Timothy Goodman believes the greatest joy as a designer and an artist is the ability to connect to other humans emotionally through his work and words. To get the conversation going, his words are sprawled across walls and buildings – uplifting and thought-provoking messages that treat topics such as love, heartbreak, politics, race, therapy, and mental health.
Aside from being a muralist, Goodman is also a designer, an illustrator, and an author, with selected clients that include Google, Uniqlo, MoMA, Airbnb, Netflix, The New Yorker and The New York Times. You can find his art and words on packages, cars, shoes, clothing, book jackets, magazine covers, even people.
“I just want to create art that people can connect to,” he stressed in an interview with Eye on Design. “I think so much of the time we make art for ourselves or for other people in our communities to see. With so many of the stories I’m trying to tell, I’m trying to make things for actual people. I think sharing your personal stories is sort of activism; when you connect to other lonely people in the world, I think there’s a service involved that is really powerful. I want to continue to use my work as a vehicle for that.”
“If I can’t connect to someone seeing my work on an emotional level, then I don’t know why I’m doing it,” he adds. “How do you interact with a great film or a great book or a great album? You’re connecting with it emotionally. So why wouldn’t I make my work in the face of that? I don’t know why we define graphic designers in such a small box. I just don’t know what the point of that is. There are so many ways for people to interact with one’s work.”
With more than 150k followers on Instagram, he’s clearly connecting with people.
