A GW Staff Member's Graphic (Design) Story

It’s not unusual for alumni to return to GW as faculty or staff members, but John McGlasson, B.A. ’00, M.F.A. ’03 , never left. Immediately after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in visual communication, McGlasson joined the university as a graphic designer and is now managing art director in the Office of Communications and Marketing. 

As managing director he oversees the day-to-day operations for the in-house design team of five full-time people but still finds time to design. Now approaching the end of his third decade as a member of the GW community, McGlasson subscribes to the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” 

His years as a GW student broadened him in two major ways, he said. First, he grew comfortable doing creative work on the computer, and second, he learned from and enjoyed interacting with the diverse campus community. 

“Working on a computer sounded like the worst thing in the whole world,” McGlasson said. “It wasn’t a career choice I thought about.” 

McGlasson had long been interested in art, having filled multiple notebooks with doodles as a boy. He had been trained in fine art—drawing, painting and sculpture—at Calvert Hall College High School in Towson, Maryland, and always assumed he would work in a creative field, perhaps as an illustrator of children’s books. But his father’s playful experiments with Photoshop, then new, had not particularly excited him. 

“He would put his head on bodybuilders’ bodies and stuff like that,” McGlasson said, “and I played with it a little bit, but it really had no interest for me.” 

One of the classes he most enjoyed in his first year at GW was a drawing class taught by Bradley Stevens, a renowned portraitist. 

“He was a professional artist who pushed and had a really good influence on me,” McGlasson said. “Brad was laid back, a quiet kind of guy who taught by example—more of a guiding than a directing type of approach.” 

McGlasson was an eager student, coming into the art studio to work after hours. That dedicated work and the example of his highly talented classmates helped him improve his skill too. 

Majoring in fine art felt a bit “pie in the sky,” he said, given the necessity of finding a job after graduating, so he hedged his bets and took a course in graphic design. 

 “I love art, but felt I’d have a better chance of finding a job as a graphic designer,” he said, “so I took some 3-D design classes, and at first, I was terrible at it. I was trying to force my fine art skills into my graphic design on the computer with mixed results. But then it all kind of clicked.” 

Again, the support and example of talented classmates helped. His comfort and skill designing on the computer improved to the point where today he can’t resist imagining how to improve the designs he sees in the world at large. 

“It’s part of my DNA now,” he said. “I’m the annoying person who points out fonts when credits roll in the movie theater.” 

His artistic growth was mirrored by his personal growth. He applied to live on the arts floor at Mitchell Hall, where he joined a diverse community of actors, musicians and artists. 

“Coming from the suburbs of Maryland, I was probably the straightest, whitest suburban guy on that floor,” McGlasson said. “I was exposed to all types of lifestyles, different races, different religious backgrounds, there were LGBTQ+ people—all people that I never really spent any time with before. Being exposed to all these different groups and identities, and living with them night and day, was an amazing experience. It was the college freshman experience that you would hope anyone would have.” 

Hanging with his artsy friends broadened McGlasson’s horizons too. He designed theater programs and even acted in a couple of productions, including a musical version of the Dracula story. McGlasson played the vampire hunter Van Helsing but didn’t sing the part himself—his singing, he said, is like “nails on a chalkboard.” The solution was having him lip sync, which McGlasson did badly on purpose to heighten the fun. “It was clearly not me singing,” he said. 

His favorite place on campus was the Marvin Center (since renamed the University Student Center), where he and other members of his circle would gather throughout the day. 

And after more than 20 years, he says, campus “looks pretty different but feels pretty much the same.