Bowling Green graphic design alumnus discovers dream career at Ford

Jacob Parr ’14 still remembers the exact moment when he discovered a new career vision.

During one of his classes at Toledo School for the Arts, Parr listened intently to guest speaker Dustin Hostetler ’00, a graphic designer who had just finished a collaboration with Converse through which he designed a pair of custom sneakers for an art exhibition.

Parr, an artistically inclined student who was already working at a family print shop, saw a new world of possibilities: High-level design was possible in his home region, and a gateway to his chosen career was a short drive away.

“Dustin also mentioned that he had gone to Bowling Green State University for graphic design, and you could obviously see he was still here and very successful in the Midwest,” Parr said. “That really, vividly clicked for me that I didn’t have to necessarily go to a big city to get into a hyper-focused creative study – I could pursue graphic design right here.

“It was really a win-win for my future endeavors because I got to stay connected to the Toledo community I already knew while getting a degree from a great design program at BGSU.”

Fittingly, Parr not only followed Hostetler’s path – he became his coworker.

As a brand design lead at Ford Motor Company’s world headquarters in Dearborn, Parr is a key part of the vision for the iconic American brand’s next wave of vehicles.

Parr puts his artistic acumen to work by envisioning how Ford’s brand should appear inside or outside its automobiles, then works with designers and engineers to make an idea a reality.

“We’re in charge of the ways in which the brand is expressed on a vehicle, so that includes the badging, the series indication, where you see the Ford oval on the front or rear, the typography or where you see the Mustang pony or the bucking Bronco,” he said. “Anything that is a brand touchpoint on or inside the vehicle, our team gets to work with the designers on how it is expressed.”

Bowling Green has a long history of supporting the arts and producing skilled graphic designers who have gone on to worldwide success. Graphic Design USA has named BGSU among its top design schools for four years in a row, and BGSU is home to the largest undergraduate art program among Ohio public universities.

For Parr, his time at BGSU marked a shift in how he thought about design. Parr said that learning from faculty like program chair Jenn Stucker and instructor Amy Fidler helped him conceptualize designs from the ground level, a skill that he applies every day in his career.

Instead of the transactional designs he completed at the print shop, Parr said he began to envision something bigger.

“The program asks you to be a creative thinker rather than just a designer,” Parr said. “Amy and Jenn really challenged all of us to think about why we were doing something and to formulate strategies that created deeper, more impactful designs in the long run. To me, that showed graphic design can be more than a skill, it can be a deep-rooted career.”

In a full-circle moment, the BGSU graphic design program invited Parr to speak to students earlier this year.

Just as Parr once looked up to others in the field, Stucker said Parr is now an example of what’s possible in a graphic design career.

“One of the reasons we brought Jacob back to our students last semester is because he’s a great example of how hard work, enthusiasm and putting your heart into the work you’re doing pays off,” Stucker said. “He’s a strong designer who has a lot of tenacity in his designs because he works really, really hard to get it right. He demonstrates that if your heart is in it and you’re working really hard, you’ll eventually see the dividends.”

Parr, who worked for a marketing agency prior to Ford, called his degree from BGSU “ubiquitous” for its ability to be applied to so many different fields.

Though his career path took a few turns he didn’t expect, Parr now uses his skill set to conceptualize a major brand’s expression of itself – an opportunity that he said never gets old.

“Being able to create a high-level strategy, even through something like typography, unites various vehicles and creates a family system they can all relate to,” he said. “Being able to say that I get to create typography for some of the most iconic vehicles in the world is super rewarding.”

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