Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Parker Gibson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Parker, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

At the beginning I learned technical skills through print magazines like Advanced Photoshop Magazine, online blogs like Abduzeedo or PSDTuts and through other designers I met online. This started in 2008 and continued through 2012 for me focusing on photoshop and adobe illustrator while I was going to school.

I believe one thing that would have helped me develop better work would have been focusing on compositions. But learning to create graphics and digital art are sort of two separate paths. Focusing mostly around pursuing digital art the journey needed to be very organic for me personally to learn the tools I needed. In 2010 I got my first wacom tablet and that really changed a lot for me in terms of how I approached creating art. I was able to go deeper with digital painting and exploring color.

I was also able to invest in hand drawn elements and how to bake that into my process for creating digital art, but also my design process for creating logos and such. Drawing typography and creating logos or design assets empowered me and made my work blossom beyond ways I imagined. Aside from technical growth, I would say confidence in my delivery and ideation are very critical skills.

Being a student and part-time worker at the same time as looking for professional work to add to a portfolio had me constantly focusing on other aspects of the career I was trying to grow in which sent me down paths of projects that I ended up wasting a lot of time on without any growth or portfolio work out of them. Not to say they weren’t, in some way, good for me to reflect on now and see how they helped.

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

My name is Parker Gibson and I’m a designer from the metro-east area of St. Louis. My work as a designer has ranged from digital art & illustration, graphic design and presently as a UX Designer. I have always enjoyed art starting out with an extreme passion for graffiti art. One day I was at a book store and saw a photoshop magazine that led to me exploring digital art and never looking back.

As a designer I’ve worked on projects like logos, custom typography, music videos and applications for enterprise businesses. I really enjoy the collaboration with people and solving a problem. This has become increasingly special to me because there are so many services anymore that people can use to generate a logo, website or video. So really landing that human to human connection and at the same time using technology to create is something special.

Memorable projects would be the music videos I worked on for Beth Bombara and Run the Jewels. Helping a non-profit from my hometown and undoubtedly the digital art days producing illustrations with some online art collectives (where it all started).

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I do not have a grand goal or mission with design in any facet. What began as a creative outlet inevitably grew into a profession for me so like most things for me it all just depends. What I do strive for is to make work that can solve a problem but also bring joy or inspiration.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There are many moments that test can test you as a designer, or any profession for that matter. Learning to accept that those moments, like crude client feedback or clients not paying on time will occur and growth from those moments is a critical part of the journey as a professional designer.

One moment that happened to me early in my career was while still in school. A colleague in a leadership role told me that for being an illustrator I was a lousy graphic designer while reviewing some of my work. It was the first time I or my work was professionally attacked like that. There are many lessons I took from that conversation but for me I realized I had so much to do to get better. That moment, among many others, still sticks with me and sort of keeps my motivation going and in a lot of ways has helped me improve so much.

Contact Info:

• Website: parkergibsondesign.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/helloparkerg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parker-gibson-6a004512/
• Other: email: [email protected]