Magazines (2022)

Urban Turks Country Jerks (2014)

Shamblegloss (2021)

YUKS (2025)

Etc. (2010-2013)

Every designer has a tick. There is no neutrality. Our quirks, fascinations, and weaknesses get baked into what we make without thought. We can try to suppress them, and might even succeed for a moment, but in the long game, our psychic fingerprints are all over the guts and skins of our work.

This was considered a problem during the brief rise of the International Style. But now when I go back and look at the great work from that era, I see the unique character of each practitioner. Vignelli was not Martens. Maholy-Nagy was not Hofmann. Each had their own tools, their own way of experimenting, and of course, their own backgrounds and interests that played a part in what they called design. There never was a universal visual language.

So what to make of yourself, designer? Can you accept what made you? Can you speak clearly about it? What if it’s out of step with trends? Can you still believe that it’s good?

Here is a true paradox: there is nothing new under the sun and everything you make is unique. So the question is, how did everything that came before you inform who you are?

I know my roots. They are Tennessee letterpress. Folk Art. Hand-painted all-caps on warehouse walls. Letrapress and stat cameras. 8-bit everything. Atomic-era car typography. Coming of age at the End of Print. The Minneapolis design scene of the late 80’s. Dutch posters. 4AD Records. Punk zines. They instilled in me a love of tool marks, technical grit, visible process and acceptable accidents.

I called a record “Shamblegloss,” a fictional, contradictory word that described the music I make. It’s no stretch to say the same of my graphic design, especially for my own records. In this new era of AI-mimickry and polished emptiness, I believe even more strongly that broken is better.

r.mh
listen or
contact at huldunótur