 2 people liking it and that's it. And then sometimes like the stuff that I put very little care and thought into, that's what, people gravitate towards. So I've kind of, learned to not— to kind of not really expect anything.

Because if you do, you're just going to be disappointed no matter what.

Nathaniel Haefner [44:33]

Yeah, I definitely understand that sentiment for sure. It's something that when you deal with clients, right, it's like you show them 2 ideas or 3, they're always going to pick the one you hate the most. Whether it's good or bad, it's just the one you usually didn't want to work on extra.

Christian Solorzano [44:52]

Yeah. Yeah. And you have a dog?

Nathaniel Haefner [44:54]

I used to have a dog.

Christian Solorzano [44:55]

You used to have a dog? Badoni?

Nathaniel Haefner [44:56]

Badoni. Yep.

Christian Solorzano [44:57]

Okay. Badoni with the good hair.

Nathaniel Haefner [44:59]

Oh yeah, that was probably my most successful social campaign, was just photographing my dog being a dog.

Christian Solorzano [45:05]

So how many accounts do you have? Too many.

Nathaniel Haefner [45:09]

I think I just have— there's maybe 5. I have the Badoni one. I have the Daily Ligature. I have— that was a— I just made ligature for every day of the year. The website's easier to use than that, than the Instagram. I had Grand Ampersand, Vast Asterisk, now Underscore Galore. Yeah, I think those are the only ones that are— that have stuff on them.

Christian Solorzano [45:34]

So Grand Ampersand, Vast Asterisk, Underscore Galore. Badoni with the good hair and the Daily Ligature. All right. I feel like—

Nathaniel Haefner [45:46]

All of them dead except for the Underscore Galore. I have finished those projects. Dog also.

Christian Solorzano [45:52]

I feel like you need a few more. I don't know. I feel like— You're kind of slacking a little bit.

Nathaniel Haefner [45:57]

I feel like at one point I tried to get back into a few of them and I couldn't remember how to like get into them. So they're stuck the way they are.

Christian Solorzano [46:04]

If I ever wanted to continue, I'd have to make a whole nother so given that it's a new year, it's 2025, are there any projects or anything that you're looking forward to this year? And are you a person that makes New Year's resolutions, or are you above that?

Nathaniel Haefner [46:19]

Oh yeah, if I wanted to change, I would have just done it the day I felt like it. I don't need a calendar to help me. A project I am, I am interested in pursuing a little more it's a, it's a programming and it's music related. There is a synthesizer platform called Norns. I don't know if you're familiar with it.

It is a— it's a little rectangle, and it has 3 knobs and 3 buttons and a little screen, and you can write software that runs on it. And people do this. A very small segment of Synthesizer people tend to do this. I am I'm getting more into that, and I want to write a sequencer application that plays piano accompaniments with a generative sort of style. So tell it a chord, you tell it a key.

So you'd say like, oh, I wanted to play in you know C major, and I wanted to play in the key of C or. That's the best I can think of right now in my skill set. And it runs, and then it plays, and then you can capture part of it. So if you hear something you like, you can sort of lock it in, and then it will do that until you change it. And so it's a, it's a big undertaking.

I Haven't really ever done coding in this language before. It's a programming language especially for these instruments. It's written in Lua is the programming language. See how it goes. I've designed it. I know how I want it to work. That's the hard part, I think. And then the coding is the busy work part that will just eat up a lot of time. And like you were saying, something might not work and you don't even know how to ask because entirely new to me.

So yeah, that's my next thing that I've been thinking about the most.

Christian Solorzano [48:24]

And then the other question that I, that I, that I'm very curious about is your overall thoughts on the landscape of just design, graphic design today. And you've been practicing for quite some time now. So obviously, there's a lot of changes, like you mentioned about, the iPad, being something that kind of kickstarted your fascination with like digital design. But I'm curious about your feelings, your thoughts, your hopes, your fears when it comes to our industry as it stands today.

And given that you're an educator, you're— when it comes to like your students, what are— what's— what do you— what do you feel to be the thing that's the most needed today?

Nathaniel Haefner [49:11]

The biggest thing that students, I try to make my students realize is Doing the actual artwork may become secondary to the ideas, right? I feel like as we get forward, the better technology we have, the easier the software becomes to use, the easier it is for your ideas to look the way you want them to look. But the idea itself is what's going to keep designers around.

I see this a lot in every kind of design that I've, that I've practiced in, web design especially, where, we had that weird Adobe Dreamweaver program. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Christian Solorzano [49:57]

I used to use it.

Nathaniel Haefner [49:58]

Yeah, and, it would work a little, but as soon as we needed screen size changes and things like that, it kind of started to show its rough edges. And so everyone thought that a lot of these template websites, that you can just go up, started out with maybe WordPress, but then it became things like Wix and Squarespace and, all those kind of places that, you can, you can get you a very nice looking website, but those websites tend to solve one kind of problem.

And so if you need something custom, if you need something that's really specific to your artistic goals, or if it's, a client has some new thing they're trying to do, they'll still need real developers, real designers who won't be able to just download a template to solve those problems. And I feel the same way, every year when I, when I start my semesters over or whatever with my students, it's what new AI thing has been crammed into Illustrator or Photoshop or InDesign.

Right, that's supposed to make their work better. And, I feel like out of all the newer things that those programs help students do, it's really just been cutting out photos that really makes it a lot easier for them. They can click a button and background's gone kind of stuff. And then most of the time that's just the beginning of the idea, right? These pieces of software still don't make stuff for you. In the way that you would really want it to be.

And so you really need that idea, that process to get from a basic idea into a fully fleshed out solution. And I don't think that designers have to worry about that going out of fashion or out of style soon. So yeah, I think, as I've moved from commercial work to more self-expression, to more artistic endeavors with my design, the AI doesn't spit out stuff that I make. I'm not worried about me.

If students are trying to emulate some of the stuff that they see in AI, which I think can become a problem if that's all that gets put in their feeds and, shown in front of them.

Then it might be something they have to really force to navigate around. But as you were saying, if they try to find, you tell your students find their own kind of voice and style, then the AI will, at least for a little while, won't be able to emulate you too much. They'll have to catch back up to you, and you can just change again.

And, I think one of the things I really like that I've always kind of thought of going back to when I was a kid is, like we have those like folk hero kind of stories, right? Like Paul Bunyan and, things like that. And the one that I've always liked the most was the John Henry, right? Steel driving guy who went against the steam engine to build a tunnel through a mountain, right? And just 2 hammers and beat a whole thing.

And then, he did it, but then he died right at the end, right? So we have to fight the AI a little bit, right? But there'll always be the need for people and ideas behind the people.

Christian Solorzano [53:33]

So have you, have you experimented with AI? Have you, do you use it as a companion to some of the stuff that you do?

Nathaniel Haefner [53:41]

Not really.

Christian Solorzano [53:43]

Very little.

Nathaniel Haefner [53:44]

I'm not, I'm not like opposed to people using it entirely. I think that has a place for it. But in my work, I've never really tried to put it in as like a front and center thing. I think as far as like creating ideas, I think it can be useful. Interestingly enough, our teacher training this year is all about how we, how we use things like Google Gemini and ChatGPT to like help us do some of the more menial teacher tasks and more effectively, right?

Oh, you need to create a lesson plan for this and you can use Google Gemini to help you do that. And, I think there's some merit to just sort of using it to speed up your work. But I've always noticed that when I see people that use it or students that use it for real tasks, they don't learn a lot from using it. It tends to be a crutch more than a— than a tool.

There's a big thing in education, how can we tell if students are using AI to write their assignments and do all their work? And I've always felt like if you're an expert in your field, you can recognize it anyway. Like if I'm teaching kids about fonts and I'm, teaching 'em, oh, this is a serif font, this is a sans-serif font.

And then, I have 'em write a little paragraph and there's like 6 other kinds of font styles in there that are talking about super hyper-specific, this is a it was a Tuscan Roman font, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, where'd you learn that? I knew about it, but where'd you find out about it?

Sometimes I'm a little skeptical because, the kids will shortcut themselves, and maybe it helps them learn a little extra things, but I think that only depends on if you read it back to yourself at the end and know what you're looking for. It's definitely a tool for experts more than a tool for amateurs, AI stuff. You kind of have to— We have a good handle on the subjects to make sure it's not telling you nonsense.

Christian Solorzano [55:42]

Yeah, I think about AI like it's like this magical key that you need to earn. I don't think— I think you have to earn it, like AI. Like once you've reached a certain level of mastery, it's like, all right, now you can use this AI thing. Because there's one of my friends, He's been a designer for decades, 4+ decades, and he loves using AI and he gets so excited about it.

And it's interesting to see the stuff that he creates because he has the visual literacy to, understand the prompt and to understand how to, massage, the output from the AI. And it's very different than someone that kind of is lacking that, visual, dexterity to, make something that is— that makes sense or that is actually what you wanted, what you wanted to create. I think AI, I think it's cool, but I think you have to kind of earn it.

I don't think, but that's just my, I don't know if that's a controversial opinion, but—

Nathaniel Haefner [56:57]

Oh no, that resonates with me pretty well, actually. You need to be able to wield its power without abusing it kind of thing. And that's interesting. Maybe I need to see what it really is capable of. Although I would say most of the stuff that I want to create personally doesn't huge undertaking effort. So the AI may not really speed it up too much for me anyway. Yeah, I bet.

Christian Solorzano [57:18]

I, I've been using it for things such as grocery, like grocery shopping. Like I will have it give me like a certain recipe and based on like the ingredients that I want and it's been helpful for like things like that. But I've yet to like find some— I don't use it for design really, like ever really. I've like tried using it before, but I don't know. It's more fun to like make the thing by hand.

Nathaniel Haefner [57:52]

I definitely agree with that.

Christian Solorzano [57:53]

But I did have, I did have this idea that I want to do with my students in the future where I want to teach them how to use AI. So what I want to do is I want to give them an example.

I want to give them like a photograph, for example, of the Chicago skyline, or like a very specific type of room, or some kind of— just some kind of image, and have them engineer it in like, for example, Midjourney, and have them like really practice how to describe what they're looking at and how to create— have AI create as close as possible, like representation of like the real thing just to get them to think about layouts, composition, lighting, color grading and so forth.

So yeah, TBD on that.

Nathaniel Haefner [58:43]

Yeah, I think that's a good idea because, even if they, don't get the most visually impressive results, they're still going through that. What does a designer think about when they're creating? I think I'm guilty of that as a teacher too. I tend to give my students assignments, and then I do the assignment along with them. So I have this demo that I do while they're working on theirs, and that way they get to see me do it and they get to do it themselves.

And, they see all their classmates do it in little phases and stuff. And I think sometimes I forget to, tell them like, oh, here's why I made this particular decision, right? And a lot of that just comes from experience, and it's like, well, I've done it 1,000 times the wrong way, so I don't think about doing it that way anymore, and I think our brains kind of skip over a lot of that basic stuff.

And I think, as I get further into my design career, I realize that some of those things that I thought were maybe the more trivial aspects of design are really the things that are that, did I ever have a moment where I went, aha, and it clicked? That's why we do that. Can I give my students that same moment a little faster?

Christian Solorzano [59:56]

Right?

Nathaniel Haefner [59:57]

I think, I think that's the one of the goals I have with teaching, right, is a lot of students could figure stuff out on their own if teachers weren't around. The ones that are motivated, that care about stuff, would do that. But as a teacher, it's really sometimes our job to just speed up that process, right? I shouldn't be mad as a designer that something that took me, a 4-year degree to learn, right?

I could distill that into a week-long project for students, and then them now are starting at a better place than I did at their age. And I think maybe that's something AI can help with too. They can get past some of these technical hurdles maybe that they might have with their art. And especially with things like Midjourney that seem to spit out images that are extremely realistic, depending on like how your friend is good at making sure they stay realistic, right? Or—

Christian Solorzano [61:04]

Before we wrap up, just have some quick questions for you. What are you listening to at the moment? What are you reading?

Nathaniel Haefner [61:10]

Let's see, what am I listening to? Let's see, on my way home from my trip, I listened to Brian Eno's Music for Airports. It's an ambient album, so just a lot of choir-y sounding stuff where it's very much in the background. That was kind of the idea of it, is you kind of forget you're listening to it.

Christian Solorzano [61:35]

Even taking a class with him this Saturday. Or someday. He's doing a he's doing a songwriting class online that I'm very excited about.

Nathaniel Haefner [61:48]

That sounds awesome. Yeah. Lucky you. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [61:51]

I'll let you know how it goes. Okay. And what are you reading?

Nathaniel Haefner [61:53]

My students had me listen to Kendrick Lamar's GNX album. Or is that it? They're into the more modern hip-hop stuff. So I have to keep up with them sometimes and listen to those things. Would prefer to listen to Brian Eno. What I'm reading right now is I've got it right here, actually. It's the how to Program Patches in Pure Data for the Synthesizer Organelle. So it is a manual for how to write music software. Okay, helping me with my sequencer thing in the future.

Christian Solorzano [62:24]

And what's making you happy today and what's pissing you off?

Nathaniel Haefner [62:27]

Making me happy today, well, I'm back at home for the first day since my vacation, so I have been without music-making abilities for a while other than just poking around on my phone. I've got a real piano again, real synthesizers again, so that's making me happy. And pissing me off, there's some snow on the ground when I got back here.

When I was in Texas, one of the days it was 88 degrees outside, and I came back to around 15 degrees here. So yeah, the cold is— I like it, but I'm still not Super happy about it.

Christian Solorzano [63:04]

Yeah, I don't blame you. But the summer in Chicago, it makes up for it.

Nathaniel Haefner [63:07]

It does. It does indeed.

Christian Solorzano [63:09]

All right, next question. What is a guilty pleasure of yours?

Nathaniel Haefner [63:13]

Ooh. I play video games sometimes. That's kind of the thing that I'm guilty about it because I feel like it's almost a waste of my time.

Christian Solorzano [63:23]

What games do you play?

Nathaniel Haefner [63:25]

I have Nintendo stuff. So like Zeldas and Marios and Metroid. The kind of 3 from them. I don't pay attention to a lot of the games that you can play forever. If I ever open up Minecraft or something that would just never have an end to it, I might just disappear off the face of the earth and play Minecraft for the rest of my life. I need to avoid games that are continual. They have an end where I can be, all right, I'm done with this.

Christian Solorzano [63:52]

Next question. What are some of your favorite spots in Chicago?

Nathaniel Haefner [63:57]

I like the Art Institute, by far one of my favorite places. Teachers get to go for free. We just gotta show them our badge, print a little thing. It's nice that I live close enough to walk to it, so I like to go, a couple times a month just to stare at a few things for a brief amount of time and then walk back home. So other favorite spots, I like being on the trains. We don't have trains in Austin really.

We have like one little rail that takes you from one part of town to the other, but nothing worth going anywhere for. One of the main reasons why I wanted to move here was the public transportation being adequate without needing a car. And yeah, every time I get on a train or I hear one kind of go by, I go, makes me real happy.

Christian Solorzano [64:41]

Yeah, awesome. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you after listening to this episode, what's the best way for people to get in contact with you? Your website, email?

Nathaniel Haefner [64:52]

Yeah, my website has a little contact form on there that sends it straight to my email, nathanielhaefner.com. I'm sure you'll post that somewhere. I'm on Instagram. Find more of my various projects. The most current one's probably the easiest one for me to notice things are happening to it. So if you send me a message that way, you can. People contact me occasionally through the website, so it's pulled its weight a little bit in terms of usefulness.

Christian Solorzano [65:16]

Yeah, and your website, your contact form is also very cool. People can draw you a picture.

Nathaniel Haefner [65:23]

Yeah, it's actually to keep the spam bots from not sending me spam, because if the spam bot doesn't draw a picture, then it puts it automatically into a trash folder. So if you do want to contact me, make sure you draw a little picture, even if it's just a little happy face, because it'll reject it. I won't ever see it.

Christian Solorzano [65:40]

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and for being our first recording of 2025. I look forward to talking again in the future, and hopefully there could be some collaborations this year, whether it's music, typography, like anything. I am very inspired by all that you're doing. So—

Nathaniel Haefner [66:06]

Thank you. Let's an odd feeling for me too. But yeah, I would love to do some music stuff, even just a little show and tell and hang out.

Christian Solorzano [66:16]

Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much and we'll keep in touch.

Nathaniel Haefner [66:20]

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on the show and look forward to seeing the publication come out and making some music.

Christian Solorzano [66:28]

Thank you so much for tuning in and sticking around until the end. I really appreciate your support and I'll see also, like I mentioned in the beginning of the show, I really appreciate it if you give this podcast a rating. To learn more about us, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. Thank you for listening, and we will talk to you soon. Goodbye and have a good day.

Nathaniel Haefner [66:50]

Thank you.