The Dark Surrealist Artist Behind Raven’s Crypt: Josh Dunaway’s Art of Beautiful Imperfection
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” — Edgar Allan Poe
Every haunted corner of Raven’s Crypt offers more than just products. Around each bend, visitors may uncover a mood, a memory, or the ghost of a story. Beneath the layered textures, fractured typography, and surreal shadows lies a single guiding vision: Josh Dunaway, the dark surrealist artist whose work gives the Raven’s Crypt its soul.
To understand what makes Raven’s Crypt feel the way it does, you must first understand Josh; not only the designer, but the storyteller, the strategist, and the craftsman of imperfection.
Art that Lives and Bleeds
Josh’s work doesn’t try to be clean. It doesn’t want to be. Every collage, every manipulated photo, every scrap of handmade type is meant to feel like it came from somewhere real; a place that’s gritty, weathered, and touched by time.
“There’s something beautiful about the marks and elements that can’t be replicated,” Josh says. “Scratches, dripping paint, torn edges. I want my artwork to feel like it has fingerprints or a soul, not just something neat and striving for perfection.”
This commitment to rawness, to soul, is what sets his work apart. His visuals feel inhabited, like they’ve witnessed something then survived it.
A Balance of Chaos and Control
Though the end result may look chaotic, Josh’s approach is anything but careless. With a background in graphic design, branding, and web development, he’s learned how to make decisions with intention, even in disorder.
“Design taught me to be deliberate. Branding showed me how to build identity. Web development made me appreciate structure,” he explains. “Even when my work feels expressive or abstract, there’s a strategy underneath it all guiding the chaos.”
That guiding force allows Josh to merge analog textures like splattered paint, concrete rubbings, scanned fragments with digital precision. It’s a dance of opposites that creates work both visceral and composed.
The Visual Language of Resistance
At the heart of Josh’s style is grunge, not as a trend, but as a philosophy.
“Grunge is the visual language of resistance,” he says. “It pushes back against polish and conformity, and against what we’re supposed to be molded into to ‘fit in.’”
This aesthetic refusal to conform permeates all of Josh’s work. Whether he’s developing a brand, designing an album cover, or crafting original artwork for Raven’s Crypt, his instinct is to dig beneath the surface to reveal what’s human, even flawed. What draws people to his pieces isn’t the polish. It’s the pulse.
The Artist of the Crypt
When it came time to give Raven’s Crypt its visual identity, there was no search. There was only Josh. His work didn’t just complement the Crypt’s tone, it completed it.
Every visual element whether a collage, logo, or layout, feels like a continuation of the world Josh sees and invites others to enter. A world where darkness isn’t feared but explored. Where beauty emerges from distress. Where brokenness becomes art. He didn’t just design for Raven’s Crypt. He helped summon it into being.
Storytelling in Layers
Josh approaches visual storytelling the same way a poet approaches metaphor: intuitively, emotionally, and with deep respect for ambiguity.
“Storytelling isn’t always linear,” he explains. “It’s about creating a feeling, a memory, or sometimes a sense of unease.”
In one of his recent series, he explored the passage of time through torn typography, vivid imagery, and handwritten notes. The piece didn’t demand understanding, it invited interpretation. That’s the hallmark of his work: space for the viewer to feel something unique.
What Comes Next
Josh continues to shape Raven’s Crypt’s evolving visual language. From product art to seasonal features, he is always experimenting, testing the edges between structure and chaos, digital and analog, clarity and ambiguity.
There are whispers of limited releases on the horizon. Exclusive prints. Deeper stories. And always, a desire to push the work further.
A Final Reflection
Josh Dunaway is more than a designer. He is the dark surrealist artist whose work gives Raven’s Crypt its voice. His art doesn’t sit still. It flickers. It breathes. It remembers.
In a world that chases perfection, Josh reminds us of the power in imperfection. In the crack. In the scrape. In the soul. To see his work is to feel something stir beneath the surface. And that, perhaps, is the greatest kind of beauty there is.
About Josh Dunaway
Josh Dunaway is the founder and owner of twentytwo Media Co., a creative studio specializing in bold, expressive design rooted in story and texture. As the visual force behind many of the pieces featured on Raven’s Crypt, Josh brings a distinct fusion of analog grit and digital craft to every collaboration. Look for the collaborative mark throughout the Crypt to explore more of his hauntingly unforgettable work.
