In a period of unprecedented economic decline and an ever more beleaguered, demoralized population, American life has become a stark contrast of its former self. Apathy far exceeds awareness, compulsive spending trumps responsible saving, and fears about the future run rampant rather than hope.
Work has equally degenerated into a frenetic, careless endeavor that hurries along uninspired and without consideration: imaginative prospects are ignored for sustainable mediocrity, principles that founded the company are forfeited for short-term gains, and employees themselves feel increasing anxiety over their expendability, despite earnest loyalty and diligence. An attitude of defeat and exhaustion has waylaid the working American and driven him to both ill-health and deep debt.
And yet despite all these sacrifices meant to justify survival and uphold efficiency, there is mounting evidence that American power and influence is diminishing throughout the world.
Kamron Rudisill, the sole designer behind FRAKTURE, believes that in the face of such austerity, a new persuasion of mind, culture and work must take root, beginning with the individual. We must undertake labor with conviction, build with sincerity and discard mediocrity without apology. We must refuse to allow things to continue as they are, resist the reckless attitude that has taken us here, and rebel against our fundamental failure to imagine.
Because when we reject banality and spectacle, and revolt against mediocrity, we thus emerge as the historically essential anomalies, the people whose passions take them in new directions, who eliminate stagnation, who act with courage and take charge into the future—who FRAKTURE.
Originally born out of a desire to just create better design, FRAKTURE is a philosophy that’s breadth has grown to seek the wisdom in active living. It is both a portfolio of thought and design, a social calling that looks to rally imagination as well as patriotism. It is a constant struggle against the stagnation of mind, against the sins of a resigned ignorance and all that perpetuates an idle, directionless existence. An alternative to dulling routines and business as usual, FRAKTURE means to awaken and mobilize, to move the individual away from widespread anxiety and into personal renewal.
Informed by the values of the past, FRAKTURE seeks simply and above all a restoration of individual responsibility: to a fast-disappearing American tradition of ingenuity, inventiveness and honest hard work; work that is rich in its returns and satisfying in its completion.
On the long path to becoming enlightened, a designer's identity is ever-changing and diverse. There is much asked of him, and only the most disciplined can succeed; thus, this person must become a student to both the craft and its past.
A designer needs to be not just an enthused visionary but a skilled craftsman, someone who can deliver his ideas through practical means, to make his tools work for him, not vice-versa. Never caught lamenting over petty limitations or restrictions, he needs to see the opportunities inherent in such limits, exploiting them to his design's advantage; thus, he must become a flexible, imaginative artist.
To make understood and sell his abstract ideas and dreams, he needs to tame and shape a tumultuous torrent of possible words and descriptions into a stream of beautiful, nuanced language; thus, he must become a poet.
Detail-conscious but concept-driven, his compositions must construct both a grand theme that is thought-provoking and detail that invites and charms the soul: thus, he must become an architect.
It is essential he and his work be sober and aware of the world around him, along with the role he plays as mediator of messages; thus, he must become a responsible citizen of his country, interested in improving it by being the world's independent critic of it.
The pursuit of wisdom must be at his core: to seek the advice of others, but ultimately trusting decisions to his own experiences. He must become intelligent about his emotions and emotional about his intellect. Remaining always interested in life, constantly striving to master communication and bridge the spaces between people, he needs to recognize his creative ideas correspond directly to what he knows about the world; thus, he would do well to become an intellectual.
Finally, he cannot simply remain an obedient student or allow the popular world to dictate his work. He must put forth himself and his own opinions, to eventually challenge the rules he has learned by in writing new rules and sharing his experiences. Finding no existing path or system that suits him, he must trust his experience to take him into new, uncharted territory; thus, he must FRAKTURE.
Because designers and artists, poets and architects, critics and intellectuals all shape human culture on earth.
Through a tradition of challenging themselves and what is accepted, by working, searching, asking what life is, can and ought to be, may a new democracy of ideas, method and experience be regularly born.
Kamron Rudisill never imagined his portfolio as an isolated event. Always intrigued by the collaborations and associations involved with how we perceive and thus co-create the world, FRAKTURE, the name and brand Kamron created for his work, was intended to add to the collective and extend to others not only a stylish means of presenting his graphic design portfolio, but also as an important brand of wisdom: a brand extolling the paradox of unity through diversity, encouraging the pursuit of passion, and challenging absolutes wherever they appear.
Set against the gloom that emanated endlessly from the media regarding the financial meltdown, the time seemed appropriate in June 2008—the point Kamron was set to graduate from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh—to situate this alternative message that was fearless and invigorating in its accounts. Instead of ignoring or passively accepting the milieu of the times, FRAKTURE seemed to confront the country’s declining attitude head-on with the assurance that the imaginative mind can overcome any obstacle.
Through these lessons, FRAKTURE became the one outlet for Kamron Rudisill under which to position a rebellion against ambivalence on all fronts. Far from seeing the message as just some exalted idea of what a graphic designer really does, the significance was well-received, resulting in Kamron being awarded “Best of Show” at his graduation’s portfolio review.
FRAKTURE’s graphics by no means deviate from graphic design’s nature of appropriation. Instead, rather than attempting to depart, FRAKTURE takes pride in the associations its identity has been built around.
The core graphics of this identity were inspired directly by the International Style and the work of Swiss designers like Joseph Müller-Brockmann, Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann. This inspiration came about from an admiration of how sophisticated and legendary their identity systems were. But as FRAKTURE’s aesthetic began to mature, the realization that it needed more than a Swiss influence came to light and the direction progressed into a looser, more experimental look akin to David Carson’s work.
The final result is an identity of opposites: the modern with the postmodern, history with the contemporary and the risky with the neurotic—essentially all that FRAKTURE was intended to be.
