Monday Motivation with Christian Ramirez

My name is Christian Ramirez, and I'm a graphic designer living in beautiful Bend, Oregon! I graduated from California Baptist University May 2015 with a bachelor's degree in Graphic Design, and I currently work at 10 Barrel Brewing Company, a brewery located in Bend, as a graphic designer. I have been doing hand lettering for about 2 years now, and it has all been self-taught. At times I feel like I shouldn't even try to compete with some of my peers that I know have dedicated so much more time and effort to their craft than myself. Nonetheless, I have spent many long nights and endless hours to hone my skills in hand lettering and design. 

I have never been extremely into biking, and there's not really any reason for it, it's just not really something I had ever had an opportunity to do, so I never pursued it. But after creating all of these hand-drawn pieces and taking all of these photos of the bike I received from SBC, I ride that thing everywhere and love biking!

The way I got involved with State Bicycle Co. was actually through someone I look up to in the design world. His name is Scott Biersack, (@youbringfire) and he inspires me to be better at design and lettering. He actually has done Monday Motivations for SBC in the past, and you should go check them out! But Scott's story has inspired me to give it all I've got and try to be the best hand-letterer I can be. And it was actually the pieces of his I saw that made me also want to give it a go. 

For the last 8 weeks I have been creating hand-lettered phrases, AND taking photos for State Bicycle's Monday Motivation series. I tried to think of phrases and short snippets I know inspire me, and that maybe "like hey I guess I wouldn't just scroll past it on Instagram, I guess," kind of posts! It's easy to put some text over a photo and call it good. Anyways, I had lots of fun creating these, and taking photos! Photography is a hidden passion of mine I don't advertise much, just because everyone does it nowadays. Since the start of Instagram, any Joe Shmoe can become insta-famous. There were a lot of unforeseen struggles while I was trying to take photos of the bike, like taking it apart all the time because it wouldn't fit in my car!! Haha. But all-in-all I would have done the whole thing over again, every part– even the struggles.








If you'd like to view more of my work, you can check out my website at christianramirez.co, and follow me for more personal content on my instagram @christianrobert_ramirez. Thanks for reading!