Not even getting run over by a semi-truck can stop the success sometimes-Milwaukeean Justin Kay is having.
Kay, an award-winning magazine and apparel designer, had his knee cap crushed in October when a semi collided with a dune buggy he was riding in while vacationing in the California desert.
"We get this hilariously sh*tty map kind of explaining everything we can check out and the dude is like 'You have 90 square miles of open land'," recalled Kay, "Literally two minutes into it we are cruising along on this trail and completely blind with like no way to see it there was like this full two-lane highway that intersected with the track that we were on ... We all look up and we are head to head with a semi-truck."
As the truck jack-knifed Kay and his friends collided with the semi's gas tank. His doctor said it was a miracle he wasn't killed. A day later he was back on the road with his friends, adding the grill of a semi to the long list of things he's redesigned.
Most recently Kay has been polishing the look of the slick music and culture monthly Fader Magazine. His focus on balanced color, design, and typography has already transformed the magazine's look and won accolades in the design world.
Kay, who grew up in New Berlin, played guitar in Milwaukee hardcore band Since By Man, and attended and later returned to teach at MIAD, said there have been some unique perks to working at one of the world's hottest culture magazines.
"One time we got together for an editorial meeting and without telling us the editorial director had invited The Dream to come over and interrupt our meeting with his laptop and he played us like raw unmastered demos of his whole new album," Kay recalled.
A few weeks later up-and-coming rapper Yelawolf strolled into Fader's New York offices where Kay talked to him about his first cover appearance.
"He came into the office and you could tell he was just like a kid just stoked we were going to put him on a cover," said Kay, "It's nice to interact with people who are at a point in their career where they aren't jaded to the point where they are dicks all of the time, they are just stoked about the fact that we want to cover them."
But for Kay job satisfaction comes with chasing that elusive perfect look, not rubbing shoulders with musicians and celebrities. And by most accounts he's doing a great job.
In 2008 he was named one of the "Young Guns" in design by the prestigious New York City Art Directors Club, a high point for a guy whose heroes create the covers and don't appear on them.
"That was a huge honor because that was judged by all the previous people who had won," said Kay, "These were people who I had obsessed over their work when I was at MIAD, and then those were people who judged me to be what they felt was almost in the same caliber which is something that it still takes me a while to wrap my head around."
While Justin is primarily occupied with his job at Fader these days, his resume is extensive. He's previously redesigned Jane and Car and Driver magazines, put in time at Teen Vogue, Complex Magazine, and New York Magazine and helped design apparel at K-Swiss, Zoo York and Burton Snowboards.
With the media landscape in a complete upheaval Kay, said he is honored to know he's helping to put a beautiful and tangible product on shelves all over the world.
"As much as it may not be the most extensively promising career path at this point, being able to create something that gets printed into concrete form that frequently and that gets that much exposure is addicting," Kay said.
