Darren Baker

Background

About Darren Baker

From visual arts, performing arts, educational outreach and fundraising campaigns to fire departments, local political campaigns, dry cleaners and electronic textbook distribution services, my graphic design career has been varied and dynamic. I love a good challenge. My work is rooted in the physical and flexible enough to be at home in any modern application, I continue to create and designs and images used in many southern Ohio businesses. I have been an administrator, a curator, a carpenter, a designer, a photographer, a mechanic. I believe we are a maker culture. Whatever I build, I know it will strength an already culturally rich community. Process is my passion and the design industry is constantly reinventing itself. Eventually, I landed in the graphic design department at Ohio University, a dynamic, design environment bursting with creativity. In graduate school, I experimented with design thinking, typography and bookmaking in a variety of applications, along with attending workshops concerning contemporary design issues. My thesis work focused on how the definition of the book form is expanding from the traditional, single function object to flexible content, free from its container. The book form is one example of how we like in a time of translation, from analog objects to digital abstractions. In the spring of 2012, I was honored with a Masters in Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in Graphic Design. My more recent work is focused on these translations, from analog objects to digital abstractions and back again. Ranging from digital printing to letterpress and advanced digital imaging to 1880s view cameras, I am in process.