Mario F. Bocanegra Martinez
Graphic / motion Designer + Educator
Born in
🇲🇽
Coatzacoalcos, Vereracruz, MéxicoBased in
🇺🇸
Auburn, Alabama, USAAs an educator, I strive to guide my students through the discipline of graphic design as a way to organize complex ideas with visual form, imagery, and textual content. My goal is to properly assist each student, open their minds to be inspired by everything around them, and expand their possibilities to create clear, powerful, and beautiful solutions capable of informing and delighting a specific audience.
My creative research builds on chance operations, incorporating both digital and analog strategies while embracing the beauty that emerges when inexactness becomes a design tool.
Central to my creative journey is the camera—not as a tool for conventional documentation, but as an instrument for perceptual exploration. I align with Stan Brakhage’s notion of the “Untutored Eye” : “an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective … an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic … an eye which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.”
The results of my studio work represent a careful balance of playful disruptions with found materials and objects that possess transparent, reflective, or porous qualities, placed in front of the lens. This experimental, iterative, and tactile approach generates a growing library of images and footage that explore the shifting relationships between time, space, light, and movement.
Publications such as Graphis, Creative Quarterly Journal, GDUSA Magazine, Slanted.de Magazine.
My creative research builds on chance operations, incorporating both digital and analog strategies while embracing the beauty that emerges when inexactness becomes a design tool.
Central to my creative journey is the camera—not as a tool for conventional documentation, but as an instrument for perceptual exploration. I align with Stan Brakhage’s notion of the “Untutored Eye” : “an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective … an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic … an eye which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.”
The results of my studio work represent a careful balance of playful disruptions with found materials and objects that possess transparent, reflective, or porous qualities, placed in front of the lens. This experimental, iterative, and tactile approach generates a growing library of images and footage that explore the shifting relationships between time, space, light, and movement.
FEATURED IN
Publications such as Graphis, Creative Quarterly Journal, GDUSA Magazine, Slanted.de Magazine.
EDUCATION
2016-19
Oklahoma State University / MFA, Graphic Design
2013-16
Oklahoma State University / BFA, Graphic Design
2008-13
Tulsa Community College / AAS, Web Design & AAS, Liberal Arts
2007-08
Tulsa Technology Center / Web Design Certification
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
2022-present
Auburn University / Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Instructor of Record ::: Graphic Design 1, Image 1 + 2, Photo Communications, Typographics 1.
2019-21
Eastern New Mexico University / Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Instructor of Record ::: Design 1, Digital Media, Motion Design 1 + 2, Web Design 1 + 2, Graphic Design 1, Typography 1.
2016-19
Oklahoma State University / Graduate Teaching Assistant
Instructor of Record ::: Motion Design 1, Graphic Design 1.
Courses as TA ::: Motion Design Studio, Interaction Design 1.
Full CV upon request.