Growing up flicking through his grandma’s Norman Rockwell coffee table book, Nathan has always liked creative expression. His philosophy on art versus design gives him a unique perspective on the difference between artists and designers. For Nathan, art is something more expressive like George Serat’s pointillism techniques. Still, design was inspiring for him growing up, admiring ads in the magazines and especially enjoying the design choices of Apple Inc. advertising campaigns. A personal representation of both, Nathan explained the distinction he saw between artist and creative. “I don’t make art for people typically, I like creating interesting looking things.” He elaborated that he is artistic when it comes to music, playing guitar since he was eight-years-old. Nathan is still playing guitar today and has been playing with roughly the same guys for about 20 years in a band called Eclectic Noise. Nathan shares his love of music through live performance as well as teaching guitar lessons. Outside of artistic passions, Nathan also loves cars and off-roading around the Silver Lake Sand Dunes with his family, a tradition he has been participating in since he was 6-weeks old.
When it pertains to his professional creative background, Nathan’s route was less than typical. He graduated high school unsure of what to do next. “I did a little art, but I liked computer stuff.” Going to Davenport College, now Davenport University, he took on their new one-year desktop publishing program. By doing well in the class, Nathan was able to secure some connections through the college that hired him for short-term work. This eventually led him to a full-time job with David McCord at MRW, later known as McCord Design Group. Nathan counts himself as very lucky for his training and opportunity working under David. When he entered that job Nathan was pretty raw, but David recognized his talents and took him under his wing. It was the early age of digital publication, Photoshop 2.5 had just been released and Illustrator 88 was only on its second major version update, meaning Nathan was able to start his career at the infancy of computer based design and layout. Now with over 30 years of design experience, he looks back and admits this route will probably be much harder to achieve today. “You [have] got to have training anymore, [a] minimum two years, probably four.”
After McCord Design Group, Nathan got hired at Blue Pencil Creative Group and worked there from 2000 until several years later, when he met Lauren Ciesa. Having worked for Lauren for 17 years, Nathan’s roles as Art Director and Developer have been evolving over time. A creative that wears a lot of hats, Nathan described his roles as flexible and adaptive to what is needed from a project. He elaborated that when there is a need to expand or learn how to do new stuff, Lauren has always let us pursue those things that we like. Learning elements like 3D and video was something Nathan was able to study on the job, and in doing so further his design skills and increase the tools in his design toolbelt.
When he started versus now, Nathan notes an industry shift and acknowledges the change in the types of creative work being requested. At the start of his time at Ciesa Design, print work accounted for maybe 80-90% of their workload; now the industry has shifted, and there is more demand for web and digital work. Nathan appreciates the change, saying that “when you [have] worked in print for 30 years it is nice to expand your creative side in other mediums like social media, video, web and 3D.” He reminisced on his favorite projects from his Ciesa Design portfolio, his favorite logo design being the City of Grand Ledge logo, a piece that exemplifies his love for designing with simplicity and minimalism. Drive less than 30 minutes west and you can still see this design heavily in use throughout the city! His favorite print project was a monthly magazine, Michigan Country Lines from the Michigan Electric Cooperative Association. He redesigned the monthly newsletter to fit a highly professional magazine print format and was able to head the project for three years. For favorite web design project, he is proud of the work done with both the Patter Park Zoo website and the Lansing Center website.
When asked about his favorite part of working at Ciesa Design, Nathan noted the importance of the people you work with and the atmosphere it creates. “Good people with skills that want to expand what they do and [have] pride in their work” is conducive to building good creative relationships.
His favorite piece hanging on his walls right now? The 2012 East Lansing Art Festival poster, the one Nathan got the privilege to design.
