Will Walker – UF Designers 2021

HEY THERE! MY NAME IS

WILL WALKER

William Walker is a multiracial creator who uses design as a form of connection and communication. Exploration of his multiracial identity inspired him to explore branding & identity systems, and exposure to a variety of cultures inside and outside the home has served as major inspiration in his work. Walker believes design is an interdisciplinary practice and always tries to explore design thinking in new spaces. In his time at UF, he discovered printmaking and has since largely integrated printmaking processes into his practice. His dream job would be to work as an in-house designer for a craft brewery or to manage his own printmaking studio. When not designing, you can find Walker watching RuPaul’s Drag Race with his cat, tending to his plants, or cooking an overly elaborate meal in his kitchen.

BORN: Coral Springs, FL

FAVORITE TYPEFACE: Facile Sanc

FAVORITE HEX CODE(S): #E5C00C, #0EE29B

ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus

MORNING PERSON OR NIGHT OWL:
Night Owl, most definitely

FAVORITE UFGD STUDIO MEMORY: I never felt more at home than every time I would walk into the studio late at night to finish a project and there would be other people there working too

DESIGN INSPIRATION(S): So many things! I always looks to the Bauhaus and Art Nouveau movements for inspiration but I also love to follow printmakers to see what they are doing!

CHECK OUT MY WORK BELOW!

GAME OVER

Game Over is a rigid typeface for playful applications. It serves as a bilingual typeface working in Latin and Hebrew scripts. I drew inspiration from the golden age of 80's arcade games and attempted to navigate modern character styles in an 8-bit context. Since Hebrew is a recently revived language, many Hebrew fonts today pull inspiration from main artifacts of Jewish culture such as religious texts. Game Over pulls inspiration from biblical letterforms which can be characterized by accentuated “serifs” and thick, high-contrast horizontal strokes.

BLUE SKY BREWING CO.

Blue Sky Brewing Co. allowed me to create a branding & identity system for a craft brewery located in Denver, Colorado. A sustainable brewery, the logo and packaging were developed around the idea of only using a paper beer bottle and eco-friendly materials. It was a priority to highlight Colorado outdoor life and the extensive natural ecosystem that exists within the state.

PONY

Pony, by Orville Peck is a country album that captures the queer experience in unexpected genre. I worked to rebrand the album and developed a new visual system that extended into its promotional materials. The album focuses on themes of solitude and loneliness, so it was important that I capture the idea of the “lone ranger” while still paying homage to the camp culture created by country music. Instead of working digitally, I carved the majority of my design into wood and then integrated that into a digital platform.