I am 225: Nicholas Miner

South Louisiana is in everything graphic designer Nicholas Miner does. His design portfolio is a colorful, stylistic world of gators, pelicans and food.

Through his business, Miner Design Co., he’s spread his art across the Capital City. He’s designed for companies ranging from restaurants to Wonder South, a local brand highlighting Southern creatives he recently helped rebrand.

The 27-year-old Denham Springs native began working as a graphic designer in high school at a screen-print sign shop. “That’s where I learned all the printing methods and how to set up files and really where I got that hands-on experience,” he says. He later went to LSU and studied design.

After college, he pivoted from trying to get a full-time design job to instead pursuing clients and building a freelance income. He built up a year’s worth of work to make his own design book of album cover art, conference posters and personal illustration projects.

He dropped it off at all the places he wanted to work. It landed him his first agency job as a designer.

Today, Miner lives in Denham Springs while working at Rockit Science design agency in Baton Rouge.

He illustrates for his personal brand in his free time. Those designs are getting noticed. A recent Kacey Musgraves-inspired illustration was reposted by the country queen herself.

Miner is going places, and he’s happy not only to see his own business grow, but also the Capital City itself—and to be part of that growing creative community.

“It’s fun seeing Baton Rouge transform, knowing that you influenced a street when you’re going down the road and see a sign you created. … As a designer, my job is to create something that looks good, but it’s also to solve a problem. Design is art, but there’s a goal in mind. When you design a mug and it’s sitting inside a coffee shop, it ties everything together.”

Quotes have been edited for brevity and clarity.

This article was originally published in the December 2019 issue of 225 Magazine.