An Interview with Graphic Designer Miles Wintner
Los Angeles-based graphic designer Miles Wintner has made a name for himself in the ever expanding indie music scene fulfilling the artistic needs of songwriters and players of all kinds.
Find Miles on IG: @mileswintner
Seamus: You’re a prolific musician and designer and looking at your work there’s a lot of crossover with those disciplines: you create a lot of record covers and show posters. Which came first for you? When you were younger did gravitate towards music or design, and at what point did you meld the two together?
Miles: I always made wacky comics as a kid — Gary Larson style one-panel things — but I don’t know if I would call that design. I started playing guitar and drums when I was 13. Design came about because I was playing a lot of shows as a teenager and that needed flyers, so I suppose it came about as more of a necessity.
Did you have any formal training in either? Or largely self-taught?
No formal training in art or drums. I took guitar lessons for a few years, but mainly just to learn how to play other songs. I wasn’t really getting deep into theory or technique or anything — it was ear training basically.
So when did Traps Ps form? Were you in bands prior?
I was in a band called Moses Campbell in 2009-2014. I was going to a lot of shows at The Smell and Pehrspace. I caught the first incarnation of Traps Ps playing one night and learned that that was their last show. I thought, “This band is amazing, this can’t be their last show.” So I approached the guitarist Andrew and asked if he ever wanted to jam. That was 2010, I was 19. We just started playing from there. The band had existed for two years before I had joined, and it’s been a band for 10 years since.
When you had joined was there a sort of overhaul with the band stylistically? Was that even talked about, or did you just start jamming and it sort of came about organically? How has it evolved over the years?
The band was Andrew and three other people: a bass player, a drummer, and a percussionist. The three of them left to do other things, so it was just me and Andrew when I joined. We would meet up at Pehrspace and just hack away at ideas. We didn’t really work on old material too much, we just wanted to move forward and redefine the band. There’s a language to Traps Ps that was established in the early years before I joined. It has to do with the efficiency of the music, keeping the songs short, and not repeating anything too much. So we worked within that language, but I play differently than the previous drummer so it definitely evolved. If you listen to the material from 12 years ago and compare it to what we’re making now – it’s different, but it’s not in a completely different world. It’s not like how XTC changed or something like that. It’s all coming from the same place. And then our friend Danny joined on bass and brought his own thing to it as well.
With music, I’d imagine it’s more of a collaborative process, being that it’s with a band. As opposed to design, where I’m assuming, you’re the sole creator? Do you have a preference in either approach? What modality do you enjoy working in more? Or are there things about either that you like or dislike?
I actually feel like more of a collaborator as a designer because I work with clients and try to fulfill their vision. Sometimes they trust me to experiment on my own, but most of the process is interpreting client notes and directions. When I play music, I’m either playing what the songwriter has called for without too much variation, or I’m carving out my own part within the rest of the song.
Ok, yeah that makes sense. In general, do your clients give you some kind of touch point? Or do you listen to the record to get some sense of inspiration? I’m sure it varies from each person that you work with, but do they just give you something abstract and then let you run with it?
It depends. Typically, I’ll ask to hear the record so I can get a sense of its tone. I’ll also ask for some visual references so I can get a sense of what style they’re after, because I do a few distinct styles. Lastly, I’ll ask if there’s any specific graphic elements they want in the design.
On that, I notice in your work that there’s a lot of cool texture going on that gives it a sort of retro pastiche, but there’s a lot of abstract motifs that make it more contemporary. I know you have a few different ways of going about it – but do you normally incorporate some kind of analog process in your work or is it strictly digital?
It’s all composed in Photoshop. I feel like our eyes were trained in the pre-digital era to recognize images with imperfections in lighting or texture. When I look at clean, flat, pixelated images, my eyes aren’t drawn to them unless there’s some organic quality to them. To make textures for my work, I’ll leave sheets of paper around my room that collect wear over time. I’ll scan them and use them as overlays, just to bring the design into the real world a bit. It’s very reverse engineered. But I like to find a balance with that kind of stuff. I’ve actually been scaling back that kind of texturing lately. It can feel like a crutch sometimes and I’d like my designs to eventually stand on their own.
You mentioned Gary Larson and the Far Side earlier, which I love. In some of your work, there’s almost a sense of humor or a tongue-in-cheek, playful aspect to it. How does humor play a role?
It’s huge. I’m generally not interested in any art that doesn’t have some humor or levity to it. I think about the Sopranos versus the Wire – similarly heavy, but the Sopranos is clearly funny more often than not, which appeals to me way more. All the media I grew up with - the Far Side, David Shrigley, even Milton Glaser - has levity to it. The world is so heavy now (and always) that I’m not interested in anything that doesn’t brighten the viewer’s day in some way. When I play with gravity, floating objects can subconsciously give the viewer a sense of being unbound from a reality where gravity is constantly pulling them down at all times.
Yeah, there’s something playful about it that’s really appealing.
Totally. It’s got to be. I think it’s one of the strongest ways to convey information. Humor cuts deeper than any other method of communication, at least for me.
Is there an analogous approach with music, perhaps with Traps Ps in particular? The band has such a singular style. There’s something about the nature of the music — a lot of the songs are short-form, quick-hitting. There’s certainly a serious tone to a lot of it, at least for me as an audience. But there’s also something — and maybe humor isn’t the right word — that gives a kind of wink to the listener.
Yeah, totally. There’s like a Minutemen-esque bounce. It’s not fun or happy, but there’s levity. We usually try to push the tempos too. I’d say the through-line between the music that I make with Traps Ps and the design I make is an attempt to be efficient and not have any extra information that will bore or distract a listener or viewer. So, the songs are short and my designs are typically pretty clean and simple. That’s just the way that I like to take in information. I’m drawn to more simple compositions whether we’re talking about art or music. I’m possibly a neat freak in my non-creative life too, so I don’t like there to be anything extra that isn’t necessary, in art or music or life or anything.
How has the past year — obviously challenging for many people across the board — but in your practice in music and design, what challenges have you faced? Have you found some way to adapt? Are you taking a different approach to things? What are you doing to preserve your sanity?
I’m really lucky that work has continued to flow in. It seems like people are staying busy in lieu of playing shows and touring, either finishing up pre-pandemic projects or doing a lot of home recording to save money. I’ve stopped doing posters for now while there are no shows, but I’m doing just as much album art as ever and I feel really grateful that I can keep working. The constant demand has been nothing but a blessing this year and the past four years I’ve been doing this. I’m hoping the job security will continue. It might not, I don’t know. The phone could stop ringing at some point. Sometimes I wonder if the design style or technology will move on without me. It happens in the creative field all the time. You can be popular for a decade, then all of a sudden something changes and people want something other than what you can provide. There’s no telling what’s going to happen. I feel like adaptability is just as important as raw skill because the landscape is constantly changing. I feel for the artists who are so good at one thing and then the culture moves on without them and they can’t adapt. I sometimes think of design trends as a massive crew of artists all steering this big ship at the same time, their collective decisions slowly steering it towards its next destination. So, I’m trying to find my place in that. And to stay sane, I play tennis [laughs].
How do you think design in general affects how we consume other forms of art? Sight really is the primary sense for us, there’s just no denying its power. I feel that it’s sometimes overlooked though.
Totally. Show posters, for example, are typically an afterthought. Booking the show is so much work and then it’s like, “Oh it needs to look like something, it needs to look appealing!” Going through the trouble of making something you want people to experience and not giving it a strong visual component, nobody has any reason to care. It’s more important than many people want to admit.
Right. Design and music are so inextricably linked, there are some album covers that have almost transcended from the record. Like Dark Side of the Moon or something like that. The visual component that exists in tandem with a record is often times more important than the music itself, at least in terms of initially garnering attention from an audience.
And it goes even beyond music, right? Another reason why I have some sense of job security, almost everything will always need some sort of visual component, whether it’s a start-up that needs a logo, or a book that needs a cover, or a box of raisins, or whatever. There’s always a need for design no matter what phase of the apocalypse we’re in.
