Meet Joe Hausch | inventor/artist/designer/musician/entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joe Hausch and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joe, why did you pursue a creative career?
From as long as I can remember I was drawing and I loved it. I remember growing up in the 60s and coming home from grade school. I would go in the hallway, and slide a chair over in front of our apartment door so I could get my key in the lock. I would go in, turn on the TV to Batman, The Munsters or Flipper, I would gab my pad of paper and pencil and I would start drawing. Usually Batman I recall. Maybe some tanks as G.I. Joe was just getting pretty popular.

My Mother could draw and did some very nice watercolor pieces from what I remember. She was a single Mom, working at least two jobs and I would spend time with other folks she worked with in her night job. And I would draw things for them. One co-worker became my Godmother and she was a huge influence and supported everything I did early in my career, through college and beyond. I spent a lot of time with my Grandmother and Grandfather and they also encouraged my art. In fact, I bought their house in the late 90s and we found an old drawing that I must have done at a very young age, inside a vent years after they both had passed away.

My Mother met my Dad, got married and we moved in 1970 from the city to the suburbs and across the street was a young man that was about three years older and we became friends. His name is Gary Haas. Kind of close last names, we got along great and I found out as we hung out together, that we had a lot more in common. Gary was like the big brother I didn’t have and he was super cool and super nice. He never beat me up. Or even yelled at me like some of the kids on TV. In fact he often had my back in local football and basketball pickup games and I usually ended up on his team.

Gary also liked to draw. He liked the same teams I liked. He loved music and listened to things I had not yet heard of. He was going to the high school that I wanted to go to. Gary could do portraits then I found out. I remember he had done a pen and ink portrait of Bruce Springsteen and it was amazing. At some point I found out that his Dad was cool as well, and an artist, and did portraits as well. He would do one everyday of someone local or someone famous. They were amazing. Color, black and white, pencil, all different mediums I recall, and he had books of them. So I would look through the books, I would watch them draw occasionally, but that became something to get me started on some greater challenges and they really inspired me.

Gary then went on to do a T-shirt of portraits for the Marquette Warriors who won the national basketball championship in 1977 and then did a characature portraits T-shirt for the Denver Broncos who appeared in the Super Bowl that same year. That was amazing to me. When I went to high school three years later, he was a senior and I was a freshman. He was doing really amazing work and selling it nationally. So Gary moved on to college and I was using all I had learned from him and his family to keep developing my skills.

I won some awards, I got recognized by the local paper as a top artist at the high school level and spent many, many hours in the art room at a national award-winning art high school. It is a private Catholic School named Pius XI High School that still has some great instructors and programs to this day. My parents truly invested in me there and supported me, it was more expensive that my first college tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I started college and met up with Gary again and we shared a locker in the Art Building at UWM. I took all basic courses as I was unsure of my major. Drawing 101, 2D Design, Sculpture, Animation 101, Figure Drawing, Creative Writing, Algebra (which I passed). Design was the biggest challenge for me. I could draw or painting pretty much anything I wanted and it would be good. But design, it was difficult to grasp and difficult for me come up with some exciting compositions. At least I felt that way from high school to this point. Then I had a design class with Professor Roy Behrens who is currently Professor of Art / Distinguished Scholar at University of Northern Iowa. Professor Behrens had a really good class, there was at least a handful of other designers I believed were much stronger than me. Well, Professor Behrens turned the class into a bit of a competition where we were competing for a small trophy he had but and spay painted baby blue. Well, that became my focus; I was going to win that trophy for design. It would symbolize the fact that I had come alive from a design standpoint. It came down to the last project, I don’t recall where points were for the semester, but there were a number of projects I felt were stronger pieces than my work. I was wrong. I won that trophy and I then declared a major in Graphic Design. I then transferred to the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) and graduated from there in 1984.

Gary graduates from UWM and we were reunited in 1982 when Gary asked me if I could stop by where he was working to discuss a possible neon sculpture for a catalog cover, and he told me to bring my portfolio of recent work from MIAD that he had not seen. Gary and his creative director ended up hiring me, to not only do the cover but to design and produce the entire catalog. The finished piece was done in 1983 and won a National Art Direction Award later that year.

I’ll add one thing here, at some point I met another talented member of his family. I had seen his work on Gary’s walls of his home, and on buildings in Milwaukee and Chicago, but I didn’t know who did them. Richard Haas is Gary’s uncle and he is responsible for some of the most incredible large scale murals from the U.S. and Europe in cities like New York, Boston, Munich and more that he has been doing since the late 70s. Amazing, beautiful work at such a grand scale often implying teams of artists and other professionals. Another inspiration.

Gary and I have collaborated on a number of projects from album covers to city branding/marketing projects and we are still great friends. We are currently collaborating on a couple opportunities.

My resume below can fill in some cracks in the story.
Joseph A. B. Hausch was born in Milwaukee in the JFK era and has been exploring Wisconsin for his entire life. An interest in the arts was apparent from a young age as he won many competitions beginning at age 10. Portraits of his father and various portraits of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball players were among some of the works for which he received awards. While attending high school at Pius XI (Milwaukee), Hausch won a number of honors including a Silver Palette Award in 1978 from the Milwaukee Journal Student Art Calendar Contest.

After high school, Hausch attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) from 1979 to 1981. There he studied drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, animation and design. During his studies he worked with local neon artist Al Blankschien doing design and production of various commercial and fine art neon sculpture installations. His first major project was assisting Blankschien with the award winning “Artist and Display : Paint Tubes”.

He then attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) in 1981. After receiving a scholarship in 1982, he graduated as a Graphic Design major in 1984. While still a senior at MIAD he taught Typography 1. Upon graduation he taught Graphic Design and Typography at both UWM and MIAD and has guest lectured on various topics including “the future of design”.

From 1984 to 1986 he worked as a graphic designer at the Milwaukee based design firm DesignGroup. In 1986, he joined with partner and product designer Allan Haas to form the corporate image management firm H2D Haas Hausch Design,Inc. Hausch was Vice President and Creative Director of this strategic and creative services firm. H2D has worked in a diverse arena with clients such as CellularOne, Bemis Manufacturing, Maritime Savings Bank, Alternative Living Services and Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre.

In January of 2002, he left H2D to create Hausch Design Agency, LLC. and a marketing cooperative called Octodea to continue serving clients in a more relaxed and focused manner in the Greater Milwaukee area.

Involvement in non-profit organizations has been a passion for the past 25+ years. Joe is currently on the board of Civic Music Milwaukee and chairs the marketing committee. He was past President of the MIAD / Layton Alumni Association from 2001-2007, a past board member (1995-2001)of IndependenceFirst: the resource for people with disabilities, a board member of the Milwaukee Advertising Club in the early 90’s and is the former President of ARTREACH Milwaukee from 1990-’97, a not-for-profit agency that “made the arts accessible to everyone”. In 1995, Hausch was co-creator and co-chairman of an interactive fundraiser for that organization that raised over thirty thousand dollars in it’s first year, called the “ARTREACH Milwaukee: Street Painting Festival”.

Hausch’s (work and) life has been greatly influenced by an addiction to another art form. Music has been a tremendous part of his life since his Grandfather introduced him to Jazz on his home built stereo/stereo headphones while sitting on his lap in the early 60s.

Since 1986, when he’s not doing things now with his own family or clients he’s usually playing drums, volunteering creative and marketing services in the community, volunteering time at actual fundraising events or creating music or art in his basement.

Creating is life to Joe. As an inventor, artist, designer, entrepreneur he challenges the way the world works everyday.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Everything I do has a creative element about it. 
I’ve had my hands in, on or around over 500 brands and I have worked in verticals from fashion to pro football. That’s my branding, marketing, advertising and design life. I have produced over 200 short documentaries since 2017 as President/CEO of a content company called PHOTAVIA. It is another kind of creative work as we have basically created a new category of content in the “Edutainment” area, we are disrupting healthcare, senior living, memory care and caregiving in general. So I have new and creative challenges every day in this half of my world.

Hausch Design Agency(HDA) is my second creative company, my first was H2D (Haas Hausch Design) I co-founded in 1986. We are a hybrid creative marketing communications firm that is focused on helping small organizations, startups and not-for-profits grow and build equity by creating strong brand programs.

We are Designers. Marketers. Storytellers. Collaborators. Educators.
We strive to integrate various elements of brand communications by creating consistencies through messaging and visual opportunities, through product development and positioning. We integrate graphic/product design, experiential design, advertising, marketing and people.

It’s all about the ride. Our mantra: Serve. Conquer. Change.

Was it easy? I don’t really think it has ever been easy. But it has always been fun. 
If you like a career where you are not sure if you are going to make payroll, or if you will get paid (ever), then be an artist. Be a designer. Open a creative office. All those things linger in the background constantly. But if you focus on those, they will literally kill you. They will tear you apart from the inside out.

Lessons I’ve learned and shared with interns and employees for the past 35+ years is; if you don’t learn something everyday in your particular chosen career, you may want to pack your stuff and go. Ask yourself at the end of every day. If you say “nope”, the that’s the day/night you should probably look for something new. You have to be happy and you have to be constantly learning and growing.

What I want the world to know: We create award winning work. If that matters to you. Some clients really enjoy awards. Awards are definitely something that employees or collaborators like, but they also like monetary rewards. If you like meeting deadlines, no worries. If you like sticking to budgets, okay. If you want a fresh view in just about any industry, I just cleaned my glasses. Do you want to have fun along the way? I’m all in.

In my PHOTAVIA life, it is almost an extension of my HDA world. We’re storytellers. We’re educators. 
We are creators.
We create reminisce.
Create conversations.
Create community within communities.
PHOTAVIA is a unique video content company.
We are time travelers. We are moviemakers with purpose. PHOTAVIA creates all-inclusive short video experiences via art/photography, part video/musical experience, part education and part history.

We follow the science that shows pleasant thoughts invoked by visual memory triggers can be of therapeutic benefit to individuals, caregivers and families dealing with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and PTSD, among others. Our unique licensing agreements and focus on the The LIFE Picture Collection™ and photos from LIFE Magazine provides incredible content for our G-Rated short two-minute programs that engage, educate and enhance environments.

I have used all my “creative skills” I practice everyday of my life for the past 40 years to develop the PHOTAVIA brand. It started with creating the logo, creating all the marketing support material, trade displays, product development, created the format for our films and designed and built two websites. www.photavia.net and www.PHOTAVIA.TV to name a couple important components.

I want the world to know this brand will always share a great story with you. It will educate, engage, and entertain you. 
It will bring family and friends to new conversations about life if you let it. If you watch it from a young age you will have a pretty good sense of history of the 20th century and much, much more. You probably won’t realize all you’ve learned, while you were learning it.

Ultimately I want the world to know how much this disruptive media has already changed lives for good in the world of caregiving, senior living and memory care; and we hope you enjoy it with others as you grow older and wiser. Here’s to “Better Living Through Imagery”!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
As much as I’d love to know all the cool places to hang out in Atlanta, I would phone friend.

Greater (Milwaukee) Wisconsin:
I am in southeastern Wisconsin, just a few miles west of Milwaukee. “A Great Place on a Great Lake”
First thing I would do is probably introduce them the the “fresh coast’. Most of the world doesn’t realize that there are more cities on the shores of Lake Michigan than the Windy City (Chicago).

There are over 10 miles of beautiful Lakefront Drive to get the best view of our little city.
The Historic Third Ward is a popular art, restaurant and cultural scene with exceptional shopping and beautiful architecture. It has been used in movies to mimic Chicago in the 1900s. A lot of creative people and offices now in the area, in fact I opened my first one there in the late 80s. This area is also attached to the Summerfest Grounds where we hold the largest music festival in the world. Now due to the pandemic, it is spread out over many weeks.

I think we might leave the city next. You would want to go up to an area called Door County. Many say it looks a a lot like Cape Cod or other little East Coast quaint little hot spots. Charming for sure. Many Chicagoans visit every Summer.

Once you are up there, you may as well stop at the shrine we call Lambeau Field which is home to the 12 time National Football League Champion Green Bay Packers. The Packer Hall of Fame is exceptional and you don’t even have to be a football fan to appreciate the history and wonderful displays of memorabilia and more. The entire neighborhood is full of great food and family fun. You could probably easily spend a day there if you are “a fan of the sport”.

Next, you probably head north and west, past Hwy. 29 “the tension line”, and into what my Dad used to call “God’s Country”. Things slowdown. White Pines grow well over 100 feet tall. Lakes pop up every few miles and if you love small towns with great history, a cute church, at least one historic watering hole; you will find one of those every 5 miles on a rural highway.

The trip back south would be a grand scenic experience traveling along the western Wisconsin border exploring the route along the Mighty Mississippi River. A route that was part of what explorers Marquette and Joliet travelled over 500 years ago. Cities like Stockholm, Pepin, Alma, Trempealeau and La Crosse are just a few memorable views and terrain to enjoy.
At some point we wander a bit back east to one of America’s “Best Cities to Live in” Madison, Wisconsin. This college town is always bustling and it too offers some amazing views around the city and especially from the campus of the University of Wisconsin. Built between two large inland lakes, there is activity on the water – or ice – all year round.

Other than that, I would probably phone a friend or two on what to do.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shoutouts:
 Rick Manuel: My high school Wrestling Coach
I thought I was in trouble one day when he called me in his office as a Junior in high school. He made me a captain and said “I was a leader”. This was a huge confidence builder the day he chose me and told me that.
 We won a state championship that year and I am still quite proud of our accomplishments!

Roy Behrens: Professor of Art / University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee / Distinguished Scholar at University of Northern Iowa

Drove me to be a (better) designer! He ran a “contest” in 2D Design I class. There were so many designers that I thought were stronger than me in that class doing great work. Every week I thought their work was always stronger. But the numbers came in and I actually won on the final week and got to take home a little trophy spray painted blue. That silly little balsa wood and plastic toy represented something amazing, “I can design” I felt now and it propelled me to be a better designer everyday since.

Becky & Fran Balistreri: Educators /Designers/ Illustrators / Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD)1982-84

They were supportive and always a real-life business world feedback platform! Dynamic design-education-focused creative couple!

Steve Quinn: Educator Designer/ Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD)1983-84 / Visual Communication Program at Northern Illinois University
Steve asked me to student teach typography with him, pushed me, inspired me, we collaborated on a number of projects including our diploma/certificates in 1984. Steve drove me to be a much better, more explorative designer!

Mike Sieren: Former Owner / President DesignGroup
He hired me in a stairwell! Believed in me. Gave me my own clients immediately, and was patient while exposing me to running a business and dealing with real design problems and situations.

Gary Haas: Friend / Creative Mentor / Creative Director / Platypus Advertising+Design
Inspiration. Collaborator. He’s been there since 4th grade. Musically, creatively, mentoring or just for an instant laugh. My brother from another.

Barbara Baade: Former Client / CEO Mentor / Investor in PHOTAVIA
She is my “Business Mother”. A wonderful client and collaborator. Best advice at any point in my career. A gifted artist herself, amazing business woman, and my CEO/Life coach combined!

Family:
 As cliche as it sounds, I really would be nowhere without love, support and inspiration from my family – everyday of my life!
Barbara (Brandt) Hausch/Mother
John Hausch/Father
Arnold Brandt/Grandfather
Florence Brandt/Grandmother
Helen Bellman/Godmother
Sharon Hausch/Wife
Brandt Hausch/Son
McKenzie Hausch/Daughter

Website: www.hauschdesign.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hauschdesign/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joehausch/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hauschdesign

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HauschDesign

Other: www.photavia.net, www.PHOTAVIA.TV