Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Wolf.
Steve, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Growing up, I was fortunate to have a family that supported my creativity. I remember drawing with my dad when I was as young as five years old. I’d ask him to draw me something, and then I’d run off and create my own version of it. Both of my parents are music teachers, so music was also a big influence growing up.
Around the end of high school, I was set on becoming an industrial designer. I wanted to design cars and took a lot of fine art classes as well as some AutoCAD and drafting classes when I started college at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. During my sophomore year of college, a graphic design professor stopped me in the hallway and invited me to attend an informational meeting about the graphic design program. I didn’t know too much about graphic design until this meeting, and it became a turning point in my life because, after that meeting, I knew graphic design was what I wanted to pursue.
In 2011, shortly after graduating from college, I moved to Dallas and began my first job as a designer at a sports card trading company called Panini America. While I was there, I designed sports trading cards for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB and eventually became an art director. After four years, I needed a change, and so my wife and I moved to Austin, TX where I worked as a senior designer at a local advertising agency called GSD&M. Fast forward to today, my wife, and I currently run our own design studio, Steve Wolf Designs.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do? Why? And what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I primarily focus on creating brand identities, logos, and illustrations for small businesses to large agencies. Professionally, one of my main goals is to communicate my clients’ stories and messaging to their audience in a unique, compelling, and timeless manner.
Personally, I’ve always been inspired by design work that was created during the 1960s and ’70s. There is a timeless quality to it that inspires my own work and is something that I strive to create. Designers such as Paul Rand, Max Bill, Ikko Tanaka, and Otl Aicher are a few names of designers I greatly admire and am inspired by. I am constantly evolving my work as well as experimenting to see how far I can push my own creative limits.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
Success for me as an artist is being able to do what you love for a living. It’s also feeling fulfilled with the work that you create day in and day out.
The characteristics I feel are essential to success as an artist would be passion and grit. When you fully immerse yourself in the art you create and give 100% of your effort each day, people start to see that the work you create has a special quality to it.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
You can see some of my work by visiting my website at www.stevewolf.co, Instagram (@stevewolfdesigns), or Dribbble (https://dribbble.com/WOLF_STEVE).
Contact Info:
- Address: 500 E 4th Street Suite 445
Austin, TX 78701 - Website: Website: www.stevewolf.co
- Phone: 512-987-9147
- Email: steve@stevewolf.co
- Instagram: @stevewolfdesigns
- Facebook: @stevewolfdesigns
- Twitter: @stevewolfdesign (no ‘s’ at the end)
Image Credit:
Photo of myself: Credit to Matthew Johnson
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