Sometime in 2009, sick in bed, hovering eight floors above Mexico City in a rusting building, I laid awake thinking about Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion—the one that states: actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem, or, you feed me a bad taco, I will spend the night in the bathroom.
No surprise, actions and reactions are a pretty frequent topic of my late night thoughts (with our without semi-poisonous taco’s being involved). For every action there lies an equal and opposite reaction. What comes around goes around. You reap what you sow (and sow on and on). These are ideas that share a common seed, and I think about that seed often, both as utilitarian scientific law and as a snooty esoteric philosophical concept; however, on this occasion, being the dyed-in-the-wool professional designer I am, I was busy working my tiny human brain around ways I could best represent these tenets visually.
The next morning, I crawled out of bed and cut a stencil of a fig newton with a big number 3 on it.
The Equal and Opposite design project maybe wasn’t conceived that morning, but the first physical actions of making it happen started then and there. Its original purpose was of exploring Newton’s Third from a design standpoint—common actions and reactions, as well as hidden actions and reactions, on a macrocosmic and microcosmic level. It involved lots of stencils, spray paint, and paste made from wheat and water and boiled on a stove in an old factory in Colonia Doctores. Later on, it simply became a good excuse for me to design a whole bunch of things in yellow and black.
I moved away from Mexico. Lived and designed my way around Berlin a bit. Finally found my way back to Portland, Oregon. And now, Equal and Opposite has sadly become a dusty parking space. I mean, just take a look at that Instagram icon in the footer… remember when it looked like that?! That should give you a fair idea how much time I’ve actually got to keep my lovely old site looking fresh, now that I’ve sold-out to work for “the man” as an advertising stooge at Wieden+Kennedy.
One day I’ll eventually take the time to rebuild this site; you may even be able to view it on a cellular telephone device too.
—GJ
Grey J is a level 30 Graphic Designer-errant with +5 saving throw versus rain and -2 against grass pollen. He has an ongoing love affair with vintage design aesthetics, minimalism, typography, utilitarian ephemera, spraypaint, stencils, wheat-paste, and semi-antiquated methodologies.
As mentioned elsewhere, Grey is a “Designer-errant.” What’s a designer-errant, you may ask? It’s kind of like Heracles, but in a graphic design context. He travels around, from place to place, picking up freelance design jobs, overcoming trials and tribulations, his laptop at his side, working from wherever he can find an internet connection... maybe that's less like Heracles and more like a hobo. Grey J: Graphic Design-hobo? Sure, why not?
Definitely.
Yes.
No. Sand is bad for laptops.
That depends, do you have a mostly-non-dirty couch?
All the time. But if not available for meetings in person, Skype does the trick.
Probably the best in the world.
TL;DR: Designer-errant is just a fancier (and more succinct) way of saying Freelance Designer-Who-Works-While-They-Travel-Picking-Up-Jobs-Wherever-The-Wind-Has-Blown-Them.
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