masculinity

Through graphic design investigations using the lens of sports to make work on a variety of topics including form, aesthetics, communication, commercialism, and masculinity I consider my work to be under the format of visual journalism. The exists to investigate these niche and overlooked areas within the dominant force of culture that is sports, and that is the story I aim to tell. My work strives to shed light on that other side of sports that may be overlooked, and tell stories, find flaws, and understand a monolithic force in popular culture that is also a mirror into the human experience. My thesis work continues this series of research to now look into the spiritual and religious side of running and commercialism of workout culture. Using graphic design, visual communication, and branding I will create a spiritual group based around the idea of "The Runner's High." I am interested in fitness and sports being co-opted into brands and sold as a way of living. The end of the outcome of the thesis work is to exist as an online website and resource.

This thesis looks at the struggle towards understanding for myself what it means to be man, has been the crux of my work for the last few years. Looking at both the interior and exterior factors that influence and effect identity formation has been key to my own understanding. Examining the internal restraint and external constraint that influenced those facets during my formative years, have been helpful in understanding how I interpret my own gender and sexuality today. Using a myriad of research strategies and an ever-expanding grasp of mediums and materials, I have begun to map and explore the terrain of masculinity as I see it and experience it. While at times personal and private, my works strives to ride the line of how much detail to report and express, as I chart the terrain in-line with my own ever evolving discovery and understanding.