Joshua Gamma

Formed in 2009 by myself and some friends that I deejayed with in college at KVRX 91.7 FM (The University of Texas at Austin’s student-run radio station); The Mole People was an experiment in performance art, design, and record-nerd musicology.

Our last album, the 2014 12" record Lost Age was created over almost two years using a 100% analogue process. Lost Age was released via Punctum Records

“An energy that can’t be held back like electric weather currents caught in a jar that cannot be contained.”
—IMPOSE Magazine

“They’ve tapped into something essential—the tried and true elements of rock ‘n’ roll—finding themselves in league with bands like Big Star and The Replacements, with a touch of their own psychedelic flair.”
—Pop Press International

“No surprise the Mole People came together as deejays at KVRX. They damn well know what a good record should sound like.”
—The Austin Chronicle

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Ode to the Desert: a Field Guide to the Chihuahua Desert is a collaboration with Mexico City-via-Texas artist Tamara Becerra Valdez. Her work at the time was often created under the title of Folklorica—a concern that dealt with the idea of the apothecary, ie. cultural relationships to plants as physical and spiritual medicine.

In 2014 she was asked by El Cosmico in Marfa to lead a workshop on native West Texas plants. For the event, Tamara and I collaborated on this piece that functions as a guide, map, story, collection of Texas folk song, ephemeral cultural artifact, gift, and piece of art. I took the design license of making Tamara’s notes, photos, drawings, and collections into both a legible guide and a hat-tip to “DIY” collages / zines / posters. The finished piece is silkscreen on newsprint.

Becerra Valdez is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in the Moving Image at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

From 2014–2016 I worked with the K–12 learning acceleration software company Compass Learning developing “digital learning objects” for 2nd through 5th grade curriculum. I worked with an international team of designers, curriculum specialists, writers, animators, film makers, and sound engineers to develop our learning solutions. I did everything from art direction and design, to voice acting, video shoots, and animations. The screen shots displayed here are primarily from a yet to be released K-2 product and represent the look and feel I co-developed. 

In August 2016 Compass Learning was bought by the online education company Edgenuity. 

Having graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Design and a BA in Studio Art, it has been a pleasure being able to work for the university in various ways over the years.

This section includes mostly work I did as a designer for the university’s Marketing and Creative Services team during 2013 and 2014. Designing for UT allowed me to work on both my serious, clean-design chops and to indulge in fun illustrations for items like tailgate party fliers.

A Participatory Art Event, held on December 6, 2008, was an exploration into relational aesthetics, participatory, and “generosity” trends in contemporary art. The event was designed around a set of prompts (involving collaborative art-making, mapping / documenting, food, music, community, etc) that were assigned via a guidebook (see spreads below). Participants divided into teams and negotiated the tasks, deciding which ones to do, in which order, and how to accomplish them. The day concluded with a free BBQ where participants hung out, told stories, and a few friends played music (A Faulty Chromosome, Hill Ma, and The Whiskey Priest). The artifacts that came out of the event became an installation at the Creative Research Lab in May of 2009 (see photos below).

This project was a loose framework to create situations within which mini-communities could momentarily exist and art could happen. 

It was an experiment in community, art and design as artifacts and byproducts of community, how we create or appropriate aesthetics in order to communicate and define ourselves; and how we relate to our place in time and geography.  I am also interested in curation and canonization as processes and in how maps, lists, collections, etc can be visual / physical narratives and lenses through which to understand events.

In 2009, I designed, in collaboration with artist Michael Merck, the Future:Simple book of the three-book special edition, 9th issue of Cantanker, a defunct art magazine in Austin, TX.

Michael’s ideas are complex and a million-miles-a-minute—collecting huge piles of typed notes and references. The system I created for this book serves both as a catalog for his exhibition at Big Medium that Fall and as a non-linear index for understanding his work.

Here’s a smattering of posters and fliers I’ve designed. For more, see many across the other sections [Below].

From 2010 to 2018, I collaborated with Austin, TX record producer Danny Reisch on the branding of his Good Danny’s studio and his annual Good Danny’s Day Party during SxSW. 

Danny prides himself on his hand-crafted approach to recording, production, and engineering, so we chose a very analogue approach to his branding and posters—practically everything starts its life out as a drawing or collage and maintains a sense of physicality throughout the process. 

From 2008–2009 my friend and design partner Amy McDonnold and I worked as design and publicity interns at the Creative Research Lab (the UT art program’s official gallery at the time). 

We designed all posters, postcards, signage, catalogues, guidebooks and promotional materials for the gallery during this period, often working with the artists and faculty to get the look and feel for the exhibitions.

In 2012 I assisted the art department at the Texas Tribune with the branding, implementation of brand standards, programs, collateral, signage and wayfinding for their annual Festival.

A description of The Texas Tribune Festival from their website—

Over three days on the University of Texas at Austin campus, more than 200 speakers will dive into the state’s and nation’s most pressing issues: public and higher ed, immigration, health care, transportation, energy, the environment, criminal justice...

Each colored ribbon in the below designs represents one of these issue “tracks.” The colors were used as labeling and wayfinding devices throughout the festival: in the physical space, in the program, and online.

From 2007–2009 I was the art director at The University of Texas at Austin’s student-run radio station KVRX 91.7 FM. I had design oversight on all ads, posters, web fliers, banners, buttons, brochures and all other promotional materials for KVRX events, radio shows and meetings. My work for KVRX has appeared in The Austin Chronicle, The Daily Texan, and the defunct Austin design and culture magazine Odic Force.

I designed the packaging and art directed the photo shoots for two of KVRX’s Local Live albums as well—Vol. 12: Technicolor Yawn and Vol. 13: Stimulus Package (KVRX’s Local Live albums are released annually and feature tracks from local and touring acts recorded live at KVRX’s studios).

I was also the DJ for the award-wining radio program The Psychedelic Boogaloo!!! during this time.

My interest in packaging design, especially record and cassette packaging, goes back as far as I can remember. Dig my Groovy Tunes cassette series from when I was in elementary and jr. high! [Bottom]

Here are various packaging projects I’ve done. For more see The Mole People, KVRX, Cantanker, and University of Texas sections.

I graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 2009 with a BFA in Design (and a BA in Studio Art). The design program at UT, at least at the time, was a rigorous examination of design as a way of thinking. Design isn’t just about aesthetics or a specific, technical way of making images or objects; design is about experiences, problem solving, and the way we look at and envision what our world could be. 

Associate Professor, Gloria Lee from the Design Division said it well—

“It has been said that ‘design is [a way of] making sense of things’ and this may ultimately be the best way to define such an all-encompassing practice. Students studying in this program are taught to observe and respond to the cultural, socio/economic, material, political, geographic and temporal environment. These are the ethical designers of the future, who will imbue our environments with depth, texture and meaning.”

[Note: My school career was interrupted twice due to my military obligations (once in 2003 for training, and 2005–2006 for a deployment to Afghanistan), thus the seeming discrepancies in dates.]

In the Spring of 2009, during my last semester at The University of Texas at Austin, I was a design associate at Marc English Design. I was initially attracted to Marc's more “punk”-aesthetic, as seen in his Slacker Criterion Collection DVD packaging, but I was pleased to work with him on a variety of projects with diverse styles including the identity and brand implemetation for the 2009 Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards and the CreateAustin Cultural Master Plan.