E-Roll | Joe Massanisso

A Life Of Creative Expression

EPIC Designer Joe Massanisso’s creativity doesn’t shut off when he clocks out … he stays busy with screenprinting, model-making, and woodworking. Get a peek at his creative process as well as some of his cool projects.

Interested in expressing yourself at EPIC? Check out our current job openings!

Video Transcript

I’ve always known that I wanted to do something creative. When I was young, I was drawing on the backs of paper plates with crayons. I remember my parents actually bought a package of paper plates separately for me to draw on, because they knew I would just go into the pantry and steal from them.

My name is Joe Massanisso. I am a designer at EPIC Creative. The pandemic sort of gave me the gift of time. I got back into screen printing. I got back into model making. I started drawing more. I’ve dabbled in woodworking, I would really like to build a nice coffee table, a nice mid-century modern coffee table.

I built this completely from scratch. I needed a surface to screen print on, and I also needed a place to store the screens while they are drying, and so I figured that I can just make one big desk to do this print on. These are all the prints that I’ve this year. I’ve done the birthday bear, I’ve done the shaka, and then the crow. So this was the very first thing that I printed this year. The coolest project I have worked on at EPIC was when we did gig posters for a bluegrass band, The Lil Smokies. Being able to work on gig posters for my day job—for my desk job—was incredible.

I sketch and I sketch and I sketch, until I find something that sticks. This was my major diorama project that I worked on over the summer. My grandpa used to work for the Milwaukee Road, so there’s a lot of personal heritage that went into this project. I have a stained glass window above it, and in the morning, light comes in from the window and just kind of cascades down across it, and it makes it look so beautiful. I love looking at it in the morning. I love it.

It’s so important to stay creative, to stay engaged in your passions that our are outside work. I find a lot of inspiration from my peers, seeing what other people are doing online. Seeing what my own colleagues are doing is an incredible source of inspiration.