My name is Joshua Gavin and I am a Visual Communications graduate with a love for design that is rooted in storytelling, problem solving, and cultural analysis. My work explores how design can communicate complex social, political, and personal experiences through both conceptual and editorial approaches. Across my projects, I am particularly interested in identity, collective experience, activism, and the relationship between visual culture and emotion. Through projects such as Protest Power and Out, I have come to see design as more than aesthetics or commercial communication. To me, design is a tool for visibility, storytelling, and connection. It has the ability to inform, challenge perspectives, preserve lived experience, and create space for voices and identities that are often overlooked. My work aims to create visually compelling outcomes that encourage dialogue, reflection, and a deeper understanding of contemporary cultural and social issues.
Protest Power
This project is a comprehensive exploration of protests as both a social and political phenomenon. Designed as a broadsheet, it compiles knowledge from a wide array of sources academic journals, books, historical accounts, interviews, case studies, and news articles to create a resource that is at once informative, practical, and inspiring. Its goal is to serve as a resource for those who participate in protests or are considering doing so, offering both context and guidance to maximize the impact and effectiveness of collective action. Ultimately, this project is both a map and a mirror. A map of the strategies, lessons, and structures that underpin effective protest, and a mirror reflecting the hopes, struggles, and creativity that drive individuals to stand up for what they believe in. It is intended not only as a source of knowledge but as a catalyst for thoughtful, informed, and courageous civic participation.
“Out”
This project explores the theme of taste through the cultural perception of pop music, arguing against the assumption that pop is inherently “lowbrow” or lacking in artistic value. While pop music is often dismissed because of its mainstream appeal, commercial visibility, and accessibility my own experience of pop has never aligned with that judgment. For me pop music has always been deeply emotional, expressive, and culturally meaningful for survivability and identity construction while in the closet. By combining autoethnographic reflection with critical ideas around taste and cultural capital, the project argues that pop music should not be dismissed simply because it is popular. Popularity does not erase artistic value, emotional depth, or cultural significance. Instead, pop should be understood as a complex form of expression that shapes identity, creates community, supports selfhood, and carries deep personal and social meaning for queer people in the closet for survivability.
