Martin Gee is a graphic designer and artist for time magazine.
There is the sentiment that if you do what you love then it will never feel like work. Martin aims to embody this statement as he takes his passions and carries them into his work. He shared that he uses his love of things to become an expert on them. This enables him to have people approach him for projects that they know he is qualified to take on. He said that it is necessary to geek out on stuff so that work is not surface level in quality. He stated that all of his personal work influences his professional work. Gee continued to talk about his early influences that have bleed over into each project he is working on. His work is mainly comprised of different vectors to create art. He talked about the complexity of communicating using different shapes to convey a message.
https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-blue-clip-board-1327214/
One of the main driving forces behind much of his work is to make the world a better, happier place. He said that being better doesn’t just extend to the world but also being a better person. Most days he gets on twitter or works on projects such as the Orlando shooting and he feels like the world is burning, but then he aims to create though art worlds that will be better. He said that working on news stories he has to pull back as a designer. He said that he has to let the photos do a lot of the work. He touched on mental health and about the fact that last year was rough on him and art and illustration helped him get through it.
He mentioned in his early career and the fact that his art started out very dark, but now it has transformed into something different. He explained his process in creating his own typeface as taking a square and cutting out the smallest amount possible to create recognizable letters.