power to the people

Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) when I create work as a designer it never sees the light of day. This used to bother me, but as I’ve aged and matured (two separate things), it bothers me less. The reason being, design is really a process. 99% of the work that designers do is never seen by the public. It’s that final 1% that people actually see, and most people never really think about the stuff that went on behind the scenes. But for designers, this is our world. So if a design never makes it “into the world,” it’s okay, because if we’ve engaged in a meaningful process, our work here is done.

This was a commission piece (which may never actually see the light of day) for a local radio station in western Oklahoma. In a modern landscape of media conglomerates, there are still a few locally owned radio stations and newspapers out there. These outposts of information serve as powerful media to empower people and strengthen communities. The broadcast tower is similar in form to an oil derrick, but instead of mining energy from the earth, this tower distributes “energy” in the form of information (albeit country & western) across the plains and shallow canyons of western Oklahoma.

“Power to the People” may seem like a rallying cry, and I suppose it is. I wanted to encourage people to not just “shop local” and “eat local” but in this case to also “listen local” as these stations deliver the news, give the play-by-play of Friday night’s game, and promote the second Saturday farmer’s market, or what have you. There’s also something magical about driving through the middle of nowhere, tuning a magic dial just right, and hearing a local dialect.