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For over twenty years, I've been a designer in the fields of visual identity, digital, and print. Since 2002, I've worked independently at varying intensities, sometimes taking full-time positions here and there. It has been 2011 and onward that I've been lucky enough to go full-time indie, and have been making an enjoyable run at it.
The decade of the twenty-tens was bookended with some wildness. An existential crisis and an overdue divorce just to start things off; dear family falling ill and passing away at the latter end. And throughout, having to re-scaffold my first principles with an ego that didn't die so much as it was booted around and taught a few lessons. Ground gave way at the fringes of that timespan, all while surrounding a centerpiece of successes: Relearning who I am. Witnessing my children continue to grow as kind, bright, interested people. Peaks as high as the valleys were low.
I'm curious what else is out there, so I'm crawling out of internet dormancy to poke around and give back. To add my light to the sum of light.
Onward to new peaks, with better gear for the valleys.
Since 2007, I have managed my design blog, Hello Bauldoff, where I catalog artistic, scientific, philosophical, and technological discoveries which I find personally compelling or culturally important. I’ve been fortunate to have met incredibly lovely people—both online and within handshake range—and have had some very interesting opportunities and experiences drop out of the sky, all thanks to this ongoing, albeit sporadic, hobby; I love sharing the fascinating work of others.
Like brilliant aging stars tend to do, the many reference & source links of my decade-old blog occasionally burn out and die off. If you ever find anything not properly attributed, and have an updated, correct source for their origins, please let me know! I want to make sure those who enjoy the good works featured have easy avenues back to the creators, and that the creators get due credit.
I've been quite busy with retained work the last several years, but I'm always interested to hear of any fun projects you might want to collaborate with. Drop me a line and see if we might be a good fit.
Phone
Social
Design direction & consultancy. Visual identity, branding, and logo design. Editorial & iconographic Illustration. Web & Interactive design, including front-end design, exhibition environments, and user experience. Print collateral, apparel graphics, publication cover and layout work.
Though I don't have an up-to-date web folio at the moment, let me know if you have a potential project or role for me, and would like samples of previous relevant work.
2010–2011
Union fka Studiobanks
Senior Interactive Designer
2006–2009
BGEA
Senior Designer
2002
Idea Giant
Art Director
2000–2002
Weaver Media Group
Art Director
1999–2000
Oakbridge Academy Of Arts
Designer & Admissions Representative
1997–1999
Pennant Brand
Graphic Designer
2012
2012
ADDY Silver Award : Bojangles’ Interactive Menu
Site Designer w/ Union
2011
ADDY Gold Award : Studiobanks Holiday Mini Site
Site Designer w/ Union
2011
ADDY Silver Award : Varrow Website
Iconography Designer w/ Union
2008
American Graphic Design Award : Dare to be a Daniel, Student Field Manual
Project Lead Designer w/ BGEA
1998
President’s Award
Presented by Oakbridge Academy of Arts
My work has been noted on design blogs/sites such as swissmiss, Design for Mankind, Think Design Blog, and others.
A long-gone version of my portfolio site was a featured example in Ian Clazie’s 2010 book: Creating Your Digital Portfolio: The Essential Guide to Showcasing Your Design Work Online, published by F+W Media.
These are great.
Don't @ me.
Below is a collection of different works that have influenced me. Nothing lasts, even favorites. Like any attachment, they wax and wane. Flags at the basecamps of thought and life experience, signifying what we've reached, where we're mired, or what we've left behind.
Some of these, I've dived in obsessively. Of most, however, I'd bet I only have a shallow comprehension, but they've still managed to delight me or punch me in the gut in the very best of ways.
Writing
Film
Songs & Sound
Television
© Joe Bauldoff. With love.
Not to mention that whole pandemic thing. Icing on a sour cake!
Time to play everyone's favorite game: Guess Which Previous Employer Actually Went Through With The Effort Of Submitting Work To Award Competitions!
Remember when the net was full of personal webpages? A jaggedy animated GIF sparkling in the header, just below the Welcome to my world! title set in Times or Arial? A visitor counter beside the Angelfire badge? Where someone you never met, without prompt, wholeheartedly shared random factoids about themselves; trusting you, a perfect stranger, to be gracious enough to appreciate the affable sincerity. I miss that: the bare, affable sincerity. I miss the decentralized nature of the Web, and coming across these little, welcoming, personal hovels. Far from Facebook. Far from formalized likes and shares. Far from the corporate incentives to mob us together based on what we hate. To instead be intact, heterogeneous individuals rejoicing in what we love.
It didn't used to be a perceived trait of vanity. It used to be a perceived trait of endearing approachability.
I recently, for the first time, visited the personal site of the late engineer, mathematician, and data modeler, William Kent, and had the pleasure of learning about his hobbies, his passions, his unpublished writings, all in his own words. To just absorb the man, holistically, as someone who lived, and to not perceive him through the lens of a one-dimensional, snarky opinionmill, as so many of us are being prodded to be today. What a joy.
You see a clunky, boring, would-be-franchise fratricidist with a hot soundtrack. I see a comfy modern myth [with a hot soundtrack]: A disillusioned son travels to the underworld to rescue his demiurgic father. What is truly rescued, however, is the son's ability to forgive and reconcile. Upon returning to the surface, the son rekindles his Purpose-with-a-capital-P by carrying his father's divine legacy onward.
One also can't knock Kosinski's architectural eye, and the beautiful collisions of light, material, and space he orchestrates. So what if it's a flawed gem with a few uncanny facets? Chaos. Good news.
The way that Realm+Conquest acts as this archetypal template of prefabricated existential roles that sits foundationally beneath the film's tactile legal drama is so cool. Flawed humans pushing beyond their labels & limitations & off-the-shelf scripts to become archetypal symbols of ideals themselves. To burn away their limiting pretense and become something new. Also…
“So no one's even sure exactly where they are, because there's no borders or landmarks or anything. And the town? It's not even a town really. It just is this camp where all these people have gathered to hide. All these deserters and guys that got cut off from their armies. All these people that are hiding in the woods, trying to stay alive. This is where they all came. There’s Thieves, Grey Mages, Unbidden Warriors, Dark Avians, Riverwynders, and Sappers....And nobody has any alliances. You can't even say who you are because, you don't know; maybe the person you're talking to, maybe they're like your mortal enemy in the wars. So it's just completely like everybody for themselves.”
Or, How to Talk About Centralized Societal Superpositioning Without Talking About Centralized Societal Superpositioning.
All music somehow expatiates upon the human condition, sure, but have you ever before heard a song that celebrates the shade provided by a freaking tree in such a way as to evoke tears? Handel: an understandable dude.
Really, the stripped-down 1990 version is far superior to the original 1977 recording, imo. I also love this performance of the song on the Kate Bush Christmas Special.
“I had an apocalyptic dream in which the psychic barriers which normally prevent us from seeing into each others’ thoughts had been completely eroded, producing a mental flood. Those that had been used to having their innermost thoughts exposed would handle this torrent, and those inclined to concealment would drown in it.” —PG
I can't help but feel the similarity between this “psychic flood” Gabriel is singing about here—the fright and the helplessness of experiencing the unshielded psychological wholeness of one's kith and kin, every shadow illuminated—and how we as a species are now dealing with the technological halving of Bacon's Law, and the reactionary onslaught of torch-and-pitchfork social media. Our nextdoor neighbors are storming Mount Olympus, the gods are vulnerable, and everyone under the collective eye are revealed to be fleshly and damaged and ripe for dragging to the drumhead.
Somewhere, our wires are getting crossed. We have a more-realistic perspective of our fellow brothers and sisters—every one of them fighting a hard battle—and yet we continue to kick and scream when we fail to find a worthy idol among them. Our tech soars beyond our innate drives, and we're left to stand agape at the chasm between. That E.O. Wilson line pops into mind. Mozo, have mercy on us.