About

What I Do

Hi, I’m Marcus. I’m a graphic designer.
My job is to make good work look like it knows what it’s doing.

Making Education Look Good

There’s already strong work happening across campuses and teams. My role is to frame it, organize it, and translate it visually so people can understand it quickly and trust it instinctively.

Design Focus

I focus on brand identity, visual systems, and illustration that bring clarity to complex environments. Good design doesn’t create the work. It makes the work legible, cohesive, and intentional.

From Artist to Designer

I started as an artist. I drew, painted, and created work for the sake of expression. Along the way, I earned scholarships for illustration and mixed-media projects, including a congressional art scholarship and an alumni award from Cal State East Bay.

Solving, Not Decorating

During college, I learned a distinction that stuck with me: artists create to express, while designers create to solve. I found myself increasingly drawn to organizing information, clarifying intent, and building systems others could actually use. That shift led me toward graphic design and designing solutions rather than standalone artifacts.

Where Art Meets Structure

Today, my practice sits between the two. I bring an artist’s eye for composition, storytelling, and visual nuance, paired with a designer’s discipline for structure, constraints, and outcomes.

A Working Standard

A professor once asked our class, “Has anyone done anything brilliant today?” That question stayed with me. Over time, it became a personal standard I return to often:

Be brilliant. Every day. In every way.

Not brilliance as spectacle, but as care. Clear thinking. Thoughtful execution. Showing up fully, even when the work is routine.

For me, brilliance looks like paying attention to details others might miss, building systems that hold up over time, and making work easier for people to understand and use.

Where I’m Most Invested

I’m most drawn to work rooted in higher education, community development, and public-facing institutions. I care about contexts where design helps people navigate systems, access resources, and understand where they fit.

I’m less interested in speculative tech, crypto, or platform branding. Having grown up in the Bay Area, I’ve seen those worlds up close, and they’re not where I want to invest my energy.

Work in Practice

My work spans district-wide branding, campus identity systems, and large-scale communications, alongside the everyday design support that keeps organizations moving. Much of it lives in real environments, where clarity, consistency, and longevity matter more than trends.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in how I approach design, you can explore selected work or get in touch.