Chris DeGaetano is a Brand & Graphic Designer |
Technical B2B
BIO
I design and value strategic brand identities and complex visual systems that reflect a brand’s personality, establish a distinct presence, and set it apart from competitors.
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USCS BROCHURES
CUTLASS MUSIC GROUP
WBC: POOL C
PIT-26
MEDIUM EXPLORATION: QKS
FENDER PERSONAS
3D & Motion Design
Poster Design
2026 - present
2025
EDUCATION
2022–2026
DEWAYNE’S – HOME & GARDEN
U.S. CARGO SYSTEMS – AVIATION AND AEROSPACE
PRATT INSTITUTE
CDEGAETADESIGN@GMAIL.COM
RESUME / CV
Obsessed with the World Baseball Classic
I made this two-page spread for the Society of Publication Designers student competition. The story was the Japan vs. Czechia matchup at the World Baseball Classic, a game that felt bigger than the scoreboard, so I wanted the design to feel cinematic. I leaned on traditional Japanese samurai film aesthetics -- reference to the over-the-top blood splatter as well as weaponry throughout -- to give it a sense of tension as well as a nod to the winners of the matchup: Team Japan, nicknamed The Samurai.
The real work came once the layout was down. My first pass looked fine at a glance, but after a peer review I realized there were major red flags in my typography : the body text had rivers running through it and the right edge was ragged and uneven. Rivers and widows are the kind of thing most readers never consciously notice, but they feel it when it’s wrong. So I switched to justified text, which brought its own problems: tighter columns meant bigger gaps between words, and fixing one river often created another.
From there it was a lot of small, patient adjustments in InDesign. I went paragraph by paragraph, tweaking spacing and editing individual styles, hunting down widows, and cleaning up the lines that were causing trouble. The last piece was wrapping the text around the images so the type and photography felt like they belonged on the same page instead of fighting for space. Getting that right without breaking the justified text I’d just cleaned up was the trickiest part of the whole spread.
What I came away with is a better eye for typography. A layout can look dramatic and still be hard to read, and the gap between those two is where the craft is.
ALTERNATE DRAFTS // PROCESS
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