Josh Hamilton looks at his phone, checks Instagram. Less than thirty minutes later, he checks it again. He’s posted a recent design of his, and he would love input, feedback, reactions. But a lack of response to his art doesn’t slow him down. It doesn’t bother him. He continues his day.
Graphic designer and artist Josh Hamilton could be another office worker, checking emails, answering to a boss, ensuring products are ready to ship, answering the phone—were it not for his wife, Emily, who believes in him and offers a level of support he acknowledges not everyone has.
Above: designer and artist Josh Hamilton
Plus, being an Alabama artist sometimes means taking a firm stance. “If a business or person isn’t willing to pay a fair market price for your efforts, it takes a bit of conviction to just say no and walk away.” That could happen in any town or city for an artist, but Hamilton knows that, despite the lower cost of living in Alabama and many other wonderful things about the state, it is “generally not easy to find clients outside of Birmingham and the larger metros who understand and value creative labor, monetarily speaking.”
Which doesn’t mean that Hamilton ignores the beauty of Alabama. “There’s a lot that is great about Alabama,” he admits, even though it would be “too easy to go on about” the worst elements. “There are cool people doing cool things in every corner, including Jasper,” his first hometown.
He was called “Alabama’s Greatest Hype Man.” Those words rang out at Hamilton’s graduation for his MFA at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He wants to live up to the moniker. It won’t be hard for him. He’s seen his share of the state. In a previous incarnation, he traveled the entirety of Alabama, making documentaries, tasting great food, seeing thoughtful art.
“I knew Matt Patton when his band Model Citizen was ska,” Hamilton recounts, offering up his in-state bona fides and beyond. “It was an amazing entry point into underground music.” Hamilton even played in some bands long before the documentary work. “[E]ventually I realized I wasn’t having fun anymore,” though he quickly adds, “I still love listening to music.”
His work maintains a musical quality with its bold, revealing colors—colors that represent more than placeholders. What he wants people to notice, though, is that as dark as some of the tones are, they still convey his brand of humor: “Even if I’m trying to communicate something serious, I want it to have a bit of levity baked in.”
Above: Hamilton's comic-influenced show poster for Druid City Brewing Company in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
A comic book sense pervades his work, yet it also helps Hamilton maintain those comedic undertones. Each design is either enveloped in a wry grin or loudly proclaiming he’s an Alabamian, with all it entails. “I always wanted to be a comic artist,” though Hamilton would get in trouble for “wasting paper” at school.
“Even if I’m trying to communicate something serious, I want it to have a bit of levity baked in.”
He got off track from doodling his own pictures of Spider-Man and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sometime between childhood and December 2019. But it was then that he was struck—far from Alabama—at the Society of Illustrators Museum in New York City, where he and his wife took in an exhibit of children’s book art. It cracked open the possibility of a life making art, creating designs.
Perhaps obvious, at least to Hamilton, but a big influence stems, too, from Jim Lee and Erik Larsen, famous for their work in comics. It’s in their artwork where Hamilton recently noticed that his form of shading is “a pretty direct rip-off of Larsen’s style, [e]xcept it’s on a can of Easy Cheese instead of some ripped bicep.”
Above: Dreams by Josh Hamilton
He hovers over an idea he’s recently scribbled. He puts on music. He drafts some sketches. Soon, he snaps photos, and he’s tracing the linework in Procreate or Adobe Fresco. Some days, it takes a round or two. But he tells his students at Shelton State, where he teaches graphic design part time, to “find the things you like out in the world and learn how to recreate them on a computer or tablet. Find a hero. Mimic them until you find your own voice and style,” such as Christoff Niemann, Saul Bass, or Ed Ruscha, whose work Hamilton really connects to.
Then? Don’t let a lack of response stop you.
“[M]ake something else.”
Above: Hamilton's home work space
Find more from Josh Hamilton by visiting his website here and his Instagram account here.
