Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Wolf.
Steve, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Growing up, I was fortunate to have a family that supported my creativity. I remember drawing with my dad when I was as young as five years old. I’d ask him to draw me something, and then I’d run off and create my own version of it. Both of my parents are music teachers, so music was also a big influence growing up.
Around the end of high school, I was set on becoming an industrial designer. I wanted to design cars and took a lot of fine art classes as well as some autoCAD and drafting classes when I started college at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. During my sophomore year of college, a graphic design professor stopped me in the hallway and invited me to attend an informational meeting about the graphic design program. I didn’t know too much about graphic design until this meeting, and it became a turning point in my life because, after that meeting, I knew graphic design was what I wanted to pursue.
In 2011, shortly after graduating college, I moved to Dallas and began my first job as a designer at a sports card trading company called Panini America. While I was there, I designed sports trading cards for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB and eventually became an art director. After four years, I needed a change, and so my wife and I moved to Austin, TX where I worked as a senior designer at a local advertising agency called GSD&M. Fast forward to today, my wife, and I currently run our own design studio, Steve Wolf Designs.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I primarily focus on creating brand identities, logos, and illustrations for small businesses to large agencies. Professionally, one of my main goals is to communicate my clients’ stories and messaging to their audience in a unique, compelling, and timeless manner.
Personally, I’ve always been inspired by design work that was created during the 1960’s and 70’s. There is a timeless quality to it that inspires my own work and is something that I strive to create. Designers such as Paul Rand, Max Bill, Ikko Tanaka, and Otl Aicher are a few names of designers I greatly admire and am inspired by. I am constantly evolving my work as well as experimenting to see how far I can push my own creative limits.
What do you think about conditions for artists today? Has life become easier or harder for artists in recent years? What can cities like ours do to encourage and help art and artists thrive?
This is a tough question. In my opinion, today’s conditions have made the world a little smaller and easier to get inspired on a daily basis. Things such as social media and other design platforms have made it simpler for artists to connect with each other as well as potential clients.
Cities today can help art and artists thrive by empowering them to become catalysts for change by creating more spaces for art. Murals, signage, branding, and sculpture are just a few examples of how art can be implemented into a city and make it better. Highlighting different artists and holding more art-themed events would also help because it exposes the public to art and will hopefully help them understand and value what we do and what we’re capable of doing for our community which is to unite and bring beauty into a place.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
You can find more of my work on my website at www.stevewolf.co or on social media sites such as Instagram: @stevewolfdesigns.
Contact Info:
- Address: 500 E 4th Street Suite 445Austin, TX 78701
- Website: www.stevewolf.co
- Phone: 512-987-9147
- Email: steve@stevewolf.co
- Instagram: @stevewolfdesigns
- Facebook: @stevewolfdesigns
- Twitter: @stevewolfdesign (no ‘s’ at the end)
Image Credit:
Photo of myself: Credit to: Matthew Johnson
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