We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jesse Allan Rozell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jesse Allan below.

Hi Jesse Allan, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I have spent most of my creative career honing in on two disciplines; art and design.

My design career began over 20 years ago when I was in high school. I was on the school’s first newspaper staff as editor, layout designer, columnist, and cartoonist. We had a small staff in a small school and I wore many hats. I didn’t have any experience with Adobe products but our teacher’s brother was a designer and he came in and gave the layout designers a crash course in Photoshop. I was immediately hooked with building grids and creating functional design for the publication.

My exploration in art began as a child with doodles and paintings. I was encouraged throughout elementary school by my art teachers but I can’t recall structure in any class. Fast forward several years to my senior year in high school. Despite not taking any art classes since elementary school, I was approved for an independent study course in art. There my teacher, Sarah Byrne, allowed me to explore my own themes and materials. There are a couple things she taught me that have helped my throughout my career; the rule of thirds and the concept of creating bodies of work.

Knowing what I know now, I could have sped up my design career by going to design school after graduating high school. It takes a lot of courage to defy the influence of your family and study what you believe will benefit your future and I did not have that courage. I studied subjects that would pacify my parents.

I think the skills most essential to my success in both art and design might not be skills but rather personal attributions; imagination, desire, and motivation. Of course, shameless self-promotion and networking never hurts.

At the time, the largest obstacles in growing skills in my craft were the approval from my family, money, and learning resources. A bootlegged copy of Photoshop without any instruction can only get one so far! It was before the era of YouTube University began. Although, I will say that were there is a will there is a way. If I had learned how to be confident in what I want for myself, I may have led myself down the path I am now but much earlier in my life.

Jesse Allan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My experience in design started in 2004 with print design at my high school newspaper. In 2006 I moved to downtown Colorado Springs, CO and began my career in music promotion, music packaging, and social media marketing. Since that time, I earned my BA in graphic design and have grown into a wider range of skills and experiences that include print, typography, layout, branding, identity development, logo design, web design, print/web/social marketing design, and packaging. I am now working on my MS in human systems engineering; user interface design and user experience research.

I provide general design services that include brand and identity development; print and environmental design; merchandise and packaging design; web and social media design; social media management; and in the near future user experience and user interface development.

I think that design is largely an objective problem solving industry. For my clients I solve many aspects of the visual and communal representation of their business. At the minimum, I solve underlying problems of aesthetically appropriate and consistent branded media elements for my clients’ existing target audiences, consumers, and customers. I also help my clients develop full brand identities which include comprehensive elements of the business; taglines, origin stories, mission and vision statements, target audience development, competition and community analysis, personality, voice, tone, values, logo sets, typeface pairings, color schemes with psychological analysis, patterns, aesthetic mood boards, and merchandising. Lastly, I provide social media management services which include audience engagement, multi-media design, and targeted marketing campaigns.

I have transformed brands and companies into consistent identities that can effectively communicate with their communities and facilitate growth for themselves and the people who surround them. I am most proud of my current project with Shutter & Strum/Disruptor Gallery. Shutter & Strum/Disruptor Gallery is a community art center and gallery offering music workshops and photography workshops for at-risk teens and the Colorado Springs. They also lend their space to underrepresented voices in art, music, and poetry.

I believe that my years of experience, empathy, and high level client/designer collaborative method in the design process with my clients desire to connect them with their community make me an asset to all those I work with.

My art experience began as a youth. By 2006 I had been featured in several group exhibitions throughout Colorado’s Front Range. In 2015, I began showcasing my work several times a year in various breweries, restaurants, and galleries in downtown Colorado Springs, CO. In my art, I primarily explore abstraction in the relationship between time and the human form. In doing so, I create mixed-media pieces on hand-stretched canvas. I am always open to hanging my work in new venues.

My art provides vibrant, and occasionally controversial, representations of aesthetics, cohesion, and organized chaos that brings color and life into the homes of my collectors and fans alike. I am most proud of the body of work that I created in 2023, titled PLAYTIME. PLAYTIME was an ongoing project which celebrates hedonism, vanity, memory, vibrancy, and chaos – an attractive and sometimes obscured, star-studded view into the men and women of yesterday. The sourced photos of Playboy and Playgirl’s models of the 1990s are meant to envelop the awareness of fleeting beauty, an experience shared by many when pining for one’s youth. The abstract manipulation of these images expresses varying degrees of one’s own togetherness and how it is perceived through physical appearance. ‘Playtime’ serves as a time capsule of exuberance that blends the body with disorder, color, and an occasional unclear form. We live in our skin as it fades with us.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In my opinion, there are so many things that society can do to support creatives and the related industry. First, I believe that as individuals we can learn to appreciate the craft and uniqueness provided by creatives and the like. One way is to buy art work. Purchasing a painting, collage, illustration, etc., fuels the creativity that has built the world around us. It’s easy to forget that our communities, cities, states, and countries have been designed by the imagination and creativity of the human mind. We can consume media in so many ways and it’s rewarding to invest in a piece for your home that has depth and was made by hands looking to leave a legacy of value and human-ness.

Second, in a response to a more recent development in the creative industry, we can stop supporting the idea of artificial intelligence replacing creatives. AI’s representation of art and design is generally theft and undermines the expertise and years of work that real people have, making it an unethical practice. AI is a tool, but it is not the answer to filling galleries and homes with beautiful pieces that represent the idea of living and being a human.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, there are many rewarding aspects of being an artist and designer. In art, there are two rewarding moments for me. One is witnessing the audience gaze at my work, thinking about how I created the piece or whether they like the piece or not. Even if they do not like the piece, it’s rewarding to elicit an emotion from my creative process. The second is what I call ‘the sale’. It’s when an interested buyer finds out I am the artist and approaches me. At that moment, we are both doing a dance that I am hoping ends with my art going home with someone I didn’t know before.

In design, the most rewarding moment is when I see my clients roll out their new identity, excited to engage with their community. It’s exciting to know that I’ve helped to develop a consistent voice, look, and attitude that will propel my clients into their future!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jesseallanrozell.com
• Instagram: @jesseallanrozell
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseallanrozell