My biggest passion is music.
I love nothing more than strumming the banjo, playing guitar, and singing in my choir. You may wonder, “It’s 2025? Why play the banjo?” It’s all because of folk music!
When I was a child, my granddad handed me a set of jingle bells to accompany him while he played some songs on the piano. I was hooked and have spent my life trying to learn everything I can about folk music and the people who create(d) it.
My Banjo, illustrated with drawings of the provincial and state flowers of everywhere I’ve lived.
There are a few things that draw me to folk music. First of all, I really enjoy the musical style, so I love listening to it and learning to play and sing the songs. I am also captivated by the rich history. You can listen to a song and learn something about what life was like for people 200 years ago. Often their problems are similar to ours today, because the human experience transcends time.
Why do some songs enter the collection of folks songs and others are forgotten to time? Oh Susanna was the top pop song of 1848, and is now a well-known folk song. This happened through the folk process: the sharing and adaptation of the same songs over and over. Ever forgotten some of the words to a song you heard and slightly rewritten them while singing, or enjoyed a cover of a song more than the original? Congratulations, you’ve participated in the folk process.
The creative process of folk music also inspires my daily work as a designer. Here’s how:
Take inspiration from everything
Folk songs can be about anything and everything. From heart break, to the news, to what happened that week at work, people have been writing songs about it all. Just like a good folk musician, I keep my eyes open to good design everywhere I go.
Learn from the people around you
Folk music originated from people teaching songs to each other by ear. Someone sitting next to you probably knows different songs than you, or has a different way to play the ending to a song you love. In design, everyone uses their software slightly differently and sees problems from different perspectives. There’s always something you can take away from talking to professionals around you.
Borrow from others
A big trend of the folk songs from the 1930s-1950s is rewriting old songs with new words to capture current events. Woodie Guthrie almost always wrote the words to a song first and then listened to the world around him for a tune to set it to. (The tune of The Sinking of the Reuben James is just Wildwood Flower with some slight tweaks.) This tip can be used in graphic design. Whenever I get really stuck on a problem, researching the solutions other people have come up with, whether online or by asking around, will always spark an idea to get me through it.
Look further back
One theory as to why we still know some songs from hundreds of years ago and others have been lost to time is that the songs that stuck around are just the best of the best. I believe this is also true of the examples of sign painting and historical graphic design we still have access to. I try to take what these examples do effectively and apply it in a modern context.
If you aren’t a regular listener to folk music, my musing may have inspired you to listen to some! (I hope that is the case.) To get you started, here are a few of my favourites:
- Mr. Frog Went A-Courting by National Film Board of Canada
- When I’m Gone by Windborne
- How Can I Keep From Singing? By Pete Seeger
I hope you enjoy them and can hear a bit of the folk process at work in these wonderful songs for the ages!
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