We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonathan Davenport a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jonathan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I think about labels a lot. Labels are a form of control, right? And as a designer, your WHOLE JOB is to label – to reign in chaos and give it form, to tame it, to control it. But it can backfire on you. Trying to control too much actually makes you a slave to it. I’ve struggled with self-labelling my entire life, well before I started a career in the arts. From my identity as a biracial person to my various personal interests and professional pursuits. But eventually, I found the most happiness – and maybe not so coincidentally, the most success – when I gave up trying to define myself as an artist and as a person and simply indulged in my interests. Instead of trying to label what kind of artist I am, what kind of stories I’m interested in, I just opened myself up to the possibility of…EVERYTHING. Of playing with ALL the toys. Wrestling gear, game design, toy design, storyboarding, illustration, screenwriting…I’ve gotten to experience them all. I hope my legacy is that eventually I learned to not limit myself with labels. With lanes. And I sincerely hope any success and happiness I find inspires others to do the same.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve had so many origin stories now, it’s hard to pick the one people might find most interesting. But I’ll say this – everything I’ve done professionally began in heartbreak.

Broken homes are so commonplace now that we hardly give it a second thought, but when it happened to me as a young kid, my whole world cracked in two. As a result, I found myself alone, seeking stability and security. I found it in stories. Books, comic books, anime, movies, Saturday morning cartoons – these things became my constants. They taught me about morality, heartache, passion, laughter and love. And as I got older and realized these things didn’t just POOF into existence, that they were CREATED by people, I felt a calling to do the same.

I attended film school in Central Florida and from there started taking any job that would get me closer to my goal of telling stories. My wife jokes that I basically “Slumdogged” my way into a career, picking up a CRAZY series of disparate skills that eventually made me into one hell of a generalist. Still working on the “Millionaire” part though. Feel free to Venmo me.

So while I’m essentially a self-taught artist, that term is a bit deceptive. I owe many skills and tricks to many talented people who helped me along my path.

These days, I’m hired to do everything from designing Pro Wrestling gear, to storyboarding TV shows, to creating animatics for commercials, writing video games, illustrating box art for toys – you name it.

Given all this diversity, I think the common service I provide my clients is that I’ve learned to become a very potent conduit for their vision. Everyone wants to be heard. They want their ideas to matter to someone. In many cases, I’m that first someone.

When I hear an idea, I’m usually able to “see it” in graphic detail and imagine its most dynamic execution. I can then start to provide context and a visual language that amplifies its best qualities and – as a bonus – I’m usually able to channel it through any pop culture lens they can name. One of the advantages to being raised by media is becoming fluent in the language.

Brand-wise, my proudest achievement is that even while working in so many mediums and representing so many different voices and visions, I’ve been able to craft a style to my execution. It always blows my mind when someone tells me they identified a piece of wrestling gear I designed or a sequence I storyboarded just from the way it made them feel. I’m just gonna go ahead assume it’s usually a compliment.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to unlearn? Modesty. Well, more accurately, modesty at all costs. When I was coming up back in the Iron Age, it was frowned upon to bang the drum too loudly for yourself. It was considered classless, low brow…Even if you COULD back it up but especially if you couldn’t. The idea was to be a good student, learn from others and hope your hard work and diligence caught their eye so when the next opportunity arose, you MIGHT be considered for it.

I followed the tenets and did pretty well. What I didn’t consider is that you’re never, EVER safe in a company you don’t own. Any company at any minute could dissolve, change leadership, downsize, outsource and they don’t feel they owe you a SHRED of loyalty one second past that point. And when that happens, when you’ve put your faith in the lifeboats only to find out there isn’t one for you…well. You might just drown.

As fate would have it, I had the great fortune of crossing paths with three of the best mentors in the arena of self-promotion I could ever hope to meet: Austin Watson, Ettore Ewen and Kofi Sarkodie-Mensah, collectively known to the world at large as WWE tag team phenoms, The New Day. Each in their own way, either by example or by outright TELLING ME, pounded the lesson into my head that in the age of social media, you need to be your own advocate. And while baseless bragging still stinks of desperation, it’s both advantageous and healthy to see the value in your work.

If you can get over these mental hurdles and manage to get out of your own way, you may discover what I’m only now beginning to grasp – that when you find joy in what you do, you’ll find joy in sharing it with others. And if that ends up getting you more business, all the better.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I’ve always loved superheroes. Their powers, their struggles, the epic feats. But something I learned very early on is that a HUGE part of their appeal to me is the costumes. When I was in grade school, I used to fill entire notebooks with page after page of original superheroes, each with their own themes or powerset not-to-subtly woven into their colorful costumes.

So in 2011, when I was offered the opportunity to design gear for an up and coming pro wrestler looking to make a stylish splash in an industry where style reigns supreme, I jumped at the chance. After all, was this not the professional version of filling those old spiral bound notebooks of mine? I mean, what’s closer in spirit to actual superheroes than pro wrestlers??

It became a regular thing. Every few months, the wrestler who went by the moniker Xavier Woods would continue to hire me to craft new looks for him, sometimes of my own imagining, sometimes based on his, but more often than not, based on some character from our shared love of pop culture.

Woods was a gifted athlete, but more importantly, a hard worker and incredibly clever at self-promotion, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he was called up to the main roster at WWE. Now, I’ve been part of PLENTY of endeavors where my efforts played a crucial part of a project taking off. Usually what happens at that point is akin to watching the rocket ship I helped build fly off into the stratosphere leaving me standing alone on the launch pad, waving and wishing.

This time was different. Not only did Woods continue to use my services but he also introduced me to his two new tag team partners. By 2015, the three of them, now named The New Day, had exploded into the heights of popularity rarely seen in the squared circle. This meteoric rise meant that my gear designs were seen regularly on television and at live shows around the world every single week. And the designs were bold. In a sea of male talent wearing mostly “badass black”, my designs were bursting with color and adorned with cartoonishly offputting creatures. We got crazy with it. I started intentionally trying out clashing color palettes and we constantly referenced long forgotten cartoon characters and deep cut comic book storylines. The New Day’s imaginations and sense of humor was as offbeat as mine, so we continued experimenting. We did a color-by-numbers set, a get well card set when Woods was out with an injury, we referenced Jean-Michel Basquiat. The experiments were unlike anything seen in pro wrestling before. It was the perfect synergy of performance and style.

And unlike ANY client in the history of clients, the three of them admonished me for not charging more for my design services and insisted that I up my asking price. I’ll say that again. THEY INSISTED THAT I UP MY ASKING PRICE.
Soon, more and more talent on the roster took notice of what we were doing and began to reach out, asking for my services. After a while, I began to notice that even when other work would sporadically dry up, I was somehow miraculously still able to keep the lights on. Somehow, at some point, this side hustle had grown. What’s more, it had grown to the point that I didn’t have to stress when other regular clients disappeared or restructured. I had a new baseline. I was still filling notebooks with original superheroes, only now the heroes were real, the notebook was digital and the audience was global.

You can say it was luck that I just happened to meet these guys before they blew up. And you can say it was luck that they took off the way they did. You can also say it was luck that my designs happened to resonate with the audience. But if I was afraid to put myself out there or afraid to take these big swings, any one of these things may have resulted in me waiting on the launching pad. So if you’re in a position where you have to choose between waiting for luck or taking a big swing. Take the swing. The luck will handle itself.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.designmodestudios.com
• Instagram: @davenpoe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DesignModeStudios/
• Twitter: @TheRealDavenpoe

Image Credits
The New Day, Johnny Gargano and Bayley promotional images are copyright WWE.