Mark McGinnis

Front Forty Profiles Series No. 1 features American artist/designer Mark McGinnis—whose work has appeared in solo exhibitions in both Chicago and Los Angeles and has been published in The New York Times and Business Week. McGinnis's studio practice contributes to an effort to rethink graphic design," proposing it as a cultural practice autonomous from the client-based industry. McGinnis’s commercial and personal work share much of the same process and language, but the latter demonstrates a much deeper authorship over content and context as he translates his work from the printed page to the gallery walls and even out into the street. The images in this book allude to words and expressions concerned with issues such as energy, war, political power, and propagandistic discourse. These eloquent icons are purposed in opposition to words that have become excessively iconic. Their purpose, in fact is to demystify a public discourse that tends too often to be schematic and Manichean... (These) images seem to fight back with the same weapons of simplification and immediacy, while recovering the complexity lost in the media's daily banalization of the news.