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Top Ten Graphic Designers: #2 Jessica Walsh

If you wander around the prestigious School of Visual Arts in New York City, you might find design and typography instructor Jessica Walsh working with her students. Walsh’s talent goes far beyond the classroom into the world of graphic design, art direction, and illustration as well as in social experimentation.

She fulfilled a dream in 2019 of opening her own design studio, one of only 36 creative studios in the U.S. that are headed by women. Walsh’s brilliant, sometimes provocative work and her spectacular rise in the graphic design field has led to this new venture, and Jessica Walsh deserves to be a focus of the graphic design industry as one of the Top Ten Graphic Designers.

Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Jessica Walsh graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She interned at design firm Pentagram in New York City. She credits finding her personal design style while working as an associate art director at Print magazine.

Walsh’s next moved her career to Sagmeister, Inc. and quickly impressed the owner, Stefan Sagmeister. He made Walsh a partner at the young age of 25 and the firm became Sagmeister and Walsh.

During her time of collaboration with Sagmeister, Walsh, who specializes in handcraft, photography and painting with digital design, made her mark. Walsh applies the blending of her specialties to the areas of website design and typography, along with branding and art installations.

Her art, with its use of handcraft, has been described as looking handmade. Walsh’s bold, emotional style caught the attention of large companies, such as Levi’s and Adobe, and museums including The Jewish Museum of New York. Notably, for the Jewish museum, Walsh and Sagmeister explored the concept of happiness. The artists combined media arts for the project, using film and sound-activated sculpture in a work titled Six Things: Sagmeister and Walsh.

Apart from the Six Things exhibit, Walsh had exhibited in Paris, France at the Louvre with Sagmeister: Another Show About Advertising and Promotion Materials. Back in North America, The Happy Show appeared at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Chicago’s Cultural Center and the Design Exchange in Toronto. Another impressive showing for the young graphic artist included Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty at the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna.

Walsh’s daring style translated to other types of immersive projects. In 2013, Walsh entered into a social experiment with designer Tim Goodman that exploded with popularity online. Called 40 Days of Dating, the friends chronicled, in detail, an attempt at a dating relationship.

Originally, the format they used was a blog. Walsh’s style comes through on the project website, http://fortydaysofdating.com/.

Later, they turned the blog posts into a book, and, eventually, Warner Bros. bought the movie rights. The same pair conducted another experiment on showing kindness in 2016, called 12 Kinds of Kindness, to others. They showed kindness to others in 12 different ways and recorded the results. The website for this project also remains active at http://12kindsofkindness.com/.

An impressive list of awards

Jessica Walsh’s talent in her young career garnered her numerous awards including the 2010 New Star of Design, Computer Arts. As her career moved forward, she won the Society of Publication Designers Award (2010), the Young Gun Award from the Art Directors Club (2011), the New Visual Artist Award from Print Magazine (2010), the Envy Index: 25 under 25 from L Magazine (2011), and the Type Director’s Club Award from Les Arts Decoratifs poster in 2012.

While still with Sagmeister and Walsh, she also won the 25 People Shaping the Future of Design Award (2013), the People to Watch Award from GD USA (2013), and the Webby Award for the Best Home/Welcome Page (2013). All these awards were presented to Walsh on or before she turned 25 years old.

Filling a need to once again make an impact on society, Walsh became the founder of the successful nonprofit Ladies, Wine & Design, encouraging women to work with each other rather than trying to compete.

Started in 2016, the organization now has more than 270 chapters. On the personal side, Walsh is married to cinematographer Zak Mulligan. The couple resides in New York City.

As Walsh continues to flourish in her new design company &Walsh, she’s sure to produce a more daring graphic design that snares clients and wins prestigious awards.

Watch for her to create projects and experiments that affect more than your sense of sight. To find Jessica’s latest work, visit her website at https://andwalsh.com/.

Walsh’s company, &Walsh, provides design for a wide variety of projects. They help companies big and small by providing a range of services, from advertising and art direction to target audience and website design. 

&Walsh has supplied both the company branding and specific campaign design for a wide variety of clients. For instance, Francesca Amfitheatrof, who is a top luxury jewelry designer, designed and produced a bracelet called “The Tag.” Jessica’s firm created the strategy, brand identity, illustrations, copywriting, and packaging design for the launch of the brand.

Their work doesn’t stop at jewelry. &Walsh also provided the branding, strategy, and merch for SuperShe, a women-only private community that’s embodied in both an actual private island and on an app. 

They’ve helped advertising agencies, like Gut, a Miami-based agency, stand out from the crowd as well. For Gut’s branding, Walsh and her team designed a moving, spiraling logo that recalls intestines and makes the viewer stop and think about gut instincts.

A leader in her field

Jessica’s campaigns have been extremely successful and have landed her fantastic opportunities. Her campaign is driven by her values, which are also the values of her firm, and which directly influence the firm’s mission.

&Walsh’s core mission is for the designers to use their skills as creatives to start dialogues and create change. They spend a not inconsequential amount of time on projects that they initiate. These projects are related to helping social causes they care about; for example, they’ve created events, books, exhibitions, and entire organizations for these different social causes. 

Ladies, Wine, & Design, the organization mentioned earlier in this article, is a non-profit initiative that Walsh started because she had experienced sexism in the graphic design industry. She wants the group to help change the fact that only 5-11% of creative director positions are held by women and only .1% of creative agencies are owned by women. 

Walsh has experienced hate mail, jealous remarks, and direct sexism since she reached a high level of success. She believes that she is not naïve and she was prepared for backlash. However, she was surprised that so many of the negative comments she received were from women.

She couldn’t believe when she received comments stating that her success was due to being young and pretty, or because she slept with her boss. Jessica rightfully points out that, if she were a man, no one would say she achieved her success because she crossed that line. 

Yet, it was women making these hurtful comments. Jessica clearly cares deeply about how women are perceived and treated, especially successful women. She wants to make the world, and the design industry in particular, a place where women can feel both safe and supported. 

Walsh also cares deeply about the pay gap. She makes it clear that she knows that the pay gap is bad for white women, but much worse for women of color. Championing equality for all women, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, age, or ability is one of her priorities. 

Going forward, Walsh plans on using her own privilege – not only as white, heteronormative woman from a wealthy family, but also as a woman who owns her own creative agency – to expand the Ladies, Wine, and Design initiative.

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