Moonlighting is a new occasional series about designers who spend a significant amount of professional time not designing. We’ll ask them to speak to the ways their non-design work informs their approach to design.
Mel Pennington: Funeral Director by Day, Designer by Night
That headline up above doesn’t do Mel justice. True, he runs the family’s 100-year-old funeral home. And by “run” we mean the full deal, from embalming to event planning to greeting mourners. When he’s not living the real-life version of “Six Feet Under,” Mel designs. His mother taught in a school with a tricked-out computer lab, and Mel spent many childhood afternoons fiddling around in early-days Photoshop and teaching himself HTML. Today he designs in his spare time, most recently working on a funeral home website for a friend/client.
To be frank, we’re not sure how Mel has spare time. In addition to working as a funeral director and designing for local clients, Mel is also the mayor of Hartsville, South Carolina, a small inland city home to several lakes, numerous parks, a college, and the global HQ of Sonoco packaging. And he’s a firefighter. And father of three girls. And a Liberty Fellow, part of a leadership incubator affiliated with the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
This last activity led to recent soul searching, which turned Mel back towards his early passion for graphic design. He discovered Cameron Moll and via Cameron, Bill S Kenney and finally, Dribbble. Below, Mel discusses how his professional life informs his design work, and vice versa.
Jazz Funeral, presentation for Mel’s current client
“Service seems to be the defining theme in my life. … Being a mayor and a funeral director means that nobody looks to you as a design professional. Dribbble has given me the platform I need to change people’s minds about what and who designers really are. … I work hard all the time, and in my spare time I work hard at design.
“… Most say that I never sleep. That I have strong opinions about how things look, how we create user experiences, and how I harp on the importance of details to create a final product. This holds true in city government and in the funeral profession. The details do matter. How it looks and feels is the only thing we really do.
“… I have a passion for mastering things and moving on to new ones. Design has been the only constant through all of these. In fact, I have a homemade screen printing vacuum press for Coroplast signs, two letterpress machines, and a host of furniture-making equipment in my shop as we speak. My life is so very complex, but so full of things that create what I call the ‘Liberal Arts Lifestyle.’
“Life is about being well-rounded. I truly believe that. So until Focus Lab needs a mayor, I’ll be planning funerals and running a city by day, and designing by night.”
Find Mel at Dribbble, on Twitter, and at melpennington.com.
Are you a designer by day who moonlights on the side? Or vice versa? Email stories@dribbble.com.
Find more Inspiration stories on our blog Courtside. Have a suggestion? Contact stories@dribbble.com.
