Meet Justin Bauer | Brand Designer & Creative Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Justin Bauer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Justin, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
So I’m both a brand designer and an artist. Since the artist side is about personal expression, digital art, and paintings on canvas – I wanted make a space devoted to helping people, or their brands make better expression and connect to their humans. But not many people know the real story behind me becoming a brand designer :

I was maybe 21 and working one of my first jobs at a live music venue. They had a ‘logo design contest’, which is essentially a low-key way of saying: “lets have one of our employees make us a free logo!”. I made hand-drawn a logo for the House of Blues Service Industry Night and I won the contest. I told them that I could take this drawing and digitize it. But I couldn’t, when I was a kid I didn’t fit in college, I took some basic courses, failed them, and went on a typical search for meaning.

So by this point I knew next to nothing about ‘computer related design’. After winning this contest I ran to a local book store and bought ‘Adobe Illustrator for Dummies’ and the rest is history. I realized I could use art for service and for exploring alternate visions from my own, and that’s why bauerhaus.la exists!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
The thing is, each project is different because the people are different each project. When I’m working with, the band, Paramore on their T-shirts and products, I really care about Hayley’s personal perspective and her relationship with her fans.

I created and directed Zac Farro’s latest album cover (Zac is Paramore’s drummer). That feels super one-on-one, we kept discussing the project as it grew from a few songs to an entire album, so that felt alive like an amoeba, we kept killing ideas and growing new ones until the latest ideas were consistently hitting for us. When we knew we landed in the right place, I could then take those ideas to the photoshoot team and direct it from a core place that Zac and I already loved.

I think that’s a human story, I want individuals to be able to reach their humans in the realest way. It’s the same for corporations though which might look completely different on the outside, but it isn’t. We, the audience, lose connection to big corporations because we can’t feel the people behind them. So that work is really just about helping individuals put their very relatable ideas into the brand they all work on together. We might “care” about Apple because of its brand ideas but we attach to it because we have access to the human ambition behind it.

I was recently the Design Director for Door Dash. It was my job to get in there and grow brands under their umbrella and affect global marketing representation. All of that requires corporate thinking as well as connecting thousands of people to a unified cause, but in reality, I’m trying to get us to tell our honest stories. That means listening, or asking people whom i’ve maybe never met how their day is going. Just finding out about them and seeing where they stand on a message we’re all creating together.

In working on my own art I’m going to be way more selfish, insular, and maybe have no actual goal, but eventually have something to say. I’ll explore in my own vacuum and not everyone is going to relate or even like what I’m making. But I’m still trying to reach the humans that I want to explore my ideas with. It’s the same with giant brands, they’re just trying to reach different people than me personally, and I have to help get them out of their insular vacuum into the brains of the people who want what they have to give.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
All of my friends are musicians so the first thing I’d do is see which of my friends are playing. If ETA was still open in Highland Park I’d take ’em there for Jazz and oysters, but, sad that it’s gone. I love Amiga Amore in Highland Park, or Shin’s Pizza in Mt. Washington. We go to Prado or some chill spots in Chinatown, sometimes they’re packed with strangers but if I’m bringing someone from out of town I want them to have their Cheers experience, where everybody would eventually know their name.

I live near Taco Row in East LA and I could point to literally any taco stand and it would be amazing. I love Taco’s Arabes, order the ‘Especiales’ to make sure you’re getting max flavor. If you’re hunting, check out @LATACO for all the recs and great local reporting. Any support to LaTaco is supporting LA.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My shoutout is a little sad but this one goes to Red Bauer. My Dad was a cowboy, very devoted to doing his job without cutting corners, and a friendly community guy. He cared about everyone he met. When he passed, I was 22, and all my ambition kicked into the highest gear.

Website: bauerhaus.la AND justinbauer.com

Instagram: @justinbauerart AND @bauerhaus.la

Image Credits
Zac Farro / Runlong Peter Dong / Kenny Laubacher / MetaHaiku / Richard Knapp