Maya Gold Patterson

What a difference a few years makes! When we first had Maya Gold Patterson on the podcast back in 2016, she was a product designer in Chicago. Since then, she’s moved out west and has held down design leadership positions at two of the most well-known tech companies on the planet — Twitter (now X) and Facebook (now Meta). And after a recent stint as VP of Design at Riverside.fm, Maya’s facing one of her biggest challenges yet: quitting her job and embarking on a journey of self-discovery and career exploration.

We caught up and talked about her recent decision, and about how it’s left her feeling about Big Tech and about her future. But we also spent time looking back at her tour of duty at Facebook and Twitter, and she spoke about the lessons she’s learned, the products she’s built, and the importance of making choices that align with her personal goals and values.

Maya is proof that taking a chance on yourself is never a bad idea, so if you’re feeling burnt out or unsure about your career direction, then this episode is a must-listen!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Hi, Maurice. I am Maya Gold Patterson. I’m a designer and I recently quit my job on a good note. I’m doing good, so it’s good. But what I do traditionally is product design and I’ve worked in big tech companies — Facebook, Twitter — and small tech companies. Riverside, a startup most recently, has filled up most of the time of my career.

Maurice Cherry:

You know, you dropped this on me, like, the day before we were about to…I mean, first of all, I’m always excited when someone decides to quit their job because I just feel like that’s just such a great opening up to new experiences and new opportunities and stuff like that. And we’ll get to that, we’ll talk about that. But I’m just curious so far. Leading up to this, how has the year been going?

Maya Gold Patterson:

The year has been rough. Oh my gosh. Well, it’s been highs and lows. It’s been yoyos. So just to give a little bit of context, like starting out the year, I’m a new mom, maybe not as new as I was at the start of the year. So my son is eleven months old. But at the start of the year, I was on maternity leave, but supposed to come back and I was supposed to come back to Twitter, where Elon Musk had recently acquired the company while I was on maternity leave. So that was kind of terrible. I was dealing with post weaning depression, which people don’t talk about often. It has to do with breastfeeding and all of that, and then using all those emotions and trying to figure out what was next for me, I was doing job hunting and soul searching, and so that was a rough start to the year. But then I met these two incredible founders, the founders of Riverside, and we had some awesome working sessions, sort of informally, that escalated into a full time role as a VP of Design, in which we all knew it would be kind of an uphill battle. They were based globally, so it was going to be a ten time zone difference between me and them. And yeah, so I was waking up at like 5:00 a.m. to get on calls between 6:00 to 11:00 a.m., essentially. And at first it was really working and I was really excited. And eventually, for a lot of reasons, it wasn’t right. And I’m like, smiling while I’m saying this, not because of what has happened there, but because of the state that I’m in now. I’m so excited for the next half of my year and the six months after that, but the first leading up to now, it has been rough but also amazing and incredible. And to watch my son grow up and I just turned 30, there’s a lot of newness and experience and learning that I’m taking in, and I feel like it all just sort of, like, came to a head in the last six months.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. Well, congratulations on your son. That’s amazing.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:

I’ve done the ten hour time zone thing, too. The last company I worked at was headquartered in San Francisco…or co-headquartered in San Francisco and Paris. So I would sometimes have to meet whatever was happening in the West Coast. But then we had people, I think as far out as, I want to say as far out as India, maybe not that far. I know we had people into Africa, we had people throughout Europe, but it was roughly like a ten time zone kind of gap. And it’s rough, it’s hard. I know remote work has made it so we can work from anywhere, but time zones are time zones. And it’s rough.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, it is. It really is. And the most challenging thing, honestly, wasn’t for me, like, getting up early. I had already learned how to not sleep so much with the baby, so he trained me well for this. But it was the type of impact that I know I want to have on a company and on a product and for customers through my design work was just super challenging with that time zone gap and the nuance of what I was dealing with in comparison to what I had come from. Like at Twitter, we were all remote. That was the nuance. Everyone was remote versus in this scenario, at Riverside, I was the one that was remote and everyone was local and they were locally ten time zones away.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh…wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Right. So there just would be a lot happening. A lot happening that I would never just get to pick up on in terms of context and decision making. And it’s a startup, so it moves fast. And so there’s only like that three hour overlap where I’m actually getting to meet with the team and different people at the company. And so if a lot of that time is spent just catching up, when is the time spent to do the work? And it was tough to find that rhythm, honestly, but everyone was really committed to it, so I commend us for that.

Maurice Cherry:

When you were last on the show, this was November 2016. We were talking about this a little bit before recording, but you were a bonus episode because we ended up doing this right after I think it was the week Trump was elected in November 2016. And I went back and revisited that conversation and listened through it. And you mentioned talking about when you’re nervous about something or there’s something that you want to do that you’re not sure is the best thing, you kind of have this knot in your chest of nervousness. Did you have that feeling when you decided “it’s time for me to quit, it’s time for me to move on”?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I did, but yes, for two reasons. One was because I genuinely really liked working with everyone I was working with at Riverside. So it was hard to come to the decision. Like, I needed to walk away. So just deciding to walk away gave me the ick. It was really difficult. But also the other part of me quitting was me committing to not taking another full time job and to not interview. And that’s something I’m even just exploring within myself, like what I really mean by that. But I really mean it. I’m committing myself right now to a year of not just jumping into another tech role, and that’s a statement to make for myself. I’m always the one to go and figure out what the Plan B is. So if I were to quit and then go to the next thing, I wouldn’t be that scared and that nervous, but I’m quitting and not immediately jumping back into Big Tech or any type of tech. I’m kind of exploring a bunch of different paths. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

When you emailed me yesterday, you told me that you were pulling the plug on Big Tech and that is something that you’ve wanted to do for a few years now. What does pulling the plug on Big Tech mean to you at this moment?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’m such a drama queen. I am pulling the plug on Big Tech right now because it was taking too much of me, and I’m at a time where I need to invest in myself and explore myself a bit more. So I don’t know if I won’t even be as ignorant to say I’ll never go back into tech. That’s probably unlikely, but right now it’s a no. So that means I am going to start turning down interviews that I was ramping up on and being clear with them and hopefully leaving on really good and open terms with those hiring managers that wanted to take a chance on me. And it’s nerve wracking, right? Because I got into this, and I don’t know if I touched on this in my first interview. I cringe listening back on myself, but I was a self-taught designer, and I was a Midwestern girl. I didn’t have a lot of exposure to what Silicon Valley was. So to decide to walk away from something when you’ve built so much progress and you’ve put in so much work for the last ten years, like putting in so much work to make it to where I’ve made it. To then say “I’m going to walk away.” I don’t know what it looks like, if people will open, receive me again if I want to come back. And I had to decide that that was okay with me. If that ended up being the case, that was okay with me, and I will figure it out.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, yeah…I mean, when you were on the show, you were in Chicago, you were a product designer at Trunk Club, and I think it was maybe about six months after that is when you ended up leaving and then going out to California to work there. And as you mentioned, you’ve worked for two of the most well known tech companies in the world. You were at Facebook, which is now Meta. You were at Twitter, which is now just a single letter X. How was your time at Facebook? Like, we actually met in person in 2017 for the first time. Revision Path did that event here in Atlanta with Facebook.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, that was so fun. I almost forgot. I was like, “I know we’ve met in person,” but I couldn’t remember what was the context.

Maurice Cherry:

You surprised me because you had came up to me over like, “hey Maurice.” And I was like “who is this?” because we had only talked on Skype. And I was like, you didn’t look like your photo. You had short hair then.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

And the photo you sent me, you had like, this long, curly hair. I was like “oh, oh…okay. yeah.”

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know, the hair will really do a number on you. How was my time at Facebook? My time at Facebook was awesome. Oh, my goodness, like, I would not be where I am today without Facebook and the unique experience I had at Facebook. So the way that I transitioned out west, first of all, I wanted to be in Silicon Valley to start with, but I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t get any job offers originally, but I found a really cool company in Chicago, so that was really good for just arming me with the tools to eventually try again for Silicon Valley. It did happen really organically where I was recruited into Facebook. I hadn’t reached out yet. I was preparing to. Dantley Davis, who was a deep mentor of mine, and I’ve worked with him now for many years. he found a piece of writing that I did for AfroTech that went, like, semi-viral at the time. That was “Five reasons why UX design and Black people go together” or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:

I remember that. It was on Blavity.

Maya Gold Patterson:

On Blavity. It’s not Afro Tech. Yeah, this is at the time, you know, when UX was still kind of fresh to people’s minds, like, what that even meant. I guess he saw that. He saw a couple of other pieces that I had done, and he was like, “yo, you interested in, you know, my team?” I was like, “I’m interested in anything. Please. Yes.” And I really wanted to work at a social media company, so I got the experience of working for a Black director, first of all, so that’s already new. A Black director that was really pushing the culture and doing so in an authentic way. Awesome experience. My direct manager was also Black, which is already…it’s a bit abnormal than probably your typical Facebook experience. And then there were not a lot of Black people in product at all at Facebook. But because it was so big, there were tens of thousands of people even just having 1% of us, there was a lot more than what I came from in Chicago, which was like, I knew one person who did UX design that looked like me in Chicago. So now I had access to incredible women and men who came from experiences like mine and cultural contexts like mine that were IC6’s and 7s and 8s and directors. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, and people are getting money and things are happening, and they’re talking in different languages, and you’re immersed in this incredible culture because Facebook Design, I really feel like, was leading a lot of the sort of education on what design organizations could look like and best practices. They were putting out a lot of content on Medium. Julie Zhou was, like, doing a ton on Medium and, like, I would religiously read everything that she put out. Like, I just felt blessed to get to work within this in the space that I had dreamt about.

I learned a lot, technically. Like, I was up against and working with some of the top prototypers who became good friends of mine, top visual designers, top strategic thinkers and storytellers. And I got to sort of see through their own craft, okay, what of this do I like to do? What could I be good at doing? And then they also sort of taught me how to implement that at scale through working with cross functional partners like PMs well, PMs and engineers I was already used to working with. It was working with people even bigger than that that really impacted the full customer experience that I first got to immerse myself with. So that was like, product marketing managers and data scientists and a formal user research team, like all of those people that are so important to the product you put out that I got to be introduced to at Facebook. So that was super cool. The offices were super fly. First of all, this is when Facebook, they were giving money, so they relocated me from Chicago to theBay. So they moved my car. I remember these movers came into my apartment, packed up my house, and set me all up.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, really nice stuff. I don’t know how else I would have moved to California or afforded it. I mean, the offices were just super luxurious. They had seven, ten, I don’t know, fifteen different cafeterias and vending machines filled with Apple products and just ridiculous type of stuff. And then you were expected to travel around the world to sort of meet the customers that you were building for. So you’re flying like first class, essentially, to these different countries that I probably would have never been able to visit. So you’re having all expenses paid by Facebook to go learn and do research, do the thing that you like to do. It just…it was a really fast and fun time. That also was really challenging too, because, again, not a lot of people that looked like us. Sometimes the decisions that the company made was not vibing with, and it was a huge ship, and you’re ultimately like a cog in a bigger ship. And I definitely made impacts in the way that I wanted to, but not as fast always as I wanted to, or in the way that I wanted to do it. And that ultimately led me to start looking elsewhere.

Maurice Cherry:

Were you working out of MPK 20 out of Menlo Park?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes. So I started there right when they opened MPK 20, I think like a year or two prior to me joining. It was really new.

Maurice Cherry:

I was out there, oh, I remember it was October 2016 because Facebook was doing their design lecture series and they were supporting Revision Path. And so I was like, “well, I would love to do some interviews on Facebook’s campus.” I was like, joking, like, “ha ha”, you know, “we could do it. And they were like, “okay.” And they paid for a first class ticket, flew me out, flew my equipment out and everything. And I remember going to the building and just…it’s kind of hard to describe how tremendous the scale of just that one office was.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes.

Maurice Cherry:

Because it has like this…it’s almost like an indoor track or like a loop where you can sort of walk around the whole building and yeah, they have all of these different cafeteria stations or food stations or whatever, and people’s desks are just kind of out. Like, it didn’t feel like a cube farm at all. It just felt like almost like a department store. But people worked here in a way because it was just that big and massive.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I had a love/hate relationship with it because to actually do work in that office was terrible, but like, there’s so much going on and there were so many people, and open floor plans are just really ridiculous for the creative process sometimes, because everyone just comes up to you and they’re just looking at…you know, it’s just obnoxious. But yeah, the lifestyle of Facebook at that time was…I don’t know what it’s like now, but it was really cool, at least for someone who was like 23. I think I joined when I was 23. 23, I had no responsibilities…

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, yeah, you were living it up.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I was living it up! I was like, “yeah, I’ll be here all day, all night, whatever.” You’re taking the shuttle. Because I lived in Oakland, you would take the shuttle with the WiFi. The shuttles for Facebook are like the most beautiful Greyhounds you’ve ever seen in your life. Like, not actual Greyhounds. And oh my, you do all your work, get in at 11:00 [a.m.]. I remember the first day I showed up like 9:00 [a.m.] and no one was there, which is the opposite of Chicago, where if you were there at 9:05 [a.m.], you were in fucking trouble. Sorry, you’re in trouble. This was not the case. People were showing up late in their flip flops and sweats, which I didn’t love, but whatever. And then they leave on their shuttle at like 3:00 [p.m.], and they’re just living it up. Yeah, it was good. And we did some really…I got to work on some really cool stuff. The best projects were working on like a Fenty Beauty AR project and working on Facebook Music, which included some AR stuff and really cool effects, and just the whole vibe of it was, like, really fun, honestly.

Maurice Cherry:

We’re talking about one building when we say MPK 20, but it’s almost like a town. It’s almost like Facebookville in terms of the scale, and there’s even an internal transit system to get you to different buildings and stuff.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Free Uber.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I was so blown away. That was also, I remember, because you know Tory Hargro, We know Tory Hargro.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Tory was giving me a tour and we had went to the Instagram building and he’s like, “Oh yeah, you know, this is the Instagram building where we do Instagram,” and they had these little stages as soon as you walk in the building where you gold take pictures for Instagram, he’s like, “oh, yeah, give me your phone and I’ll take some pictures for Revision Path’s Instagram.” And I didn’t have an Instagram for Revision Path. I was like, “oh, yeah, I don’t have Instagram.” And I’m saying that in the Instagram building. And it was like you could hear a pin drop. Needless to say, I was on Instagram by the time the day ended. But the scale of that place is just so massive to think about. And yeah, I could see how you were saying you felt like just a cog in the whole ship of everything, because it’s huge.

Maya Gold Patterson:

It’s huge. And Facebook was definitely a place driven by data, and it was pretty top down. Like, they say it’s bottoms up. Yeah, you could decide your roadmaps with the PMs and such, and that’s a skill that you learn. And there are certain initiatives that I got to be part of that definitely influenced what we worked on. But your impact, which translated to, okay, your performance review, which happens every six months, which is tied to your bonuses, whether you’re going to get promoted or not, your impact is tied to data, like, what metrics did you move? And so that kind of started to incentivize not kind of it incentivized everyone to work in a way that was really not necessarily what I defined for myself as building the best user experience always, or even the way in which I like to go about product development. And so the promotions felt real good, the raises felt really good, the equity refreshes felt really good. But over time, it’s like, I want to try something else. I want to try something else just for now.

Maurice Cherry:

So you made the jump over to Twitter, and that was right before the pandemic began, is that right?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, my timing is just really interesting, so I coincide everything that I do in my career with major stuff happening out in the world. Dantley had moved to Twitter maybe like two years — I can’t remember — prior to me joining. He was pitching me on a team, or rather an opportunity area that he thought I might be good at. Now I’m fresh off of what was like the Facebook Sharing team and then the Facebook Watch team. So Sharing is a really ruthless team to be on at times at Facebook because it’s always the most impactful to the bottom line, but it’s really hard to get the metrics up. And again, Facebook was oriented around metrics, so if you can’t move the needle there, it just was really stressful. So I was really burnt out by consumer facing sharing products, like Creation products. So that’s like creating things on a newsfeed, creative things in any sort of social media app. And this opportunity that he was describing sounded like Sharing to me. It wasn’t Sharing, but it sounded like some of that same sort of stuff, but it was vaguely like, okay…”we want to build something in audio, we don’t really know what it is. The team needs that sort of design vision and design strategy and some of the velocity that you probably would bring…if you’re down.”

I was like thinking about it, and Twitter I loved as a consumer. Twitter was my social media of choice. I had always loved Twitter, and I built a really strong design network on Twitter and found a home there. I never was interested in joining the company because I had heard through the valley, it’s just very white. The way things were run. Didn’t feel really fresh and innovative and they weren’t shipping a lot of products. I pride myself a bit on being able to ship products. That always was my sort of thing as a designer. I don’t get stuck in la la land. Like, I really will deliver something by the end of it. And with Dantley moving over there, he was changing the culture along with some other bigger cultural changes too, happening at Twitter. He’s like, “no, things are changing, and we’re hiring talent too, to help with those changes.”

I ended up taking that role.

It was incredible. Twitter was really incredible. I joined Twitter in January 2020. I went to their One Team. It’s called One Team, which was a time where everyone across the globe gets together in person to have this big conference that was in Houston. It was like the first week of January, or second, and it was lit. Oh, my God. Oh, it was so lit because Twitter was just that sort of more hippie tech company, you think Jack Dorsey versus Mark Zuckerberg. It just had that sort of vibe. And then they really leaned into, quote unquote, “the culture.” There was like Black people doing stuff. It just was cool. We were there partying and hanging, and the vibes were just right from start. And it was a much smaller company than Facebook. So I’m going from I think when I left Facebook, it was like 40 or 50K, at the time, employees, and Twitter was like 7,000. So it already felt much smaller, easier to navigate. We get back from One Team. I’m working with my team, which is three guys that were jamming on a very ambiguous scope of audio. And then we are about to head to a user research session in, I think, Houston actually, again, and I get a call to say to cancel my flights because Twitter is going to shut down, probably. Twitter was the first company, I think, in tech to shut down and go remote when 2020 happened. So I get that call. I had to cancel my flight. And I remember asking, I was like, “it’s not going to be that long, right? We’re not going to be locked up for that long, right?” And they’re like, “I think it’s going to be a bit” and I’m thinking to myself, okay, three weeks to say I never went back into the office again. Like, three years later, and only three months in was, yeah, I just wouldn’t have expected that. So from there on, it was like a fully remote position. And we were all working remotely, everyone in the globe, obviously. But yeah, my entire time at Twitter was remote, which was interesting. It was really important to have that one team experience. So I think that made me feel much better about the situation.

Maurice Cherry:

And now one of the products you were working on while you were at Twitter ended up becoming Twitter Spaces. We won’t go into that. You actually did a whole episode with this podcast I produced called Happy Paths. I’ll put a link to that if people want to hear about your journey with sort of helping to build that product. But there were some other features that you worked on as well. You worked on voice tweets, is that right? Some other things as well?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I worked on voice tweets, the first commerce/sort of beta approach which turned into a whole organization. And then I transitioned from Spaces because I was just ready for something new. And I was working on our crypto — sort of like very ambiguous crypto space — I was second trimester pregnant at the time. A couple of months prior to that, Jack Dorsey left. They let go of Dantley and a couple of other really important leaders, Kayvon, and those two really were the ones that were driving a lot of the positive change on the product side. So Twitter was quickly corroding from my point of view. And I also just didn’t care about work like that because I cared about my baby and myself and whether I was going to be able to deliver. There were bigger questions I had for myself, right? Yeah. But I did get to work on a couple of interesting things by the end of it, like some interesting concepts for crypto, but those didn’t really get to see the light so much. And then a couple months after that, Elon bought the company and the rest, I guess, is in the news.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like with all these sort of things changing as quickly as they were, it sort of kind of put that idea in your mind that it might be time for you to go then as well, right?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, for sure. And I think Spaces was such an incredible experience. voice tweets and Spaces really were like a one-two punch together. I loved the team I was working with and I loved how we built that product and even how we approached it. Everything just felt so good. But it was really hard too. There was some really not cool stuff that went down as well. And we went from a team of three, four to a hundred, and I realized I just didn’t like that part of the job so much. Maybe in the future I will, but the scaling to an org, I did not like it. Well, I didn’t know why fully I didn’t like it, but I knew I didn’t like it in the context of this bigger tech company where you have the KPIs and the roadmaps and the vision planning, like all that stuff. And it just was a lot of politics. And so I was really burnt out after Spaces and needed a break. And honestly, with all the drama that like, I got that, like people really weren’t checking for me after Jack Dorsey and them left because no one knew what their job was. Everyone was running around with their heads cut off. And I was like, “well, I’m pregnant. I’m just going to lay up.”

Maurice Cherry:

Well, it sounds like it was also just a big career shift in a way, because you had went from being an IC as a product designer. It sounds like you were mostly an IC while you were at Facebook and then at Twitter, you’re now, like, managing a team. You’re on management. How did you approach that shift?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, that’s good context. Just to be super transparent, when I joined Facebook, I was IC 4, got promoted, was about to get promoted, left before that and went to Twitter, and I still was on the IC track. I went from staff to senior staff. So that’s just like going up the IC sort of career ladder. And during that senior staff transition, which I think translates to an [IC] 8 at most companies, that was at the same time that Spaces had gone live as a beta, the company decided, “okay, it’s our number one priority. Maya, Alex, Remy, all the people that were like, the leads of the team, what do you need to make this make product market fit?” And that included bringing on a lot more designers. And so there was a point where I was getting coaching from Dantley, where I was telling him, I was like, “I don’t know how to do this.” Like, I’m not a manager, and I never went into management at Twitter. It wasn’t my goal. But he wanted me to essentially move into a design lead role, which was undefined at Twitter at the time, even though they were starting to try that out with me and a couple other designers. And he was like, “you’re essentially like the mass editor of Spaces, and you need to orient the team, the design team, to be able to create the product that we all see could happen.” So I internalized that, and I also knew for myself what type of culture and environment I wanted to work within, and that mattered to me. So while it wasn’t my actual manager, I wasn’t a manager. I also paid a lot of attention to the team culture, and I worked with my direct manager, and he was awesome. He gave me a lot of support in doing this. I worked with him to sort of set a culture and different activities, put those in place so that the team could not only create the best product, but it felt good getting there, ideally, even though the pressure was high. So, yeah, going from being the sole designer to leading seven designers — super talented designers, too — that was an incredible learning experience. But, man, that was really fun. Really fun, really hard.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, it’s good that they sort of were also kind of giving you the sort of support to support that team. Like, they didn’t just say, “okay, now you’re leading. Good luck.” It sounds like you sort of had help and support along the way, as you were kind of navigating all of this.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yes and no. So I got the support and I definitely got help. But it usually happened at a major junction point where I just completely was burnt out. One of the ways in which we even realized I needed so many more designers than I originally thought. I remember a new design director leader in the industry, Halli, had just joined. I had never met him. Big fan of his Twitter presence and everything he did with Ueno, they had just been acquired. He and I were going to sit down and have a conversation. Spaces was like…oh, my God. I was just so stressed out by it. And I couldn’t figure out how to essentially meet the leadership team’s ask, which was like, “okay, figure out how to do all of these things and what resources you need.” I just didn’t know. And he and I get on a call — and he’s so good at reading people; he and I had never met — and he was like, “how are you?” And the most embarrassing thing happened. I just started bursting out crying to this man that I’d never met before. It was, oh, my God, it goes against everything that I want to be. I’ve cried twice in front of people at work, and I always hate myself afterwards, but I could not help myself. I was so distraught. And through that, that’s when we really got to the essence of what I needed, and that was more support, more designers, and then also the sort of go ahead from design leadership. Sometimes people are really…I find that managers and leaders sometimes are really nervous about saying, “no, this designer is who you need to listen to.” Usually they’re like, “oh, everyone’s opinion is sort of like, equal, and the best one will come out.” But that’s not always true. Sometimes you need a decision maker. And so it was a combination of getting those resources and being everyone explicitly knowing, like, Maya is the decision maker. That empowered me to really lean into that role and then sort of transition in that situation.

Maurice Cherry:

And so now, after Twitter, you joined Riverside as their VP of design, which is where you were most recently. I know you were only there for a short amount of time, but can you just sort of sum up what it was like there for you?

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, yeah, yeah…and even why I chose it.

So after leaving Twitter, I was curious still. I had some questions about my career. Like I mentioned, I had gotten to a pretty senior level of IC path, but I had been leading a team of designers. Several managers of mine had pitched the idea of me going into management. I knew that I wasn’t really that interested in doing it at a big tech company, just based off of what I was witnessing was the role of a manager. But I was curious about it, and I kind of thought that at a startup maybe that would be the way that I could both still keep my hands in the product making and product strategy and all of that while also getting to trial management. So I thought that this VP role would be like the sort of best of both worlds and I probably downplayed the challenges.

I knew it was going to be challenging to work in the ten time zone difference and I knew even just the cultural differences might be a challenge but I wasn’t too concerned about that type of stuff. But yeah, that ten time zones and even just the nuances of the startup world, right? Like I’m coming from big tech into startup world. It is different. Even though Spaces liked to brand itself as a startup within a big company, no, it’s still different. It’s really different.

What I really loved about Riverside is that they just moved really fast, but from a place of curiosity they would always be observing what’s happening out in the world and where their competitors are moving. And they weren’t afraid of scrapping a roadmap and just redesigning one or reprioritizing it. Sometimes we did that probably a little bit too much and I think honestly through our work together we started to get a little bit more consistent with our priorities, and that was great. But some of that even was a bit of a headache to just navigate just how rapidly things could change in terms of priorities.

What I found with Riverside was people were really just genuinely down to create and hopefully create a really solid product for customers. And I know everyone says that, but I don’t know…people just seem to be really curious to do that and really open to receiving wherever that idea gold come from. So they’re all taking a bet on me too. I’m in L.A. and they now have this new leader who’s all the way over here and they kind of have to listen to, like, they kind of embraced that with open arms and that was cool. And I think the startup world in general, I really am still fascinated by. But one thing I learned was I probably want to be…to create it myself. I have so many skills at this point and I have a way of working where actually startups aren’t that different from big tech companies. If you have a boss, the boss is still the boss and what their vision is and how they want to do work. That is the way in which you have to do work. That’s not a bad thing. And it wasn’t even bad how Riverside did it. It just at this time in my life, I was realizing that’s not what I’m looking for. Like, I was actually trying to get away from that sort of, I don’t know, like company-first mindset. I want to build something. I want to build something. I don’t want to push forward something that’s already been built.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a natural progression, though. I mean, going from these larger companies to smaller companies, but you’re gaining more and more experience just as a designer, as a person, you’re just gaining more experience. So I feel like that’s a natural progression.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I hope so. It’s a messy journey. I think it’s even messier now that I’ve pulled the plug on big tech, apparently. But I think it’s going to shake out to something really beautiful, hopefully.

Maurice Cherry:

I think it will. I mean, one of the beautiful things about this show and having done it for so long with these conversations, it can kind of show people that your career path isn’t always a linear thing. Like, it can have ups and downs and highs and lows, et cetera, as long as you kind of at least have a sense of what it is you want to do and where you’re going. And it sounds like you’ve kind of weathered that in your own career.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, 100%. Oh, man, you hear it when you first start out. One of my best friends who originally was just a colleague of mine, she just would always tell me, “your path and your journey is your path. In your journey, you make the decisions that are right for your career.” And at first you’re like, “oh, yeah, of course.” And you kind of can get taken away in the career paths that these companies have sort of set out. Like IC 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, then you go into VP and then you go into C-suite, or you can start your own. There’s these very set paths of what success, quote unquote, should look like. And they’re attached to money and they’re attached to potentially notoriety and all those things. And what I found myself doing was going through that path, making a couple of choices that were uniquely Maya, but not enough. Not enough of those uniquely Maya choices and ones that only I could answer.

I think, you know, you really have to put in the hours and the effort. Like, the last decade of work was really important to get me to where I am today, where I feel comfortable being comfortable and confident being like, “actually, it’s a no right now. Right now I need to go do something different.” And I believe in what that difference is. And I have the skills to go approach that difference and turn left on this path instead of turning right, even though right is maybe what everyone else would naturally say I should go. And I think when people are able to do that — and what you and I were talking about a little bit earlier — was just like, I think a lot of us, a lot of millennials, and definitely people, you know, and other generations, too, are just kind of waking up and realizing, like, “oh, I don’t know if I want to do this path in the way in which it’s been laid out for me. I don’t actually know if I believe in this work for 30 years and then get to go do the thing that I love to do or that I want to explore within myself. I don’t even know if I love to do it because I haven’t been able to do it.” Do I want to wait until I’m 60 to do that? Do I need X amount of money to be able to go do that? I think what I’ve been doing, what I decide to do, is figure out what those constraints are that I’ve applied to myself; what I’m missing to be able to go and do that self-exploration through my career path. I don’t know. And then see, I guess, where the cards land after it. I’m now not willing to wait until I’m 40, 50, 60, I guess, to go figure it out. Like it needed to happen now. That’s what I learned.

Maurice Cherry:

So when you look back at kind of the experiences that you’ve had, you look back at your career, and I would say even, like, looking at what the current landscape is now in tech and design — I should say we’ll put tech and design together — what do you think it means to be a designer these days?

Maya Gold Patterson:

What does it mean to be a designer these days? I feel like designers are typically multidisciplinary, like the best designers are, but there is a singular part of their design skills that they can get paid to do or paid really well to do. And so we kind of lean into that. But I’ve seen people, whether they’re product designers or really honestly, outside of product designers, like interior designers, stylists, just creators in other ways. I’ve seen when they leave their corporate structure, and they just take that bet on themselves because they’ve put in the time and the work and gotten the network and gotten the resources that they need to go do that, amazing stuff blossoms.

So what does that mean for design? I think design is still messy. As messy as it was back in the day, it’s still messy now. Yes. We have more understanding as an industry of maybe the different types of designers, like what exists and what types of design work we need. But we’re not yet good at helping designers blossom in a variety of design skills. Like, are you going to be a tech designer? Are you going to be a graphic designer? Are you going to be an agency designer? Are you going to be a fashion designer? It’s very limiting. There are people that push outside that box, and what I assume is happening is they’re finding some interesting happiness and making stuff that can be really impactful on the world in a unique way. I’m kind of hopeful that that same thing happens to me. I don’t know if it’s actually their reality or not, but that’s what I’m interpreting.

Maurice Cherry:

Are you where you kind of want to be at this stage in your life? Maybe that’s an easy question. I don’t know.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah, I am, actually. That’s why I think I was comfortable walking away, right? And what does that mean?

So for me, honestly, since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to be successful and that meant money and being able to do whatever I wanted to do. So having the financial means to be able to do whatever I wanted to do, have a loving partner, have a family, probably. And so by choosing this career path and then going all in on it and having a lot of luck along the way, I was able to sort of achieve enough to be able to check the boxes on a lot of my childhood dreams. And I think because that happened, I’m now in this state where I’m like, “so then why am I still doing that? Why am I still in the rat race in that way?” One good answer is I need healthcare. My family needs healthcare. But honestly, again, we tucked away a good amount of money and it’s not enough for us to just retire retire, but it is probably enough to stop, get out of the rat race, look at it from a different vantage point and maybe go invest in ourselves or myself. Me and my husband are both on our self-employment journey now, and kind of see where it shakes out.

And corporate America is always going to be there. That’s like the backbone of this. You know, I don’t know if I’ll be able to enter back into big tech shiny roles when I’m done with this self-exploration, but I’ll be able to feed my family. And I think being able to distance myself from the keeping up with the Joneses mentality enabled me to sort of make that call. And a good example of this is like, me and my husband bought a house and that was like a really proud moment for us. And I remember one of the things that happened after we bought this house was like, a lot of people were like, “oh, this is your starter home. You’re going to move into a bigger house immediately.”

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know! And they didn’t even say it coming from a bad place at all. At all. I understand why they said that, but I just was like, “wow, shouldn’t we just be satisfied with what we have?” Because I immediately started thinking like, “okay, yeah, I need to go get like, a bigger tech bag so then I can go get the bigger house.” And I’m like, “I don’t want the bigger house.” Like, I have enough house problems. I have enough house problems with what I have. And I like my home. I like designing my home. Like, I don’t need more. So because I’m in this space, I’m like, okay, so then I don’t need a job that has these super high dollar signs attached to it and benefits and stuff. Like, maybe I will in the future. Maybe my son or myself or our health will require it. Okay, then we’ll saddle up and go do that. But if right now my family doesn’t need it and it doesn’t bring us ultimate joy, then I’m not doing it. I’m not going to do it.

Maurice Cherry:

I’d be interested, like even, you know, I think you’ve sort of alluded that you were kind of taking a year off in a way — I’m using air quotes here — but you may not even want to go back into big tech after that. I’d be interested just to kind of see what your priorities are at that point.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Me too. Yeah, I leave the door open on big tech just because I know myself and I know also how beneficial big tech can be when you need it, and maybe there’ll be a right time and right place for it. But this year for me is definitely not going to be a sabbatical. I actually don’t want that right now. I think I’ve done a lot of resting and rebirthing and actual birthing over the last two years. I’m just, like, ready to go after it. Me and my husband talked about it actually yesterday. I want to balance my time really well, where we’re explicitly saying, “okay, if no money comes in, that’s scary, but okay, we’re just going to do that. That’s fine.” If you’re spending your time investing in your passions, that maybe could lead to making money. And then so, like, the first six months, I’m hoping is just investigating what I like to do, how far I can go with that sort of sorting out can it make me any money, and if so, how much? Okay, out of those five things that I might want to do and could maybe make me money, let me pick one that actually, like, is drawing me. And now if I really invest all my time there, what would happen? That would be maybe the next six months. Can you tell, like we’re type A, so we’re planning already. Very structured, in a very structured way, but that’s kind of how I see it going, is like, I want to go and I want to maybe reopen up my vintage shop. I want to maybe go and start some stuff with my husband. I’m going to do some design advising on the side because I’m interested in that and I have friends building cool stuff and I know a lot now, so maybe I can be helpful, explore all of that, see what feels good or not. I can say no at any time because I’m not beholden to anyone but myself and my family. And then hopefully success to me would be like, by the end of the year. I’m not rich or anything at all, but maybe I found a business that just speaks to me or is mine and I’m loving and also could earn enough for us to continue letting me walk this path. That would be incredible if that happens, but I don’t know if it will.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, there’s one project that you started recently called Recshop, is that right? Tell me about that.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, man, that was a really cool project with my brother. So I love all things vintage, so I love vintage clothes, vintage cars. My dad was and still is as a DJ. He was, like, a DJ in the 80s. So he spun vinyl and we always grew up with a ton of vinyl in our house. And recently me and my brother have been getting into it and we decided to open up a record shop. Honestly, it was just like a creative passion project to have. And I think after shutting down my clothing shop, I was looking for that again. Quickly we realized the used record shop business is just not a business and it just wasn’t sustainable. And I had just had a baby and it was just like too much. So I think I want to do more of that type of stuff, though, because it teaches you so much. I learned about that business and there’s unique problems for the customer in that business. That was a learning, and even just what I enjoyed about it or didn’t. And it was a cool outlet. Like, we got to design a brand and a customer experience that was all about music and curating these really important pieces of artwork to the American music landscape. We got to curate that sort of stuff for people; that was really cool. And so maybe I do a couple more things like that that sort of get me closer to understanding what my actual purpose is.

Maurice Cherry:

What do you want your legacy to be? And again, I feel like asking this now is maybe a bit premature because you’re right off the heels of quitting. You’ve got this freedom. The rest of the year has opened up to you. But have you thought about that?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I had not thought about that until you asked it a little bit before the podcast. But it’s such an important question. I do know from a gut sense what legacy for me, and I think my husband shares this, but one of the drivers of me quitting and quitting tech for a little bit was just I want my legacy to be the imprint that I have on my son in the type of woman I’m proud of and he’s proud of me for being. So I want him to see that he can make radical choices that are okay and can be honored and enable you to be your best self. And best self means like, showing up as a better partner, a better mommy, a better…just individual in general, making choices that go against the grain if it means it’s right for you is okay. That’s the type of legacy; like him approaching those intersections of life head on and not being scared of that and really having that sort of gut sense of like, “no, this is right for me. I’m going to try that. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to go try that. I’m going to go do something kind of crazy and feel good about that because I know it makes me a better man.” That’s the type of legacy that I think about. And if I leave some cool projects in my wake as I do that, that’d be awesome too.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, I feel like that’s a good place to wrap up, but I guess before we do that, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask you about?

Maya Gold Patterson:

No. I think though, if anyone’s doing some cool work in any cool work, honestly, I’m obviously open. I have some free time, believe it or not. So I guess I would just share that. Maybe I’ll leave my email for people to reach out directly if they’re working on anything cool, especially any cool collaborations in the vintage space, any cool design product startup stuff. I’m just here to sort of understand what people are trying to do and see if there’s some synergy, and if not with me, then maybe with somebody else. So I am open and more accessible than ever, I would say, right now. And yeah, just leave that.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. Where can people find you online?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know that’s a good question because I kind of am off socials, but my accounts exist. So I’m on Twitter @mayagpatterson, and then I’m on Instagram @mayapatterson. I’m not super active there. Maybe I’ll become more active. I don’t know. We gotta see, but usually there.

Maurice Cherry:

I feel like we’re sort of at this time where people are maybe trying to wean themselves off of social media.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

I don’t know if it’s…well, I think what it is, honestly, is that Twitter has lost its damn mind. And then all these other Twitter clones kind of popped up, and folks are like, “oh, well, now I’m on Threads, now I’m on Spill, now I’m on Spoutible,” and I’m like, I’m not going to be in six different places. I’m going to wait like a year and see if any of these still exist. And then maybe I’ll see like, okay, if I decide to migrate to somethin, because people have asked that about Revision Path. They’re like, “well, why isn’t Revision Path on Threads?” I’m like, “well, I’m squatting on an account, but I don’t think I’m going to ever really use it.” But we’ll see how things work out.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I know. It’s interesting. It’s in a really interesting space. I don’t know where it’s going to net out. I think because I’ve worked in social media now for a bit, I know that it’s not good for us. I know mentally it’s not good for us. And so that’s why I had to make the call for myself to quit smoking, which is like quit social media. Realistically, when you have a small business like you do, or any sort of project, using social media is really one of the best tools you have to get your work out there and make connections and stuff. So I think now I’m going to have to probably re-investigate my Instagram or something like that. But yeah, it’s just yuckily…I don’t know, it’s just not good for us to be consuming people’s lives in that sort of way that frequently. And I know I feel much better since I’ve been off. And when I do go on, it’s like through my desktop for like five minutes. I don’t think that I’m going to be on Twitter for much longer, which is so sad because like I said, I loved Twitter, but I don’t believe in anything that’s going on there. So I probably got to delete that, I guess Threads is kind of left or Spill.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’m going to just wait and see. I mean, I talked about this on another episode, but I was like back in 2006, 2007, a bunch of Twitter clones popped up and there was like Yammer, there was Pownce, there was Jaiku… there were a bunch of them. And then within like a year or two’s time, they all either looked at other markets — like Plurk is, I think, huge in Taiwan — or they got bought out by a bigger company and then got closed down, or they just shut down. I don’t wanna…I think the way I said it in the last interview, I said, if Elon Musk is the problem, I don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg is the answer.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Oh, I know that’s right.

Maurice Cherry:

So maybe there might be just an option to divest altogether.

Maya Gold Patterson:

Maybe I think that there should be. I actually have thought about this as like a potential project, but more on that later. But yeah, get ourselves out of it. You know what I’ve been doing though, instead of scrolling? You know what I’ve been spending my time doing recently?

Maurice Cherry:

What’s that?

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’ve been going to the public library.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay!

Maya Gold Patterson:

I’ve been going to the public library, which is an incredible resource that is actually inspiring and gives you a lot of content for free that is not destructive to your mental wellness and health. And it’s been so…I like go there regularly and check out books and I spend so much time reading now, it feels really nice. I would encourage people to do that.

Maurice Cherry:

You heard it folks; support your local library. Maya Gold Patterson, thank you so, so much for coming on the show. One. It’s just great to have you back on the show, but then also just to have seen your glow up over the years, to see how you have grown as a person, as a designer, I mean, I’m going to be really excited to see what is next for you. And I’m so glad that you were able to come on the show, especially on the heels of such a big life change, to talk about sort of what that means in the greater context of your career and everything. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

Maya Gold Patterson:

I appreciate oh, thank you, Maurice. And thank you for creating this safe space. I mean, I am so happy. Like, you’re essentially the first place that I get to even share this news with. So just thank you for that and being always so warm and open, keep doing what you’re like. Your type of energy is what this world needs.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Eric Thompson

You’re in for a great conversation this week with creative technologist Eric Thompson. Eric staked his claim in the Atlanta tech space through his entrepreneurial work through Georgia Tech, and is now helping support the next generation of makers and creators through his work at Spelman College.

We talked a lot about the Spelman Innovation Lab and how it functions as a third place, and Eric shared his journey from construction and mechanical engineering in New Jersey to studying user experience and human computer interaction in Atlanta. He also spoke about the thriving tech scene here, working with his partner on a food startup called Eat Unrestricted, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

This conversation is packed with deep insights, and I love how Eric is pushing the boundaries of innovation of creativity!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Eric Thompson:

Hi. Yes, I’m Eric Thompson. I’m the assistant director of the Spelman College Innovation Lab. And I’m the co-director of the Blackstone Launchpad at Spelman College. I’m also a strategic advisor for my partner’s business, Eat Unrestricted, where we make vegan cheddar cheese sauce. And I’m also an entrepreneur and innovator in my own right.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s a lot. That’s a mouthful.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah. A couple things there, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:

How did last semester go at Spelman?

Eric Thompson:

It went really good. It was a whirlwind. We ran a ton of programming in the Innovation Lab last semester, including one of our signature programs from last semester was our HBCU Game Jam spearheaded by J.C. Holmes. Basically, we had a hackathon where I think we had like 23 HBCU schools sent teams to the AUC and built games over a 24-hour period. They used everything from RPG Maker to Unity to put together concepts, games, functional games over that time period. And we had a competition at the end, and it was really empowering just seeing what these students could create in such a short amount of time. Everything from story and game theory into 3D and 2D assets and putting the mechanics together in the game engines. It was really impressive. So game development is one of the verticals that we’ve developed in Innovation Lab that came out of the pandemic because we needed something that students could innovate and create with that wasn’t an in person maker space. So that was one of the things. And then, you know, entrepreneurship has grown quite a bit at Spelman over the past few years as well. You know, I’m the advisor for the Entrepreneurs Club and our Blackstone Launchpad. We took some students to Battle of the Brains in Austin during SXSW. We had our Spel-preneur competition. We have been kicking off with the Center for Black Entrepreneurship, which is a collaboration between Morehouse and Spelman to kind of bolster all the entrepreneurship programming and ecosystem and get our students beyond just the four walls of the schools and into the community, into the broader entrepreneurship ecosystem. Just our standard kind of situation at the Innovation Lab where we have students making everything from future fashion to eco-friendly packaging for cosmetic products and students who are graphic designers and animators and everything under the sun. We’re kind of like a one stop shop. That’s…one stop shop is like the worst thing you can say as a designer, but we’re the one stop shop for creative and innovative entrepreneurial endeavors on campus, and we try to make sure that everybody feels at home in the space. So workshops relating to everything from laser-cut business cards to building your own interactive robots, to working with emerging AI tools to further your artistic filmmaking animation journeys. So we do a lot.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow, that is a lot!

Eric Thompson:

It was an exhausting semester.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I feel like I have like a dozen questions that I want to ask just from that. But I’m curious really about the game jam. I mean, 23 HBCUs sent teams to Spelman. Was that the first time Spelman had done a Game Jam?

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, this was the first time the program was run. So this was kind of like the brainchild of J.C. Holmes, Dr. Volcy, and basically it’s an event to kind of build the profile of what HBCUs are doing in these spaces. I think so often when people talk about gaming and HBCUs, it defaults to eSports. And don’t get me wrong, especially in a place like Georgia where the entertainment industry is such a big part of the local economy, eSsports is a huge opportunity space for students, right? But we also want to make sure that our students are on the creative side of the funnel here, actually developing the games, developing the assets, writing the stories. And that’s something that we’ve been focused on in the Innovation Lab is kind of building students up as creators, upskilling them, writing code, learning how to do 3D modeling, learning…. We even have a game theory class, you know? We have a professor who’s a lifelong D&D DM and teaching game theory to students so that they understand what really are the core components of a good game — of a good interactive story. This is what the game jam was kind of raising the profile for. And we have several classes also associated with this vertical. So we have a game design class. We have a class called interactive storytelling. We have creative coding. Students use p5.JS to create interactive games and stories and experiences of all sorts. And then, like I said, the game theory class. We have a mixed reality club, which kind of works with anything from Unity to RPG Maker throughout the semester. And we have research students who work on projects that involve virtual reality training, mixed reality, even projects, you know, some of these students work on collaborative projects with other departments like literature and the creative writing department, and even experiences to tell the history of Spelman and so on, right? So we have projects with Georgia Tech. It ranges, but all things in this space, Unity being a very central software to a lot of what we do in these. So that’s a big push right now in the Innovation Lab. And it fits in because, like I said, Georgia is very big into these creative industries, whether it be video games…but even, I mean, on the film side, the skills are very transferable from what we’re already doing, right? So that’s something that personally over this summer, I’m kind of putting together a framework for what that might look like of getting some of these same students who are doing this work in Unity, who are learning how to create these stories, who are developing these assets, how to get them more involved in the film industry locally as well. So that’s something we’re working on as well.

Maurice Cherry:

I have to say this as a Morehouse alum, it does not surprise me that Spelman is like light years ahead. I don’t know if I could even say light years ahead of Morehouse, because I don’t really know what they’re doing at Morehouse, but I just know…I remember when I was a student in, yikes, 1999, Spelman was it. Spelman had the Sun Microsystems computers. I think we had some also as well. But we took all our programming classes at Spelman. I came in the summer as part of the Project S,P.A.C.E. program, which I don’t even know if Morehouse still has that. But I think Spelman had it, too. It might have been called something different, but it’s when if you’re a STEM major, you can intern at two NASA facilities for two summers. And then afterwards, I think the goal is like, oh, you could go and work for NASA. Unfortunately for us, this happened right before 9/11, so that did not happen for me. But we took all our programming classes at Spelman, and Spelman had, like, the decked out computer lab, and I was just like, “why don’t we have this at Morehouse?” It was like, going to Spelman, and it was the future, and then we would come back to Morehouse, and it’s like the projects in Good Times, Like, what is happening?

Eric Thompson:

I don’t know. I can’t speak to it exactly. A lot of students do come into the Innovation Lab, and especially Morehouse students, the way I have the Innovation Lab structured, it’s supposed to be like chairs, like the bar. Everybody knows it’s a third place. That’s how I organize it.

Maurice Cherry:

Right, okay.

Eric Thompson:

I want it to be a place where students feel welcome and like, they want to be rather than they’re just there for a class. Right. But Morehouse students always come in. They’re like, “yo, Spelman’s always got the stuff.”

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

“How do y’all have this space and we don’t?” But I have some really great colleagues over at Morehouse, obviously, Tiffany Bussey over at MIEC, the Morehouse Innovation Entrepreneurship Center, but also Brian [Lawrence, Ph.D.], who was running the Morehouse MakerSpace, they have put in a tremendous amount of effort to rebuilding their makerspace on campus. So I think that that should be ramping up this coming semester. I think they just opened at the end of last semester.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Eric Thompson:

And they’ve come and talked with us, folks from their makerspace, who even some of their students are our regulars. Right? And they’re taking a lot of notes and applying some of those same things to how they’re building out their space, because traditionally, their makerspace was really focused on STEM engineering students. And, you know, as I just mentioned, the Spelman Innovation Lab functions like a third space where students of all disciplines can come in and feel like they can just hang out and have discussions at our big table, where we host our informal Innovation Lab podcast that’s never recorded but always involves good conversations. So they’re building out the capabilities over there. And I think that’s important because we want to kind of decentralize out some of the things that we do out of the space and let some of the best practices that have worked for us go other places, even if they have to be adapted to different populations.

Maurice Cherry:

See, I didn’t even know Morehouse had a makerspace. So you put me onto something there.

Eric Thompson:

Yes. The Morehouse Maker Exploration Lab. I want to say that’s what it’s called. But yeah, it’s coming on. It’s coming along. They’ve had it, but they’re really trying to revamp it and rejuvenate it now. So I think that’s good. I think it’s important.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay, so you mentioned the Innovation Lab being this third place, and I absolutely love that concept, especially now as we’re sort of emerging out of this pandemic, and I think we’ve seen a general erosion of third spaces. Why did Spelman decide to create this kind of lab?

Eric Thompson:

The initial motivation, and to be frank, I wasn’t there at the very beginning when it first came online, but it’s taken many iterations because it’s moved. Like, this is the fourth location. It’s going to be moving again soon to our new building. Okay, but the initial motivation was that interdisciplinary work is important. It was even eight years ago, it was kind of apparent that the world where a student kind of gets one career and stays in that career their whole life and retires, that is not the reality for everybody anymore. Students, especially at a liberal arts college, are already encouraged to have a broad exposure to a variety of different areas. Dr. Volcy and his colleagues in the art department and some of the STEM departments, I guess they felt like it was necessary to create the space where maker could come together and work on interdisciplinary projects no matter what their background is. I feel like it should be a natural occurrence at a liberal arts school right, where broad collaboration is already encouraged. Well, why not apply that to making and technology and innovation? So I think that was a lot of the initial, you know, obviously personalities involved are a big part of the initial kind of mandate.

So Jerry, he’s obviously a creator, a maker, he’s a Georgia Tech PhD and worked at Bell Labs. And so this was his natural playground, being able to take some of the stuff, know, starts and stops in the classroom, but take it out of the classroom and make it a place that students can do it in a co, curricular fashion. Yeah, I think that was a lot of the initial then, you know, when President Mary Schmidt Campbell became president of the college, that just kind of got boosted, like turbocharged, because she’s coming from running the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and working with the ITP program over at NYU. So she’s seeing that, okay, we have kind of this nascent innovation collective starting. Let’s just put more effort into growing that, because in her mind, that’s also the future. Art, technology, STEAM. It just makes sense. It’s where things are going. So that was also a big help. And so she just retired last year, so she was a great advocate for our space as we tried to grow it over the years.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I think it’s really great to see this type of expansion on curriculum, and even this expansion on just, like, interdisciplinary space for students at HBCUs. And I mean, I’m pulling from my own personal experience here. I mean, when I came in in ’99, I was a dual degree major. I was computer science/computer engineering. And the only reason — well, it was two reasons. The first reason was because I wanted to be like Dwayne Wayne from A Different World. That was the first reason. But the second reason was because I had already started learning — or teaching myself, I should say teaching myself — HTML in high school. So by the time I got to college, I already knew how to make a web page. In 1999, I remember making the first Project S.P.A.C.E. website for the scholarship program. And in my mind, because I didn’t know, I mean, I was 18, I’m like, “oh yeah, you do web design on a computer, so why not study computer science?” Thinking that it was just like a direct path to take. And I remember my advisor at the time, Dr. Jones, who’s passed on now, but I remember him saying, “if this is what you want to do, you should probably change your major because the Internet is a fad. This isn’t going to be around. If this is what you want to do, you should probably not look at computer science because that’s not what we do here.” But at the time, it was like programming and Assembly. It was doing a lot of, I guess you could call it hardcore computer science work, but it was doing work on SGI boxes and Java and all that sort of stuff.

Eric Thompson:

And I’m guessing this is like right after [the] dotcom crash, right?

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, this is like the Fall of ’99. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Fall as in the autumn, not “the fall,” you know what I mean? But it’s in 1999 and I did I change my major that next semester in 2000 to Math because I was like, I do really like web design, but if I’m not going to be able to pursue it in any sort of fashion, then why am I sitting in this class trying to learn C++? This is not going to get me any closer to where I want to go. Not that Math did either, but I liked Math better and I had more credits and I was like, I did the math. I literally did the math and was like, “oh, I could graduate like a semester early if I just switch over to Math.” So I did and I did, but I wish that that kind of stuff was around then. Although that was really just, I think, a consequence of the fact that the Internet and technology was still in such a nascent space that you couldn’t have this type of environment to learn unless you went to a more specialized school.

Eric Thompson:

And that may be also a big part of it. Right? Just kind of a realization that especially right now, I mean, it’s very apparent, but where students are going is changing so much. And maybe those were lessons learned, seeing that maybe that was something that the folks at Morehouse say, like, “yo, this was a missed opportunity. We could have been ahead of the game on this. We had the infrastructure to be ahead of the game on this.” There was like a secret VR research lab that was heavy in existence in the 90s at [Clark-Atlanta University]. They were doing work in VR, basically the equivalent of VR training and metaverse in the late 90s…mid and late 90s. And their lab spaces are still there, but it just hasn’t been touched. But I was just saying the schools might have looked at this and been like, “hey, these are missed opportunities, and it might be helpful to have an engine on campus that is not just a space for innovation for the students, but also kind of a driver of thinking differently about where our students are going for faculty and staff on campus.”

So for instance, like the Innovation Lab, it’s not purely a student-facing space. It is open to staff and faculty and we actively encourage staff and faculty to come and participate. And one of the advantages is that we have staff and faculty that are experts in their own fields, but maybe not experts in everybody else’s field, and there’s an idea exchange among them. And then we also the people who are staffing the Innovation Lab can suggest trends and things that are informative to staff and faculty on campus. What ends up happening is the third place effect doubles, not just for students, but for faculty. And the students sometimes jog ideas to the faculty, and the faculty jog ideas to the students outside of the typical classroom context where it’s a respectful but still more kind of peer-facing relationship where ideas are exchanged at the big table. And overall, the hope is that this brings people up to what’s going on in the world. And this has been more very apparent now with the AI stuff or even the mixed reality stuff, because we have, for instance, that same physics professor that teaches our game theory class is using Unity to teach. He’s putting together modules in Unity that will demonstrate and teach physics to students. He had never worked in Unity before. Not only is now he exposed to this game creation engine, but he’ll probably expose his students to it as they’re learning physics. So it becomes an engine of staying up to date with the latest actions on campus. So I think that’s also kind of, it’s kind of an indirect but very important effect of why these kind of spaces are necessary on campuses. Because obviously campuses are always centers of innovation, but internally even a campus can become stagnant in its approach to education and academia. And I think more than ever we need to be considerate of how technology and how cultural shifts are changing the way we teach or the way we have to teach.

Maurice Cherry:

I went to Morehouse in the late 90s and early 2000s, so I know about a stagnant…I know about what it is to be on kind of a stagnant college campus with respect to that sort of stuff. So I think it’s fascinating that this place is also somewhere that staff and faculty can be a part of. So now it’s almost like this forum where there’s this exchange of ideas, and it’s facilitated by the technology and stuff that’s in there. That’s fascinating.

Eric Thompson:

Yes, that’s how I like it. That’s what I’ve always wanted, that space. I’ve always enjoyed those spaces the most. Those are spaces that inspire me. In undergrad, we kind of had it a little bit when I was at Rowan. We had a space where it was a machine shop and a projects lab for the mechanical engineers. But it just felt like a community. We had a small class. It was only like, thirty of us. We in there making our stuff, figuring out our problems. “Hey, I don’t know why this isn’t working.” “Here, let me show you.” “Maybe re-cut this lever arm, right?” Playing music, sharing memes. It was informal, but it was good. I’ve always enjoyed those places. I feel like those are places that inspire me the most, and those are places where I’ll spend the most time.

Maurice Cherry:

There’s more stuff that I really want to touch on about the lab. But since you mentioned Rowan, let’s kind of shift the conversation and learn more about you. So tell me about where you grew up.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, so I grew up in New Jersey, central Jersey, down the street from Rutgers University, actually. Piscataway. I grew up near a college town, but it was a great place to grow up. I always describe, like when people ask you, like, describe your neighborhood growing up. I always say, like, imagine Alabama. But like, if you put Alabama in New Jersey. But Alabama in New Jersey in the middle of like Ahmedabad, India.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Eric Thompson:

My neighborhood was like…it was a suburbanizing, formerly rural Black neighborhood surrounded by a lot of Indian enclaves.

Maurice Cherry:

Interesting.

Eric Thompson:

It was a very diverse ethnically and socioeconomic town, which I thought was really cool growing up. We all went to the same high school, so it created, like, I feel like there was a lot of equity there. Yeah, and it’s right next to Rutgers University, which is also, like, a super diverse university. So, kind of, it puts your worldview, even in high school, you know, but even like growing up, I was always interested in inventing since I was young. I wanted to be an inventor. So I guess this is like, my keystone. It’s just like, creating. [I] wanted to create and make things. And so even in high school, I took electricity and electronics class, which was a vocational technology class because it was teaching students how to become, like, electricians. But the professor, the teacher, who was one of my favorite teachers, he really taught a lot of electrical theory as well, like, stuff that most electrical engineers wouldn’t learn until freshman, sophomore year of college. And so it was interesting because the class was like a weird mix of students who were really hands on vo-tech students and then honors AP Physics type students in the same class. So I took that class for three years, and then I did orchestra my fourth year. And then that was…did I sum up K-12 real quick there?

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you definitely had an early interest in tech. I mean, I feel like you would have to end up going to study mechanical engineering, which is what you did at Rowan.

Eric Thompson:

Yes, and it’s funny. I was talking with Jerry, my colleague the other day. We were talking about like, yeah, I did mechanical enginering. We both did mechanical engineering. He was like, “yeah, mechanical engineering is like the liberal arts of engineering field.” I was like, “exactly. That’s why I did it.”

Maurice Cherry:

I was like, how so? How is it the liberal arts of engineering?

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, like, mechanical engineering is the broadest of the engineering fields…of the four major engineering fields, right? There’s electrical, computer, right? Chemical, mechanical, and civil engineering. Mechanical engineers have to learn a little bit of all those other engineering fields, whereas you won’t normally expect electrical or chemical engineers to learn mechanical design. Mechanical engineers have to learn electrical design. So we really touch on a lot of different subjects. More so. I mean, in my opinion, more so than, like, a chemical engineer, right? So mechanical engineers really can diversify into any engineering field kind of more easily than I think any other things or doing other things, like managerial positions and so on. So basically, I was trying to decide between whether I would do electrical or mechanical engineering because obviously I had this big pre kind of exposure to electrical engineering work via those classes, and I loved robotics and so on, but I was like, I can do robotics with mechanical engineering. And being, as I’ve always been, a person with a ton of different ideas and interests, I always pick the fields that give me the broadest array of options as far as stuff to do. I picked mechanical engineering. I was like, yeah, this will give me the most options of things I could go into. I like keeping as many options on the table for me as possible. I’ve always leaned into that jack-of-all-trades title, even. Like, I remember doing that on my college essays back in the day, and my mom was like, you know that’s not a good thing. Right? When people say jack-of-all-trades, they usually mean, like, master of none.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s the other half of that. Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

And after that point, I was like, I always thought this was, like, a good thing. I thought people liked jack-of-all-trades. And she was like, no, that’s not really what it means. It’s usually meant disparagingly, but I think that’s changing now. Obviously. I think people are going the opposite direction of that right now. So I think maybe I was ahead of the game on that.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s funny you mentioned the jack-of-all-trades thing because I’ve gotten that as well. Actually, one of the first writing gigs I had online, that was my like, we all had different handles that we would have, and mine was “jack-of-all-trades” or something like that. But that phrase about jack-of-all-trades, master of none, that’s not even the full phrase. Like the full phrase is “a jack-of-all-trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

Eric Thompson:

Ah, the secret truth comes out!

Maurice Cherry:

So being a generalist helps to have all that sort of broad body of knowledge as opposed to being specialized to maybe one particular thing.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, exactly. And I think it goes in cycles, too. I feel like for a long time, yeah, it was valuable to be a specialist. And I remember going into college and going even up until grad school, people were still preaching specialization. It makes it easier to find jobs. It just makes it easier for you to navigate your career path. Specialization. But like I said, I think that’s going back the cycle is going back the other way right now, going deeper. I just feel like humans naturally tend to be generalists. We’re trained out of generalizing, but I think we naturally tend to be generalists, right? Because we’re multifaceted individuals who have lots of different interests to explore. I think that’s the natural state of things. We’re kind of trained to ignore those and focus, and that has its place, but I don’t think it’s always the optimal course. So anyway, but that’s why I chose mechanical engineering. This will let me continue not making decisions.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now, after you graduated, you stayed in Jersey for a while. You worked as an engineer. What ended up bringing you to Atlanta?

Eric Thompson:

I started working at a construction outfit as a capital projects engineer, which after I stopped working there, I realized this is basically the closest thing you get to R&D in the construction industry. You’re basically the skunk works for that construction firm. So I got to work on all their newest cranes that they were building out, like equipment projects and so on. You know, be innovative. And it was cool. I think I just felt like because while I was doing that, I was still at home playing with Arduinos and trying to build up products and so on. And so I always kind of felt like I was probably going to go back to grad school to do something like super innovative, cutting edge technology related, even though, you know, after having a six month stint on twelve hour night shifts.

Maurice Cherry:

Ooh, that’s rough.

Eric Thompson:

It was longer than six months, actually. Twelve hour night shifts. Yeah. That was also a motivating factor to do something different than what I was doing. So I still really am prideful about some of the innovative work I did as a capital products engineer. Working on some of these really famous cranes and rebuilding them. But it just wasn’t, like, my passion as far as I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into just doing that. So I decided I wanted to go to grad schools. And I applied to four or five, and I applied to mechanical engineering PhD programs, which I wasn’t really excited about them because knowing me, right? PhD is like the ultimate pigeonhole. Like, focus on one thing. And I was like, oh, no. And then there were other programs like ITP at NYU and Georgia Tech’s HCI program. The MIT Media Lab. And I tried to get into Media Lab, didn’t get in. And I was looking at similar programs like the Georgia Tech program. And I was on a forum like, somebody said, oh, this is kind of similar to Media Lab. They were like, you know, if you want to do, like, user experience, like, UX. I didn’t even know what user experience was at that point, right? Because I remember even searching for jobs at that time, I was like, I know what I want to like, I have a feeling, like, product development. Every time I would search product development, it would always be like the job descriptions on Indeed will always come back as, like, UX and wireframes. I’m like, what is this actually? Mechanical engineer? I’m like building things with wire and frames. I was like, what is this thing? I just was like, I don’t know what this is. I don’t think this is what I’m supposed to do.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

And so I got into these PhD programs. I think it was CMU and Virginia Tech. But, like, I remember looking at some of the projects coming out of the Georgia Tech program, the HCI program, particularly, like, their interactive products lab, but just projects in general. I was like, these things seem cool. I’ll do that. I’m going to do that master’s degree. And then I could always go into a PhD afterwards if I want. But I was like, these projects look cool. They were speaking to me; the work. I didn’t really know anything about HCI or UX at all, but the projects coming out of the space were like, things that I felt like, that’s the type of stuff I want to make. So I decided kind of to come down to Atlanta and Georgia Tech. It was kind of on a coin flip type of whim. I was like, let me give this a try and see how it goes. That’s kind of how I ended up down here.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. I mean, I think you came down here at a time when in terms of just, like, the tech and the startup industry and things like, I mean shit was popping down here by the time you came. And you’re at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech has the ATDC, which is the Atlanta…I forget what the acronym is for. Something Technical Development Center, but yes, technology development.

Eric Thompson:

Center, something like that. Yeah, like, the oldest accelerator in the country. Like I said, I had only ever been to, like, through the airport before. I was very much like a Northeastern kid playing in the area between New York, Philly and DC. That was kind of my comfort zone. So I didn’t know I knew very little about Atlanta when I came down here. But my kind of personality is, like, whenever I go somewhere, I really try to be in that city. I want to know more about it and get involved quickly. So I came to the HCI program, and immediately I was like, this is very different from engineering school, right? There are people who are, like, artists. People coming from journalism and psychology and computer science. These are all my classmates now. And that was refreshing. I was like, this is cool because art and engineering was so separate in my experience. And to be in that space where having all these people together in these classes was really cool. And I was learning stuff that I hadn’t learned before. Like the first class that they teach you, that they have you learn in Georgia Tech HCI is like, user research methods, which is basically like a psychology class. And I never took any psychology in engineering school. And so it was just new information, new personalities, people, a lot of international students. So that was nice. Nice change of pace. Kind of reminded me more of the environment I grew up in at home. And so I learned a lot of things in that program, and it was really fun. I had a really great time in grad school. And at the same time, like you said, Atlanta around 2016, 2017, things were really apparently starting to pop off. You felt like there was an energy.

Maurice Cherry:

Absolutely.

Eric Thompson:

I was like, I came here, I was like, I didn’t feel this up in the Northeast. Things were really moving. And I remember one of the turning points for me being me attending, because I was at Georgia Tech and HCI program is in Tech Square. And I remember going to events at Tech Square Labs back in the day. Do you remember Tech Square labs?

Maurice Cherry:

I do, yeah.

Eric Thompson:

Being in a space where I was like, all these are Black innovators, I was like, this is something I’ve never been a part of before. This is cool. Yeah, this is cool. Because just by circumstance, it’s not that I haven’t met Black innovators before. One of my best favorite professors in undergrad was a Black innovator. But it was just like, the amount and the culture that came with it. As I mentioned before, I love those spaces that are kind of lit and innovative, right? And I was like, this is lit and innovative. I was like, this is what I want. This is it. So for me, that almost kind of sold the city on me. I was like, this is a place I need to be. It feels like a small town, but it has big city opportunities. It feels like a place where my ideas would be encouraged. I could go and try and pursue them in Real. And so, yeah, I kind of started getting involved. That was my first foray into the know, hanging out over there, going to Startup Battle.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

All the CreateX at Georgia Tech. That was kind of the start for me. So, yeah, that was what really kind of sold Atlanta to me to a point where when it came to the end of grad school and most of my peers were going to New York or the West Coast, right? I could have gone home and made a lot of money and saved some money, too, going back to Jersey. But I was like, I feel like I need to be over, you know, I feel like I need to be here for what’s going on and be a part of this. That’s why I decided to stay. And it wasn’t always the easiest path, but I just felt know, it was what I wanted to do.

Maurice Cherry:

Tech Square Labs, co-founded by Morehouse grad Dr. Paul Judge. Yep.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, there was a lot of people that I work with regularly or more now that I let them know, you know, that event that you put on six years ago or whatever, that was a big part of me staying around in Atlanta. So it just goes to show that you never know who you’re influencing when you do these things because I feel like that encouraged me to stay and then also be a value add to the ecosystem.

Maurice Cherry:

No, the whole just like…I mean, Atlanta itself already has this really rich history of — I’m loathe to use the term “Black excellence” — but I feel like that kind of does apply with Atlanta because, I mean, one, you have this very rich history of entrepreneurship, but also like a super rich history of political activism, civic engagement, et cetera. You can see Black people at every level of social strata in Atlanta and it feels normal. It feels to a Black person, it feels right. It feels like this is a place where you could come and really make some kind of dream that you might have come true, which is probably why a lot of people move here, which is probably why now it’s getting so expensive here. But certainly back then that energy was so palpable. Well, no, but I mean, that energy was so palpable, particularly in tech and within and around Georgia Tech, Tech Square Labs, et cetera, there were so many startups popping up and things of that nature. And for me, who had been like, I’ve been doing startup work here since 2008, it was just so great to see the city feel like it was finally starting to come into its own as a place that was not Silicon Valley, was not. Because, you know, I can tell you, for a long time, people did not look at Atlanta as any kind of a tech city. I mean, there was Georgia Tech, but they didn’t look at Atlanta, the city as a whole, as like a place where we want know, start a business here or we want to open an office here. They just thought, I don’t know, we were all down here barefoot, blowing on brown jugs or something like that. They just did not look at Atlanta as a city for innovation, a city for that kind of stuff. And it has grown, I want to say, gradually. And I think a lot of that is because of the infrastructure that a lot of Black people have created here, as well as just like an influx of honestly, an influx of money from tourism has really helped a lot as well to just kind of bring people here in general and then to see what opportunities are available is another thing. I talked to so many folks who just not moved here on a whim, but they came here, and then all of a sudden they’re doing something else or they found another lane or avenue to venture into that might have been different from what they did back home. But because of the ecosystem here, they’re able to kind of branch into something new and be successful doing that.

Eric Thompson:

Right. It’s a wonderfully diverse economy, and I think that has helped it so much because it attracts a lot of talent. So people come here for work or for school like myself, because of certain hallmark industries. But then what’s changed is the culture is keeping people here more so it’s making it once people come, they see this is — “I see Eric down there. He seems like he’s thriving. He’s living, you know? I came to visit him. Oh, I didn’t know it was like this. Now I want to be down here too.” Right? So it’s a domino effect when you have something like that. But that kind of goes back to my point, is the things that made it work and made it accelerate so fast. Pre-pandemic was a lot of grassroots ecosystem development, people doing the work on the ground to create these programs. So I feel like we have to keep that in mind, that that’s a big part of what makes the place feel real and feel good. Like, tonight is one of my favorite events in the city. I haven’t been to it since before the pandemic, but have you heard of Controllerise?

Maurice Cherry:

No, what’s that?

Eric Thompson:

Controllerise is this event. There’s a couple of offshoots now, but before the pandemic, it was like this event. And one of the first events where it was like, hey, you’re into anime, you’re into video games, you’re into lo-fi hip-hop, you’re into freestyling and DJ culture, you’re into art. Come to this get together. Monday nights. And it’s grown. It’s huge now, but it was this place where I met a lot of people there did networking there. It was another third place where people come hang out, they play games, they get drinks and food. They have every video game set up on the side that you can imagine.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Eric Thompson:

And that was kind of part of it. That was another thing. I was like, this is a place, I used to go there and network. This is the networking events that I like to go to. People freestyling, dancing. A lot of technologists would go there and hang out. So you would always inevitably run into somebody who you could collab with or give you some advice.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. I’m looking it up now. Controller. It’s like controller, like a game controller? Controllerise, yeah.

Eric Thompson:

Wow. Yeah, it’s real cool. It’s a really cool vibe. Happens at Monday Night Garage. But it started out small. Started out as a small thing. A couple of video games, some lo-fi hip-hop, food and drinks, maybe a vendor or two. And it’s kind of grown into this force to the point where there’s a lot of offshoots of it. Now there’s like, Trap Sushi. There’s an event called a LAG because people realize this is like Black nerd heaven.

Maurice Cherry:

You said it started at Monday Night Garage?

Eric Thompson:

It started…no, it actually started years ago. It started back, maybe 2017. 2018?

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Eric Thompson:

At like smaller restaurants. They eventually settled at this place called the Deep End, which used to be across the street from Ponce City Market and they were there for a while and then that place closed and they moved to Monday Night Garage. And now the event is so big that it takes up the whole gGarage. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t been since the pandemic. They just started again for the first time in like two and a half years.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, wow. Monday Night Garage is literally right around the corner from me.

Eric Thompson:

Oh, nice.

Maurice Cherry:

I had no idea. Wow. I’m going to have to check it out. Wow.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, it’s super cool, man. It’s a really cool spot. Really cool vibe. The people who founded it, like I said, it started off very grassroots and now it’s just kind of this very unique cultural force that’s like it’s very unique to Atlanta. I would bring people there from out of town and they were like, yeah, I’ve never even seen anything like this outside of maybe in like…Spider-verse.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh man, don’t tell me that. Now I definitely got to check it out. Wow, that is amazing. So to kind of, I guess move things a little bit forward because you’re talking about startups. In 2018, you started a startup called Walimu, which is around eSports tech, and now you’re also part of another startup now called Eat Unrestricted. First tell me about Walimu and tell me about how you may be able to use lessons from that with Eat Unrestricted.

Eric Thompson:

So Walimu was kind of like my, you know, I was in grad school and I was creating in ways that I had never really thought to before, right? A lot of my creative work was based on inventions like physical products, right? But being in an HCI program, I was learning really more about human-centered principles and I was also away from home and my cooking skills have always been okay. I oftentimes would call my mom while I was cooking on the phone and I would have her on WhatsApp video or whatever and be like, “yo, can you walk me through?” And basically she would take the video and let me ask “hey, let me see what you’re doing. I’ll add this much, stop, okay, put another piece in this and that,” and kind of walk me through on video through these processes, and same thing if I was doing something and I needed my pop’s help and he could come on video and help me out. “Oh, water heater, let me take a look at this.” And I was know, not everybody has these resources, this ability for live help. People will go on YouTube or forums or Reddit or whatever, right? But not everybody can have somebody who they can talk to in live to coach them through whatever they’re trying to figure out in the moment and ask their specific questions and get encouragement, right?

So that was kind of like what the idea was born from. So I was like, this would be a live help marketplace. A marketplace where people can kind of get that mom or dad kind of type of assistance, whether they’re trying to change a tire or they’re braiding their hair for the first time. And so I was really into that idea. And I applied to CreateX and I applied to Ascend 2020, which was being run by Morehouse Innovation Entrepreneurship Center. And so this was my first real foray into entrepreneurship and it wasn’t physical product based. I was like, this is a really compelling problem, I feel like. So I started doing that startup. But something they told me during the process of building this startup is that I needed to focus my marketplace on one particular topic area.

And so back to Controllerise. I was going to that pretty frequently and so I kind of was just like, that’s why I was doing customer discovery a lot too. I was just kind of out in the field, lots of strangers, I was just asking people if I could interview them. It kind of ended up focusing on eSports coaching. I was like, “oh, you know what, let me focus on eSports coaching for this marketplace.” eSports was starting to kind of get some momentum, so people were really into it. It was a trendy topic. And so I started doing eSports coaching workshops with some of these eSports houses around town. Like there’s a Black-owned one 404 eSports up in Doraville. Another Black-owned one was Versus Realm or eSports Arena. So I started doing eSports coaching sessions for kids. And it was like a marketplace. And I was building a new website for people to book coaches on the platform. Basically the idea was that, hey, you can train with actual coaches and get better at the games that will allow you to become competitive in leagues or win competitions or even get scholarships, which was like a new thing, like schools are giving away eSports scholarships, right? eSports was a sanctioned sport in high school. This is all in 2018, 2019, so it was still very new that all this was out there.

So I was doing these things around town, but like around the…it was growing, but growing slowly. I think it was kind of maybe ahead of its time in a lot of ways. And once kind of the pandemic hit and I kind of got into developer snags with developing the new website, momentum for it kind of shifted. And I think a large part of that was that not momentum, just momentum on the side of things, taking their time to finish, like the website. When I made the switch from this platform that was built around helping people with whatever their needs were to eSports, I think a little bit of the passion went out of it. Not because I’m not a gamer. I do like playing video games. I’m a big fan of Civilization, okay? I love Super Smash Brothers, but it’s not my passion per se. I met people, even people who I would call my friends now in that world, in that ecosystem, and you can tell when they talk about video games, their whole soul lights up. And that wasn’t it for me. And I felt like I just wasn’t passionate about the topic area. Coaching kids in eSports wasn’t what really lit me up versus the original idea where I was kind of just helping people in a really human to human connection way, figuring out things that they may not have been taught by parents or people who are like mentors. So momentum for that kind of slowed down and then the pandemic hit and it really slowed down.

And the biggest lesson I learned, I guess, about entrepreneurship is that you really got to trust your gut. At the end of the day, a lot of it is risk taking, right? You can do customer discovery and you can minimize risk as much as you want, but I think at the end of the day, you can’t predict the future. And if you feel strongly about something in your gut, you kind of have to go with it and live with the results of that decision. That’s kind of like a deeper lesson that listen to your mentors, listen to advice, take it in, but then listen to yourself and make a decision. At the end of the day. It’s hard to teach that, but people are always there’s always going to be a million people who can give you advice. I remember somebody even told me that that concept that I was pitching was obviated. I was like, really? Because I don’t see anybody else doing it. They were really like, no, you shouldn’t do this. And I was like, especially later in the pandemic. I feel like if I stuck with that original idea, this would have been perfect timing for it.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

So that was kind of like a hard lesson. The other lessons I think you learn from entrepreneur. There’s a lot of intangibles. Doing entrepreneurship is like one of those things where three months in, six months in, you’re like you don’t even realize it, but you could teach a class.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, yeah.

Eric Thompson:

You’re, like, giving people advice, and you’re like, “whoa, where did that come from?” I wouldn’t have known to give this it’s like a business degree, but on the slick, you’re learning all these things that you wouldn’t have thought you were going to learn, and then all of a sudden, you can teach people how to be entrepreneurs all of a sudden, just based on the mistakes or the things that you picked up in the process. So it’s hard to say a lot of specifics, but the deepest thing is that gut decision making aspect. Yeah, but there’s so many things that I learned, I couldn’t list them all. It’s just I try to be a good advisor to my partner for Eat Unrestricted, who is my significant other, and we didn’t start dating immediately, but we had met for the first time doing interviews for CreateX at Georgia Tech.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, wow.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, we were both there waiting for our interviews. And we like introduced…like, what are you, tell me about your company. And so that’s how we met. And so she’s really passionate about food and food inclusivity. That’s something we kind of connected on. And we were both working on different projects during the pandemic and decided to help out. Help out as much as I can with the unrestricted that’s going on. Wow. Three years now.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. And how’s it been? I mean, I looked at the Instagram, and I can see, like, you’re at farmers’ markets, and I think even you got some students at Spelman to taste test and everything. How’s it been going?

Eric Thompson:

So, yeah, it’s been going good. Basically, the food industry is harder than technology, I think, personally. Oh, I think it’s harder because it’s the ultimate tangible product. It doesn’t just have to…you make it, and that’s it. It has to taste good, and it has to commit with people emotionally. And so it comes with all the emotional struggles that a digital product consumer would go through with a digital product and all the overheads that come with an actual physical product that you make in a factory. So it’s capital intensive, so it’s really hard. But we’ve grown steadily over the three years, so that’s been a positive sign that people like the product. Everybody who tastes it really enjoys it. And so, yeah, we go to farmers’ markets. We’re in stores, independent grocers all over the country. A couple here in Atlanta, of course, where we started out. Right. But we have stores in L.A., New York, Philadelphia that carry our product. And right now, talking about doing a lot of things, we’re kind of very similar. We both overtax our schedules. Basically, my partner, she works on Eat Unrestricted, but she’s also a product manager at GTRI.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Eric Thompson:

And she’s getting her MBA.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Eric Thompson:

We realized that we can’t keep cooking the cheese in the kitchen, not our kitchens at home, but in our shared kitchen. Making this product is very time intensive and energy intensive. So we’re like, in the process of switching to an outside manufacturer and making the product in bulk so that we can kind of just streamline our whole supply chain and provide like…you’d be able to basically by streamlining our supply chain, we can probably get larger accounts to buy our product. So that’s kind of where we’re at right now and what we’re trying to grow into. But things like the brand turned out really good. Shout out to Veritas for doing our branding. Like, it looks really professional, and so we feel like we’re moving in a really good direction right now.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice.

Eric Thompson:

So, yeah, that’s the story of Eat Unrestricted, currently.

Maurice Cherry:

Now I’m curious how you balance all of this entrepreneurial work with the work that you do at Spelman, because it sounds like the work that you’re doing with the Innovation Lab — we didn’t even really talk about the Blackstone Launchpad — but all this work that you’re doing and then you’re also doing these entrepreneurial efforts outside of, like, how do you keep all of that in some level of balance?

Eric Thompson:

Yeah. Very difficult. There’s no way around that one. Life balancing is very difficult for the both of us. We just try to do our best to practice self care and just kind of run our own race because it’s a marathon, not really a race. So that helps the most, I think, right now, trying to keep mental and physical health as best as we possibly can, work on that from time to time, rest, take rest, and then not worry about beating anybody to completion or to a certain milestone because that’s just going to ramp up the anxiety levels too much. As far as the balance with my job, I find it has always actually been super symbiotic. So me coming into my position at Spelman with entrepreneur experience, I’ve been able to really help a lot with the growth of the entrepreneur programs at Spelman. Before I came, Sonya Rush had started Spelpreneur, and it had been going on for maybe a year or two, but outside of that, there was nothing for entrepreneur really on campus. Then we started getting some classes. One of some of my students in Innovation Labs started the then, you know, I was part of the committee for kind of helping figure out how to get the center for black entrepreneurship off the ground. We have an entrepreneurship minor now, now co directing the Blackstone Launchpad, which basically helps boost some of the entrepreneur stuff on campus, including what we have in the Innovation Lab, our fellowships for each of our verticals. So we have a game development fellowship, we have a maker fellowship, and then we have an entrepreneurship fellowship. And so we basically pay students to work on their own projects.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah, so it’s a pretty cool program. So we run that program. So basically, entrepreneurship has taken off. And one of the benefits of the personnel in the Innovation Lab, the team that I work with, is that we all bring our personal connections and networks and knowledge of the ecosystem to the students. So I think it’s been very beneficial to the students. It kind of was always destined to be this kind of symbiotic thing, because, like I mentioned before, a lot of the events that really first sold me on Atlanta, I look at some of the shirts I got from those events. Morehouse Innovation Entrepreneur Center was one of the sponsoring presenters of those events. When I started working at Spelman, right? I was transitioning; I was working as a service designer prior to that, or right after. Around that same time, I was working on Walimu, and I was in a pre-accelerator called Ascend 2020, which was meeting at the Morehouse Leadership Center. So I was, like, going there weekly for meetups with the cohort, and then all of a sudden, I’m working across the street. So it all kind of worked out symbiotically. And so I think the stuff that I do on the side as far as entrepreneurship, has always felt like it’s been kind of a natural benefit to what I do for work and vice versa. The things that I learn at work and the connections…sometimes the connections that I make through Spelman are beneficial to entrepreneurship endeavors. So it works out really well. I think it should be kind of a model to how I personally think we should encourage more faculty to be entrepreneur on the AUC campuses. I think it only benefits the college personally. That could be debated, but I think it definitely is a big benefit to the schools.

Maurice Cherry:

I feel like you have a lot of advice to give. I’m sure you probably give a lot of advice to students. It’s clear you have done a plethora of things projects, studying engineering, now doing the Innovation Lab, et cetera. What advice would you give to somebody that’s like hearing your story and they want to sort of follow in your footsteps, like, maybe they, too, are a jack-of-all-trades and being told that they’re a master of none? What would you tell them to kind of keep them motivated?

Eric Thompson:

I think, man, for motivation wise, I think one of the biggest motivating factors is just that. It seems just like that’s how the trends of our economy and our ecosystem are leading to valuing people who can be flexible into different roles. So for a person, I guess starting out is even though for me, I talked about not wanting to be pigeonholed and this and that, right? But part of being a jack-of-all-trades is being open to picking up all these different experiences. My girlfriend jokes about this to me, but when I was growing up with my dad, my dad worked and had a construction company and one of the things we did was we built out or helped renovate food manufacturing plants. So that was like one of my core memories. Growing up, it’s like working in these manufacturing plants that make some of our favorite foods and being like, this is dirty, I’m never going to work here again. I never want to be in this situation, working in the roofs of these warehouses. And now I’m helping my girlfriend make food. Manufacture food. I’ve learned so much about the food industry from the manufacturer standpoint, distribution, lead times. It’s a whole ecosystem. It’s a whole thing. Now that’s knowledge in my banks that I can share with somebody else or I can apply it to consulting or whatever, right? I have that tangible knowledge and time experience because I’ve been working with Erm restricted that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Right. I never thought I would be making cheese at 2:00 a.m. In the morning and the next day have to go in and critique a student’s painting and then help somebody with Python code.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Eric Thompson:

That’s part of what gets you these experiences, right? You’re just being open to all these different worlds. So my advice with them would be be open to these weird directions that life could take you. Make sure you document where you’ve been and build networks wherever you go, because that also allows you to be a connector and to be that person at the nexus of all these different silos that can connect people who never probably would have been connected before. I consider myself like a nexus because I play in academia, but a lot of my friends are still heavily into the design world, whether it’s service design or the local IxDA, right? So you get to play in a lot of different worlds. So it’s just really about being open to different experiences and then leveraging the connections and the knowledge that you’ve gotten from all these different experiences to create new connections and new things. I think that’s really my advice to anybody who’s interested in following, I guess, my path.

Maurice Cherry:

Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What do you want the next chapter of your story to be?

Eric Thompson:

Oh, Maurice, I’m trying to figure that out, man. I’m trying to figure that out. So I’m working on a company called IO Toys and I feel like this is my first self-driven entrepreneur endeavor since Walimu. I’m excited about it because I think it’s more at the core of what I like making, which is, like, crazy, interactive, cutting edge technology. So I’m working on this one product that I’m trying to do, haptic feedback for holograms. That’s something that I’m really excited about. And so I want to announce it and then maybe, I don’t know, try to get into some accelerators or I’m not really sure how I want to run this business. I just know that I do. I have these ideas and I want to put them out there and see where they go. I’m always going to have new ideas, but this is one of the, I think, the most core to my passion. I want to pursue and see where it goes. So right now, the way I’m kind of organizing my mental plan is I’m going to see where this IO Toys thing goes, and then after that, I might just try to get into consulting or something like that, something simple. Because I think one of the things, like, with the person with as many ideas as I have, you can always be working on something new. So you could do that forever, but it can get tiring, too.

Maurice Cherry:

Yes.

Eric Thompson:

If we’re being real about it. Right. There is a limited amount of energy that you can really put into every idea that you have. So right now, I think I’m going to put my energy into seeing where this goes, and then after that, I might try to simplify a little bit while still doing things that I like. Yeah, I’m excited about this. I did a logo for it that I think came out really good. Let me paraphrase, I have never been a good visual designer, good user researcher. I think I’m good at designing customer journeys. I think I’m good at designing concepts, strategies. Visually, though. Nah. My best user interfaces that I designed were the ones that I screenshotted other user interfaces into sketch and picked them apart and made my own. And those were mid at best. But I did a logo for IoToys that I’m pretty proud of. I did incorporate somebody else’s design work. I mean, I redid it and made it my own, but I’m going to cite them in the logo. Somebody off of Dribbble, but I incorporate some of the elements that they used into the logo. I’m really proud of it. I think it’s, like, one of my best logos that I’ve ever designed.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice.

Eric Thompson:

So I’m excited. I’m excited about this.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice.

Eric Thompson:

We’ll see where that goes. That’ll be the next step. And then obviously see how Eat Unrestricted goes.

Maurice Cherry:

Got you.

Eric Thompson:

And then seeing how the Innovation Lab. See how all the other…a lot of irons in the fire.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I was just about to say that. See how the other irons in the fire will keep going.

Eric Thompson:

Yeah. And I bought a house, so I’m like, that’s a whole monster in and of itself, man.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice! Congratulations.

Eric Thompson:

Thank you. Lots of juggling going on right now. It’s cool. I definitely had an exciting time in the city.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work and everything? Where can they find that online?

Eric Thompson:

I would say I’m active on LinkedIn, so I try to document the stuff I do there. It just becomes kind of a repository for me at this point of the stuff that I do. So if I ever forget, I can just go back and look through my posts. Pretty active on LinkedIn. The Spelman Innovation Lab Instagram is @SpelmanIL. So I post what we do in the lab there. I try to document a lot of the work so that people have a really good idea of the feels of the lab and the vibe and so on. My personal website is pericthompson.myportfolio.com, and you can get to that from my LinkedIn as well. Yeah, I mean, I have a personal Instagram, but it’s more casual. It’s @et.llamacasa. So [E-T]-L-L-A-M-A-C-A-S-A. So those are the channels that you can find me. That’s pretty much where I mostly post all my stuff. I think that’s it. And then @EatUnrestricted is the company, the vegan cheese company.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, I’ll make sure that we put all those links and everything in the show notes. But Eric Thompson, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I know we had first met, like, back in 2019 doing I did a podcasting workshop, a two day workshop at Spelman through the Innovation Lab once. It’s great to catch up with you again, but then I didn’t know that your story was so rich, I guess is kind of the best way to put it. Like, you’ve done so much stuff. I feel like you’re like an idea factory. Like, there’s also just a lot of things that you can do, but just the fact that you’re also in a position where you’re giving back to not just the students at Spelman, but also to just the entire Spelman community, staff, faculty, and then continuing to do stuff here in the city. These are the kind of success stories I think more people really need to hear about, especially from people like us that are like jack-of-all-trades. You’ve managed to take all of your disparate interests and form them into this career and life, and it all is working for you. And so for me, that’s super inspiring, and I hope for people that are listening that it’s inspiring as well. So thank you for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Eric Thompson:

Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure being here. And yeah, keep doing what you’re doing. This podcast is great, you know, we appreciate that.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Carl Bogan

Artificial intelligence has been a running theme on the podcast this year, and I couldn’t think of a better person to talk shop about this with than the one and only Carl Bogan. Through his studio, Myster Giraffe, he’s created viral mashups that have racked up millions of views across social media.

Carl spoke a bit about his experiences as a visual effects artist, and then we went into a deep discussion about all things synthetic media — generative AI, deepfakes, media literacy, government regulations…you name it. But we didn’t just geek out about that! Carl told his story about how he got interested in visual effects, what motivates him, and where he wants his work to go in the future. This episode will definitely give you some food for thought!

A selection of Myster Giraffe’s work:

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Carl Bogan:

My name is Carl Bogan, and I am a digital creator and VFX professional living in Los Angeles.

Maurice Cherry:

How’s 2023 been treating you so far?

Carl Bogan:

2023 is…every year is a bit different. This one is no different from that. Starting out, very interestingly, more inbounds from Myster Giraffe. The VFX industry is a bit slow right now. The strike isn’t making it much better, but of course, always optimistic, looking for new opportunities in every single direction.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’ve been hearing from friends of mine in L.A. and other folks in the entertainment industry how the strike is kind of…I guess it’s reverberating throughout the industry. Because it’s one thing when the writers are striking, but then that affects production, it affects actors, et cetera. So, yeah, I mean, we’re recording this now as the strike is going on. I have a feeling it might still be going on by the time this airs. Given that, what plans do you have for the summer?

Carl Bogan:

Lots of family traveling time, creating new projects, coming up with new ideas, new ways to create new ways to engage with people. And so sort of never stop creating is one of my mottos. So the strike doesn’t really stop that.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Is there anything in particular that you want to try to launch by the end of the year?

Carl Bogan:

I’m still working on a list. I have a long list, I’m turning into a short list, but Myster Giraffe is always sort of near the top of that list. It tends to act as a calling card in general, and so I keep creating every — I don’t know — every six weeks or so, maybe every eight weeks of a new piece in order to keep the beach ball in the air.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, you’ve mentioned Myster Giraffe a couple of times now, and I think listeners have probably seen your work a lot on social media. If not, I’ll make sure to link to a couple of clips in the show notes. But yeah, talk to me about Myster Giraffe. Like, I’m really curious on where that name came from.

Carl Bogan:

So Myster Giraffe is an online handle I created in April of 2019 as a way of honing my deepfake skills in a world that was very much pre-deepfake, generally speaking. And so the name Myster Giraffe was sort of a flippant reaction to wanting to put something out there, seeing if it had any value, and so it just sort of stuck after the first video went very viral. So now I was married to it, so it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it or not at that point.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Carl Bogan:

But I do like it.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty unique name, Myster Giraffe. And also, I guess the spelling of it probably also calls into a bit of mystery as well.

Carl Bogan:

Now, that was on purpose, namely because Myster Giraffe was born out of not seeing any…I had seen deepfakes to date at that point, but not any deepfakes that I could identify with in terms of Black culture or pop culture. And so I wanted to be that voice, but at the same time, knowing that history has told me, for good or bad or indifferent, you can be marginalized as a Black creator. If you show your work and then put yourself next to your work, the work may not stand by itself. So the M-Y-S — the mystery in Myster Giraffe — the goal was to be sort of more of a Banksy character, and that did work for many, many years and it really stoked the interest of many media outlets and people. Like, I wanted the work to stand by itself instead of having to say, “oh, well, that’s good for a Black creator,” or for that, sometimes people can put an asterisk next to your accomplishment.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, brother, you do not have to tell me about that. I know that all too well. I mean, it’s one thing…yeah, you put your face or your likeness or something next to it, and then people will automatically kind of either discount it or buy into it. But when I was doing the Black Weblog Awards back in…I did that from 2005 to 2011. And even though it was, like, gaining notoriety, like NPR had reported on it, et cetera, I knew that people would not even pay attention to it just because it had “Black” in the name. Like, it would just go in one ear and out the other. And that was also when Obama was running, and so everything was post-racial. So if you mention anything with “Black” in it, you must be racist. So I know that feeling all too well and kind of being able to stand behind a bit of a pseudonym or just to kind of obfuscate your personal self from the work helps the work stand out on its own.

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely. Not to mention, I was thinking about having a clear delineation between me and Myster Giraffe, in case I get into a bit of trouble. You know, deepfakes are still sort of new, and so I didn’t know what I would create that may or may not get me in hot water. So I wanted to be able to put up a firewall just in case. So I can go get a sandwich and not get attacked.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, it’s interesting you say that, because I thought about that as I was looking at some of the clips, and one of the last clips that I remember seeing from Myster Giraffe was — you probably know the one I’m talking about — is Jonathan Majors and Michael B. Jordan, you know, doing the Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett, you know, “Don’t Look Any Further”. And I think that came out and then maybe it was like the next month or so, those allegations about Jonathan Majors dropped, and it was like, ohhhh.

Carl Bogan:

Mm-hmm. You never know.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. And it was in that media time where he and Michael B. Jordan were doing a lot of press together for Creed III and everything, and people were kind of speculating on their friendship or their bromance or what have you, and then that happens, and…yeah. I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying.

Carl Bogan:

Yes. You can’t always control the narratives when they leave your mouse click.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. You mentioned wanting to do the studio to kind of hone your talent, but what was the other inspirations behind starting your own studio?

Carl Bogan:

When I first started doing Myster Giraffe, I got a lot of inbounds from different people who wanted to work with me. This is even before I was really ready for the attention. I had been in freelance visual effects for maybe fifteen years at that point, so I was very familiar with freelance work. And so the demand kept growing and growing and growing and growing and working more and more brands, more and more music artists. And so it just made sense to launch an entire effort in order to take advantage of the inbounds.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay, so just sort of have one place to kind of funnel everything into.

Carl Bogan:

Sort of. That’s correct.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Now, do you have a team that you work with or is it just you?

Carl Bogan:

Generally? It’s just me, unless thee job is too big and I need to scale it. And so if I have to do production onsite, I have to scale the team. I have people I go to and I hire, and we work very well together. Friends of mine, colleagues of mine. But for the most part, the Myster Giraffes online as far as the social media effort, that’s just me.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. How do you come up with the ideas? I think some of them probably certainly are just inspired by, of course, Black culture. A lot of them are. But like…Steve Harvey as Megan Thee Stallion? Where do these ideas come from?

Carl Bogan:

There’s an instinct that only shows up during certain times. There’s maybe about 10 out of the 40 that I’ve created, I think around 40 or so, that I knew what they were going to do before they did it because there’s a little tickle that you get. There’s a little sort of…where you can’t stop giggling. You’re working on it and you watch it 37 times and you’re saying, “this is a good one. This is really good.” So I allow myself time in between creations. That way I don’t wear that muscle out. I wanted to always be able to recognize the funny before it shows up. Some of them I do them for me. Some of them I do as an experiment. Some of them I do as tributes. But there is a certain section that I have an idea for what’s going to work well within the demographic that I’ve sort of created or taken home in.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, some of them certainly are really fun. I mean, they’re all fun. I don’t want to say some of them aren’t, but I think the one that really sort of stuck out to me and I was like “wait a minute, who is this?” I think it was one for Insecure…for the HBO show. And Issa Rae singing Luther Vandross.

Carl Bogan:

That’s one of my favorites. Well, because that one’s fun. So what normally I like to do when I first started out, it was a bit more cheeky. Man over woman, big difference over here, big difference over there, chasm in the middle. That’s where the joke is. But then pretty quickly I realized, “oh, you can really tell stories with this and sort of come up with alternate realities.” So that was before the term metaverse had really — or multiverse had really — sort of come to fruition. And so I had the idea of Rick and Morty’s intergalactic cable mixed with what Myster Giraffe sort of became. And so each of these sort of are their own reality and their own channel in a multiverse somewhere existing in simultaneous fashion. And so that one was all about the love triangle between Issa and their two male interests on thee show. And so it lines up with the lyrics of the song. Who doesn’t love that song? It’s an iconic song. Who doesn’t love Issa Rae? She’s fantastic. And so you put them together, you cut a trailer around it to help the story get sticky and then you put it out.

Maurice Cherry:

Now when you put that out, was it for HBO and the show, or were you just doing it just to release it through the studio?

Carl Bogan:

That was spec, but I wanted it to look as if it was commissioned because why not? I have no doubt in my mind they would have commissioned it or asked to repost it had it not been a day before they launched the next season. I just kind of got to it late because I don’t rush through these things. It’s like, oh, let me sit down, I’m ready to create again. And so Luther Vandross actually reposted the video — or rather his team — and most people from the show reposted it minus Issa. I’m not sure if she liked or she didn’t. I guess that’s not really the point. It’s to make art that I like and then see if others can appreciate it.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. What does the process look like when you’re working on a new project? Like, you have an idea for one of these deepfake videos, or if it’s something from a client, like, what’s the process behind going from idea to conception?

Carl Bogan:

I would say if it’s for me, the process is 80% concept and that is a very passive process initially, whether that’s daily Twitter usage or Instagram usage or TikTok usage. It’s a sort of…collecting things, collecting daily life into your brain. And then I sit down when I’m ready to create. I just kind of feel like, you know what, I’m ready. I sit down and it takes about three to four hours of just kind of going through, combing through what I want to say. I think… I want to have an idea. I think I want to do something with 70s African-American hair care products. I think I want to use this person. This person’s sort of been of the zeitgeist lately. Let me see if I can work them in. And so I kind of have this rolling list of people and topics in my head over in between the pieces. So then when I sit down, that three or four hours, I march, march, march, march, march and then I eventually end at a singular point which is a video. And then I back into it. So I always choose a person second. So I always choose the video first. It’s easier, I found, to not have to force a person into a place. So the people…if I wanted to do a person right now, I wouldn’t really be able to because I haven’t found the piece of media that fits yet. So finding the media is much harder than finding the subject. But if it is a studio, they normally come with thee concept [of] what they want to do. So that’s the easy part. Then they say, okay, great, they have an idea. I’ll either go on set and VFX supe it to make sure they’re shooting it correctly, because there’s a lot of things you can get wrong. We do a data collection of the person that you want to put in what they just shot, you know, we use a stand in. And so I’ve also created a very unique process of data collection for the subject. So that takes about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, and then I take all the data back to my workstation, my home office, and I make a data set of the data. I get the plates from the studio and it takes about an hour to pre-process everything. And then I start training. It takes about a day and a half or two days. Then the compositing takes about a week, depending on how long and short it is, how perfect they want to be, how much they’re paying me to be perfect. So for the Myster Giraffe stuff, I purposefully don’t spend more than a day on the compositing because it’s not about how perfect it is, it’s about the story that it’s telling. If I do that, I’ll never get done because of my VFX background. I know too much in order to make it take less time.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Carl Bogan:

That’s about it. That’s sort of the broad strokes.

Maurice Cherry:

So it sounds like with Myster Giraffe, at least for your self initiated stuff, you kind of want to be a little bit more and this is not a diss by saying this, but it’s kind of rough and dirty, like you want to go ahead and get it and get it out there and get a reaction from people.

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely. I didn’t want to chase the pixel perfect deepfakes that some people chase, which is fine. I want them to push the technology forward. But I also realized, like I said, from being in visual effects, the goal is to have it be so good it disappears. Good VFX are invisible. And so since putting different faces on purpose, on different people, the goal is to create cognitive dissonance. So being perfect there is sort of working backwards. And so I do a good job of blending skin tones, face sizing matting and masking around the faces. Yada, yada, yada. So I get a lot of praise on how well integrated they look, but nothing past that because if they can’t see the job that I’ve done for this particular world, then I think it goes against the work that I’m doing. So sometimes I see an error and I just leave it in.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

Because it’s not worth the three hours to fix it.

Maurice Cherry:

Right. I’m curious also…when you put it out I’m imagining people aren’t coming back to you saying “oh, between this timestamp and this timestamp it’s a little off” or something. They just like the concept.

Carl Bogan:

Correct. I have yet to hear anyone complain about the compositing or the face generation because the story generative is so enthralling that it doesn’t really matter that it’s not 100% perfect. I will take 85 to 90 for this since it’s just for social media.

Maurice Cherry:

And I think that’s probably just an important thing that creatives listening can kind of apply to their own work. Like don’t let perfect get in the way of good. I don’t know how that saying goes. It’s something like that. But done is better than…

Carl Bogan:

Done is better than perfect.

Maurice Cherry:

Done is better than perfect. Thank you. Because you can spend a lot of time trying to get something to what you think is perfect. But the reality is that once it’s out there in the world, the person that sees it already thinks it’s perfect as it is. I mean there’s going to be some that will scrutinize, but for the most part, just put it out there and get feedback. You can always iterate on your own time but don’t let that stop you from releasing the thing, you know?

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely. Put the work out. Don’t worry about it. You can always go back and fix it, but put the work out. I remember the very first one that I did — very first piece was a Will Smith and Cardi B that he ended up reposting. I’m going to believe, to date, it’s still the third highest viewed post on his social media account. And I remember getting ready to really get granular and get into each pixel, make sure it’s perfect. And I stopped myself and said “you know what, this is good enough.” And I know sometimes you hear that, oh, “good enough is never good enough.” Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is good enough depending on the place you’re sending it and what you want to use it for and the time that you have and the effort that you have. And so I would say that examine that before you really spend a lot of time on something that may not matter in that context.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I think that’s good advice. Now you’re working in…the area that you’re working in is known kind of generally as synthetic media, which I feel like is the talk of the tech industry these days. Generative AI, personalized media, deepfakes, like you said, with some of the social clips that you’ve done. And I’m sure that you’ve got thoughts on all of this. So I do have some questions. I’d like for us to chop it up a little bit and talk about some of this stuff. Now, the most obvious thing is synthetic media has the potential to kind of blur the line between what’s real and what’s fake. When you’re working with synthetic media, are there sort of ethical considerations that you think are completely essential for doing this work? Like, when a project comes in or when you’re working on your own project, what are sort of the ethical considerations that you have around creating something?

Carl Bogan:

So I will start with saying deepfake porn is a scourge on society, and they need to legislate that into the ground. It’s not okay. And I say that because that’s where all of this started.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

I say a lot of the tech industry is born from video games and porn. Well, this is no different. And actually, as quiet as it’s kept, a lot of creators would use a forum on a deepfake porn site because that’s where all of the information was on how to do this, how to do that. It was sort of an oddly placed forum in sort of a deep, dark place on the Internet. Sort of, I would imagine, in the same way that YouTube was created and how to get compression rates down and so on and so forth. So I don’t know how it still exists. I won’t list the website because it’s not important. But the sites that do indulge in that practice, I think they should be held to a much higher standard and shut down, so to speak. Because permission and consent in synthetic media is extremely important. Which is exactly why I and many other creators do not do work or use anyone’s likeness for money where they did not consent to it. And so if someone came to me and said, right now, “hey, I want you to put Steve Harvey in a commercial, I’ll pay you money,” I have to say no, because I did not get Steve Harvey’s permission to do that. And so when it’s all fun and games on the Internet, I’m not getting paid for it. It’s fine. It’s parody. As soon as you take money for it, it steps outside of parody and it’s paid for hire. And now you’re infringing on his likeness. Now, that being said, here’s where it gets tricky. You take Steve Harvey’s likeness, you put it into the machine, it turns those pixels into numbers. The numbers turns into whatever goes into the latent space of the training, and it spits out something that looks like Steve Harvey, but legally, is it Steve Harvey? Because I always ask sort of this thought experiment: if you have two twin brothers who are identical, one is a senator and one does pornography, what happens? It hadn’t happened yet. But is the twin brother who is in pornography, is he allowed to practice his pornography as well as next to his brother who’s running for Senate? And so that’s sort of, at least from where I’m standing — how do you handle likeness and what [someone then] does with something that looks like you, right? And so we’re kind of reaching this grey space of what to do with that and I don’t think anyone really has the answer right now. But I will say that having ownness over your likeness, not in the way that it has been done for the last 20 or 30 years, but in a new way…that hasn’t yet been created, I believe that’s going to become very important.

Maurice Cherry:

Last year, right around this time, I was working with a startup. We were doing a magazine and we were doing this issue on Web3 and it was really like my first time diving into, in a deep sense, learning about a lot of these issues. And it was amazing. Like, just hearing about the concept of digital twins and people considering licensing or putting some sort of restrictions around their voice, because someone could take like…someone could take this podcast and the hours of audio that I’ve done and put that into some type of, I don’t know, whatever sort of generative AI type of thing and spit out something that I’ve never said, but they’ve cobbled it together from the words that I’ve said over the years and stuff like that. It was fascinating in like a Black Mirror sci-fi kind of way. But I could see there being some really heinous implications if that is used for nefarious purposes.

Carl Bogan:

Five years ago I was talking to several generative audio companies, and none of them were really that good, if I’m just being honest. But something happened the last six months, because in AI, six months is like six years. And now, all of a sudden, from this one podcast, my voice can be cloned. Your voice can be cloned. And we can be singing Frank Sinatra or saying really inflammatory things about different races and cultures. And so where is it going to be in six months from now? I don’t know. But I will say the technology is allowing for less data to do better impressions visually and audio wise. The future of that I believe is going to…someone’s going to come out with a way to identify or there’s going to be some protocol that everyone’s going to have to adopt if they want to seem as if they are with the time. Sort of like the Truth campaign which got rid of a lot of smokers or stopped a lot of people from smoking. It was a social movement and if you were seen smoking, you were seen as sort of a disgusting act. And because of that, many people do not smoke. And I don’t think the Truth campaign or the Truth company get enough credit for doing that, but I believe it’s going to take that sort of social movement in order to prevent people from being ripped off. Or I think you’ve heard of the kidnap scam where people take your voice and they say, “oh we have Maurice. Maurice, say something.” And you’ll say, “help me, help me give them whatever they want,” just that little bit. And it triggers your family to then go into their banks and their coffers and pull out whatever money they have to satisfy the demands of the would be kidnappers. But little do they know you’re just on vacation in Hawai’i.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

And so that is a real thing that will also happen. And not to be too dystopian or anything, there’s so many other good things that are going to happen.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, yeah.

Carl Bogan:

But these are just the immediate things that are sort of the low hanging fruit. Especially because we’ve been in the media lately and we’re making tools and we’re using tools but we’re not really getting ahead of them fast enough. But not necessarily saying that these things will happen, it’s just that they can happen. But oftentimes things that can happen will happen.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s true. That’s true.

Carl Bogan:

I forgot. Is it? Occam’s Razor. No, I think it’s something it’s one of the laws.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s probably like Murphy’s Law or something like that.

Carl Bogan:

Murphy’s Law. That’s what you have. Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, to that point, you know, you’re right. I mean, I even think about, you know, some technology that we have now that we take for granted, like cell phones and things like that. Those were inspired by science fiction. So you kind of have this interesting, almost symbiotic relationship of how the technology can be influenced by fiction and then that ends up influencing what people actually do with it in real life. It’s a weird sort of process and I think you’re right; it is going to have to get to some point where there’s some type of protocol or regulation. I know the government has been talking to Sam Altman from OpenAI about artificial intelligence and how it can be used. So I can see the government trying to put some guardrails around this. But in the meantime, what do you think? Actually before we do that — side note, you mentioned Truth. I was on a Truth street team in 1999.

Carl Bogan:

Thank you for your service.

Maurice Cherry:

No, you mentioned that and I was like is the Truth campaign still a thing? It’s still a thing. It’s been around for 25 years. Damn.

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Carl Bogan:

Now little did we know that they would go from cigarettes to vaping which I think depending who you ask is better or worse. But at least we don’t have to smell it.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Carl Bogan:

So maybe that was the goal. I’m not entirely sure.

Maurice Cherry:

But to go back to that whole thing about protocol in the meantime, what do you think we can do to sort of cultivate some literacy or some critical thinking around how folks can sort of, I guess, navigate and discern between what’s synthetic media and what’s authentic media? Like we’re already starting to see political campaign ads use kind of this generative video or generative AI for some things of course. I think probably earlier this year you were starting to see people do those AI avatars and stuff like that. And I know one way that people were sort of saying, like, “oh, well, you can tell this is fake. Look at the hands, because they could never get the hands right.” But now they’re starting to get a little better with the hands. But in the meantime, until this sort of protocol is implemented, how can people start to spot the fake, I guess?

Carl Bogan:

Well, for video, it’s easier right now. So for fully generated, like, prompted video, the data is not there. The computational math hasn’t really been done yet on the full models to make them fully realistic. Yet six months ago, it was much worse. Six months later, it’s much better. Six months, it’ll be even better. And two years from now, it’ll be almost impossible to tell. Sort of like Unreal Engine. And they got really, really good at generating rock formations and trees and landscapes because they’re using scans of actual rocks and trees and landscapes. Science plus computing power plus data equals reality, essentially.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

And so eventually, we won’t be able to tell. And so I actually work with a larger group put on by MIT. It’s sort of like a disinformation panel of people all around the world, and we get on a call once or twice a year. We talk about where things are, what can we do to help usher in a safer future, a more honest future, and a more ethical future for everyone, so that we don’t end up in a Black Mirror episode, which we’re rapidly racing towards. And so one of the easiest things, I believe, that always comes up is just an identifier, whether that’s a logo or a bug in the bottom right corner or somewhere on the screen that lets you know what you’re looking at has been generated. That’s it. It’s nothing terribly difficult to do, but there just has to be one commission or one protocol that everyone signs up for says, you know what? I’m going to be a part of the winning team in terms of wanting to make sure that disinformation is not spread, whether that’s innocent or whether it is really damaging. There was a person who went to the Met Gala. Allegedly, she wasn’t there. Someone posted her in a beautiful gown on thee red carpet, and she was at home in her pajamas, so that’s not a big deal. But then you see, like, you’re saying, the political information where you see Trump kissing Fauci.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

And that’s a big deal. And so these are just images, or the images where you see Trump running from arresting officers.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, I remember those. I remember seeing those. Yeah, yeah.

Carl Bogan:

Which is weird because you would imagine with the video capabilities of deepfakes and whatnot, and especially with voice generation, you can do a much better fake, but the more data points you have, humans are really good at spotting things that are not real. And so with images, they say a picture is worth 1000 words, but people are generally pretty bad at noticing what’s fake about one single image just because of the way we’re wired. Ever since we’re born, we open our eyes, we start collecting data about what’s real and what’s not, about what does a human face look like, what proportions, what are the microexpressions, so on and so forth. But you can’t capture any of that from a single image.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, you know, what you mentioned there is sort of an interesting corollary to what I tell people all the time about design. I often have encountered people over the years that are like, “oh, I’m not creative, I’m not a designer,” that sort of thing. But I tell them that everything that they have used or encountered in the world is a byproduct of design. Like the clothes you wear, the chair you sit in, the car you drive. Someone had to really think about that and cater that to a human’s usage or what have you. And so we know when something has been designed poorly. We don’t have to be a designer to know that, but we have enough just sort of like tactile experience with designed objects to know when something is poorly designed. So it’s kind of a corollary to what you’re saying with we see and know enough as humans to know when something is just not like maybe it’s in that uncanny valley, but something is just not quite right about the image that we’re seeing. Like the Pope in a white puffer jacket or something like that. Is that real, you know? That kind of thing.

Carl Bogan:

Exactly. I was reading a book about that, about design. I believe the author called it the Norman Door. Have you ever gone up to a door and you didn’t read the push or pull sign? But it had a handle, and handles generally mean grab and pull.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Carl Bogan:

But you grab the handle and then you push in where you’re supposed to push. And so you feel kind of stupid. You grab the handle and you pull toward you and it goes and then you see the word, it says push. Well, that’s not your fault, right? That’s bad design. Yeah, flat surfaces are for pushing and pulling gives you a handle and there’s no two ways about but, you know, depending on where you stand.

Maurice Cherry:

Like I like that analogy. That makes sense. One thing that I love what you’re doing with Myster Giraffe, and you talked about this earlier, is kind of…you’re using synthetic media to kind of amplify otherwise, I think, marginalized voices and faces. Honestly, looking ahead, what developments or advances do you see in synthetic media, and how do you plan to kind of contribute to that through Myster Giraffe?

Carl Bogan:

So what I would like to see, for one, is I’d love to see the world’s first synthetic host for an awards show. I think you can really get away with that for an awards show because the stakes are low.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

Or like a Dancing With The Stars or something where it’s purely entertainment. There’s no real weight on it. And then what I’d also like to see is…I’d like to see someone take the reins, if they haven’t already yet, and design a show specifically to allow you the choice of who you want to be the main character. So let’s say you have three identical body types. You have 5’10”, brown skin, clean shaven. There are several actors that can fit in that category. And so if you take three of those actors and you have one sort of dummy body, if you will, run through the scenes, run the acting, and still tell a good story. Right. And then let’s say, much like Bandersnatch on Netflix, you could choose your own adventure. I would love to be able to sit down and choose who I want to see in that role for that film and then watch it three different times to see how I feel about it. Because a lot of the times how we feel about actors changes how we feel about the film. And so if Jim Carrey was Vin Diesel in Fast and The Furious, the whole movie would feel different.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Carl Bogan:

Even if he wasn’t being funny in the moment, he would feel funnier because of who we know Jim Carrey to be. And so sort of experimenting and playing with that juxtaposition I think will be cool to see. I think also allowing us to…there’s no reason why when shopping online, we shouldn’t be able to see ourselves in the clothes that we want to wear. Why do we have to buy the clothes and send them back? We should be able to see how we look in them before we waste the fuel and polluting the environment, not knowing how it’s going to look on us. So we should be able to deepfake ourselves pretty much wherever we want to, whether that’s in a…I’ll give an example. Let’s say Cardi B comes out with a new music video, but she comes out with a version where you can put yourself in it and then everyone can put themselves in it as a means of creating another viral sensation. I mean, there’s so many different flavors of ethical ways to engage with people, allowing them to have fun with it instead of it being all sort of doom and gloom and, “oh, no, they’re gonna come get you.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. You mentioned that about the shopping, and that immediately made me think about what Snap is doing with augmented reality. Like, I think it’s like a Snap…I think it’s called like Shop Suite or Shopping Suite or something like that, where you can do just that. You can sort of use augmented reality to see how clothes will look on you before you buy them. So you can get a sense of like, “oh, this might work for me.” I think Target does this, Amazon does this, for some products where you can use AR to see how like a piece of furniture or a plant or something might fit in your space before you actually buy it. Because you know, if you go to the store, you got to measure, then you got to go to your spot and measure and make sure that it fits and all that kind of stuff. Whereas now you can just use AR to kind of approximate for the most part how something will look on you or in your space. So I could see that being fleshed out more certainly as technology kind of gets better.

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely. I’ve seen them for shoes. I’ve seen people…I just saw someone was just acquired or started working with Amazon for putting, trying shoes on, which is great because the hardest part about trying on shoes is that you have to go there and they don’t have your size, so on and so forth. But being able to see that the shoes are on your feet now, you still can’t feel them, which is the other half of that, but at least you’re halfway there. But I think there’s a lot of ways to use the technology and use your own face. Or my favorite one, or actually two of my favorite ones — one of them is…there’s a quote that says, “today is the youngest you’ll ever be ever again and tomorrow you’ll be older and older and older. So for online creators whose faces are their money or their investments, they spend a lot of time on skincare and wellness products and Athletic Greens to make sure their skin is glowing and they never bank the data. They never bank the data. And so right now you could take 30 minutes out of your day or every year 30 minutes and bank your data and keep…and sort of put this version of you in carbonite. So in five years from now, gravity, sun, wind takes us all down eventually. Why not be able to call on that older version of you to essentially freeze a digital version of you in time and have that be your Internet facing version forever?

Maurice Cherry:

I like that.

Carl Bogan:

That cuts down on having to get plastic surgery if you don’t want it, having to get Botox if you don’t want it. Just having an independent version of you that only lives online. Sort of like a Max Headroom that never changes. And I believe that’s going to be a way we’re going to interact with the Internet sort of in the near future. Sort of like a Ready Player One way where you just have your avatar and you can choose to show up how you want to show up because you should have freedom and individuality on the Internet.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Carl Bogan:

And the second one is — and I’m really passionate about this and I haven’t found the right candidate yet because I don’t know if I’m approaching it correctly — is that I would like to offer a burn victim the chance to restore their face digitally for use on the Internet, depending on how severely they were burned and so on and so forth. But if they have enough data of their face before the accident, you can restore their faces if they so choose.

Maurice Cherry:

If they choose, yeah.

Carl Bogan:

There’s so many different use cases that have yet to be seen that I’m really excited about either Myster Giraffe creating them or other people creating them.

Maurice Cherry:

You know, you mentioned the thing about the digital host, and immediately I was like, if there’s any media entity that I think that could probably pull that off and it would work, it’s probably BET. Like, BET had “Cita’s World” back in I was hoping you would like early 2001, but not only that, they brought Cita back. I think it was in 2021. BET had a reality show called “The Encore” that had these like it had like, Black girl groups from the it had like 702 and Total and I think Kiely Williams and some other folks and they were like all in a house, like, trying to make a hit or something like that. And Cita was the host. I mean, granted, it was only like, on a television, but it was like a more updated version of Cita that would be the so, like, if anybody, I think, could pull it off and at least has a precedent for it, BET, I’m putting that out there.

Carl Bogan:

You know, I’ve used that example and depending on the room you’re in, they won’t know it. They don’t know who Cita is. They’ve never heard of Cita.

Maurice Cherry:

Right!

Carl Bogan:

Cita who? Cita who? But that was ground– And this was 20 years ago. Yeah, actually, I was reading the story behind that and it was a couple of brothers out of Atlanta, I believe, that came up with the idea. And it was very popular and it fell out for whatever reasons. But I think you’re right about that. I think they definitely have the prestige in order to bring that back or to be the first. Let’s just say…let’s hope Tyler Perry gets to buy BET and puts it up.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, speaking of Atlanta, I want to kind of shift the conversation because we spent a lot of time, you know, just kind of talking shop, But learning some more about you as I was kind of doing research for this interview…you’re from Atlanta originally?

Carl Bogan:

I am from Atlanta.

Maurice Cherry:

Tell me what your time was like here.

Carl Bogan:

So I’m from Atlanta and I went to elementary school through high school and college. I started out going to…I got a band scholarship to go to Clark-Atlanta University. I was in the drumline, like most of the people in 2001 who played an instrument at the time. Only stayed there for a year, went to Georgia State for a couple of years for a graphic design foundation. Wasn’t really thrilled with the program, wasn’t really into graphic design as much as I thought it was. I was more into the motion. And so I left Georgia State after two years and went to AIU for the last year and a half to focus on visual communication, where I really dug into 3D, specifically Maya and After Effects and whatnot. Graduated, did an internship at Riot Atlanta, which I believe was absorbed by Company 3, and got my start. Left there three months later, worked in graphic design and motion graphics for the next six months, then I said, “you know what, I’m just going to go for it.” So I left to go to Los Angeles.

Maurice Cherry:

And so for your time here in ATL at Georgia State and then at AIU — I’m kind of trying to place this in terms of the time frame. I’m guessing this is like right around late 90s, early 2000s kinda?

Carl Bogan:

I graduated college in 2005.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. So a little bit later. Okay. But I was trying to think of what the curriculum might have been, because what it sounds like is what you wanted to learn, there might have just been maybe just a limit in terms of how much the school could teach you.

Carl Bogan:

Absolutely. Everything was still books. YouTube didn’t really exist in the way that it did now. I believe They just got started and everything was 240p. And so if you wanted to learn it, you get a book and you get a DVD and good luck. So that’s not my preferred way of learning. Neither is most people’s based on the success of online courses. But I would say I didn’t really learn what I needed to to be competitive until I left Atlanta. Unfortunately, I had to come to Los Angeles, which at the time, and I think before the pandemic, they were still the number one market for motion graphics and visual effects. Now it’s much more global, so I don’t know if they’re still number one, but I do know that a lot of filming still happens in Atlanta, but rarely, if ever is there any post-production done in Atlanta. It still comes back to Los Angeles.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, you know, we talked about this a bit before recording. You were like back then, the only places you really could have gotten a job was, like you said, TBS. What was the other place you mentioned? I forgot already.

Carl Bogan:

TBS, The Weather Channel…

Maurice Cherry:

The Weather Channel! That’s right. The Weather Channel. Or if you’re lucky, Cartoon Network.

Carl Bogan:

Correct. That was sort of it. It was sort of a one horse town in terms of post-production. Now it’s maybe a three horse town, which is great. I’m happy to see them growing, but there’s still not a lot of shops and certainly not — I know Method Studios opened up an office there, maybe a couple of others, but it’s definitely not a booming industry there yet.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Atlanta, I feel like, has always been…and God bless them. I was working in the tourism industry like in 2005 and 2006. And I got to tell you, Atlanta was kind of as a city, and I say this only from, like, a tourism perspective, not from a cultural perspective, but from a tourism perspective…Atlanta was kind of failing because we had lost as a city…we had lost this really big convention. I think it was the Home Builders show. And that was like something that brought in like a billion dollars worth of revenue into the city every year, and then they just chose another city. Hurricane Katrina happened in…I think it was 2005. I think Katrina happened, and Atlanta picked up a lot of their convention business, and that really kind of turned things around, I think, for the state to the point where they were able to lobby to state government. And then state government started putting in these tax credits for entertainment. And then that’s how these production studios started coming here and filming. I’m curious as to what Atlanta would have looked like if we hadn’t…I mean, benefited is probably the wrong word, but if we hadn’t benefited from being able to pick up that business from New Orleans, because a lot of people, at least back then, really didn’t want to come to Atlanta. They had a really negative perception of Atlanta, partially from Freaknik, that just carried over into the next decade, but then also know people would come downtown and there was nothing to do. Like, they come downtown, and after five o’clock, everything is dead. And conventioneers would often be angry about thee fact that they can’t walk from their hotel to the restaurant without getting accosted by homeless people. And I don’t want to bring my family here, and there’s a whole bunch of strip clubs, there’s a lot of Black people. I just don’t know what to know to do…that whole thing. And the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau was really trying hard to, like, we need to find a way to brand the city. Like, we need something like Milton Glazer’s “I Love New York” or something like that. And they paid this agency like $8 million to put together this Brand Atlanta campaign. Were you here when Brand Stlanta happened? I think you might have been maybe on the way to L.A.

Carl Bogan:

Might have just left. I left in 2007.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, they did this whole Brand Atlanta campaign, and they paid for this really bad logo that was like a combination…like, if you took the Target logo and the Ubisoft logo and put it in a blender, it basically just looked like a bullet hole, which probably was not a great visual for the city. It’s like ATL in this red bullet hole. And they had produced a song called “The ATL” with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Ludacris, because I remember being in the [Georgia] Dome when that happened, when they premiered it, I was like, “this is really bad.” And granted, people still come to Atlanta for the music, and the entertainment and stuff, but they wasted so much money on that branding campaign, it was ridiculous. I say all of that to say that Atlanta really sort of benefited from that in some ways in the creative industry. But like, I think in other ways, you know, it took a while for the schools to catch up because Atlanta is pretty unique in that we have so many HBCUs, but then we also have kind of some top tier schools like Georgia Tech or Emory or something. And there’s also like art schools here. There’s [The] Art Institute [of Atlanta]. Well, Atlanta College of Art got absorbed into [The] Art Institute [of Atlanta], but the Portfolio Center, SCAD now has a campus here, but they didn’t back then. And now the city, I think, is known for its creative output. But for creatives that are here, and I can tell you this from trying to do the show, it’s been so hard to try to get Atlanta people on this show. They don’t want to do it. Or there’s always some excuse, or…and I mean that this is probably neither here nor there. But I say that to say I think Atlanta outputs a lot of creative work. I think it’s tough to be a creative and stay here because the infrastructure is just not supported from the business end. It may be from the community end, but not from the business end. There’s a lot of folks, a lot of really talented folks I know that have had to pick up and leave because the opportunities aren’t here.

Carl Bogan:

The opportunities aren’t there. I would agree with you. I just shot a music video in Atlanta maybe five weeks ago. Hopefully it’s going to release soon. And shooting the music video there with a small budget and three days of prep would have been impossible in Los Angeles, be completely impossible. I was able to show up on a Friday afternoon with nothing, no talent. Well, I had the main talent, but no supporting roles. It was a two day shoot, had zero locations, and in a day and a half I had everything. So I had the warehouse location that had proper lighting and had the white psyche and they had the robotic arm. I had the people who knew other people. I mean, it’s a very small community. The people working in post-production or production in Atlanta is a very small, insulated community. But I was able to find one person who let me into that community enough for me to get the resources that I needed. And so as much as I say Atlanta is not ready, it is ready if you have that one person. But if you show up to Atlanta and you know no one, you’re going to have a really hard time with trying to make it happen.

Maurice Cherry:

That is true.

Carl Bogan:

So, you know…it can be tricky, but they kind of saved my bacon. So I do want to say that. Now, that being said, all the post-production went back to Los Angeles, but in terms of getting stuff shot, finding makeup artists who actually know what they’re doing, B-camera operators, producers. Those people do exist in small amounts. There’s no strike going on there right now, so I think they’re okay.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’m pretty sure there might be some strikes here. I haven’t heard of anything but then I also haven’t really been looking, so I’m not sure. Now, right before you started, Myster Giraffe, you joined Aliza Technologies as their chief technology officer. This was in 2019. Tell me about that experience. How was that?

Carl Bogan:

So I had been freelancing for about a decade at that point, and I was looking for a new opportunity, and I really wanted to build something instead of just being the hired mercenary to solve this problem, which I really like doing, and I’m talented at it, but I just wanted to sink my teeth into something. So I reached out to a buddy of mine who has a company — shout out to Zerply — who does a lot of hiring for the VFX industry, and he connected me with someone who was looking for someone to build a team to create digital avatars. And at the time Lil Miquela was coming out, she was making a lot of noise being the first big one, the first American influencer to be an AI robot, and people didn’t really know what that meant, instead of just I don’t know. It’s sort of like a weird time. Anyway, Brian Lee of the League of Zoom Company, the Honest Company, and ShoeDazzle, had this big idea to have a universe of influencers, and he needed someone to help build the team and get the influencers created digitally. So I was hired in 2018 to facilitate that as a consultant. So I hired people from around the world working from home and getting those sort of…this quarterbacking that process, getting the designs from the concept artist to the sculptor to the renderer to the look of that person. When everyone was created, he said, “all right, we want you to come in here and lead the team and get everything going in person.” So April 1, 2019, got in the office, and besides building computers and setting up networks, asked, “where can I provide the most value?” And he said, “I want you to figure out how to animate these characters.” Prior to that, two months prior to me starting, I talked about deepfake, and they didn’t know what it was, so I told them about what it was and how maybe we can use it to animate the characters, because initially I gave them a budget, a VFX budget, and it was very expensive. And I said, welcome to VFX. And they said, can you make it cheaper? I said probably. So I told them about deepfakes. It was open source code out of the Eastern bloc, so from day one, I start specing out a machine to start learning on, and I don’t have a machine learning background. But what I do have is a method of solving problems from working in VFX, so I didn’t have to have a machine learning background or to solve a problem, so long as I would approach the problem methodically and chart my progress, so on and so forth. So three months from April 1, we were seeing really good signs of progress, and the task was to turn 3D data into a data set that could be used for machine learning to make animation 80 times faster and cheaper. And so three months later, we’re seeing some progress. Six months later we started filing patents. We got granted five patents, and those patents still hold. And that was sort of my role at Aliza was many things, but mainly focusing on the animation of these characters and how to get them, how to use a real human to drive the character, replace their head with a CG character in order to save time and money.

Maurice Cherry:

I’m curious if that work kind of helped feed into what you were sort of doing with Myster Giraffe. Not to say it’s like on-the-job training, but I’m curious if that kind of helped you out in that aspect.

Carl Bogan:

It was absolutely off-the-job training because I would do it on the weekends or in the evenings, because I was trying to, as a person who was not a deepfake artist at the time, I was just practicing. And so what Myster Giraffe started was it was really just scratch paper. I have this idea, I want to know what happens if I use less data for this, or I want to know what happens if I use three different types of data here. And so each of the first, I would say ten or twelve videos was just me trying different things. And then it became, well, I wonder how people are going to respond to this sort of thing. And it just became this sort of social experiment of how are people going to respond to this? Whereas it started as, I wonder how this is going to look if I do this XYZ, how much data do I have? What kind of data do I need? How big does video have to be? So on and so forth.

Maurice Cherry:

So it sounds like that was just a really good, I think, like you said, you had to have something where you could focus on building one thing as opposed to kind of doing these off, I guess, freelance type work, like working, doing one thing here, doing one thing there. You kind of had some stability, it sounds like.

Carl Bogan:

Yeah, I had some stability. I had now had a full time job for the first time in a decade, which was odd because I had not been in that role, but at the same time, I wanted that role so I could sink my teeth in. And so when everyone was settled and in the bed on a Saturday night, I’d show up to work at 8:00 p.m. and stay ’til 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. Wow. And just experiment, experiment, experiment. So there’s a lot of bloods and tears on intimate draft. I would say out of everything I’ve posted, that’s only about 10% of the work I certainly that’s only about 10% of the work I show. The other 90% is in a graveyard of stuff that is either too inappropriate to show because of it’s funny when you try to tell a story sometimes and you’re also trying to use comedy. Sometimes you try to toe the line, but you accidentally fall over to one side or thee other, and if you get lucky, you’ll stay on the good side. But sometimes thee experiments end up on the not so funny side and then you have to bury them or the data doesn’t work out. Like, I’ll give you an example. Some of those videos I’ll sit on for two or three years, and I’ll know I want to use them, but because I don’t have the right data, it doesn’t work out. So Michael B. Jordan, I’ve been trying to get the data of him for two years, and when he was with Lori Harvey and when he was doing different press campaigns and so on and so forth, I couldn’t get the right data. But because of this newest run for Creed III, I was able to get the right data, which made that video happen. So it wasn’t really up to me when I got the data. It just had to sort of arrive and now I could move forward with it.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, interesting, because yeah, like you said earlier about consent, you couldn’t just put this together if the footage didn’t really exist or you didn’t get that permission from them. But now that he’s doing this press work, he’s out there. You’re now able to sort of gather these sources and then use that to put together a clip like that.

Carl Bogan:

That’s correct, yeah. There’s tons of people I would love to do, but I just can’t get the right data for them. Like Prince. He’s gone now, unfortunately, and he looks so different every time you would see him. But it’s hard to really nail down a good data set of him. So it just may never happen. But that’s okay because that’s how it should be.

Maurice Cherry:

Personally, over the years, how would you say you’ve evolved as a creative?

Carl Bogan:

I would say I’ve become more thoughtful in what I create. I also spend less time creating and more time thinking. I used to create for the sake of creating, which scratched a different itch. But I think as I’ve gotten older, I want my creations to have a bigger impact with less effort. Because I believe that’s…when you’re creating a painting of a Campbell Soup can, you know, it seems like student work, but yet that’s one of the biggest American pieces. And so I think the more and more I do Myster Giraffe or anything for that matter. I try to spend more time thinking than time doing. That way I can do it correctly the first time without having to make a lot of changes to end up at the same place.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, this work with synthetic media, I think is only going to improve as technology improves. What kind of keeps you motivated to continue with this?

Carl Bogan:

I would say the storytelling aspect of it all. There are so many stories that need to be told. Whether they’re in still format or whether they’re a full video, whether it’s found footage, whether you have to go on set and shoot something. There are so many stories to be told. And I think that to be Black in this country is to have your culture cherry-picked for what it’s worth. But rarely do we get a chance to be at the forefront of technology and to tell the stories that we like to tell. Which is why there are so many slave biopics we don’t need anymore. Yeah, we want afrofuturism and afropunk to see the newest Spider-Man and to see the character that was the British punk character, but he was Black, was mind blowing for a lot of people because most people have never seen a Black British punk character in their lives. And while that was an entire movement, maybe the 70s, 80s, and 90s and in Europe, we never saw it in the U.S. And so I think just being able to see something and tell a story around it just because we want to, I think that is important and powerful because we’ve never been able to do that before. So now that the technology is being more democratized, I think is the best time to do it now.

Maurice Cherry:

To that point, I’m pretty sure that there are listeners that are hearing what you’re doing and they might be interested in wanting to try to get involved in synthetic media creating it or something in some way. What advice would you give them if they want to try to delve into this deeper?

Carl Bogan:

I would say to start just by absorbing as much knowledge as you can. Everything you ever wanted to learn is now on the Internet. Everything, every single thing. And if you don’t want to learn it, you don’t have to. But if you want to, just go read, go watch a TikTok video, watch a YouTube video, read a Reddit entry, go on a forum, ask someone. But there’s no more excuses for not doing. Everything is available right now.

Maurice Cherry:

Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Maybe this is a little hard to kind of see because of how the technology is changing so rapidly, but what kind of work do you want to be doing in the future?

Carl Bogan:

My immediate goal is to produce the very first deepfake leaning entertainment show. That’s my first goal. There’s a deepfake show that has not been created in the U.S. Yet. There’s one in the U.K. that didn’t do so well. But I would like to create the first deepfake entertainment show in the US. And then from there have a slew of game shows, talk shows, so on and so forth, proving that you can use the technology in an ethical way and have sign off on everyone who watches it.

Maurice Cherry:

I love that. I think you can make it happen too. I really mean it. You’re in L.A. You’ve got skin in the game clearly for doing this. I mean, you’re a pioneer as far as I’m concerned when it comes to this. So I feel like that’s definitely going to happen for you.

Carl Bogan:

Well, I appreciate that. From your mouth to God’s ears.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to wrap this up, where can our audience find out more information about you? Where can they see the clips, the studio? Where can they find that information online?

Carl Bogan:

Sure. So you can find me online on Instagram at @mystergiraffe, which is M-Y-S-T-E-R. Giraffe. G-I-R-A-F-F-E. Or you can just send me an email at carl@mystergiraffe.com.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Carl Bogan, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on the show. Like I mentioned before we started recording, I was super excited to talk to you and this conversation did not disappoint at all. I mean, like I just said earlier, you’re a pioneer when it comes to this. You’ve had skin in the game for years. You’re making work that is one I think showcasing and celebrating Black culture. But you’re doing it in a way that is fun, it’s informative. It’s not like you’re not trying to incite anarchy or anything like that. I mean, really, you’re at the forefront of this as far as I’m concerned. So I really am interested to see how far you can take synthetic media in the future and I really do see that show for you in the future. So thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your story and everything. I really appreciate it.

Carl Bogan:

Of course, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the time together.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Kristina Turner

Kristina Turner is really putting Montgomery on the map when it comes to design and creativity! With over a decade of experience working for in-house agencies around Alabama, her focus on rethinking legacy brands, overseeing digital experiences, and delivering award-winning visual storytelling means she’s definitely someone we need to keep an eye on.

We talked a lot about her work as senior director of marketing and storytelling at Jeremiah Program, as well as her involvement as regional director for district seven of the American Advertising Federation. Of course, we both had to share our experiences about growing up between Selma and Montgomery, volunteering for national professional organizations, and she spoke about what keeps her in Montgomery and what that affords her as a creative. Kristina is really representing for the South, and I’m excited to see what else she’ll do in the future!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Kristina Turner:

I am Kristina Turner. I like to say I’m a creative, but at the heart, at the root of it, I really am a graphic designer. That’s where I started. But I’ve kind of found my way into more than just graphic design. So I’ve been dabbling in marketing, event planning, all of the above. So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s me.

Maurice Cherry:

Any plans for the summer? Like, how’s this year been kind of treating you so far?

Kristina Turner:

This year has been good. I’m already ready for a break. It’s been six months now. I’m like, is it break time? It’s coming. I’m actually going to San Diego Comic Con next month. So I need to square away all of my plans for that. Actually, on the spur of the moment, yesterday or Sunday, I was like, should I do it? I was like, I bought New York Comic Con tickets, so we’ll see if I actually go. And that’s in October.

Maurice Cherry:

OK, you should do it. I’ve not been to one of those big cons like that like New York or San Francisco. But comic conventions in general are just a lot of fun.

Kristina Turner:

It is. And once you started going to just small ones, like locally, and I was like, oh, that’s fun. And then I was like, venturing out. And I think New York was my first big one. And I was like, oh my. Like, this is a real like, see the celebrities. You sit on the panels. You get to watch sometimes episodes of a TV show before it. Yeah, it’s everything that I could ever want.

Maurice Cherry:

Is there anything in particular that you want to try to accomplish by the end of the year?

Kristina Turner:

I have a blog and I’ve kind of let it lay dormant for a while. But I want to pick it back up and kind of get it more into my regular routine and updating and writing more because I do enjoy the writing. And I’ve also been dabbling around going, should I start a YouTube channel? Because I feel like that’s what everyone says these days. And I was like, maybe I should start a YouTube channel. So one of these things, if I don’t get to the YouTube, I definitely want to just be consistent with my blog.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot about sort of branching out and doing some kind of video content. Whether it’s YouTube or TikTok, I don’t know. As an old head, I’m not quite there yet. I realize the utility of it. Like people are just watching more stuff. They’re consuming more video, long or short form. But I’m not there yet. I’m almost there, but I’m not there yet.

Kristina Turner:

I don’t blame you. I don’t TikTok. Like, I have a TikTok and I’ve posted a few because at one point I was like, well, I’m going to make a reel or two and then just repost it on TikTok. It’s too much effort.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, it’s a lot one thing to kind of learn the tool itself because everything is right there in the app. But then also you’re subject to the whims of the algorithm. And I think it’s that way with all of social media, but particularly for video stuff, you’re really subject to algorithms on whether or not anybody even sees it.

Kristina Turner:

Exactly. I think the thing is, it starts out as really fun. Like, you do it, and then, like you said, you start thinking about the algorithm, like, who’s seeing it, you get addicted to those likes, and then it becomes not fun anymore because you’re like, who am I making this for anymore?

Maurice Cherry:

Right. I have friends of mine that are creators, and they definitely will. They’ll create something, they’ll put it out there, but then they’ll follow it up with saying, like, “please go and like it so the algorithm can blah, blah, blah.” And it’s like, are you doing it for your followers, or are you doing it for this algorithm, this faceless program that may or may not push your stuff out to a bigger audience?

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, honestly, on one of my Instagrams for my blog, I haven’t posted on the grid since December because I just literally got I was over it. I was like, Why am I posting this? I’m just now starting to get back to a point where it’s like, you know what? I need to just start posting for myself, not for other people. If other people like it, that’s cool, but I just need to start posting for myself. So that’s where I’m getting back there.

Maurice Cherry:

I hear you.

Maurice Cherry:

Let’s talk about your work. You are the Senior Director of Marketing and Storytelling at Jeremiah Program. Tell me about the organization and what you do.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, so Jeremiah Program, we’re actually in our 25th year this year. What they do is it started in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And what they did was they recognized a need for single mothers who need some help, who want to finish their college degree. And so what the program does is provides a personalized coach to you to help you coach your way through college to help you finish that degree. If you have a child, we have pre K programs that they can go into as well. So it’s a two generational model. Like, we want to be helping mom and child at the same time because there’s just this cycle of poverty that we’re trying to disrupt, basically. Right. And so I know a lot of people go like, oh, you don’t need college degrees anymore, which in some cases, it actually is very true. But what we found is that all the research done, college degree is still the lever that needs to be pulled to get up in the ranks to start making more money. It hasn’t been disproved as the way yet. Some people get lucky and there’s influencers and all that stuff, but it’s still the thing that is consistently, it still works.

And so we encourage people who want to finish that degree. If you just need that help to just finish that degree, if you just need some of the campuses. We have non campuses across the country and so some campuses have child development centers, so that’s pre K programs that they go to. Some of them even provide housing. If housing is like a barrier, like, I can’t get my housing and my childcare together, then like, cool, we got you. And so you focus on getting this because we don’t want you to trade your dreams for something else, right? So, yeah, that’s what JP does.

And so in my role, I started working there a little over a year. It’s been a year and a couple of months. I actually started by working through a friend who was contract with them, doing some design work, and he was like, I could use some help. And I was like, sure, I can do some extra freelance work. And so I started doing freelance work for about six months and then I found out at the end of the year that they were looking to build their own in house team and I was like, oh, good, cool. That sounds like a cool opportunity. I like the mission. And so I didn’t know that it was you build the team and do the work. And I was like, oh, okay, and literally like, kind of building from scratch. So me and another person, we started she’s more of a content writer editor. So we started together and we’ve built this team now to five people. And so we basically handle all the marketing, like social channels and website and that kind of stuff, like the main national stuff. We handle that and then we also assist campuses in anything that they need. And so we’re also like our main charge at this point is getting people brand aligned because the brand has kind of been all over the place for many years and so now it’s like, we need people to understand that JP is one organization, no matter where they are.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’m looking at the website now. First of all, the website looks great. I mean, I don’t know how much of that you might have had a hand in or not, but it really looks good. And I love that it’s an organization that’s really about helping people. It’s about helping families, helping mothers, helping single mothers. I’m reading through The Commitment to Social Justice where it says “JP supports 100% women, 100% single moms experiencing poverty, and 100% parents in pursuit of a college degree with 80% of those parents identifying as black, Latinx and indigenous.” Oh, I love that. That is so super important.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, because I think a lot of people try to social justice is such like a word that people just either love it or they’re, oh, social justice, I don’t want anything. But I think the thing is what JP does is that they basically explain, like, you can’t divorce one from the like, it is directly like this poverty issue is directly related to all these social justice issues. That’s why they’re in this situation, and so we don’t run away from it, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:

I’m curious. You say you’re having to sort of build the team and everything like that. Has that been sort of the hardest part about what you do is making sure that you’ve got this kind of unified team under one brand?

Kristina Turner:

My team right now is killer. I love my team. Yeah. We have five people, including me. So I have a designer on staff. I have a digital marketing person, digital strategist, someone who does like writing. And then our coordinator kind of keeps us all together. And so our hopes in the next year or two is grow a little bit bigger because we started easing our way into it, but now we’re taking on more and more work. And so I’ve been lucky to come to a place that not everybody understands, like branding and marketing design. And I’m lucky that I have a CEO who cares about that and has invested the resources into getting it done. And so I’m so glad. That’s one of the things I never had to explain, like, why is this important to my boss? Because she gets it. And so, yeah, right now, everything is good for us.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, is it a remote team or is there an office that you’re reporting into?

Kristina Turner:

My team is fully remote, which is so strange to me. I’ve never been a fully remote person until last year, I think 2020. A lot of people went remote and then they went remote part time. But yeah, this is my first time being fully remote, and my team is fully remote. So we’re all on the national team, and so we all are remote. If you live near a campus, then that could be your home base. But yeah, none of my team are by campus, so they’re all remote.

Maurice Cherry:

How’s that been? Sort of building and managing that.

Kristina Turner:

I was a little worried about being remote because I have been an in person person for so long. But honestly, it’s been pretty good because I think the best part is I have a team that’s very committed to getting the work done and putting out good work. So that’s the first thing. Two, I used to be a person who hated daily meetings. Daily check in meetings or stand up meetings. We used to call them, and I started doing those. We do those almost every day. And if we don’t have anything to talk about, we won’t do it. But we do those every day. It’s just like, let’s start the day with each other just to level set the day and be like, okay, what do we got? Making sure we’re on top. Is there any questions? Whatever. And it kind of helps ground us all in the day or what’s happening, and then we go about our business the rest of the day. That has been the most helpful thing, I think, in managing a remote team.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, along with your work with Jeremiah Orogram, you’re the regional director for AAF, District Seven. AAF, standing for the American Advertising Federation. How did you first get involved with them?

Kristina Turner:

Oh, man, how anybody gets involved, they’re like, oh, the event planning. I want to do part. I’m still a part, but I was part of my local chapter in Montgomery. How I got involved was a coworker of mine was like, hey, they’re looking for committee members to be on the American Advertising Awards Committee. And I was like, oh, that big party they plan? I was like, oh, yeah, I want to do that. And I didn’t end up going to the meeting. And she went and she came back and she said, well, not only do they want me to join the committee, they want me to be the chair. And then I said, oh, okay, I can be on your committee. And then we let them know that I wanted to be on the committee. And then they were like, why don’t you just be co chairs? And somehow I found myself on the board. And so, yeah, we did that.

That first year, it was really cool. It was just interesting and seeing all the work regionally, like the stuff that people enter, having to find judges and having to play in this awards gala. I learned a lot through the club, through that, and then I think I did that for two years, and then I kind of just moved up and started doing other positions. I really loved being education chair, and that was me just, like, connecting with all the local colleges and finding out who has design and marketing programs and how do we involve students, how do we help students. And that was a really great year for that chair. And I moved up into a diversity chair at one point because I was like, no one’s doing this. There’s a diversity chair. It’s like, the chair, there one, skips it’s okay if we don’t have this one. And so that year I was like, I’ll do diversity, and I learned so much about what is AF doing on that ground.

And then eventually I became president, which I didn’t want, but it happened, and it was good. It was great. Honestly, I was president two years in a row. It was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I made a lot of connections locally, but know, around the south also because our District Seven means Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, part of Louisiana, Mississippi. So if you have a club and whatever, you know, all like, you have this huge network in the south. I took a year, maybe like a year, year and a half, almost two years off because I was just a little burnt out. But they asked me on the district level like, hey, would you mind wanting to join the district level. And I was like, why not? And so in my job in regional, I’m just kind of like the liaison between the district and the local level. So I get assigned like maybe four or five clubs. I check in with them, just make sure they’re okay. If they have questions that they can’t figure out, I try to help them. And it’s just kind of like a go between and help kind of guiding some clubs.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you really have taken on a lot of leadership through them. Like you said, these different chair positions. Now you’re regional director. How does AAF help you as a working creative?

Kristina Turner:

I will say that when I started AAF, I was just a designer. Like at my job, my title was just designer. And I was doing a lot of the boring stuff, which letters and that kind of stuff in mail. And so it was a good creative outlet for me of like, oh, I get to do some other stuff like event planning and creating graphics for these events and playing around on social and going, what works? What’s getting people’s attention? I want them to come RSVP for an event and even like finding speakers and booking speakers, like ooh and me paying attention to who’s out there, what names are out there, who’s giving good advice. And so I was doing all of this stuff, and at the time, my boss was really supportive of me being involved in the club. I took a lot of work time sometimes to do it in middle of the day or would take off early to go do it. And one day he came to me and he was like, I see all this stuff that you’re doing with AF and how you’ve grown the club, and it’s great. Now I’m going to give you a promotion and you’re going to do all that same stuff here. And I was so like, it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, it did pay off for me. At the end of the day, I was learning all this leadership skills and stuff off the job and then bringing it to the job.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I think that’s a good thing that your job recognized that you were doing this. It didn’t try to step in or penalize. If anything, they were supportive of.

Kristina Turner:

Very, very supportive.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, in the last episode for folks that are listening, I was talking with Ashley Fletcher and we had a pretty rousing conversation, I think, about the role of professional design organizations and how they should kind of be more proactive on the voice of their members. We were specifically talking about AIGA, but we lumped in a couple of other orgs in there too. AAF is not a design organization. Like you said, it’s for advertising. But it sounds like there’s some overlap there with design and that you would have maybe like visual designers or art directors creative directors, stuff like that. I’m curious, is AAF like that? It sounds like it’s been a pretty instrumental force in your career as an organization. Do you feel like they’ve really spoken up on behalf of creative people, of their members?

Kristina Turner:

For sure, AAF. I would say you’re right. AAF is definitely all encompassing. Like, even though it says the word advertising, there’s many things that go into advertising, right? You got to have a designer, you got to have a copywriter. Do you have video? People like video. You got to have that. Every spectrum of being a creative is involved in this club. You don’t have to just be like the ad guy or whoever. The way it sounds like this isn’t Mad Men. And so it covers the gamut. And so I would say AF. They definitely do speak up for the industry. They have a whole arm, like their whole thing. They do a lot of things, but their main mission always is like the government relations part of it. Every two years, they do a Day on the Hill. They get you to go speak to your representatives and talk about how if you start everyone’s looking for money and if you start tax and advertising, this is what’s going to happen. Or they’re constantly reminding people, these are the things that we’re pushing for right now. I just went to the national conference a couple of weeks ago, and one of the big things they were talking about was the data privacy issue, right. And how some states are even talking about creating their own laws. But what does it look like on a national level? They really get involved and really go to literally go to Congress and go, please look out for like, that is their main part of what AAF does, is, like, the lobbying and what’s best for the industry, because you don’t want to kill the industry because it just employs so many different types of people. And so the minute you start taxing it, that’s when things start going downhill.

Maurice Cherry:

They go to Congress?

Kristina Turner:

Yes, I did Day on the Hill. It was probably about four years ago, and every year we sent someone else this past spring. But yeah, we go up there. They have a lawyers group who does the research and stuff. They fully prep you before going to talk to your representative. And if you don’t actually if you’re lucky, you get to actually talk to your representative. Most times it’s like their staff or person, but either way, you’re fully prepped. You go in, like, I get to talk about, here’s how much revenue advertising brings into the state of Alabama. This is what happens if you tax it. This is how many people employs, this is how much all the good it does. And so, yeah, we literally go into that, go to DC, into their office and talk about this.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

I am flabbergasted to hear…I mean, in the best way.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

And I mean, I’m saying I wish I’m not a member of AIGA. AIGA, I feel like, has kind of has been like a whipping post throughout this entire podcast that’s

Kristina Turner:

You’re on the board, right?

Maurice Cherry:

Oh nooooooo. No, no, no.

Kristina Turner:

Oh, I thought you were on the national board for some reason.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh no. So my involvement with AIGA…first of all, I was very skeptical about joining AIGA because — and this is prior to me doing the podcast, so we have to go back to 2013. And before, I had wanted to join, but had been told explicitly by [AIGA Atlanta] chapter members, chapter leadership, like, “oh, well, you didn’t go to design school, and you have to have a design degree to be a part of AIGA.” And so I didn’t go to any events or anything like that. I was just like, whatever, for real. Again, this was ten plus years ago. So the thing that changed my mind about joining AIGA was I had Antoinette Carroll on the show. She’s the founder of Creative Reaction Lab. And actually, when I talked with her, this was prior to her starting Creative Reaction Lab. She was a co-chair of AIGA’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. And, like, she was talking me into joining. Like, you know, if you have these thoughts about the industry, you should join, try to be part of the solution. And I was like, “you know what? You’ve convinced me. I’ll do it.” And so I was on the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force for four years. I think three or four years. I think it was like, from 2014…it was three years, 2014 to 2017, roughly about three to four years. I was on that whole time. And what I discovered was that — and I don’t know if it’s this way with AAF — but what I discovered was that the organization only takes diversity seriously if the person at the top, the executive director, if they take it seriously.

Kristina Turner:

Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:

And so when I joined, Rick Grefé was the, I think, longtime executive director. He was on his way out. And Julie Anixter was coming in as an executive director, and she was all about diversity and inclusion. She would come down here to Atlanta. We would have dinner. She would be really passionate about making sure that people of color, particularly Black designers in the organization, were getting recognized and being put in positions where they could make a difference.

The problem came when… how can I put this? I think Julie had great intentions. I love Julie, still talk to Julie to this day. But I think other people in the organization were very much anti diversity, but yet they were in positions influencing diversity. So, like, we had this person, she wasn’t the co chair. She was, like, the liaison between headquarters and the [Diversity and Inclusion] Task Force, this woman, and she was very racist. And it’s sort of like, why would you be racist and you’re over a diversity organization? I don’t know.

But what I also discovered is that each chapter kind of functions independently in terms of what headquarters does or what national does. So while National may be all about diversity and inclusion, the Atlanta chapter still won’t talk to me. Or like, the DC chapter is really cool, but then if I talk to a chapter in, I’m just throwing one out there, not saying I’ve talked to this chapter, but I talked to a chapter in, say, Minneapolis or something, and then they’re not cool. And so it’s like, you would think that stuff that happens at National would trickle down through the chapters, and that’s so not the case.

And what I would tell people, I have folks on the show and they’re like, “well, should I join AIGA?” I’m thinking about I’m like, you know, AIGA is only as strong as its weakest chapter. So if you’ve had a bad experience at your chapter and you feel like that’s precluding you from joining AIGA, I would completely understand that, because that was my experience even when I had joined. And this is sort of the part that sort of got me is know, prior to me being, quote unquote known, the local chapter didn’t want anything to do with me, wouldn’t talk to me, anything. Now that I’m on the national Diversity and Inclusion Task Force and people know about Revision Path and stuff, then they’re smiling in my face like, “oh, you should come and do this, you should want to do that.” And then we would try to do events together, and then they wouldn’t market the events. I don’t know. They would say one thing, do something else. At one point, I was trying to be the chapter’s VP of Diversity and Inclusion, and they were like, “well, we thought about it, but you don’t have a design degree.” And what does me not having a design degree have to do with anything? Clearly you see the advocacy work I’m doing in the community, the work that I’m doing talking to Black designers, the work I’m doing with National, but yet I didn’t go to art school, so therefore it’s just not valid. And it came to the point where I kind of really had to tell them, keep my name out your mouth. Don’t talk to me. Don’t put my name in conversation with anybody. As far as I’m concerned, you and I are persona non grata. Do not speak to me.

Kristina Turner:

Dang.

Maurice Cherry:

I haven’t been an AIGA member since 2017. I still talk with leadership; like they recently had their first Black executive director, Bennie F. Johnson. He and I are really close. So I was there throughout his tenure, just kind of talking with him, seeing how the organization changed, but he just left at the beginning of this year. So I don’t know what AIGA does. I don’t really care what they do. But I think about in terms know a lot of Black designers, particularly because I’m thinking about it through the focus of this show, really found community over the pandemic by joining other events or joining other sorts of groups that had sprung up, like the HUE Design Summit or Where Are The Black Designers? Or something like that. And now, like, a few years out, they’ve kind of died away. Not died away. That’s not the best way to put it. They’re not as active, I think, as they used to be. And so I still get some designers that are like, well, they want to find community. They’re trying to find it, and they look at AIGA. And they’re just like, is this, like, the only game in town? Because this is not it for us as designers, because there’s other issues with AIGA. Just in terms of there was a time when they didn’t recognize UX designers as designers. I still don’t think they’re a very proactive organization at all. Like, AIGA ain’t going to Congress. That ain’t happening. They are not doing that.

Kristina Turner:

I think AAF, I wouldn’t say they’re perfect by any means. I would say that it’s very similar in how each chapter kind of does its own thing, and you just hope that national stuff would trickle down into them. I think it’s always dependent on where that chapter is. Or also, do you have people on your board who’s going to hold them accountable to those things? Right. Like, I was diversity chair one year, and I was probably the only black person for a very long time on our board. And then as soon as I became president, I was like, where’s the black people? We bringing them. And so I would go and I would literally go out to places like, we have an HBCU here. And so I would approach them. I was like, do you all have design or any kind of program? And they were like, yeah, we do. And I got them to enter our awards. This is the first year they’d enter, and they won so many awards, and the joy on their face was so awesome, right? And so I was like, it depends on the people in the chapter, if they’re willing to go out and go do something about it. I don’t know. I guess the national can’t really hold everyone accountable. I think they try to, but I don’t see them going to every chapter and going, are you doing this? Are you doing, like, there’s certain things they have to do, but in terms of diversity and stuff, I think it’s really on who’s there.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I see that. And, I mean, it’s sort of the same way. Like, you know, if I didn’t see Antoinette doing what she was doing with the Task Force and getting me on board was sort of the message, I wouldn’t have joined. So seeing someone that looks like you, that’s kind of in that position, helping to influence stuff, really does help. But it also sounds like for you, AAF has been just a positive force. I mean, it’s helped you out throughout your career, you’ve worked in these different leadership positions. Would you say that AAF has really been instrumental in kind of getting you to where you are today?

Kristina Turner:

I would say yes, very much, 100%. I think a lot of things that it’s like a continuous learning thing. Like when I wasn’t going to a conference that work was paying for, I was going to these club conferences and learning all these different things. I couldn’t tell you anything about data privacy before I went to any of this stuff where things outside of a normal designer would know because the more that you know and have in your tool belt, the more valuable you are, right? And so it’s like I can speak on a lot of things that I never probably would have spoke on before joining AAF.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, I want to switch gears here a little bit. I don’t want to just talk about design organizations and stuff. As I told you before we started recording, it’s just rare to find another designer from the same area where I grew up in. So I really want to learn more about you, about growing up in Montgomery and everything. Tell me about that as a designer.

Kristina Turner:

I will say that growing up in Montgomery, it was fine, but I also was in the majority who was like, as soon as I get a chance, I’m out, I’m out, I’m going out. I don’t know where it is, but I’m out. And so I thought I was, like, trying know until the reality of how much college costs hit me in the face. I was like, oh, well, I guess I’m going to school at AUM, which is local, Auburn University of Montgomery. I was like, okay, I’ll go there. They have a design program. Went there. And then towards the end, when I was getting ready to graduate, I was really like, in this whole, I got to get an internship. Like, I got to get something to get a job because no job will hire you without some sort of experience, right? And so I ended up getting an internship at I think it was called Southern Progress Corporation at the time. But it was basically Time Inc. had owned Southern Living magazine and Coastal Living magazine and all these Southern magazines at the time, and it was in Birmingham.

So I moved to Birmingham up there for that. And I was like, I’m going to stay in Birmingham. Birmingham is like an hour and a half away from Montgomery and like, the nearest biggest city probably. And so I was like, okay, I’m going to Birmingham. We’ll see what happens. And then it was 2008, also known as the recession, and no jobs were to be had because as I don’t know if people know creative jobs were the first to go. And so there were no jobs. I was interviewing for jobs left and right. It was just like a kind of depressing time. And so at that time, I had to put it down. I had to just like, okay, I’m going to apply for the job wherever it is. And I ended up applying for a job in Montgomery. And I was like, I want to go back to Montgomery. And I went, I applied for the job. They said yes. I was like, I could save money, moved back home, save money. I took this job, and that’s how I ended up back in Montgomery. And so I think for a while, I took it as a temporary pit stop, but I never would have thought that I would still be here until I started until I started kind of realizing what does design. Not just I think a lot of people, when they get out, they kind of just go, I’m going to work at this huge agency, or whatever. And there’s no agencies in Montgomery. Like, for real. There’s like a couple. That means everyone’s competing for those same jobs. And so I worked at this place called Henig Furs, which is funny. It’s a fur store in the South. And yeah, I was like, this is okay.

Maurice Cherry:

It don’t get that cold down there for furs!

Kristina Turner:

You’ve got a good ten day window of cold that you can wear that fur. And they don’t do it. And they’re all in the Southeast. Like, there were stores all in the Southeast. And so they wanted an in-house designer. And I applied for the job, and I got it. And so I did that for a little over four and a half years. And so what I learned at that job was, like, I think we think of the glamorous part of being a designer when we’re out of school, oh, we’re just going to design all these cool things and stuff. And it’s like, no, you’re going to probably do some boring stuff for a while. And it was like retail design work. Like retail marketing. That’s what I was doing.

And so I’m learning all of this stuff that why didn’t I learn this in school? Like, the real stuff, right, is like, how back then, newspapers were still a thing. So then it was like, I was doing a lot of newspaper ad design. I was doing having to design mostly in black and white a lot of times was like, that was a learning curve for me for a while. And then we had at the time, they had a partnership with Belk, so sometimes they had like, little salons inside of Belk stores. So then it was partnering with Belk and making sure I’m adhering to Belk’s Design, right? And I’m also learning how to place radio ads. I’m writing scripts for ads on TV and radio. And how do you even place an ad on TV? All these little things that you need to know how to even run some sort of design marketing kind of startup. I’m learning from this job that’s like, in Montgomery, Alabama. Yeah, it’s just like all this we had to read it on a website, and it was like, how do you even go about that? I had no idea, and I figured it out, because at the time, I think we were saying I remember I kept pushing. I was like, hey, I think web is where we need to go. People aren’t shopping in stores anymore. And I want to say primarily, a lot of their businesses are online now.

And so, yeah, it’s like, I’m learning all these things that are outside of design because they don’t tell you you need to know more about stuff other than just design. And so I’m learning all these things. I stayed there a little over four and a half years, and then a job at Southern Poverty Law Center came up, and I had interviewed with them right out of college, and clearly I was rejected from that. But I interviewed again with them, and I got the job because of all this stuff that I had learned at this small shop. Yeah, they were like, oh, you know how to do this. And we’re also talking about redesign a website and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, I’ve been doing all this scrappy work. And so that’s what sold me to get this job at Southern Poverty Law Center. And that job, I love that job, and I did it for ten years. It was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever been in an in house of that caliber before. I think Southern Living was kind of almost a little it gave you a little bit of in house feel. But I was on the advertising side when I was an intern, so it was like those ads in the back of the magazine that no one looks like. That’s the stuff I was doing. I wasn’t doing the pretty editorial work. And so at Southern Poverty Law Center, we had a full in house team. Nothing in the organization got done, and it had to come through us, the creative team. That was video work, that was any ads. Like, everything, if it was going to be public facing, it had to be touched by our team. And so we were a full shop. I always wanted to work in nonprofit because just being in the retail life is just, what is this for? You start questioning your life, you’re like, Why am I doing this? It was at a nonprofit, which was even better. And yeah, it was just a good experience. I did that for about ten years, and so that’s why I ended up staying, because I had this job that was paying me well. It was in Montgomery. It was, like, mission driven. I was like, oh, why do I need to leave? This is great.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I want to go back to…I mean, you’ve covered a lot of ground, but I want to go back to just like I guess well, I guess this is sort of full circle, now that I think about, know, growing up in Montgomery. Like, you said, you left, you came back, you stayed in Alabama, you stayed in Montgomery’s and built your career there. Why is it important for you to stay there? As opposed to say, like, oh, I’m going know, maybe move to Atlanta or to New York or somewhere where there might be bigger opportunities. Is there more about staying in Montgomery than just the job opportunity?

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, I would say definitely not a martyr for staying in Montgomery. I would say that my number one would be cost of living. Cost of living is just compared to other places I’m okay, then, you know, if I take cost of living and stuff out of it, I would say that especially when I was doing stuff with AAF and engaging with all these designers and stuff in college and just talking to them and, what do you want to do? And I would just always tell them, like, hey, design is everywhere that you can think of it could possibly be. I don’t think people even realize in house was, like, a thing. Right. And so I think for me, it’s almost proven, like, you can have a good career and still be in Montgomery.

It doesn’t like, I think, everyone’s thoughts of what they think they should be doing. You can do it from think, but the problem is it’s not as out there. Right. You have to find the opportunities. They’re not just out there going here’s, all these great opportunities, right. You have to find the opportunities of Montgomery. And I think that’s the difference between going somewhere to a larger city or, like, Atlanta or something, right. You see opportunities galore, but you have to find them here. And I think Montgomery also has just been they’ve been having kind of almost like a little bit of a renaissance in the last ten years of just trying to build it up and trying to get people, encourage them to stay. Particularly this creative community that we have, a huge arts community that’s blown up in the last few years. I just think there are people here who now are like, it’s not just one or two. There’s a lot of people who are just advocating for people to see us, like, see Montgomery and just, hey, there’s stuff here. You just have to find it. It’s not going to come to you.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. Wow. I grew up in Selma. Selma is 50 miles away from Montgomery, and just growing up, Montgomery was always the destination because Selma didn’t have the things Montgomery had. Like, Selma was almost like an extended suburb in a way, because we didn’t have a movie theater. So if you wanted to go to the movies, you had to drive up 80, go to Carmike Cinemas 8. If you wanted to go to a mall…Selma kind of had a mall, but it wasn’t the Montgomery Mall. It wasn’t that. If you wanted to see a play or something, maybe there might be something at Walton Theater, but it’s like, fifth graders or whatever. If you wanted to see, like, Shakespeare, there’s Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which I mean, when I first saw Alabama Shakespeare Festival as a kid, I was blown away. I think I mentioned this before we recorded. It was the first time I felt immersed in a fully designed space. I’m like, this is like a theater. And then, of course, I learned, like, it’s one of the, I think, ten Shakespeare festivals in the world. And I’m like, Why? Would there be one in Alabama?

Kristina Turner:

I don’t think I knew that.

Maurice Cherry:

It’s so beautiful with the water. And I remember going to see plays there. Like, we would have field trips there all the time. And even then, when I was in marching band; there’s no music shop in Alabama. We had to go to Art’s on East Boulevard. We had to go up there to get me mouthpieces and slide oil and stuff like so, like, Montgomery to me, was always, like, the destination in a way, because there was just art and culture and museums and shows, and we didn’t have a television station in Selma. Everything comes from Montgomery, WSFA, all that sort of stuff. So Hot 105, the radio station…all of that was just…Montgomery was the destination. And so it’s interesting for you to talk about how it’s coming up in this renaissance, because, of course, there’s, like, the civil rights museum. Not a civil rights museum. It’s a justice museum.

Kristina Turner:

There the EJI — Equal Justice Initiative.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, that museum is there. I know that there’s been a lot of activity around trying to build up that Selma to Montgomery corridor. Like, I know, especially in Lowndes County, like, they have an interpretive center. They’re trying to build all that stuff up and everything. Montgomery, to me, has just always been the destination. I bought my first video game in Montgomery. I went to my first big mall in Montgomery, saw my first, like, theater show, but also movie theater in I mean, to me, Montgomery was like, it I mean, Birmingham was, of course, the big, big city. Yeah, but in Selma, it was like…Montgomery is just like right there. You know?

Kristina Turner:

It’s interesting to hear that perspective as someone who has been from I’m from Montgomery, and so a lot of people here like, “oh, we’re too small. Nothing happens here.” But then to hear you from someone who’s from Selma going, everything was in Montgomery.

Maurice Cherry:

Everything was in–

Kristina Turner:

You probably need to give that talk to some other people that live here!

Maurice Cherry:

Listen, we didn’t have a bookstore, so when I was trying to learn…I mean, we had a library. So, I mean, a library is not a bookstore, but the only kind of books we bought was whatever might be in Walmart. And that’s like, what romance novels or something like that. Scholastic book fair. And the library. Like, there wasn’t a bookstore, whereas you go to Montgomery, there’s a Books-A-Million, and Waldenbooks was there. When I started learning how to code. This was like mid 90s or something like that. There were a couple of books out and stuff, and the library didn’t have anything. And I remember going on a field trip and going to I think it was a Walden Books. It was either a Waldenbooks or a Books-A-Million to get my first computer book.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, we used to have a Barnes and Noble. It probably was that.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I’m curious, what high school did you go to?

Kristina Turner:

Robert E. Lee.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. All right. I mean, Selma only had Selma High School. I mean, there’s Dallas County High School, but that’s different. That’s the county high school.

Kristina Turner:

We have a ton of high schools. We’ve got Robert E. Lee–

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, and mostly named after Confederate folks.

Kristina Turner:

Confederate people! exactly! Like, back then, I wasn’t too hard about it, and I was like, yeah, Lee, that’s where I go. And now it’s like, oh, yeah, there was Lee. It’S a lot. Like, they’re planning on renaming the schools, so that’s going to be interesting.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, we had Selma High School, and that was just in the so, like, we had city high schools and county high schools. They were rivals of some sort. So in the city, there was only selma High School was, like, the city high school. And then outside in the county, you had Keith High School, you had Southside, and you had Dallas County High School. But then you also had I guess you could call this, like the honestly, what we called it growing up was the White School, which was Morgan Academy. And it was a private I guess private-ish school. But then that was named after a Klansman that’s named after — John T. Morgan. So, like, we just didn’t fool with them. Never the ‘twain shall meet. Like, I think Selma’s main rival was Southside, because it was just know, city versus county, that kind of yeah, yeah. No, I remember. I’ve marched at the stadium in–

Kristina Turner:

Crampton Bowl.

Maurice Cherry:

Crampton Bowl. I’ve been there. I’ve been to the Turkey Day Classic. All of that. All of that.

Kristina Turner:

You’re bringing it all back!

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’ve been there. Absolutely. So it’s great to hear that Montgomery is kind of having this renaissance. Like, tell me more about the creative community there.

Kristina Turner:

So definitely not me, but it’s spearheaded by a few other groups that have really more of the fine arts community. I have been so impressed. It started with maybe, like, throwing a couple of murals up, and now we’ve got a ton of murals up in the city, and then they kind of have these kind of art groups who are just there’s one group, King’s Canvas, that I really love, love Kevin King. He created it. His group is mainly on the West Side and where people don’t that’s not a thing that people think about, but he’s been really advocating for creative place making, meaning community and culture can be created if you bring arts into it. And so he’s been really doing a lot for the city. There’s another group called 21 Dreams. They’ve also been doing a lot. And so it’s just been a really good time. If you’re like a fine artist, I would say design too, because a lot of designers are also they do fine art, but they also are mixed up in that as well. And so it’s a good time to be a creative in the city if you just get involved.

Maurice Cherry:

And like you said, there’s the schools that also have design programs. Like, you went to AUM, but then also Alabama State is in know, so you’ve got at least colleges that also have these programs too. Like, you were part of the AIGA student chapter at AUM, right?

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, we started a student chapter. I don’t pretty sure that didn’t last, but we had started a student chapter because there wasn’t one. And the nearest AIGA chapter to us was in Birmingham. And so, yeah, we started one know, we were like, we want to be a part of a design association. And at the time, I think when I had remember hearing about AF, but I was like, I’m a designer, I need to be a design thing. Design things is what I need to be. And so we did a little bit with it, but I really don’t remember a lot of the time, like, what we did. I don’t think we did very much other than start the chapter. And so, yeah, I think there’s opportunity wherever you can go. We even have two year colleges and stuff. We have one of those who has like a design program. It’s everywhere.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. When you sort of look back at the span of, your know, even like your time at AUM to Henig to Southern Poverty Law Center to now with Jeremiah Program, how would you say you’ve evolved as a creative over the years?

Kristina Turner:

I would say that definitely for me, I love doing like I still like doing it, but I think I’ve definitely fallen more into creative leadership. I just love kind of like that art direction kind of stuff. And so I’ve also kind of realized there are people who are better than me, and I’m okay with that, right. I’m okay with getting the best people who know how to do the job, but I still have that eye for direction of where we should go and stuff. And so I follow more into creative leadership over the years and managing designers and other creative people. I really have enjoyed that part of where my career has gotten to, and I would like to keep doing more of just, like, creative leadership. I don’t know, maybe far down the road teaching, maybe. But I just feel like because I just feel like at least when I remember in my college, feel like they’re just not teaching you what you need to know when you get out, you know, the basics. But it’s like, I need some real life application here.

Maurice Cherry:

And you don’t feel like that’s like.

Kristina Turner:

Being taught, at least when I was in school, it could have improved. I mean, the program has been around for a while now, and it could have improved. I just felt like when I was in school, I was having to do a lot of things on the side on my own to try to figure it out. And we had a teacher retire in the middle of my year also. And so we had a new professor came in who was just she just came from an agency. And so when she came in, I will say we saw more practical application type projects. We started doing that kind of stuff. And so, I don’t know, maybe I feel like I was slighted because she didn’t come in until toward the end of my year. So I’m sure she’s still there. And a great friend of mine, and I will say that she probably brought a lot to the students after me, for real. But when I was in, it was like still a lot of old school teaching. And so not to say there’s anything wrong with it, but it was like I needed it to evolve with where time was going.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, that’s something with, I think, a lot of design curriculums. Like, you can teach the basics, of course, you can teach theory and composition and all that sort of stuff. But so much of design now, I think is wrapped in tech in some way, whether that’s product or UX or some digital form. It’s hard to be, I think, just a visual designer, maybe, because the expectation is that something you do has to be tied to a tech part, something with technology. And I don’t think that’s what’s being really taught. They’ll teach you the basics and then you’re kind of on your own once you get out there.

Kristina Turner:

Yeah, I would have really appreciate now a class where they teach you Canva. Because I was like, everybody’s like, Canva is going to take your job. No, Canva’s not going to take my job. But Canva has a place in the world. And it’s like now I’m definitely one of those designers that’s like, turn my nose up at it, but I’m like, no, it has a place in the world, and we all need to adapt to it, unfortunately.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, outside of work, I see you love Disney and Marvel and all that kind, like comic geek culture stuff. Do you really ever have an opportunity to combine that with your everyday work?

Kristina Turner:

That’s funny. Anytime I give a presentation, I like to let people know that that’s what I’m into. If it’s a presentation on something slightly boring. I always intro with hey, and it’s usually like a picture of me at Avengers campus at Disneyland or it’s just like, hey, I just need you to know a couple of things about me off the top. Number one, I’m a blerd. If you don’t know what that is, that’s a Black nerd, right? So I kind of break the ice conversations and I try to introduce it that way. I also would say that part of me starting like a blog and stuff too, was me trying to incorporate my love of design and building websites and stuff like that into trying to marry the two and my love of talking about it. I try to pour a lot of that into that. If I don’t get to do it through work or they know that I’m good for them in something, even if it’s just like a quick zoom meeting, they know I’m good for them in something that’s going to be very nerd culture related. So I try to throw it in there as like a personality thing. But no, we’re not up there making Marvel movies at work.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I know with like what you said with the Jeremiah Project, like the work has to do with family. So I didn’t know if maybe you’re able to kind of introduce some more family-friendly Marvel or Disney. I mean, Disney is family-friendly, of course, but any sort of way to sort of incorporate those two. I was just curious about that.

Kristina Turner:

No, no. We keep it professional.

Maurice Cherry:

What advice would you give out there to someone? Like they’re hearing your story, they’re hearing about your career, and they want to follow in your footsteps. Like, what would you tell them?

Kristina Turner:

Oh, man. I would say that opportunities won’t come to you. You have to go find them, and you have to do the work to go find them. I can tell you I’ve spent many a time, even before out of college, leaving a little bit after, just finding opportunities and sometimes just even creating them, even when there’s not there, because sometimes you creating stuff on your own will get you noticed. I think you have to find the opportunities. You can’t just expect them to come to you. It’s work being a creative, right? It takes a minute to get you unless you’re just really good. It takes a minute for people to put that trust in you, to hire you as a creative person. Right? And so I also think being a creative is more than just your ability to make something look good on the screen. I think also too, that some of that leadership and communication style also is a big part of being a creative. Like if you can’t talk about your work, if you can’t defend your work, if you can’t also take critique and criticism that communication is very important and sometimes even that part, they’ll see that before they’ll see your actual. Work that you’re doing. So I just think that ultimately, you have to do the work.

Maurice Cherry:

What do you want the next chapter of your story to be? Like? I feel like you’ve accomplished a lot so far in your career, and especially now you’re at this new nonprofit. What do you want the next chapter of your story to be? Like, what kind of work do you want to do?

Kristina Turner:

I would say career wise, I can’t think of anything else that I would want to be doing other than teaching. At some point. I think I like connecting with students, and right when life hasn’t slapped them in the face yet, so all their ideas are fresh and new, and you’re like, yes, energize me with your energy. I would like to think I would like to eventually go that route. But personally, though, I think I just want to push myself a little bit more to learn things that I’m still not like, I, at one point was like, I should learn. UX. And then I quickly gave up on it. But I think I just want to explore. I’m getting more into video editing. I’ve done a little bit, and I’m getting a little bit more into that and just trying to add things to my tool belt to kind of keep me going. Because I think most people, if you’re a creative, you know, you can’t just stop at what you learn one time, right?

Maurice Cherry:

No, that’s very true. It’s very true. Just to kind of wrap things up here. I mean, we’ve talked about so much stuff, but where can people find out more information about you, about your work? Where can they find that online?

Kristina Turner:

You can find me on my website. It’s ohheyitsmekt.com. That’s also my Instagram and Twitter handle. Yeah, that’s where I’m at.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Well, Kristina Turner, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on the show. Like I said earlier, it’s just been so rare for me to find another designer that’s, like, right from around the area where I grew up. So I applaud you so much for being such a badass working creative in Montgomery. And, I mean, I don’t mean that just because of Montgomery being a smaller city, but the next generation, and I would say even the current generation of.

Maurice Cherry:

Designers, creatives and stuff, people need to see that.

Maurice Cherry:

They really need to see that. Because I think about myself growing up, I didn’t know anything about design. I mean, I liked to draw. I couldn’t really draw, but I did a lot of stuff with magazines, and I worked on my school newspaper and yearbook and stuff. And this was at a time when computers were just starting to become a thing. We’re talking, like, mid to late ninety s. I graduated high school in ’99, and so there were no sorts of examples for me to see of, like, oh, this is a working person doing creative stuff. I had to leave to find it, to see it somewhere else. And so I think it’s super important that what you’re doing, you’re kind of being the symbol in a way, maybe inadvertently, but you’re being the symbol for others to see that. Yeah, you can be here in Montgomery and live a fun, fulfilled creative life doing work that you love. And that is so inspirational to me. I know it’s got to be inspirational to other people. And again, I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show.

Maurice Cherry:

I appreciate it.

Kristina Turner:

No, thank you for geeking out about Montgomery with me.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.

Ashley Fletcher

Revision Path is all about inspiring Black designers, and my conversation with Ashley Fletcher is a brilliant example of why that inspiration matters. Ashley drops some serious knowledge on finding your creative community, pushing boundaries, but also the importance of taking care of your well-being.

Ashley talked about her current work, including her business Goods Made By Digitrillnana, and she shared how her educational journey helped her growth in understanding design. We also talked shop on a few topics, including the role of design organizations in 2023, AI and intellectual property, and more.

Ashley’s story will leave you feeling inspired and ready to take your design career to new heights!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Ashley Fletcher:
Hey, everyone. I’m Ashley Fletcher. I’m a graphic designer and illustrator based in Washington, DC. by way of Prince George’s County, Maryland. I have a passion for visual storytelling and designing with intention and alignment. I’m also the owner of Goods Made by Digitrillnana, an art shop dedicated to celebrating culture and art through greeting cards, art prints, and more. Maurice, thank you so much for having me. Listening to this podcast has been a beacon of light for my career.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow. Well, thank you. I love to start off the interview that way. Wow. How’s your year been going so far? How’s 2023 been?

Ashley Fletcher:
My year has been great. 2023 has been a year of really Repivoting, I think, my creative journey. So I’m excited to see what this new process has in store. I feel like I’ve checked off a lot of boxes. Sometimes when you’re always working and just grinding things out, you don’t really realize, hey, I accomplished all of these things. Also, this is my first year. I’m a breast cancer survivor, so this is my first year without any surgeries. So I am looking forward to what 2023 has to offer as far as my overall healing and well being as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow. Well, congratulations on beating breast cancer.

Ashley Fletcher:
Thank you. Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
What plans do you have for the summer?

Ashley Fletcher:
This summer I am going to be working just a few more events. I’m trying to add a few more events for my art shop. So I’ll be at Broccoli City Festival in July. Super excited because the past years I applied and I wasn’t accepted. So it’s always beautiful to see when things start to align and check that off. And I don’t have any vacations planned, but I’m sure I’ll go to New York for one of these amazing, like, Brooklyn Museum art nights and some little local travel as well.

Maurice Cherry:
If you make it up to New York, you should definitely check out the Poster House Museum.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I get their emails. I’ve done some events with them as well, but they always have really great exhibitions. I haven’t been to the museum itself yet, but I always recommend people to go there. So if you get a chance to check it out, you should.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I definitely will.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your current job. You’re a graphic designer at Brookfield Properties. Tell me about that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, so they are kind of a real estate house. They work with everything from logistics warehouses to residential commercials to commercial property. So I am a part of their in house team. It’s a fairly small design team in DC. They have about three designers in New York, I believe it’s four or five. And then we also have designers that are working remotely and all over the world as well. It’s an international company, so yeah, it’s been really cool. They have a beautiful office. They received some awards for the best eco friendly, sustainable office. So very beautiful space to be working in and really inspiring. Lots of windows that I love because working at my when I was freelancing, I was in the house all the time, not a lot of suntime. So it’s been a beautiful shift. And I create a variety of things from eblast variety of I just did some graphics for a Summer Sounds event that they have at their properties in Denver. So really wide variety of designer projects that I’ve worked on.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, very nice. And so it sounds like you’re in the office then working. It’s not like a remote or hybrid thing.

Ashley Fletcher:
Actually, it’s hybrid. So I’m three days in the office and two days at home. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s that been for you?

Ashley Fletcher:
It’s lovely. I love it. After freelancing again, stepping back into the corporate world, I realized how much I miss being around people on a regular basis. So having that balance has been really beneficial to me, I think. And then also the balance of not having to worry about commute for work for those two days because commuting can also be pretty draining depending on how far you are from your job and things like that. So it’s a really great balance.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, that’s something I’m sort of weighing now that I’m back on the job market and looking because I’ve done remote work for so long and this is like before the pandemic. I’ve been working remotely since 2008. So it’s not that I am averse to going back into an office, but Atlanta traffic is no joke. I’m really trying to think of like, if I work somewhere in the office, is it going to be somewhere that I can not have like an hour long commute and that’s even if I take the train as opposed to driving or something like that. But it sounds like you’ve got a good set up, though, with the hybrid.

Ashley Fletcher:
I do. And thankfully my commute is very beautiful. It depends on the day, of course. Traffic in DC is pretty tough, but it usually doesn’t take me longer than maybe 45 minutes. On a rough day, maybe an hour, it’s really nice. And when traffic is sweet, it’s like 20 minutes it might take me to get home. So it’s very nice commute. I remember when I was working way back when I worked for the government and I was traveling, I think like 2 hours away and oh my gosh, I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how I did it. I commend all the people that have to commute whether driving or taking public transportation. It’s tough.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’m right across the street from a train station, so it will be easy for me to get on the train. But everyone knows Atlanta’s mass transit is not the best. I’d say it’s probably gotten a lot better, at least in terms of the trains. I can’t say for the buses though. But I want to make sure if I do get back to a hybrid thing that it’s in a situation where I don’t have a long commute. It’s not going to take me forever to get to and from work because like you said, that part can be draining, especially if it’s not a good commute to get there, like, if you’re passing through a certain part of town or anything like that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago when I was taking public transportation, and ever since then, I was like, I have to be able to drive to work because it’s so draining. You don’t know what kind of experience you might have that day on or off the train. And also for me, I absorb a lot of people’s energy. So having all of that various energy around me, sometimes it’s like, wait a minute. By the time I get to work, I’m like, okay, I need to decompress. I need some sage going on, maybe a little nap. So, yeah, definitely grateful. I think this job came at a time where a lot of things aligned for me. So if you are on the job hunt and you’re having a tough time, I just say manifest, write those things down that you want, that you’re looking for those qualities in that space, because those were deal breakers for me. So, yeah, definitely grateful to have this job come across. And the team is really awesome. Everyone is super helpful, friendly. My first day, like, the welcome, it was just so beautiful. So really grateful.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What does I guess, like, a regular day look like? Because it sounds like you’re working on a lot of different type of design things for the company. You mentioned e-blasts and a number of other things.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So we utilize Monday as a software for a lot of our projects. So I’ll come in most times, I know have an idea of what I’ll be working on, so just prioritizing those projects based on their deadlines. Sometimes I’m checking in with the marketing team, so our design team is kind of underneath the marketing team, so checking in with those requests, asking any questions that I need, kind of gathering that designer brief of, okay, here’s all the components to what I’ll be creating and what I need. And then I’ll just go in from there. A lot of our materials, because book build is pretty established, some things have been created already. So I might be going in and tweaking an already existing design. I might be creating something from scratch. Like, I designed some exterior and interior graphics for the Highlight Center in Houston. If you’re in Houston, check it out. It’s very nice. Lovely work. I’m really proud of myself for that. So I spent a lot of time sketching, carving out time in the day for research. Also, again, asking those different questions with the marketing team of things that they needed that I may not have gotten in the brief in ideation sharing that with my creative director and that process of ideation and revisions. So that’s usually what it’s like. They also have something called activated. And so they have various events throughout the office. One day we had, like, boba tea. They may have I think they have a Pride event. Actually, today they have a Pride event. So different various different events to get you engaged with other people in the office and the other tenants that are in the office. And Google is in their office as well. So it’s a cool way to engage and break up the work day. So, yeah, that’s usually what I’m doing, attending some of those events during lunchtime, getting some free ice cream, some free boba tea, and going back to the office and zoning into some of the deadlines that I have.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, honestly, as you describe it, it sounds like the ideal type of sort of design position for where you’re at in your career. It’s open to the point that you can sort of work hybrid, but then you’re also working on all of these different types of things, so you’re stretching your skills in other ways. And the team is nice and there’s like, fun, engaging activities for you all to do. That’s good. That’s great. Actually, I wish a lot of designers kind of had that type of set up because it’s really fun. I mean, it makes work fun in that aspect because you’re not so keyed into the work that you can’t sort of know what else is going on in the company with other people and stuff like that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Right. And I think sometimes for people, that can be the difference from in house or being at an agency. One of my coworkers had shared agency life. It can be a lot more hectic depending on where you are. So definitely want to consider that when you’re looking for places to work.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, before Brookfield, you were doing freelance design. Actually, you’re still doing freelance design. You mentioned that a bit earlier. Talk to me about that. Like, how do you juggle that freelance work with doing your nine to five work?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, so when I first started at Brookfield, I had a freelance project that I was doing. And honestly, it was a little hectic because I was adjusting so much to being back in the office. I went from grad school right into freelance, and that was also during COVID So I graduated in 2020 in the height of COVID So it was a lot of different things were happening within the work industry. So now I’m able to kind of set some time aside and really just being intentional about my timing. Weekends, I’m usually working, and that’s okay. Sometimes I take a break, I’ll spend one day kind of doing letting things fly. So if I want to go hang out with my family or get pizza, whatever, just go outside and take a break. I definitely do that. I prioritize that, especially nowadays, that’s kind of priority of getting that break. But definitely timing. Like, I’ll come home some days if I have my art shop. So I’m doing a lot of work for that. I’ll take a little nap, maybe I’ll get home maybe around seven or something like that, take a nap, get things back started, maybe around ten. And depending on how my creative flow goes, I’ll end around one. Or I might keep going until I’m like, okay, you need to take a little nap before work. So it definitely depends on the project. It depends on how I’m feeling, my well being and everything. So if I’m tired, I’ll try to push myself just a little, but I got to get my rest because you create much better when you’re rested. So it’s been an interesting time. I’ll say adjusting with nine to five in freelance, but again, scheduling and being intentional with my time. So if that means I have to put my phone in a drawer so I’m not checking social media or being distracted by notifications, I’ll do that. Yeah, it’s very helpful.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. One thing with trying to make that balance is, I mean, of course you have your regular nine to five work. That’s the stuff you know you’re going to do, because that’s probably the most money that you’re making. You have your health benefits tied to that, so you don’t want to lose that. But I remember those days of trying to balance freelance at nine to five, and it’s not an easy thing to do, especially if your freelance work starts to outpace your nine to five work. Yeah, I remember when I was starting to do that, honestly, back then they called it teleworking, this was like 2007 or something. And they would say, oh yeah, you could work three days in the office, two days out. But then the two days that I wasn’t in the office, I never did work. I only did freelance work because when I’m at home, I’m thinking, okay, I can sort of juggle doing both. Because your mindset is just different in an office, I find, than when you’re doing it at home. At home, and this is pre-pandemic, of course, but at home you’re around your creature comforts: your bed, your couch, all this sort of stuff. And it’s tougher to kind of get into that work mindset. I remember even at the beginning of the pandemic when I interviewed folks just kind of asking them, how are you getting into work mode at home? Because it can be so difficult to do that. It took me quite a while to be able to juggle that, to be able to switch off work brain and go to freelance brain and try to balance those things. It can be pretty tough.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it can. And I think as designers, we’re constantly creating, we’re constantly problem solving. And I don’t think we give ourselves enough grace sometimes of multitasking with that. When you’re always problem solving, it can definitely create burnout. That’s why, again, for me, I’m going to take a nap. If it’s one thing that I’m going to do, I’m going to take a nap. And sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn’t. In between working and starting with all my freelance projects, I think too, being honest with yourself about your time and also with the client. For me, I was working on a project, I started a project right before I found out that I was going to be hired for this new position. So I had to let the client know, hey, my schedule is definitely going to change. Some days I wasn’t able to check my email at all and having to pace that time, or some days I would be working really late and so I’m scheduling emails and check ins with clients to go out the next morning. And then not to mention for me, I had a lot of family stuff happening at that time too, like dealing with aging grandparents and family members that can also wait into your time. So I just had to be honest with myself and say, hey, okay, this is where we are. And also therapy. I have an amazing therapist. She’s like, you should spend some time not freelancing and take a break. This month I think is like the first month that I’m not actively seeking freelance work and hopefully that I’ll be able to shift a little bit back because there’s definitely a lot of projects that I’m interested in doing. But yeah, she told me, she said you need to take a break. You need to go ahead and just enjoy this new chapter a little bit before you continue and get back into work.

Maurice Cherry:
If I can give just a tiny bit of advice there. If you get to the point where you can sort of see that you have enough money to hire an assistant, like a virtual assistant, do it. Do it and just have them do basic tasks like responding back to messages. Like for me, responding back to emails timely was always the thing that kind of caught me up. It was like, oh, I forgot to send this. And I sent maybe something a little too late. If you can afford it, do that to handle the smaller mundane tasks that you can sort of take off your plate so you can then focus on the creative work.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I suck at that. I definitely agree. And I can’t wait until I have evolved. The practice has evolved and I can do that as well.

Maurice Cherry:
So I want to learn more about you and about your journey as a designer. So we’re going to kind of take things back to the beginning. Are you originally from the DC area?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes, so I’ve lived in Maryland pretty much all of my life. So yeah, I’m Maryland through and through. Went to high school in Maryland, went to college two times in Maryland, so yeah, Maryland, DC native.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you grow up around a lot of design and everything as a kid?

Ashley Fletcher:
No, I didn’t. But I grew up around a lot of entrepreneurs and creatives. So my mom is a hairstylist, and I think sometimes we don’t give our hairstylists the credit they deserve as far as being creative. What she does and creates with hair is amazing, from cuts to color. So seeing her seeing her as an entrepreneur, navigating having owning her own salon. My father also was in the carpentry industry when seeing him navigate and just creating things with his hands. My grandfather is a fine artist. He’s also a jack of all trades from cooking. There’s so many paintings in my grandparents house that he’s created. He’s upholstered chairs. So I’ve been surrounded by creatives without really knowing. And a lot of the times that I spent in my mom’s hair salon was looking through Black hair magazines and publications. So I spent a lot of time unknowingly around ingesting design without really knowing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, hairstylist. And I would say also, like, seamstresses. I’m gendering it by saying that, but, like, people that can sew and everything. Yeah, top tier people really like underestimate, I think especially probably hair more than than sewing. But, like, yeah, everyone’s got to get a cut. Everybody has to get their hair done at some point for something that’s a very lucrative I mean, it’s a lucrative thing, but it is something I think we can kind of in our community probably take for granted a little bit.

Ashley Fletcher:
And the community that they bring, especially Black hair salons and barbershops like, it’s a sense of community there. They’re using our hair in a sense, it’s like a bleak canvas. You might have some different scalp situations going on or different things with hair loss and all types of things, and they’re supposed to create something out of that. You can’t get much more creative than that. And it’s a lot of risk with what they do. They cut your hair wrong or you don’t like what they do, you might lose a client. It might create a tough relationship. So my hats are off to what they’re able to do day in and day out, using their hands.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you mentioned going to college in Maryland. You went to Salisbury University, and you majored in graphic design. Since you kind of grew up around all these creatives and entrepreneurs, did you already sort of have a sense like, this is what I want to study, or did you kind of fall into that once you got to Salisbury?

Ashley Fletcher:
So I fell into that after I got to Salisbury. So in high school, I took a yearbook course for juniors my junior and senior year. And my junior year, I went to yearbook camp, and I was introduced to the process of design thinking again, I was collaging and really looking into fashion magazines. Like, I loved Vogue, all of those magazines, the models, just the visual storytelling from that. And so your book introduced me to this thing, like, oh, you can create a design and a publication on this program, and it’s printed and what the print process looks like. And I really loved it, and I thrived in it from the interviewing, interviewing different people from high school, and photography. I really loved photography. I took a photography course in high school, so by the time I got to college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was like, well, I kind of like marketing, so I’ll just do business administration with the track in marketing, I realized there’s a bunch of accounting courses and a lot of math involved. I said, okay, let’s be real with yourself here about what you really want to do. And so I started to think about how much joy your book brought me, like being able to wear these multiple hats of one day you’re shooting and take capturing moments, and then the other day you’re dabbling in copywriting and creating captions, and then you’re dabbling in creative layout and design. And I called my mom and I said, I think I want to design magazines. I don’t know what it is who does that, but I think that’s what I want to do. And so I looked through the mass head of some magazine, I don’t remember which one, and I found the title graphic designer, and I had a title to put with the thing. I checked if my school was offering any art or graphic design, and they did. That’s some alignment right there, because it could have been a whole different situation. And I switched. I was like, if I’m going to spend four years learning, I want to learn something that I’m interested in. So I switched to graphic design with the minor in marketing.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How was your time in general there at Salisbury? Like, once you switched over, do you find that they really kind of prepared you as a designer?

Ashley Fletcher:
I don’t think…so. I went to Salisbury — it’s a PWI — and their population at the university of Black students was pretty small at the time. So of course you have the nuances with that. And then I started in 2010. For me, the design industry was completely different than where it grew. By 2014, in graphic design one, we were sketching things on paper. Then we had to color it with colored pencil, then put it into using the light box, and then putting it into design software. So curriculum was very early on of those kind of foundational processes. So by the time I graduated, because for me, I felt like there was a lack of mentorship in the curriculum and preparedness. I don’t think I was prepared at all. I think sometimes with certain schools and structure and curriculum, if you’re not a stellar designer off the bat, some people might not nurture their skill set or say, hey, let me help you find your way. And there was actually an incident that I had with an instructor that he had said something really racist towards another student for a design. We had a design critique and it was just like really off putting. And so when you have those different nuances and situations and you can’t connect necessarily with your instructors, it’s very hard then to rely on them for help and for them to see you as just a student that is trying to just make a living out of this. And also, I think that the pace of Salisbury is a different pace from DC that I’ve experienced. And so people are enjoying life out there. It’s not too far from the beach, they’re chilling. It’s a very chill vibe there compared to how the design industry is now. So all of those things I left school not really knowing where to go, what I wanted to do in design. Again, at that time, there were a lot of traditional forms of design. Digital design wasn’t really a thing. Yeah, so I graduated and I worked at a beauty shop cosmopros that my mom frequented for all of her hair supply needs. I worked there for a few months. I was a winter graduate, so I worked there for a few months, and then I got a job as an administrative assistant at a medical association. So, yeah, definitely didn’t get a job right off the bat or really know what design looked for me outside of what I was learning in undergrad. I will say though, I did gain a lot of experience. I did designer for a lot of the organizations on campus, like MPHC and some of the other organizations that I was a part of. So I was able to create and explore what my design practice looked like, what I wanted to create outside of classroom assignments. And I think that was really beneficial to where I am now.

Maurice Cherry:
I was just talking for the last episode I did was with Kevin Tufts. He’s a product designer at Facebook. And we were sort of talking about kind of the time period that you were in school, like early two thousand and ten s and how it felt like design really took this abrupt shift into digital and product at a time when I think a lot of us prior to that were learning about more traditional design, like graphic design, visual design, web design. And then overnight that became product designer, UX designer. And you’re like, wait a minute, what? You thought you knew one thing and now your title is different and sometimes it’s the same skills, sometimes it’s not. Like, I can imagine. Certainly if you’re in school at that time, like, yeah, you get out and you thought you were learning one thing, and then you try to look for jobs and everything is different than what you thought it would be from what you learned. Yeah, I can certainly empathize with that. That whole time period was I’d. Say probably from 2006 to 2012. There were so many changes happening in design because of technology. Also, the browser was becoming more of a tool that you could use for design and less of just a presentation for a design. Right. Like, you could now do things in the browser and you have new tools coming out. I think this was around the time I want to say this was around the time, like Sketch or maybe like another web based tool really started to come about. I don’t know if Figma was around.

Ashley Fletcher:
Back then, but yeah, I think Envision was one.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, InVision. Yeah. So you had this kind of shift from the Adobe style of these extremely expensive, extremely complicated pieces of software because they started to go subscription based. And then in response to that, people are like, well, we’re just going to make something that you can do in the browser. I don’t know if Sketch was in the browser, but it was just such an interesting time because the tools were changing from what industry standards used to be to these new things. And again, the titles were also changing. I feel like when I look back at that, that was a very tumultuous time in design that it was hard to keep up with what was going on because innovation was happening so quickly.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, and graduating in the midst of that when you still are trying to learn this new thing, like four years, learning something that goes by really fast, and depending on your curriculum, depending on who your professors are and their skill set, their skill set could still be in a certain decade of design. And now they’re like, okay, everybody, let’s rush. I remember buying my first Adobe software when you had to buy the CDs and you couldn’t share the CD code or whatever the little access code was to now, like subscription. I remember how much of a big deal that was and just the shift that was coming. It was really tough. By the time I got to MICA, it kind of advanced, too. And so I was with a whole new cohort of people that were ready to create design in this new way. And so I feel like Salisbury was really an exploration of what design is like, a really rough exploration of, okay, these are these different tools. This is layout. But MICA really set the foundation and kind of solidified it for me. Yeah, that 2010 period. Now, even now, we have content creation now, which also shifts the media in which we’re designing for. And so, I mean, Apple is going to come out. They just dropped their latest thing, and that’s going to shift the medium in which we’re creating and the scale and the size and the resolution, all of that matters when you’re thinking about and understanding the tools that you have now.

Maurice Cherry:
During that time that you were like you said, you’re working in this beauty supply shop. You were working as an admin assistant. How were you feeling about doing that kind of work? Like you mentioned before, going to Salisbury, and you spend all this time studying for your craft, and then you get out and you’re not working in what you studied. How did that time make you feel?

Ashley Fletcher:
It was definitely an adjustment process. I think also dealing with I talk about this a lot amongst my friends and family, like post grad depression as an undergrad, when you go from being in this community of people and then you move away from that community of people, that’s such a shift. Like your friends. Like, I had a best friend, she lived in New York, so I didn’t get to see her unless we came to see each other. So that sense of community for me, shifting in who you are when you grow and you’re living on your own in a town or in college, that’s a completely different person from when you were living with your mom in high school. And so going back to that, there’s all these different changes. But I think I knew that what I was doing was just a placement of like I knew that my career was going to be bigger than what it currently was. So having that administrative assistant role, I used to always when computers first came out, my grandma, she had a computer, I would always play like, oh, I’m working at an office, or things like that. And I think it works for the logical I’m a Virgo, so really scheduling, organizing those things I love, I kind of thrive in. So it wasn’t a miserable place. It was also a great company to work for. Again, it was a small organization, but they had just a lot of different things to cultivate community there. And I was able to I was in that role for a year, and then I moved to their meetings department because I guess I was doing so well in assisting with the events that they did. It wasn’t miserable. I always knew even before graduating Salisbury, I was like, okay, I’m graduating. Here are my options. I could go back to school and go to grad school, and I kind of knew a little bit about Mica. And so by the time I had that full time administrative assistant position and then into meetings, I was like, okay, you’ve been here for I think it might have been year two. Now, what are we doing next? Because you can get complacent here or you can take that leap. Just like you took the leap from business administration, which felt comfortable, to going for design. I told myself, you didn’t take that leap just to give up or to just kind of settle for this current position. So I applied to go to MICA and I got accepted.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Tell me about what that was like. I’m pretty sure that was much different from Salisbury?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yes, it was much different. First of all, I must say that my love for Baltimore, oh, my goodness, it’s such a beautiful place to be, a beautiful community to grow. Of course, part of my time was spent in what they call like the MICA bubble. So the bubble of the art community in school there, but during, just constantly inspired by other creatives. That was something that I loved and really propelled my understanding of what a creative practice looks like and how other people are creating. So it was beautiful. I did a post Baccular program, and then I did the MFA program. So when I first applied, I applied to both, but I was accepted into the post baccalaureate. That program was phenomenal. I grew so much. It was just one year, but I grew so much in that one year of my understanding for design. I think by that time, I was a much different person than when I first graduated. I had started to really focus on mindfulness practices, and I was being mindful of the soaps that I was using and the food that I was putting in my body, and also having this awakening of learning about African American and Black artists and designer. And so I learned about Emory Douglas there. He spoke at Bowie [State] University. And I got to meet him and just really teaching myself the history that I wanted to learn, because I was, again, very intentional about that. It’s like, okay, I have this skill set. I know what this is. I’ve looked through Meggs Book of Graphic Design history, and I don’t see any Black people, but I know we’re here. I know I’m not the first graphic designer, so let me do the work to teach myself. And I think a lot of us do that. We have to teach ourselves a lot of our own history. Thankfully, now things are very different. You could pull up TikTok and you have a whole video on designers, fashion designers, whatever you want to learn, you can learn. So, yeah, it was a beautiful time of exploration, being around other designers that had different backgrounds, like a lot of people had. They were science majors. Not everyone had a design background. And so we all brought different perspectives to what we were creating, and it was really good. The curriculum also was just it’s a night and day from my time at Salisbury and my time at MICA. Again, the design industry was very different at that time, too. I started MICA in 2017. So again, two different eras of design. I’m forever grateful for that experience. I’ve blossomed so much and added so many things like motion graphic to my skill set. I remember there was a workshop that we would have different workshops throughout the year. And we had a workshop on after Effects. And I was like, what is this? I thought I got away from math. What are all these numbers. What is this interface? I was completely intimidated. But by the time I started the MFA program, I took a motion graphics class because I realized these target commercials. This is motion graphics. This is how you can use design as a tool in a different medium. It doesn’t have to be traditional print or anything like that. So I wanted to learn how to do that. I wanted to add that to my toolkit and my skill set. I spent a lot of time that first year learning about publication design and these methods that I was drawn to that drew me to design in the first place. Salisbury, at the time that I was there, I don’t think that we learned a lot about the foundation of layout design. And so I was able to get that at MICA. So I spent a lot of that first year exploring that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I mean, it really sounds like MICA just kind of re energized you as a designer and kind of put you on the track that you needed to be on to get to where you’re at now.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it definitely did. And also the amount of resources that they have. Their career development. Yeah, the career development department, they are super helpful. They help you find jobs, they help you cultivate your portfolio, build your portfolio. They have so many tools of here’s how to interview that they update and keep updated. And so having access to those resources as a student and as a graduate and an alumni, it’s so beneficial. We need those tools, especially, again, as Black designers, where we may not have representation or we may not see ourselves in certain industries. And I think we deserve mentors. We need mentors at every step of the journey. And so they were really a lifeline for a lot of those things of preparing for your portfolio, your resume. They have full templates that they update in different scenarios. And those things I didn’t receive from Salisbury at the time, from my program or the university. I can’t say that those things are whether they’ve improved or not, but yet having access to those various resources. Baltimore is also just a great community for artists. There’s so many different resources and grants. And I had exhibited my work at my first art exhibition. I never would have thought, like, oh, I can show my work here. I don’t have to create art. It doesn’t have to be on a canvas. I don’t have to pull out a paintbrush, but I can actually showcase my work. That was also the first time I ever sold artwork. So I was introduced to new forms of art and showcase my art in different ways. They have something called the Is. It the art market? Mica art market every year. And so this big thing around holiday season, the Illustrator department, they have this big set up so students can sell their artwork. There’s different vendors from the community as well as alumni. So I created and sold my first art print and stickers there. And so that was kind of the birth of the art shop that I have today. So, yeah, getting introduced to all of these different means of showcasing your design and your art, it was really a great time.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Yeah. Sounds like MICA was transformative in many ways for you.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, it definitely was.

Maurice Cherry:
You mentioned resources, and we sort of had this conversation a bit before we started recording, and I was like, let’s save it for the show. Another resource that is available to us as designers are design organizations. There’s AIGA. There’s the Graphic Artists Guild, IDSA, et cetera. What are your thoughts on sort of design organizations now? Because you’ve said before again, this is before we started recording, but AIGA DC, for example, was a big help for you.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So in between kind of that shift before MICA and while working as an administrative assistant, the meetings, I was like, okay, I need to be around the people. Where are the designers? I will say give credit to Salisbury. One of my professors was like, you guys need to join this. You need to join AIGA. It’s only however the membership was, it’s only $5. You need to join. You need to join. And in my mind, I’m like, well, I don’t see Black people in this class. I don’t even know if I want to enter another space where I’m like, okay, here we go. That kind of thing also very much an introvert, so maybe my introvert self was like, speaking of, oh, no, I have to go talk to more people or join a group with other people. But that later came back because I listened to revision podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you. Because you guys definitely found me and helped me to just figure out where to go. And I think one episode you were talking about AIGA, and that is a resource. And so I was like, okay, let me look this up. And so I went to one of their events, and I think AIGA DC has been a great resource for me. I was able to apply for a scholarship while at Mica. They also have various events like DC Design Week. And so I was able to do a pop up shop with them, with my art shop. So I think depending on where you are, the different chapters might be a little different. But AIGA DC has definitely been an amazing resource for me to find my way, figure out what places I could work, what different career paths other people had and their journey, and just connecting with other designers. Also, more recently, I was a part of Designers Ignite, and so that was during COVID but it was an opportunity for designers to Black Designers Ignite. It was an opportunity for us to talk about our work, our progress, where we are, and for us to get paid for speaking. So that was an amazing resource. I think COVID and post COVID brought about a lot of different design organizations that I found that I could connect with versus before, it was just AIGA. DC, or AIGA in general, not even DC. And that felt a little bit more corporate for me at the time. Again, the design industry had a major shift early on. Some of the things and practices, they seemed a little, to me, outdated, a little closed off. But as time has progressed, I think AIGA has been a great resource also. It’s an online resource, but brand new website by under consideration. I think that’s the proper umbrella, but they’re a great resource for anything branding, branding, identity, visual identity. So different online resources and communities I’ve been able to connect with. So if I didn’t get it from one organization, then I was able to kind of navigate to some of these other organizations to find the resources and just to connect with the people that I felt that represented me.

Maurice Cherry:
For people that have listened to the show, I’ve kind of mentioned AIGA a lot over the years. I’ve volunteered for them, things of that nature. I really do wonder in general, about the role of design organizations for the modern designer. I remember this might have been, I guess, maybe about right before the pandemic. I know that there was a lot of talk with AIGA about them not really considering UX designers as designers, and I feel like I think the organization started to come around on that. But there have been a lot of topics recently regarding AI art and sort of the encroachment of technology into the creative space and what that means for creatives in general. And I’ve seen honestly, a lot of our modern design organizations have been kind of silent about it. I think I might have heard the most from the graphic artist guild. I know that they do some regular events, but, like, AIGA has been silent. I don’t know if IDSA has said anything or any other types of organizations. I would love to see our designer orgs in general, just be more proactive and talk about the things that are happening in the industry instead of just taking dues and maybe having a monthly webinar. And this is no shade to anyone in particular, but I would love to see them just be more in the community and proactive in that way, because it sort of feels like, especially with AIGA now, them I will single out. I remember when I was volunteering with them and there was this big push for us to get more Black students, really more HBCUs involved with student groups. And it’s like, yeah, but the parameters around a student group might not apply for HBCU, because for a student group, you have to, I think, be within 50 miles of a regular chapter. You have to have at least ten students that are studying design. And then I think a professor has to be or had to be, like, a sustaining member, like one of the top membership levels. If you did those three things, then you could have a student chapter. And I’m like, well, that might be prohibitive for an HBCU that’s like, not near a city or there’s not ten students in the program.

Ashley Fletcher:
There might be two, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Like, it’s prohibitive. And so we were trying to talk about getting them to sort of lessen that for HBCUs, and then they were like, well, if we do it for them, we have to do it for everybody. And I’m like, well, do it for everybody. But I mean, the reason that they didn’t want to do that is because it boils down to finance. If they know each student group is getting at least a minimum amount of money that goes back into the organization, all of that stuff, it’s all somewhat self sustaining in that way. So in that respect, I don’t know if our design orgs are equipped at the moment to really do that. I would love to just see more of that in general, because I don’t really see a lot of it now. I feel like they’re being pretty quiet and reactionary instead of really like, speaking up about how this affects our industry, how sort of these things affect our industry.

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah, I think we definitely because they hold this title of being a guild for graphic designers and artists, we also expect them to lead some of the different changes and to kind of push to the conversation, to push the changes to advocate for us, especially when it comes to AI. I would have thought with Photoshop releasing this new AI feature that’s going crazy, that they would connect, the two organizations would come together and say, okay, here’s what we have on this. Here’s what this tool is doing, here’s the information, or here’s the discussion that we can have around this. Maybe they are having it. And I don’t know, because, again, I’m not within these organizations, but we definitely want and we talked a lot about the shift that happened in design from 2010 to 2017 or even 2014. I think being in the midst of that and helping designers, maybe it’s a thing of understanding the core audience. A lot of young designers rely on them or may go to them to help them in these different moments of their career. And so if these practices and things are outdated, you’re going to lose those people that really do at the core need your assistance. Like, HBCUs should for sure be supported, especially given how eager a lot of the companies were to highlight Black stories and Black voices and oh, now we have all of these different initiatives to support HBCUs. Well, we want to see that applied across the board, and not just for a short period of time, because we already know that we’re dealing with so many barriers and checklist, stipulations, whatever when it comes to even getting hired for a job. Because let’s be real. Like, the hiring process and those practices are still very challenging. And so if our own organizations that are for us aren’t helping us get over that hump, aren’t leading the conversation, aren’t pushing and encouraging these companies and HR hiring practices to change and shift as design is changing and shifting, what’s really the purpose? What’s going on? I think COVID thankfully shook a lot of organizations and things and practices up. And I think companies need to be doing those checks and balances on a regular basis, not just every decade or natural disaster. We need to be doing these things on a regular basis and having these conversations so that your organization can sustain itself and the culture of design and where it’s headed. Yeah. AI. I don’t even want to talk about it. Don’t understand just the overall checks and balances. I have not used the Photoshop tool. I will use the Lasso and the pencil tool till I can’t no more before I begin swapping out backgrounds with different stuff, until I don’t know. I don’t fully trust it right now. But just like with other things, we evolve and we grow. So I’ll look forward to the day that I actually test out that tool.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I haven’t downloaded I think it’s like a beta version of Photoshop that allows you to kind of it’s similar, I guess, to content aware fill, where it will automatically generate part of an image or something. I haven’t done that yet, but we’re certainly seeing AI filters being a big thing if you’re on TikTok, if you’re on Instagram. I mean, even augmented reality stuff, I guess, kind of maybe ties into this a little bit, like stuff that Snap has done with filters and lenses and stuff. But it would be good to hear from our design organizations. They’re just kind of thoughts about this, even if it’s like drawing a line in the sand or something. Because I know that it’s only going to be a matter of time where people who are not designers will generate AI art things and then try to take them to designers for edits or changes or something. And I feel like there needs to be an industry wide line in the sand that says, we are not doing this. Absolutely not. Like, it needs to be something that is across the board. Yeah.

Ashley Fletcher:
In a way to protect your intellectual property as a designer. I think there was one app that everyone was using and it was putting together all these really cool pictures on Instagram. It’s like, okay, but where are these images being pulled from? It’s being pulled from the Internet. Somebody had to create bits and pieces and is now creating this beautiful picture of you. So I think the music industry has started to set some parameters around AI because they’re using Drake’s voice on a Kanye beat.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Ashley Fletcher:
Things like that are happening. So, yeah, we also, as designers, want to need to start having those conversations too, especially when it comes to our intellectual property and how our work can be protected and what our new design process will look like when we are working within AI generated art.

Maurice Cherry:
Well said. Well said. What advice would you give to someone out there who’s kind of hearing your story and they want to kind of follow in your footsteps? What would you tell them first?

Ashley Fletcher:
I definitely say take the risk. I think through these different moments of my journey, it really resulted in me taking a risk. Like just going with it, going with what I wanted. Sometimes I would say, oh, no, let’s play safe and let’s try this. No, go for what you want if you want to, especially in the age that we are in now where you can directly reach people. I know people say this all the time, but it really does matter. Your moment can change from night and day just by you sharing your work, sharing your design process. It can be an ugly design process. It doesn’t have to be the final product. But sharing how you think through creatively different works and things like that can be the next step that you need to elevate and pivot your career and your dream career, or your dream creative journey. Not even just a career, but your dream creative practice. So I think definitely go for it. If there’s something that you want to do, if it’s something in your heart that you’re like, oh, I don’t know how you’re putting all these limitations, just do it. Just take the first step, because I promise you, everything else is going to fall in line. I would have never thought that by me switching my major and being in love with yearbook and magazines would now lead to where my career is now. Everything that I do is fulfilling it’s in alignment with who I am. So really just take that risk. And also knowing again what your values are and what kind of work you want to be creating, what type of clients you want to work with, and manifesting that. Speaking of into existence also, I think trusting that journey and process and being okay, that it can get a little messy. It can not be like, for me, I was out of work for a very long time when this just this past year, to the point where I was like, I don’t know, I was kind of burnt out a little bit from freelance. I don’t know what I’m doing. I really don’t want to work full time, but just not really knowing what that next step was. But it’s working out for me. Things aligned. I got a job that I really loved. I love there’s so many different things that I prayed on and manifested on and just really started to be intentional about the things that I was asking for and not playing. Don’t play yourself small. You got to think big. You really do. Like, whatever you want to achieve in this lifetime, if it’s aligned, it’ll definitely work out. So just really take those steps. I think also asking not being too afraid to ask for help, sometimes I forget that, hey, it’s okay to go and reach out to this person. If you don’t know how to do this thing, like using that network and community that you have because you have it for a reason, whether it’s an old teacher or an old classmate, you just never know. Don’t be afraid to ask for that help, especially with someone who didn’t necessarily have mentors or someone consistently guiding me through this creative process. I’ve just been like, okay, I want to do this. Let me try it. Let’s see how it works. Like, I want to create an art shop. I don’t know what’s going to happen, what’s going to come of it. Well, now I’m in four stores and I’ve sold my artwork internationally. There’s so many different things of taking that leap, but also asking for help along that journey, like, don’t be afraid to do it. The worst that anybody can say is, no, can’t help you, or I don’t know the answer. That’s it, I think. Yeah, just really taking that leap. Also getting your creative practice in order in your creative process, I think that’s something that I didn’t realize until later on down the line, especially after being in Mica and the rigor that is grad school and being diagnosed with breast cancer. I think I was like, oh my gosh, did I work myself to the bone? What is going on? How was I not paying attention to my body during this time? And so really figuring out what creative practice works for you, what that looks like. Fletcher it’s taking a day off throughout the week to go explore, to go be in nature, to go on a road trip or a trip somewhere, if you can just invigorate your creativity, taking rest from working in general just so that you can take care of your well being and your health. The nature in which graphic design lives in, it’s a fast paced environment where people essentially want you to be robots of just working around the clock and churning out these designs. And not everybody can work in that type of creative environment. So really figuring out how you thrive creatively, what things work for you, whether it be your meal prepping to your intake of media and content, what things are really going to get you in a good space to create and inspire you. That’s something that I think is really important for us to have. We can be burnt out so quickly of just always consuming media, content, everything. And then we do that. Within our own practice. Sometimes you don’t need to research for 3 hours with design. Sometimes just give yourself ten minutes to find what you need and be intentional and then go and create. Go and sketch it out. Yeah, I think that it’s really important. Design School doesn’t teach you about the business of design. So if you want to be your own boss, if you want to dabble in different things, you might not get that from Design School. So you’re definitely going to have to teach yourself some of those practices. And so again, having a creative process in place that keeps you a little structured, having the schedule that, you know, okay, today I’m just going to do administrative task. I’m just going to dedicate this day to responding to emails and then you have the rest of the week to create. Coming up with that kind of structure I think really helps. I found myself during my freelance journey getting off the rails a little bit, like I was spending too much time at home. I was burnt out because I was working around the clock, then trying to find more work and trying to update my portfolio, all these things. So it really helps to have that structure a little bit.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow, that’s tremendous advice. I almost feel like we can sort of wrap it up here. I don’t feel like there’s anything I can say that can trump that, but I mean…just to wrap it up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work? Like, where can they follow you online?

Ashley Fletcher:
Yeah. So I’m online. If you want to follow me on social media, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter at @digitrillnana. It should be linked in the podcast. But that’s D-I-G-I-T-R-I-L-L-N-A-N-A. Think Foxy Brown “Ill Na Na” and digital design. That’s what that is. Okay, of course, online. My portfolio is ashley-fletcher.com, and then my art shop is digitrillnana.com. If you are in the DMV area, you can find me in local shops. I’m at the MICA Bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m also at Sankofa. You can find some of my art goods in Sankofa in DC on Georgia Avenue.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Ashley Fletcher, thank you so much for coming on the show. You don’t know this. You kind of inadvertently spoke a word into me with all that advice. That was some stuff I personally also needed to hear, and I hope that certainly the listeners will get that too. But your whole story of kind of persevering through not just kind of getting sidetracked in terms of your path to being a designer, but your perseverance and your creativity and your drive and your passion for this just completely shines through in everything that you’ve said. And I’m so excited to see where you go next in the future. It’s always exciting for me when I do this show and I talk to people that are so energetic and dynamic about the field of design and the work that they do, and I really feel like you’re an excellent representation for that. Keep shining, keep doing what you’re doing. And thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Ashley Fletcher:
Thank you so much. You just spoke life into me, so I appreciate it if you are listening to this podcast. Keep going, guys. Like, we got this. I’m so grateful to just have this opportunity to connect and just share some wisdom in a space that once inspired me. So Maurice, thank you so much for all that you do. Yeah, thank you.

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Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world. They are always looking to expand their roster of freelance design consultants in the U.S., particularly brand strategists, copywriters, graphic designers and Web developers.

If you know how to deliver excellent creative work reliably, and enjoy the autonomy of a virtual-based, freelance life (with no non-competes), check them out at brevityandwit.com.