In this month’s Artist Interview, I chatted with my neighbor, Mary Banas. We have bonded over our inept landlords, and who says community is dead?? Make sure to read this one in your browser - Mary has graciously provided many examples of her work and exhibitions. Ahead, our conversation on design, education, panic attacks, t-shirts, and Mary’s buffet-style approach to work.
Editor’s Note: this interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thank you again for being a part of my little newsletter here. We’ll start off easy with what is your job?
I have a few jobs and I usually call the buffet-style approach. Getting a nice colorful mix of stuff on your plate. The first is Senior Visual Designer at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the Marketing and Communications Department. I create materials to promote the school like posters, books, and social media graphics. I also make internal things like stationery and business cards. We have a relatively young brand design system, so we're creating a lot of things for the first time. I also teach. On Tuesdays, I take the train to Boston to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) which is part of Tufts University. My course is called “Type as Image,” and it’s heavily involved with design process and experimental making. It's open to all undergraduate students so some are focusing on art but others might be studying cognitive science or engineering and then also taking a graphic design class.
As a side note, I went to Tufts, but when I was there, the SMFA was not part of Tufts yet. They just had a partnership. I never took one of the courses there but it was open to us to take courses between both schools.
Now, I believe you have to separately apply and get into the SMFA, but maybe that is just for art majors.
Anyways do you consider yourself more of a graphic designer, or a teacher or...?
I actually have a couple more jobs. I do freelance design work, usually for artists and musicians. For example, the artist Selby Cole just reached out to me. Several years ago, I made a poster for one of her art projects that she called “a remote happening” titled No Phone Day. The first installation of this project was simply a day without your phone. Selby has an exhibition and corresponding with that is another iteration of No Phone Day—this time it is a performance piece. So I'll be making her a new expression of No Phone Day for that. For the music stuff, I do music package design for the indie rock singer songwriter Mitski—her most recent album is The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We which has a fantastic package. Additionally—and this is more of a calling and less of a job—my friend Breanne Trammell and I make artwork together as BMTMB, our M.O. is “friendship as practice”.
While that may sound like a lot of things, they all work together and compliment each other, like an ecosystem. It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea that I would have this mix of things instead of one, single, clean, linear “career”. The idea of working at the same job for 20 years is sort of embedded in my subconscious, and I had to actively resist that as the only path.
To directly answer your question: I call myself an artist, a designer and a teacher. Designer is usually the title I get paid for. Right now, I'm doing much more design than teaching (I teach one class) but they always coexist. Even if I was working as a full time graphic designer professor, I would still maintain a design practice. Other higher ed disciplines call it publishing (research papers, books, articles), and professors in the arts have shows, or are otherwise engaged in an active art-making practice. With graphic design, it's a little bit of an in-between, because we could be making self-initiated work, or we could be doing research, or we could be writing, or we could be just making work for clients. Ultimately, designers who teach are always tending to a practice as well as the classroom.
This is fun for me, because I don't know any of this: how did you get into graphic design? Were you into art as a kid? Did you like drawing, or what started you along this path?
I was into art as a kid, my mom is an artist and taught me how to draw, paint, and sew. The power of somebody telling you who you are when you're young is real. My mom was like, you're an artist, you're an artist, you're an artist, so I believed her and was confident that I had something special. I will be forever grateful to her for that. What you should know though, too, is I also thought I was terrible. Which is probably because I wanted to be good.
I didn't know what graphic design was until I was in high school. It was my junior year and I was touring a prospective college. I was walking around the open house with my Dad, and for the art school they had a table with work on display and a person you could talk to sitting at each spot. There was a table for painting, a table for sculpture… and I saw this table that had some postcards and t-shirts with words on them. And I asked, what major is this? and they responded, This is graphic design and I thought, Oh, graphic design is t-shirts with words on them? This is right up my alley.
I loved to make my own shirts. I blame my parents for not buying me clothes from the mall. When I was in elementary school, I cut all the tags that had cool type or cool graphics on them out of my clothes and then sewed them onto the front of a shirt in a random arrangement. It was just a shirt with tags all over and it looked fresh as hell. In high school, I would use Sharpie and draw freehand on white t-shirts, like the crown album art from the band Cake’s album Fashion Nugget. I also liked to do those iron on letters that were kind of like vinyl. I’m pretty sure they only came in Cooper Black. Now when you go to Michael's, they have the iron-on letters in, like, 20 fonts. My best friend Nicole and I made a shirt that said “American Idle” when we were in college. American Idol, the show, was very popular then. Now I have the privilege of designing shirts for real bands, which is kind of a full circle moment for me.
The short answer to your question is: I discovered graphic design through a college tour. I then majored in Communication Design in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut (UConn), where I learned a lot about design from my professors Mark Zurolo, Randall Hoyt and Edvin Yegir.
At UConn, were you in a specific program? I know sometimes the larger state universities have a specific honors program or specific tracks.
They did—it was in the School of Fine Arts, in the Department of Art + Art History. The program was a general BFA but with concentrations, and I chose Communication Design. I think it is called Graphic Design now. To get into the Communication Design program I had to write an essay and submit a portfolio. Something else special about the program was a class called “Design Center”, which I also had to apply for. It was like a student-run design firm, but as a course. We would create designs for on-campus clients like a logo for the writing center, or layout for the student literary journal, or maybe the drama school needs a postcard for their upcoming show. We also had our own house on campus, like a little design office with computers, desks, a conference table, white boards, and even a microwave. The jobs would come in through our professor, Edvin Yegir, we would have meetings with clients, do the work, and then we would actually get paid. The money was used for the studio. It was exciting to do “real world” design projects as a student; I found it really validating.
That’s such an easy way for UConn to keep things in house in terms of not having to hire outside designers. It's like, why would you do that when you already have all of these professionals and students here?
Design Center was just one class and we would only have maybe four projects per semester. So I think it was a benefit to the university, but I don't think that it's anything that the university was supporting in any substantial way. But you're right. It's really nice for students to have that opportunity for professional work, and being such a large school with so many different departments there was plenty.
With your graphic design concentration, were you only allowed to take courses within graphic design? Or were you able to branch out?
UConn is a research university, so everyone gets a liberal arts education with requisites in math, science, English, and history. Then within the Department of Art + Art History, there was a robust foundation year, which included drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking and digital media classes. In my more advanced years I took mostly graphic design classes. But the foundation was critical. For example, in taking a couple of painting classes, I learned a ton about color. Also with painting, you are beginning to master composition, shape, and line—and all those things absolutely relate to graphic design. The multidisciplinary foundation also gave me confidence to take things on in the workplace that were outside of my specialization or concentration. After college I had an internship at the Hartford Courant (the newspaper) where I did page layout. I also made editorial illustrations in cut paper, mixed media, drawing, and watercolor. I think they let me do it because I was bored. My first real full-time job after college was as Assistant Art Director at Yale Alumni Magazine. There I learned a ton about magazines, the editorial cycle, pre-production, going on press, layout and typography, but part of my job was also assisting on photoshoots. Having taken some photography classes at UConn made me feel more confident in having conversations about art direction with professional photographers.
When you were in college about to graduate, what was your idea for what your career would look like? Because I know you went back and got more education, was that the thought: Oh, I'll work for a little while and then go back to school?
When I graduated college, I had zero inkling of going to grad school. That wasn't a thought in my mind. My dream job out of college probably would have been working at a studio, because of that experience in Design Center, the course was run like a little design studio, and I knew it I liked it. It also seemed like the fun/cool/interesting work was coming out of design studios. But in reality we were still coming out of the early 2000’s recession and I was desperate for any job and managed to land the internship at the Hartford Courant. I'm glad that I started out in publishing, because there was so much to learn. And working in publishing is how I got good at typography. I tell my students: it takes 10 years to get really good at typography. It probably doesn't take 10 years now… but it takes a lot of practice to flex that muscle with heavier pieces of text. Everything is easier today because of access to tools, references and the internet (and also automation!). I'm grateful that I started out in publishing because it gave me a great appreciation for the workflow, and respect for collaboration between writers, editors and design. I love the relationship between content and form, visually and conceptually, but also practically, I appreciate the opportunity to respect another discipline like that. I got to work with a fantastic team of editors and writers at Yale Alumni Magazine; the team was supportive and I always felt like I had a seat at the table when it came to contributing ideas. The executive editor, Katherine Lassila would say “a good idea can come from anywhere” and that has stayed with me as a practice. If I wanted to do something on the creative side, I was given the room to do something interesting by the Art Director, Mark Zurolo (who, by the way, was my former professor).
Was the Yale Alumni Magazine in person? Because I'm still thinking about like, what were the early 2000s like, work-wise?
Yes, in person, in a little office on York Street in New Haven Connecticut from 2004 to 2007. It was a small, relatively unstylish but tidy office. I was in a room with the production designer. The printers were in there with us, and we had this big pinup wall. If you've seen The Devil Wears Prada, you know about “the book”. We would print everything out as we went and pin it up on the wall in our office. When you're making a magazine, you build it as things come in. You might have a story ready to go like at the beginning of the cycle, perhaps because you've already had it in your back pocket. So that gets pinned up, it gets designed to get laid out. You know you will have a Table of Contents and you know you will have a cover, so those pages can go up, even if they are just placeholders. Oftentimes, the cover actually comes last with the magazine, because it ultimately reflects the content inside. Or the cover sometimes would involve a more time-consuming shoot. We often worked with Boston photographer Mark Ostow. He would come down to New Haven for the day and the Art Director, me, and a photo assistant would bop all over campus for the shoots. Mark Ostow could make a math professor look cool. Then as you go, you're as you're revising, you're pinning up new pages on top of the old pages, so you have a physical record of the thing. The physicality of this process is pretty satisfying, and also made the status of the book clear to everyone on staff.
There is something special about being able to have the thing in your hand and having that connection.
Connection to it, yes. It's also about scale, it comes alive. There is a real physical relationship of the type and the image across a spread. Page layout feels different when it is flat and on screen than it does when you're holding it reading distance away from your face.
Okay, so you didn't have any design, pun intended, about going to grad school. What changed your mind?
I actually had my first panic attack. I was also encouraged to go by Mark, my mentor and former college professor. But baby’s first panic attack is what moved the needle. I had been working at the magazine for three years and I felt like, Okay, I learned a lot here and I'm grateful for that, but I don't know what else I'm going to learn. There weren’t natural growth opportunities within the organization because it was such a small team. I looked around for other jobs but I was not inspired. I thought I was having a heart attack and took myself to the ER. They saw me right away, ran an EKG and then the doctor was like, You're not having a heart attack, you are having a panic attack. That’s what happens when you’re being indecisive about your future! I decided I better apply even though it clearly terrified me. Now I know that if I’m afraid of something like that, it might mean I want it badly. I got in to the two-year MFA program at RISD for graphic design. There is also a 3-year program for people who do not have a BFA in design.
Sort of similar question, but at the two-year program at RISD, were you just focusing on graphic design? How does RISD work in terms of their curriculum?
For grad school, it's very focused on the discipline. It’s a small program, I was among very sharp and serious people who were deeply interested in the same niche thing as me, which was an absolute gift. The curriculum for the graphic design grad program at RISD is pretty structured and there is a lot of interaction with outside critics and working professionals. All of the professors have interesting working practices — so lots of models for sure. There were opportunities to meet and collaborate with other grad students across departments, and there were opportunities to take classes that were open to all disciplines, but if you wanted to, you could also be pretty focused on graphic design.
In reflecting on it right now, I did take several classes that were outside of graphic design. One was a silk-screening t-shirts class over wintersession (RISD’s mini-semester between Fall and Spring). So the t-shirt thread continues. I don't know how useful that was to my graphic design degree. But I did make a poster for the show that was actually a shirt. I also took a class with Charlie Cannon, the topic was climate change and the course culminated in an exhibition in the summer of 2008. At the time people were talking about how we need to curb our carbon emissions before 2012, and then we can prevent global warming. It caused me a lot of anxiety actually, to be immersed in that topic. Today, it’s almost banal. Climate change is something that you hear about, and you just accept. This was a time when mass media wasn't addressing climate change as much.
Anyway, the course was super interesting. We spent the semester doing research on both content and exhibition design. The course was multidisciplinary, and open to both undergrads and grads and our class collaborated with an undergraduate graphic design class to create an identity for the show.
The exhibit Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast presented information about transportation, food, buildings, energy, landscape and water. The show was part of the Democratic National Convention in 2008, Obama was running for president. We traveled to Denver that summer and installed the work in this sort of indoor-outdoor mall. Everything we made for the exhibition was printed on these giant, vinyl vertical-hanging banners. We did the research, the design, the production, and then we installed the exhibition. We were the docents of the gallery, and we got to go to the 2008 DNC. It was a pretty cool experience. I think that was my first exhibition design experience and it was such a brand new world to me.
Even with your graduate program, you're still doing stuff outside of graphic design. So you're not just siloed in graphic design. Did you have to do a thesis or a dissertation for your Master's?
Yes, everyone in the MFA graphic design program makes a thesis. Actually, I think everybody at RISD, who's in a master’s program completes a thesis. RISD thesis books are available to the public, and you can access some of them via the Digital Commons at the RISD library. I did a lot of exploring in my two years at RISD. Ultimately, I collected all those projects in a volume and it made sense of what I was interested in at the time. My thesis I Read My Mind Through You: Designing Personal Communication in the Public Realm was essentially about using design as a medium and form to communicate personal messages. I saw graphic design as rational and precise. Design, especially corporate stuff, is usually interested in making things smooth, clear, and concrete. In opposition to this, I saw humans as messy and emotional. I was interested in expressing the human part, but with design as the medium. Now, the work I do for music clients and with Breanne Trammell as BMTMB is closest to this methodology. I'm still proud of some of the stuff that I made in grad school, but I also am, like, very far away from that.
What was your path after you graduated? You mentioned when you graduated undergrad, you didn't have any idea that you would go to grad school. What was your thought process at this point, now that you've graduated with a master's?
Well, 2009 was fourteen years ago, but I remember it well. After grad school, I was very eager to get a job, earn a living, and get out of the school debt I had just accrued. I moved back to New Haven with one of my friends from RISD, Melissa Small. An MFA is a terminal degree for graphic design, so I was able to teach a class at the University of Bridgeport in the Shintaro Akatsu School of Design. It was an entry-level class which focused on learning the software through projects. Melissa and I were also co-teaching an after-school yearbook class at Elm City College Prep, a public charter middle school and an Achievement First School in New Haven. In addition to the two teaching gigs, my main thing was working at a small design firm in New Haven which focused mainly on architecture monographs and non-profit identity work. But I wanted more. Melissa decided to move to San Francisco and I was like, I guess I'll come. I like to say I moved to the Bay Area on a whim (twice, actually). We found an apartment in the Mission neighborhood in 2010 and were eating a lot of burritos and listening to a lot of Arcade Fire. I started co-leading the RISD Alumni Club for Northern California with my best friend Heather Phillips. We were really hungry to connect with people who were serious about creative work and we had a strong vision for planning unique and special events, it was like a part-time job in terms of the time commitment. I started working at a creative branding and production house, John McNeil Studio (JMS) in Berkeley, CA. It was a mid-size company offering everything in-house: strategists, writers, designers, photographers, and editors/videographers. And would build flexible teams to fit the job. At the same time, I also taught my first class at California College of the Arts, a sophomore graphic design class. I learned a lot at John McNeil Studio, but after 3 years, I did not feel like I was growing enough and I had an existential crisis. Right at that time, I got a very interesting job offer.
It was my mentor again, Mark. I was on a flight from California to go back to Connecticut to actually surprise my mom at her late-in-life college graduation. I took a last look at my inbox before powering down my phone (this was the era of actually turning your phone off on a flight), and I saw an email from Mark Hey, we have a full time visiting assistant professorship opening up here. Do you know anybody? And I was like, No, I don't know anybody. Have you asked Bethany? (the chair of graphic design of the MFA program at RISD) And then he wrote right back, not interested yourself? I shut my phone off, and I'm sitting on this plane for five hours flying over the entire United States, and my brain finally catches up with about one word per hour, wait a minute, maaybe-I-waaant-thaaat-jooob. By the time I landed, I felt really excited about the opportunity. I had an interview in California with the Department Chair and accepted the offer as a Visiting Assistant Professor in-Residence. It was a two-year contract, non-tenure track position, but I was assured there would be a proper tenure track (TT) search and when that happened, I could apply. I moved back to Connecticut and was living close to campus in Storrs.
I learned a lot teaching a full course load for the first time. I love to be challenged and teaching provides that. Teaching is one of the most inspiring things I have ever done. The creative exchange with students is extremely special and I care deeply about my students as people. It was also unique to teach at the same school where I had been a student. I strived to give my students as much of an overview of the professional landscape as I could—that was something that was always kind of obtuse to me when I was in college. Through my personal relationships and network I brought lots of practicing designers from elsewhere in the school. I wrote a class where students got to interview alumni who were working at interesting design studios and we took trips to New York, Boston, and Providence to tour design studios and witness special design exhibits like Graphic Design Now In Production.
When my two-year contract was up UConn offered a renewal and I said yes. I felt like I was doing a good job, and naively, I thought that would be rewarded for my efforts. Academia can feel personal, especially when you pour so much of yourself into it, but like any job, it is not! It was maybe even more personal for me because it was my alma mater and I was working with my mentor/former boss/former teacher. It was tricky to separate that for myself. After my third year operating in the Visiting position, the school had not launched a TT search. They offered me another renewal, but I declined. I felt emotionally burnt out, and I had been focusing so much on teaching that I felt like my practice was being neglected, despite the fact that was working all summer and doing a little client work during the year. I had also picked up the junior level studio class at RISD. I determined the sleepy place I was living, Storrs (reknown for its safety) was not feeding my practice or my inspiration.
I ended up moving to California for the second time, also kind of on a whim. I booked a flight for my best friend's wedding without a return ticket. I put all my stuff in storage in Connecticut and thought I'll just see what happens. Jon Sueda, the Chair of the MFA program at California College of the Arts, hired me that August to teach a course in fall. I still had a strong network of friends in the Bay Area, and many of them were connected to the field. I crashed with a friend, started freelancing and found opportunities through my network. The first gig I got was co-facilitating a branding workshop at Dolby Labs. Afterwards, I freelanced in-house for them. I also worked in-house at tech companies like Segment (data), Blend (lending), Pinterest, and Honor (an in-home healthcare startup). I also spent some time at Imprint Projects and Play. Much of this work was dedicated to brand work — creation, application and evolution. I enjoy creating brands because you have to translate abstract concepts into concrete form, and I find that exciting. But I reached this point where I realized I was interested in making more expressive work and needed to represent that on my website. I believe in the idea of “dress for the job you want” when it comes to your portfolio, so I made this my focus.
I designed a float for Postmates Pride in 2018, started working for Mitski with the album cover for Be The Cowboy (which was eventually nominated for a Grammy for music package design), collaborated with Breanne Trammell on a printmaking course at Ox-Bow School of Art and launched BMTMB, and participated in my first residency with Design Inquiry on Vinalhaven, Maine, where I explored line. My unconventional work set up afforded me the flexibility to take these risks. It was the residency and starting a formal practice with Breanne Trammell that helped me get a better understanding of my art practice, which was huge for me.
How did we get to today? How did we get to you're back at RISD?
I was in the Bay Area living my life, and then the pandemic happened. We lost a lot of elders in my family. And it was all within the span of like two months. This was pre vaccine, so it was not recommended to fly. It was just a really scary time. And so I was like, I'm too far away. Also my work dried up, the freelance work got a lot smaller. That was also scary, financially. I started freelancing for RISD in January 2021.
When did you move to Providence? Because I was thinking about this right before I went to your show. And I'm like, I don't remember what year we met because the pandemic made time a circle.
I was subletting when I first moved here in January 2021. I think I moved into this apartment building we share in in April 2021.
What’s going on for you currently? I know you had the Always Be Around exhibition at College of the Holy Cross, but what are your current projects you’re working on?
We are doing a lot at RISD. Currently, I am building out a lot of components for events, like tablecloths, invitations, and banners. We are aiming to make a set of assets that anyone on campus can pick up and use. I am working on song lyrics, almost every week I add something to the notes doc on my phone, but I am in a weird, experimental, electronic, noise band with my friends called Wet Cardboard that I do spoken word for. We never practice though, so the band is becoming more theoretical by the minute! I am also working on a new iteration of the No Phone Day poster for Selby.
Where can people find you?
yesismore.us
Outside of your paying job, do you do anything of your own creative edification?
I absolutely love to go to museums, any type, especially art. And I like to go to New York and bop around. The song lyrics are a creative outlet for sure, there is a real freedom to them. I'm usually excited to make any type of hand craft. Right now I am really enjoying collage, which also provides me with a freedom I crave. Additionally, I have a pretty robust pen pal relationship with the young people in my family—my cousins' kids—so we write each other letters. I like everything to do with stationery. And I don't know that that's a creative outlet, but there's something special about it.
Do you consider yourself a working artist?
I don't know. I think I aspire to be a working artist. Do you mean an artist who works or a practicing artist?
However you interpret it. What is your self-conception in terms of: do you make a living off of your art or do you do art full time?
I have this mix; there's an alchemy of jobs and the things that I do where they support each other. It keeps me intellectually engaged with what I'm doing. I've never been the kind of person who could just do one thing. This fits that pattern of what I was doing in grad school where I was seeking the classes that were multidisciplinary and not siloed in one area (even though I'm sure that focus could have benefited me). Self-initiated work is what challenges me the most. And it's also the most liberating and exciting.
As an offshoot of that, what is the best and the worst part about the lifestyle as you have it now?
The best part is that a lot of the different modes talk to each other: working as a designer in higher ed, teaching design, collaborating with Breanne, writing song lyrics. The worst part might be that it doesn't feel like enough. It’s a question of, what should I be trying to work on so that I really feel like I'm scratching the itch, you know? And I'm not sure what the answer to that is. Something I’m challenged by in Providence is community. I find it lonely here.
I don't know if it's because when we moved here, but you couldn’t do anything, you couldn't go outside, you couldn't meet up with people. For almost two years after I moved to Providence, people would ask, oh, how's Providence? And I'm like, it's fine. I don't really do much, because I can't.
I do have my family close by, which is a big gift of my life. But I agree that modern community is tough. I have a lot of communities, but they're kind of splintered. Most of my crew around here is from other eras of my life—grad school, even high school. And there is something about growth that can feel limited when you are spending time with people who may see you as the 2009 version of yourself. Breanne is in Chicago, so we work across the distance but the working experience is so much better when we are together. And there are people who are really important to me in the San Francisco Bay area. I have a couple colleagues at Tufts, but because of the nature of adjunct work, we interact infrequently and mostly remotely.
I think our lives are also sort of fragmented. We experience life through the phone. It can feel like it's a connection, but it's not the same as if you and I were sitting in a room together. Instead we're on zoom. Like, we couldn’t even be in the same building for this conversation! Note to the audience.
[laughs] Editor's Note: we live at the same location, but we chose not to be in the same place. Or well, I didn’t, at least.
This article was sponsored by our apartment building.
Is there anything you wish you would have known before starting out your career? What would you say to like someone who's starting as a graphic artist now?
I would tell someone starting out that business is about relationships. Just being a person and meeting people goes a really long way. Ask for what you need, usually there is someone who can help (and wants to). Believe in your ideas, and in what you think is important, even when other people do not see the vision. Pursuing those ideas will serve you really well.
And then, is there anything else that I didn't ask that you would want to? You would want to mention?
No, I don't think so.
The only other thing I was going to ask just because you mentioned it earlier was the second panic attack story. Was that relevant to anything we were talking about?
When I moved back to California, I told myself, you can freelance for two years, and then you're going to apply for tenure-track teaching jobs again. Because I had given myself that deadline, I freaked out when I didn’t hit it. I was freelancing and judging myself harshly, like what are you doing with your life?, especially since there had been an FT opening at CCA, where I was teaching. Looking back, it was really important for me to be freelancing and trying things at the time instead of applying for tenure track positions. Something about it was not right at that time. I guess it’s hard to follow your gut sometimes. But I know now my body will take me down if I don’t listen to it.