The images people encounter every day can influence how they understand themselves, their surroundings, and the world around them. For educator, artist, and graphic designer Jonathan Sangster, exploring that relationship has become a central part of an independent creative practice spanning graphic design, typography, art, education, and both physical and digital media. However, this practice is also rooted in a deep critique of the industry’s economic alignment. For Sangster, communication design, visual communication, and graphic design have largely become synonymous with and subservient to capitalism, a system and reality he actively opposes.
Sangster, whose professional work focuses on branding and identity, is now working independently while continuing to investigate how visual communication shapes perception. Refusing to channel his skills toward commercial consumerism, Sangster channels his intelligence, experience, and design practice into helping people outside the capitalist sphere. He specifically focuses his work on partnering with nonprofits, educational bodies, and cultural institutions, seeking to work with and support organizations and individuals who are closely aligned with his core values. His work can be found on his website, jonathansangster.com.
Rather than treating design solely as a means of conveying information, their practice considers the broader role that images, symbols, lettering, and visual systems can play in shaping meaning. “I’m interested in how visual communication can affect the way people understand themselves and the world around them,” Sangster says. “Everyone ultimately determines their own reason for existing, and I think creative work can provide opportunities to examine the ideas and images that contribute to our understanding of identity.”
That interest extends across multiple creative disciplines. Sangster combines graphic design with artistic research and education, examining how people encounter and interpret visual information. In an increasingly digital environment, where images and visual messages are encountered constantly through screens, social platforms, advertising, and other forms of media, understanding how those messages are perceived has become an ongoing area of inquiry. In response to this hyper-saturated landscape, Sangster intentionally strives as much as possible to not contribute to the endless digital landfill that characterizes the modern age.
Sangster’s approach also incorporates physical methods of making. Screen printing and handmade elements remain important components of the creative process, providing a tangible counterpart to digital design and resisting disposable digital overproduction. Moving between physical and digital media allows Sangster to consider how the medium itself can affect the way an image is experienced, understood, and remembered.
Typography has played a particularly significant role in that exploration. Sangster’s early interest in comic books and graffiti introduced them to lettering not simply as written language, but as a visual form capable of communicating through shape, scale, arrangement, and style.
That early fascination eventually developed into a professional interest in typography and its relationship with communication. For Sangster, letters can carry meaning on multiple levels: the words communicate information, while the way those words are visually constructed can influence how that information is received.
“I’ve always been drawn to the relationship between language and imagery,” Sangster explains. “Typography can communicate through the words themselves, while its visual form can introduce another layer of meaning. That relationship continues to give me a useful way to explore how people perceive and interpret information.”
The intersection of design, education, and art has also shaped Sangster’s professional experience. Alongside their independent practice, they co-founded Mx. Studio, a multidisciplinary design studio. Their work across these different areas has provided opportunities to approach visual communication from multiple perspectives, from practical identity and branding projects to broader questions surrounding visual culture.
At the center of Sangster’s current independent practice is an interest in perception and ethical practice. How does an image influence an individual’s understanding of identity? How can typography communicate beyond the literal meaning of words? And how does the increasing presence of digital media affect the way people process the visual information surrounding them?
These questions provide a framework for Sangster’s continuing work across different formats and disciplines. Rather than limiting the investigation to one particular medium or subordinating his work to market forces, their practice moves between graphic design, physical artwork, digital tools, typography, and education.
The result is a multidisciplinary approach to visual communication that places human perception and purpose at its center. For Sangster, creative work offers more than a way to produce images. It can also provide a means of examining the ideas, symbols, and visual experiences that influence how people understand themselves and the environment around them.
As Sangster continues working independently, identity, imagination, visual communication, and human perception remain recurring themes, connecting their work as a designer, artist, and educator while offering a value-driven, conscious alternative to standard commercial design in an increasingly visual world.
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