Jake Stutzman – Design, Art, & Porn from a Christian Perspective

Christian web design

(From 2005) This was a little bunch of interviews that I decided to begin a while ago. I interviewed a few people and never really finished. The premise behind this series was that a lot of people in the design industry seem to think that porn is okay to put into work because it is simply to them a nude artwork.

I wanted to know what other people thought… especially people who stand out in the design area online. Women were hard to come by to interview, there seems to be a lack of female profile which hopefully we can rectify some time in the future.

These are the responses I have gotten, some finished some unfinished. Some don’t even exist because I didn’t get around to it.

I’m always interested in what people have to say about this and the idea was to have a large discussion around the matter. They may be old but the detail is still relevant. So respond how you will.

What is your primary design discipline? (web, print, multimedia, etc)?

I consider myself a multi-facetted designer, but right now, I’m doing primarily web design.

What are you working on at the moment?

World-wide ministry site, site for a photographer, my companies site, and various freelance projects.

What role does Jesus play in your life?

He’s the one that saved my life…so he plays a very large role. Honestly, i love my work so much, that sometimes I don’t let him have as big a role as he should, but I’m slowing adjusting my priorities.

How do you think the design landscape been changed result of the explosion of Porn online?

I don’t know if the basic principles of design have changed at all. But it seems that what gets considered as art becomes more and more crude as our society go on. We’ve become so desensitized that if someone creates a piece of pornography and calls it art, our culture seems to be ok with it. I believe that good design draws the attention of the target audience, communicates clearly and delivers the intended message. By using something ’shocking’ or ‘vulgar’ is, in my opinion, cheating.

What is your opinion of the way that Porn has been promoted as just another part of the artistic world? In your eyes is this a legitimate claim?

With the desensitization of society, we are accepting more and more things as ‘art’. Porn, in my opinion, is not art..in any form. I believe that our bodies are pieces of art created by the master artist himself. Porn is the degradation of that art and the perversion of something that God made sacred between a man and a woman.

I also believe that designers need to stand up against pornography. As people who are always around computers and constantly faced with questionable content that is readily accessible, we need to turn down jobs that are questionable and stand up for what we believe. Also, we need to work hard to keep our own minds pure in these situations. I don’t want to be responsible for causing someone else to fall into the trap of porn.

You can find Jake over at Elevate Visual Communication