Patrick Creyts "A Sit Down Chat About Graphic Design"

Patrick Creyts is a professional graphic designer based out of Denver, Colorado. Whitworth had the privilege of having him come and give a lecture on his career and a little bit about what it takes to be a graphic designer.

Creyts has been working as a creative director for his own company, “Thought Tub,” for the past nine years. Before that, he attended Pennsylvania State University where he entered a very rigorous and competitive graphic design program. He described some of his projects as having to be created within a single hour. Pretty impressive to me.

After university Creyts was hired for a company called Moxie Sozo under the direction of Leif Steiner. While working for himself as Thought Tub, Creyts has provided great work for many clients including Justin’s Peanut Butter, Telluride Bluegrass Festival and others.
The event was held in the Lied Center for Visual Arts on the Whitworth University campus which provided a nice setting for the lecture to be given. The event supported Whitworth's mission by the educational nature of the lecture which included some instruction as well as advice.

The lecture given was very insightful and, as he was a graphic designer, the powerpoint slides were pleasing to the eye. One thing that stood out to me was the idea that you can’t create something that is good if you start off with a bad idea. Out of all the profound things he could’ve shared with the audience I think that was the best because of its simple practicality.
Creyts work is obviously involving graphic design, and he creates a very personal feel with his design. He described the difference between art and design being that art is an expression and design is a problem solving exercise.
A reoccurring theme found throughout his work is a very playful nature accented by vibrant colors. You can see this displayed in the image above of a poster designed for a folk act called "Surprise Me Mr. Davis." This piece conceptually is very successful as it demonstrates the funky nature of the folk act while presenting the typography hierarchically, leading your eye from the top down to the artist names and on to the description.
The form is also excellent as there is an incredible amount of detail in the piece. Creyts is actually very fond of small details and he showed us during the lecture the fine detail, like a small cricket next to the main figure's foot.
The impact that this event left was demonstrated by the amount of excited people who showed up the next day for Creyts' graphic design workshop, which was equally as fun as the event. So the overall impact on the Whitworth community was very positive.
I am aspiring to be a graphic designer, so getting to experience these pieces that Creyts has designed was a complete joy and I really connected with all of them that he showed.
With that bias for graphic design, I am interested if anyone connected with Patrick Creyts work as much as I did, or in a different way. So if you did, please comment why you did or did not.