My First Blog Post

The Design Snob Who Stole My Heart (and My Palette): An Ode to Joe

They say you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your “best friend,” and I clearly chose the one with the most expensive taste in typography and the most judgmental eyes for my wardrobe.

If you’ve met Joe, you know exactly what I’m talking about. He’s a graphic designer by trade, which is really just a professional way of saying he spends $14 on a single notebook and gets personally offended by the font choice on a dive bar menu. But beneath the layers of linen shirts and the obsession with “minimalist aesthetics,” Joe is the best man I know.

A Relationship Built on Vectors and Venti Lattes

Our friendship is a delicate balance of me trying to exist and Joe trying to “curate” my existence. I’ll show him a flyer I made for a garage sale, and he’ll look at it with the same pained expression most people reserve for seeing a car crash.

“Harry,” he’ll sigh, dramatically rubbing his temples. “The kerning is offensive. It’s actually hurting my retinas.”

But that’s the thing about Joe—he can’t help but make things better. Whether he’s spent ten hours perfecting a logo for a client or two minutes fixing the lighting in my latest Instagram post so I don’t look like a Victorian ghost, he puts his soul into the visuals. He sees the world in CMYK, and honestly? It’s a much prettier world than the one I was living in before he showed up.

The “Gay Best Friend” Who Actually Does the Heavy Lifting

We’ve been through it all. From the disastrous “Experimental Mustache Phase” of 2022 to the time we spent three hours debating whether a sofa was “eggplant” or “deep plum” (it was purple, Joe, it was just purple), he’s been my rock.

Being two gay men navigating the world together means our friendship is fueled by a very specific brand of humor, a shared love for Lady Gaga deep cuts, and an unspoken agreement that if one of us is wearing a questionable outfit, the other is legally obligated to staged an intervention.

But beyond the jokes and the shared Pinterest boards, Joe is the guy who shows up. When my last breakup left me looking like a human puddle, Joe didn’t just offer “thoughts and prayers.” He arrived with a bottle of decent Pinot, a hard drive full of comfort movies, and a lecture on why I was “way too high-res for a low-res guy anyway.”

Why He’s the Real Masterpiece

Joe’s talent as a designer is undeniable—the man can make a spreadsheet look like a work of art. But his real talent is the way he designs his life and his friendships. He’s intentional. He’s fierce. He’s the first person to celebrate my wins and the first person to tell me when I’m being a total drama queen (even if he’s currently wearing a silk kimono while saying it).