Sam Viotty

We’re exploring the intersections of design, music, and social impact with this week’s guest, Sam Viotty. Not only is Sam an extremely knowledgeable program and experience designer, but she’s also the co-owner of a record label and she’s an adjunct professor at Loyola’s Quinlan School of Business. And that’s just scratching the surface!

We started off by defining program design and experience design, and from there Sam talked about her label, Rosedale Collective, and her dedication to showcasing BIPOC voices in country music. She also dove into her previous work at The Obama Foundation, and how that opened her world to the importance of design in project management and social innovation (and for starting her own company, Viotty Design Studio). Sam even talked a bit about her current role at Adobe, and shared her plans on what she hopes to accomplish in the near future.

Sam’s career is a lesson in how we can all reshape our perspective on the conventional borders of design — something important to learn in this ever-changing world!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

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

Sam Viotty:

I’m Sam Viotty. I’m a program and experience designer, a creative at heart, and someone who really just loves design all things design.

Maurice Cherry:

Just before we really kind of get into the conversation, I’d love for you to explain just off the top, like, what does experience design and program design mean to you? And the reason I’m asking this is because oftentimes and we’ll, I think, get to this later in our conversation oftentimes when people think of design, they’ll only think UI/UX, visual type of thing. What does experience design and program design mean to you?

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, I think a lot of the time when I say program design, people are like, you design computer programs? I’m like, no, not that kind of design. Or they’re like interior design. And so program and experience design really to me is thinking about service and experiences for people. It really is people design in how I see it. So when we’re designing the ways that people interact with one another, build relationships, operate in the world professionally, develop themselves, that’s how I see program design. So really designing programs and experiences that people go through and then experience design, I think is a little bit more broad than program design. So it includes program design, but also thinking about events and experiences and things that people kind of experiencing go through. So events, conferences, those types of things, all thinking about not just what people are going experiencing, but seeing, smelling what they’re taking away.

A lot of it is like learning. So overall experience.

Maurice Cherry:

So it’s kind of like an encompassing it’s funny you mentioned event because that’s really sort of something that indulges or can indulge all of your senses. What you see, the swag you pick up, any sort of beverages or drinks or food or anything like all of that kind of can fall into the realm of experience, design, it sounds like.

Sam Viotty:

Correct? Yeah, absolutely right.

Maurice Cherry:

How have things been going for you this year?

Sam Viotty:

It’s been a busy year. I was traveling a lot. I took on just, like, really trying to spend a lot of time thinking about what is my life outside of my professional work. I live in Los Angeles, so I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors. Started hiking this year. Yeah, I just really trying to absorb a lot of the outdoors now that I live in a warm climate. I grew up on the East Coast, and so it’s really nice to spend more time outdoors more times during the year. And I feel like it’s definitely ignited my creativity in a way that it hasn’t before.

So I’m really excited about that. So, yeah, spending lots of time outdoors reading, trying to figure out this has been an exploratory year, and I think next year will be more of the taking action on those exploratory ideas. But I’ve been thinking a lot about I’ve always thought of myself as a designer and a creative and an artist, but recently have more thought about myself as being a curator. So really trying to dive into what that means.

Maurice Cherry:

And also, I should say congratulations are in order. I was doing my research, and I saw you were recently selected to participate in something called the 2023 Keychange US Talent Development Program. So congratulations on that.

Sam Viotty:

Thank you so much. Really excited about it. It kicked off at the beginning of October with a cohort of 25 really incredible human beings. It made my heart really warm to spend, like, three days with all of them started in October and it ends in March. So I’m really at the beginning of the program right now, and so far we’ve only had a few interactions, so one in person and two virtual events together. And I already feel like I’m a part of a community, which is why I applied. I was really excited about being a part of a larger music and artist creative community in Los Angeles. But it’s a Los Angeles, New York and Nashville based program, so we’re also the first US cohort.

So I love being a part of a pilot program. We’ll probably get into this later, but yeah, I’ve been a part of a lot of pilot first time programs, which really is exciting to me to kind of lay the groundwork for what’s to come. It’s been really fun. We’ve spent time working together. We went to Joshua Tree Music Festival together. I’ve never gone to a music festival for work before as fun, so that was amazing. Yeah. Being a professional at a music festival is interesting.

It was really so four of the participants in the program also performed, and it was the first time I got to see them perform. So just seeing the people who are your peers do their thing on stage was just like a proud mom sitting in the audience.

Maurice Cherry:

Nice.

Sam Viotty:

So, yeah, it’s a really beautiful community that they’ve built.

Maurice Cherry:

And now you said it’s the first US based cohort. Is it normally international?

Sam Viotty:

It sounds like yeah, it’s an EU funded program, so they mostly do projects in Europe, and so this is the first time they’re doing a cohort in the United States, which is exciting.

Maurice Cherry:

And now what will you be doing as part of the program? Is this affiliated with some of your other work?

Sam Viotty:

It is. So I applied as an innovator. So it’s twelve innovators and 13 musicians or artists who come together to work just professionally develop. So really thinking about what is your career? I’m the co-founder of a small indie music accelerator and label focused on uplifting the voices of people of color in country, folk and Americana music. We’re expanding to other genres of music. So think like genres that you don’t normally see people of color on the charts. We’re helping amplify those. I applied thinking, how incredible would it be to be a part of a cohort of people who are working towards similar things, trying to achieve equity in the music space, trying to change the music industry.

I’ve been working in the music industry for a few years now, and it’s very interesting. It is unlike any industry that I’ve ever worked in. I used to work in nonprofit, I moved to the private sector. But music feels very different. And living in Los Angeles, on any Wednesday, you’ll go grab lunch and you’re like, Why is it crowded? Because everyone’s having a lunch work meeting within a different culture than I’ve ever experienced. Yeah, it’s very different. I applied thinking, how do I build my music community and work alongside other musicians and innovators to change how the music industry operates. A lot of the label is called Rosedale Collective.

We really often think about how do we change the way that artists are treated and supported and how do they have ownership, in particular, Black and brown people having ownership over the work that they create. So how do we revision no pun intended, actually, how do we revision a way forward for how artists create work and work with labels? And so we’ve designed a residency program that is a year long. We’ve done a few that are shorter. We have not launched our long term, one year long program yet, but we’re working on that. But the long term vision is you support a cohort of artists throughout a year. You pay them a salary and they get to focus on making the art. And then instead of owning the It or the masters to the work that the artists create, we revenue share throughout across all of the different categories that an artist to make money. So through merch and royalties on streaming and touring.

So we split those and instead of just outright owning the work, an artist gets to keep ownership. So we’re really trying to rethink how the industry makes money with artists, and right now they’re making money off of artists. So we’re like, how do we make money with you instead of off of you?

Maurice Cherry:

First off, that is a fascinating model. I mean, I think there’s no shortage of horror stories about musicians getting shafted in some way by the music industry or taken advantage of or something. So I love that you sort of have this revenue share thing and then also the fact that the focus is on a genre of music. I know you said you want to expand it, but you’re focusing right now on country music, which, again, is probably not seen as very super diverse. Like, I can probably count the number of Black country artists. There’s more now than when I was a kid. I’ll say that in terms of visibility, but yeah, that’s such an awesome I mean, I feel like there’s a great story behind even the fact that you co own a record label. That is amazing.

Sam Viotty:

It’s a fun, actually. I met my co-founders at a conference in DC while I was working at the Obama Foundation. We got tickets to A Day of Healing and Restorative Justice. And so I was like, I’d love to not go into the office today. I’d rather be at a conference. And so met these people who are working at the intersection of social impact and entertainment. And I was like, this is such a cool job. You just get to use celebrity money to change the world.

That’s awesome. I was 25 then, so I was still doe-eyed and excited…a little jaded now. So I was very excited about that. And so I kept in contact with the people who were working there, and they reached out to me in 2020 about starting a record label and thinking about designing programs for people of color in the country music space. And so I was like, I don’t know a ton about country music. I know a little Shania Twain, but I do know that it feels pretty racist and so that I can get behind challenging that. And so how do we really think about what music would look like and how it would be different if Black people or people of color kind of were at the forefront? So country music was made by people of color. And so Charley Pride is one of our people that we look up to.

And so, yeah, how do we just reclaim a genre that really was made by Black people? And now the face of country music is not a Black person, not in the United States and not on the top charts. So how do we reclaim that? So we spent a lot of time thinking about narrative change and really redesigning the system of the music industry.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I feel like there’s a lot that has to go behind designing a label. I mean, of course you think of general things like album art and logos and things of that nature, but the design and business of putting something like that together, that seems like such a huge undertaking.

Sam Viotty:

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t know what I was doing. I still don’t know what I’m doing. And I think it actually has been really beneficial that I stepped into the music industry not knowing how the music industry works, because I’ve just been doing what I think makes sense, and that doesn’t necessarily align with what actually happens. And so I’m like, yeah, I think artists should own their work. And people are like, well, it doesn’t really work that way because we don’t make a profit. I’m like, well, that doesn’t make sense. We could figure out a way to make money while also letting people own things that they make. So let’s just design that.

I very lucky. My co-founder is an incredible…I don’t think he would consider himself a designer, but he designed our logo, and I think it’s genius. It’s a circle that has lines going through it and it’s the middle of a guitar. It’s a really amazing logo. I’m very proud of the logo. So we put it on everything. I wear a sweatshirt. I have a hat. Stickers.

And so thinking about how do we take symbols of country music and redefine them? Because I think right now people think country music. I think or before this, I used to think cowboy hat, cowboy shoots, cowboy boots. So what are the symbols of country music? And what are the symbols of country music for people of color. The guitar is one of them. We work with some other organizations who really like to uplift Black and brown artists. One of them is Black Opry, and so their logo is also a guitar. So just thinking about the symbols and iconography for black country music has been really exciting because I think it’s a different language. Like, we’re speaking a different language to a different audience.

And so I spent a lot of my time in undergrad thinking about symbols and iconography. And so it was exciting to bring that piece to the label. And thinking about a label, it’s like developing a brand. We developed a brand before we did anything. We came up with colors and a logo and a design and a deck. And so so much of it was like, how do we communicate who we are and what we do before we’ve even done anything? Which lots of conversations, lots of talking to people before we did a single thing, we did a listening and learning tour where we talked to tens of musicians, like 100 music execs and people in the music industry and in the nonprofit space trying to change things, social impact people. So just spend a lot of time talking to people to be like, what are people looking at? What do people feel and how do we communicate what we’re trying to communicate? And who is our audience, actually? So goes into a lot of the design work. When I went to grad school, I went to grad school at Emerson in a pilot program.

It was called Civic Media Art and Practice. And so that’s where I learned about design thinking. And so I’ve brought design thinking into ever since I’ve learned about it, I’ve brought it into every single job. And so I think when I don’t know what to do, I just rely on that process. I’m like, it’ll be good, we’ll just figure out how. It’s like the scientific method. I’m like, I don’t know how to get an answer, but if we just use this process, I can get us to figuring out how we get an answer. We did a lot of that.

And so that first stage of talking and listening to people is very similar to the empathy stage and the design thinking process.

Maurice Cherry:

I say that all the time to people about how design thinking is very much like the scientific method. So I’m glad that we see eye to eye on that.

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, I explained it like that. I’m like, it’s the same thing. People just yeah, anthropologists looked at it and I guess the design school looked at it and then rebrand it’s all branding. They rebranded it, but it’s the same thing.

Maurice Cherry:

I think what you’re doing with one, shining a light on country music and also promoting and uplifting artists, BIPOC artists, et cetera, in country is great because I grew up as a musician. I grew up as a jazz musician mostly, but there was one thing about like and this might be a bit of a stretch, so if it is, please let me know. But I feel like a lot of could do really well as contemporary country songs. I feel like there’s a thin line between Toni Braxton and that being a country song. I’m thinking love should have like “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” could totally be a country song.

Sam Viotty:

I absolutely could be a country song. We used to jokingly make a criteria checklist for what is a country song. One was like, is it about love or heartbreak? Check. Does it have a Twang check? I think you’re right. The only thing missing from the twang, like, if they all had a twang, they would absolutely be country.

Maurice Cherry:

Yes. A lot of, like, Anita Baker songs could definitely also sound like country songs. She has like, a slight Twang. But I get what you mean though. There is sort of a checklist of like, is it heartbreak? Is it lament in some capacity then it could totally be a country song. Now, we talked about Rosedale, but also you have another job where you work for Adobe. Can you talk a little bit about what you do there?

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, that is really exciting. I spend most of my time working at Adobe now. It’s one of those companies that when you’re young and in college and you think about design and education and what’s the coolest job you could have. It is the job I have now. And I think that’s incredible. College me would be very proud. So right now, I lead all of Adobe’s higher education professional development. So training programs for faculty and students in higher education in the United States.

We’re expanding to the United Kingdom and Australia. Starting to think globally about what does it mean and what are the skills that a 21st century college graduate needs in order to operate in the world. Adobe is notorious for being extremely challenging, having a high learning, a very difficult learning curve and being quite know one financially. And also, just like, the tools are complicated and there are a lot of them. Adobe has launched something called Adobe Express, which is the kind of premier product that I work on and work with schools to use. So think of the rival Canva as…Canva was a response to Adobe being really difficult. Adobe Express is a response to that. And so it’s an incredible tool.

I think the thing that’s exciting about Adobe Express is it has the generative AI in it, which is really helpful now and interesting, brings a conversation about ethics and IP and copyright, which Adobe is big on, especially because we’ve been working with artists and illustrators and graphic designers for ages. I spend a lot of my time helping faculty and schools and instructional designers think about what does it need to be a digitally fluent individual? And so how do you redesign your curriculum so that students are getting the skills that they need to be successful beyond college. So instead of maybe writing that ten page paper, what does it look like to help a student create an assignment that is actually a video storytelling project or create a podcast instead of the paper? So what is the alternative to the typical research paper? Because in my personal job, I am not writing research paper long things anymore. I am doing research and then applying it to a project. And so how do we do a little bit more project based learning at the higher ed level? I think a lot of K Twelve and high schools have taken this on, which is incredible. But I think the project based learning often happens either in really vocational or technical student projects. So if you’re in a graphic design class or create this poster or create a project for a client, those things happen. But in the kind of social sciences and English classes that’s not really happening.

It’s still pretty static and it’s like write a paper to respond to this. And I’m like, the world that we live in now doesn’t really do that. So how do we change how we’re thinking about it? And how do we cultivate the skills that people need? Creating presentations, marketing on social media, creating posters, creating graphics like everyone video and short form storytelling. Short form video is the primary way that people communicate now. They cannot scroll on any social media without seeing video. How do we cultivate those skills to make sure that students are signed up for success? So I spent a lot of my time doing that, which is really cool because I was really interested. I started my career in education and then I also just have always had this passion for being creative and working with creatives and just thinking about arts and culture. And so I feel like I get to bring those worlds together in my role at Adobe.

Maurice Cherry:

Now that is fascinating. You’re designing education or you’re designing the way that people are learning about these new tools and these new methods. And I’m curious, does that work and the work you do with Rosedale collectors, does that bleed into each other in any way? It feels like that could be a lot to possibly try to balance it.

Sam Viotty:

Is it’s like, you know, corporate world and also working at a small indie, but I sit in between the education team and the marketing team. And so I’ve learned so much about corporate marketing through working at Adobe, which as an Indie label and accelerator, we have the finances to play small. But I’m like how do we play big? Because that’s how the music industry works. There’s so much like everyone’s a musician, everyone can be right. And so how do you get the people that you want to bubble to the top? And it’s marketing. I was talking about those interviews earlier and we talked to so many artists, and I’d say, what do you need help with? What’s your biggest struggle right now? It is not songwriting. It is not making the music. It is not finding a producer.

It isn’t even touring. It is marketing. They’re like, how do I get someone to hear my music? It’s marketing and distribution. And so I’ve learned a lot about marketing and distribution in this corporate role and seeing how that plays out and being able to say, okay, if that’s true here, how do we apply it to how do we use some of these strategies for our artists and teach them how to do it for themselves? And so I see my role in both of them as I’m professionally developing people. They’re just different. But coincidentally, the artists that I work with are about the same age as the students who faculty are working with. I have a similar audience. Like, how do I prepare these 18 to 25 year olds with 21st century skills to be successful in the world to either market themselves, market the things that they’re working on, and really tell stories?

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I think what you’re doing is just such extremely important work because I think what we’ve definitely seen over the past few years is that our systems are changing. I mean, definitely with the advent of AI and things, we’re seeing how that’s been affecting certain industries. But even like you said, with marketing and getting content out there, it’s even weird to call it old school. But the old school ways, which we knew about how to market things and how to learn things are changing. And a lot of that is due to technology. So I think you being at the forefront of that, particularly with sitting kind of between marketing and education teams, that sounds like a dream. I mean, I’m speaking for myself, but that sounds like a dream job to have.

Sam Viotty:

Yeah. Again, I think college undergrad me would be like, if someone asked me what job I wanted, it would be this one. And so I’m excited about that. The other thing that I just so excited about is generative AI. I know that it’s a hot topic, but working at Adobe and seeing just, like, how these tools have allowed people to make things that they wouldn’t have created before, same. Like, I also am an illustrator. Not a great one, but it’s my hobby. It has enabled me to create things that I wouldn’t have been able to create before.

And not in a plagiarism way, but I’m like removing the background from something. Used to take ages in Photoshop. Now in Adobe Express, it’s a like, it has saved me time. Technology is catching up with how quickly and how fast the world is. Like, things happen and then it is online in seconds, and the tools are starting to catch up to that. So I’ve been really excited about how do we leverage those tools to ignite creativity because I’m someone who procrastinates, and I also get really stuck. I think generative AI has helped me get unstuck as a brainstorming. Like, you know, let me just pop it in and see what I can start with.

Whereas before, I kind of just sit and wait and then never do it.

Maurice Cherry:

Just recently we had Andre Foster on the show and he has a motion graphics company in Detroit called First Fight and he talks about how he uses generative AI, kind of in the same way that you mentioned it. He uses it like a I think he likened it to a Pinterest board or a mood board where it’s a good place to sort of just take the idea from your head and start to instantly visualize it, to see where you could possibly go next with it.

Sam Viotty:

Love that. I totally agree with that.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, you talked about growing up on the East Coast, so I would like to kind of shift the conversation towards that and learn more about just sort of how you got to where you are now. So you grew up on the East Coast. Were you kind of always exposed to a lot of art and creativity and such growing up?

Sam Viotty:

Yeah. I grew up in New York City, so every field trip was to a museum. When I was in school. I also had parents who were really excited about the arts. My mother was a dancer, just really excited about performance arts. And with my grandmother and then my dad and my dad’s mother. My dad’s mother was a teacher. I was excited about reading as a kid.

He spent so much time at the library. I used to pick out books, and very often I would pick books based on their covers in contrary to what you’re told. I was like, if it looks cool on the outside, I’m sure it’s cool on the inside. And so I was just really excited about that. I used to draw a lot. Like, the Christmas gifts that I used to get as a kid was like, I don’t know if you remember those. Really big. I hope they still make them.

I haven’t seen them in a while, but it’s like pastel crayons paint.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, yeah, those 130 piece art kits or whatever.

Sam Viotty:

Yes. And they’d have a bunch of pencils, and I never used to use they had, like, four types of pencils, and I was like, I don’t know what anyone’s doing with this. I like the color, so I used to get those every year. I’d ask for a new one. I didn’t always need a new one, but, yeah, I used to run the cray pods down to the bone, and so I used to play with those all the time. And so I’d, like, draw pictures of our family, draw pictures of the sky, draw pictures of the books that I’d read. Spent a lot of time drawing and. Creating.

I’d like, do cutouts. I used to play with paper dolls all the time, just always thinking about what I can now see in retrospect is design. And my dad, who just was so proud of me, used to, in our basement, created kind of like a little curatorial gallery of my work on a string through the basement. So anytime I came down or people came down, it felt like a gallery show. And so I always loved museums and art. Yeah, my art was all over the house. Like, it was on the fridge, it was on the walls, it was upstairs. And so I was really encouraged to express my creativity.

My dad was a computer nerd, and so he tried to teach me computer programming when I was younger. I think it was called Logo?

Maurice Cherry:

Logo, with the turtle!

Sam Viotty:

Yes, with the turtle! So my dad was…yes, he tried to teach me that. I hated it. I was like, this is so boring. I can’t stand this. He’s like, but you can create art with it.

I was just, I’m not interested. I really regret it. I wish I became a computer scientist, but I just constantly encouraged. I used to use the Paint app on Microsoft and on, you know, all kids, but I was really into just, like, creating, and I was really encouraged to create, which I’m so grateful for now. I think my parents really let me explore, at least when I was a child. This changes a bit when I get older, but while I was a child, in my adolescence, I was very much encouraged to paint, create, make things get messy, do whatever, and explore my creativity, whether it was, like making my own clothes, designing clothes, designing paper, making notebooks, writing stories, like, anything. And I think that I brought a lot of that into how I kind of exist now and explore my creativity now.

Maurice Cherry:

Did that shift happen in high school?

Sam Viotty:

Yang it did. And I think it’s funny that, you know, that I was not encouraged to explore art when I was in high school. I remember I liked our art class, and I did quite well. My dad was excited, so my mom passed away when I was six. So a little hard. My dad had to take on being a single parent and then remarried. My parents were divorced at the time, so it wasn’t like that stark of they’re dating someone else difference. But I was close to the woman who is now my stepmother, who I’m very close with and who helped raise me.

She was a nurse, and so registered nurse. And so just like a very practical human in a way that maybe my dad and I were not. And so she’s like, you need a practical job. Need you to get a practical skills, like, what are we doing? Which I think she’s brought the logic to my creativity, which is wonderful. But once I got to high school, I was not discouraged from taking art classes, but it was like, well, then what are you going to do? I used to use my room as a curatorial space. I’d buy as many magazines as I could, and then my walls were completely covered with images, and I just would always do that. I’d look at font type and ads. I was like, how do I create this? And I wanted to go into advertising and market and communications, but my parents were just like, maybe I don’t know.

My dad was like, Please go into science. I was like, I’m really not good at physics. And my mom was like, Please do something practical. And so I was kind of, like, torn. And all I really wanted to do was change the world. Then I just became privy. I went to a predominantly Asian school in New York City. So 50% of the population was Asian, maybe 20% was white, and then the rest was, like, Black and Latino.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay?

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, maybe Southeast Asian. It was a very interesting mix, but just was starting to become more privy to racism, I think. Growing up in New York City, I’d always thought in high school, thought, I’d go to such a diverse school, I’ve gone to diverse schools, everything’s fine, and then realizing the world just doesn’t operate in the ways that it should. Extreme poverty exists. I want to work in that. How do I do that? And my parents were not excited that they were proud of me, but they were not excited about that career path. My mom’s like, you want to go into nonprofit, you’re not going to make any money. And so I ignored them and went to college.

So I went to college at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Small liberal arts college, about 1600 students. So very small campus was like, you could run around it. I couldn’t even really get my laps off when I go for a run because it was only a mile and barely. So it’s a very small campus. And so I was like, I’m just going to major in English. I wanted to go into marketing, communications, but small liberal arts college only had English as a major. I was like, Seems close enough.

I major in English. My parents are like, sounds fine. It seems like a scale. Great. And I start applying to internships, and I’m not getting anything. Like, absolutely nothing. I’m like, I can write things. This seems practical.

What’s going on? But I was applying to things that were a little bit more creative, a little bit more ad comms marketing, and I think they were, like, looking for someone who was in that. My junior year, there’s a new major called Film and New Media Studies, and so it sat within the English department, and so I could take film classes as an English major, and so I did. And the first class I took was race and racism in U.S. cinema. Blew my mind, was excited. I was like, this is all I want to do forever. I need to change my major right now. I know I’m getting ready to graduate, but I have to.

And I also need to study abroad. So how do I make it happen? My professor and advisor at the time. Incredible. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to switch your major. You’re just going to change it, and you’re going to go to Australia because that’s where they have a mutual program. And you’ll study film and graphic design there. You’ll make up your freshman credit for the major, and then you’ll come back and you’ll finish the credits and you’ll graduate on time.

I was like, great. Sounds lovely. I changed my major to New Media Film and New Media Studies on my resume before even changing it formally on paper. And all of a sudden I’m getting responses back on internships. People are so happy to talk to you. This is ridiculous. And that to me, is the epitome of that’s. The power of branding and marketing.

Yeah, pursued that. I was excited about Film and New Media Studies. I didn’t love actually being behind the camera. I was like a senior in freshman classes in Film Production 101, learning about Aperture. I was like, I don’t want to do this. This is not fun for me. I was like, Can I just tell someone what to do? Isn’t that a thing? And someone’s like, oh, you want to be a director? Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I moved a little bit away from technical film and really loved the theory and things like that.

And so I was able to explore ideas of concepts of social justice and equity and race and representation through that studies and then took that into my hope. I was hoping to take it into my professional career, which I did, which quite different as my first job, which was I was helping first generation college students get into college when I first graduated, which there’s more similarities than I thought. I was really excited about that role, and I wrote a lot. I helped every single student tell their story, writing college essays. I reviewed lots of college essays, lots of supplemental essays. They ended up being more connected than I thought they would be. But yeah, I did not go into a Film and New Media Studies advertising role right after college like I wanted to. But I think supporting students to get into college was really an impactful, one that led me to the career that I have now in education.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I feel like, and I’ve said this on the show also before college is really that time for you to experiment and explore exactly what it is that you want to do. And I think it’s specifically for the reasons that it sounds like your parents didn’t want you to go into some specific field. I mean, K through twelve, we’re kind of booked or we’re sort of subconsciously shaped and molded into a particular trajectory that we may not even want, we may not even want to do. I know for me, when I was growing up, I really wanted to write and I wanted to major in English, and my mom was like, no, you stay on that computer. You’re going to do something with that computer. Like, you’re going to major in something with that. And I liked web design, but I also went to a small liberal arts college, and this was in the oh, my God, I’m dating myself. This is in the they didn’t have web design, so I was like, oh, I’m going to be a computer science major.

And that was not web design back then. I mean, we’re talking 1999, 2000. That was not web design. That curriculum did not exist. You learned it on your own, and you just kind of hoped to make a way for it. It wasn’t something you went to school for. But I say all of that to say college is really that time where you’re able to branch out and see where your interests take you. I mean, there’s very few places outside of that particular type of institution where you’re allowed to explore and play and do different things, and it won’t have a detriment on your status as a human in this capitalist world.

Maurice Cherry:

You know what I mean?

Sam Viotty:

Totally. And I wish I knew it. I guess I felt it then that that’s what it was for. My parents were like, the tuition money four years, so explore all you want within that amount of time. So I felt like there was a ticking time bomb. And I was one of those kids who was like, I literally cannot go back home after college. I can’t live my parents. I am an only child who is just constantly being helicoptered.

I need to live elsewhere for all of us, for everybody. And so I really need a job. I need a job that pays me enough to leave. And so, yeah, I moved to Boston. So my school’s in Massachusetts. I ended up moving to Boston right after college and lived there for quite a bit. But yeah, college was an interesting time, and I loved school. I was one of those kids who loved school.

When I was younger, I looked forward to going to school. I think part of it was being an only child, because I make all these designs and stuff, and the only person looking at them was my dad or friends who came over occasionally. So I was so excited to go to school and get affirmation from teachers.

Maurice Cherry:

I 100% know what that’s like. I mean, I wasn’t the only child. I had an older brother. But yeah, to get that sort of validation that the work that you’re doing means something, it’s actually making an impression on other people. I was very much. Oh, yeah. Especially in college. I was very much like a school kid.

Like, I did not want to go back to Alabama. I’m like, we have to make it out. I don’t know what that looks like, but we got to get out. We can’t go backwards. Now. In 2017, you started working at the Obama Foundation, and you sort of touched on some of your early career things that you did right after Wheaton. How was your time at the Obama Foundation? Like, how did you sort of start there?

Sam Viotty:

That was like I remember getting my offer verbally, and I just was stunned. I was like, I cannot believe I’m about to work for the person who was the first Black president of the United States. It meant so much to me. I think it was after he was in the presidency, so he made a foundation really focused on organizing community work for young people. I worked on the education team at the Obama Foundation, which, again, mixing education with what I was excited to end, like, changing the world. I was like, my goodness, dream job. And it’s so, like, at every stage that I’ve had a job, it’s been like a dream job only. And now I’m in a job that I also think is my dream job.

And I’m like, what will I think years later when I have another job? Anyway, it was incredible. I have made the closest friends I’ve ever made. It was an interesting time. I think a lot of I never worked on a campaign before, but I imagine some of the campaign culture had seeped into our workplace. And so all of us were very close, spent a lot of time together trying to work towards the goal of empowering 18 to 25 year olds to change their worlds and their communities. I loved it. It was incredible. I was hired as an experienced designer, so thinking about our program, so the education team had one program at the time.

I was there for a few years, and so we developed more programs, but the original program was like a one day experience for 150 18 to 25 year olds in Boston, Chicago, and Phoenix, Arizona. And so we went to each city, and we work with community organizations. We’d work with designers and organizers to really fire up these 18 to 25 year olds, get them passionate about the thing that they were excited about. So we’re like, what aren’t you passionate about? What do you care about? And how can we drive you to a plan of action to organize towards that? And so I saw my role as one just understanding our audience. So I spent so much time talking to the 18 to 25 year olds that we worked with. I set up design workshops. I would work with them. So I used a lot of my design thinking stuff from grad school that I learned and would go through that with them.

I taught a lot of our design thinking sessions, so I go from city to city just going through project based learning and talking about, how do we like, well, if this is what you care about, how do we develop a plan for that? How do you understand them? Who is your audience? A lot of 18 to 25 year olds are like, I want to end poverty. And I’m like, yes, where do we start? Like, poverty, poverty where? And so that was really exciting for me, and it was really impactful. I can still remember the day that we brought President Obama to meet all of the students who had been in the program. Not students, community members who had been in the program. And it was just, like, the most joyful I’ve ever seen. People are crying. They’re, like, falling down. He decides to shake every single one of their hands.

He was supposed to be going to a meeting with donors, and we were scheduling him to just take a photo. He was supposed to come and take a photo with the group. We’re very excited about that, that he was going to be able to do that. But he is supposed to be rushing to a donor meeting. He was already late. He was late to come get us for the photo. He finds out that he’s late to the donor meeting and is like, oh, well, and just stands there and shakes 350 hands. And so I’m so happy I got to witness that.

And so that was the power of his brand. I was so lucky to be able to I felt like I could walk into any room and just be listened to because of who we were representing and the power that that had for people in many communities across the united States. It just symbolized change. It symbolized hope. And I’d never been a part of a brand like that. I’d worked at many nonprofits, but obviously nothing like that. And so that experience is yeah, I loved working there. I met so many incredible people, so many smart people who have worked and lived all over, had different experiences, but everyone came together for this one central mission, which was to empower people.

To change the world is absolutely incredible. I think about that experience very often.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, if there’s any brand that could get you probably in the foot of any company, it would be Obama. I mean, God, that has been such an amazing experience to be able to do that kind of work. I think you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier when you said, like, making I wrote it down. You said something about using celebrity money to change the world. That is awesome.

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, it was so great. And the other thing that I was able to do was, because I was our experience designer and helping to design our program, I got to choose who we put on so or who we got to put on a platform. And I was so excited about that. I was like, this is it. I get to choose the people of color that I want to be on stage or the people who I think are making a difference. I can get to curate that experience. So lucky. I’ve worked with Antionette Carroll and Chris Rudd, who have also been on this show, who were a part of that amazing program that we ran over the course of a few years.

So just really excited to be able to give opportunities to people who really deserve one recognition, the amplification, and just, like, the connection with the community that we really thought they were already doing but wanted to uplift them. So absolutely incredible. Got to work with a ton of designers and creators because I was working in that space, and you send an email with Obama.org attached to it, and people responded, which was, you know, there’s.

Maurice Cherry:

A saying that you can’t be what you don’t see. And I can only imagine, because you had that level of access that it probably opened up for you a lot of possibilities of what you could do personally out in the world. I know while you were at the Obama Foundation, you started your own design studio, via studio. Did that sort of come from that time of seeing what was possible because of the Obama Foundation?

Sam Viotty:

It did. I didn’t know how much money existed in the world until I worked. Mean, like, talking to donors and who you have access to and who responds and what people are willing to do, and how many people of color I’d seen and worked with who started their own companies. So many of the designers that we worked with ran their own design firms. And I was like, oh, I can see how it’s possible. I had never thought of it before. I knew I wanted to start something when I was younger, but I didn’t know what. And so I started doing design consulting, so designing programs and giving design thinking advice and doing design sprints and workshops for other companies and nonprofits at the time.

But, yeah, I was so inspired by all the work that I was doing with other people. I was like, well, if you’re doing it, I think I might be able to do this, which is really exciting. And I had help. I mean, the connections that I made at the Obama Foundation and the people and the designers that I spoke, like, I don’t think people were trying to gatekeep at all, which I thought was really beautiful. People were like, I mean, I work with them. You should totally work with them. Let me just make an intro, which I had not experienced before. I think a lot of nonprofits that I worked with before that were gatekeeping, and I understand why.

It was like, well, if I tell this company or this grant about you. Will we get the money next year, right? So it was a lot of, like, I want to keep things to myself, but it was not like that at all. I was like, this is amazing. So everyone wanted to help each other, and so I was able to make connections and get clients pretty quickly. And a lot of them came from I think all of my first clients are Obama Foundation related.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Now, you were there for a number of years, and then afterwards you left and you went to work for a biotech startup, Curative. When you look back at that time, what do you remember? Because I could imagine it’s probably a lot different from nonprofit work, especially the Obama Foundation.

Sam Viotty:

So it was 2020. So the pandemic had hit, and I used to do programs in person at the Obama Foundation. 2020 happened. We’re doing programs virtually. I just was like, I don’t know that our programs virtually are doing the same thing that they were when they were in person. And so the world is in a really scary space. I want to be on the ground. And so I got recruited by Curative to lead all of their kind of expansion with communities.

So the job actually when I had that interview with Curative, the woman who hired me actually was in political organizing before that. And she was like, it’s actually she’s like, you’re telling me about your job at the Long Foundation, but she’s like, I think it’s really similar. I know it’s biotech, hear me out. But I think what you’re doing is, like, partnering and working with communities. We’re changing health care, and it’s the same thing, only it’s healthcare and not community organizing. And I was like, I think you’re right. So I partnered with community organizations to pop up COVID testing at the time and then vaccinations for communities of color in particular, where they didn’t have testing and vaccinations. And so I thought that I was like, this feels like a need, right? Like, people are dying.

I want to be of service. And so it was a crazy time. I don’t understand how I did not get COVID then. This is like, before, people were wearing masks. I was out helping set up test sites without a mask. And then I was wearing a mask, and I was traveling everyone’s at home, and I am on a plane to New Orleans to set up a test site alone on the plane because obviously no one’s flying. And I was, like, flying all across the country trying to make sure that people were getting tested. I thankfully, in the year and a half I worked there, never got COVID.

I got COVID last year at a conference. Yeah, literally, just like I was completely fine. But it was a really impactful experience. I got to use my design thinking skills. I did lots of marketing and trying to understand our audience. I worked with a bunch of different types of clients and customers. I worked with city governments. I worked with fire stations.

I worked with federal government. I worked with everyone private sector. I worked with schools. So many schools wanted to go back to in person, but they didn’t have a testing plan. So I was like, working with each individual school to workshop what will work best for you. And so I used a lot of what I felt like was my design thinking hat to design programs and processes that made the most sense so that people could return, not return to life, but be able to live lives that felt safe enough to live and still benefit. Yeah, it was a really crazy time.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, it feels like it’s a lot of that sort of practical application or continuation. Like the person that hired you said you’re taking that same energy and that same sort of skill of putting programs together, but you’re doing it on really kind of a more tactical level in that way, especially during a time when the pandemic affected. I feel like all of us in different ways, but the one thing we all had to do was sort of figure out how to kind of move through it, navigate through it, move forward, especially with information changing a lot. Like you said, pre masks is a time that now is a bit hard to think of because they were so ubiquitous. And I mean, people are kind of still wearing masks now because we’re kind of still in the pandemic. But in a lot of ways, because of work that people like you have done, we found ways to kind of manage our lives through it, which who knows how long that would have taken if that didn’t exist or if there weren’t people like you that were able to make that happen.

Sam Viotty:

Thanks. Yeah, I was able to hire an incredible team. Just could not have done it with a bunch of other people. And it was a wild time, and I learned a lot about healthcare. I used to hate the healthcare system. I still do. But I now understand why there are so many entities designing for healthcare. Now that I’ve worked in it, I’m like, it makes sense.

It needs redesigning. It was my first for private sector job, which I was trying to pivot. Like, the Obama Foundation was great, but I was kind of tired of being a nonprofit. I was tired of not having enough money and working really hard all the time and working to the mission, but not getting paid enough. I was like, I think there’s a way for me to get paid enough and work towards a real goal. Being in the for profit during COVID was very interesting. Healthcare. We’re trying to save the world, but we’re also making money.

So a conversation for another day about the healthcare system. But yeah, it helped me understand a little bit more about the way the world works.

Maurice Cherry:

And now you’re doing Rosedale, you’re doing Adobe. You still have your studio, and you also teach. You are an adjunct lecturer at Loyola’s Quinlan School of Business. How did that come about?

Sam Viotty:

It’s an incredible am again. So I met two people. One was someone who was one of the first community members in the Obama Foundation program that we ran. Just stayed really close to her. She was one of those people that I called her our super user. She just would do exactly what I would imagine someone would do in our program. She’s ideal. I could predict her behavior.

It was amazing. And so we stayed in contact. She started working at the Baumhart Scholars Program at the Cleveland School of Business and asked me if I wanted to guest lecture her class, like, come and just talk. So I did. And then there’s another person who was in the program I did Starting Block, the Starting Block Fellowship a few years ago, probably 2018. More than a few now, but someone else who was a designer also taught another course and was like, hey, could you come to my class too? And so I did. He was getting ready to leave the following year because he got a very cool job at Capital One doing design. And so he left, and they were like, well, we don’t have anyone to teach class.

Do you want to teach it? I said, I’d love to teach this class. So it’s a project management and social innovation class, and it’s taken a bunch of different iterations. This will be the third year that I’m teaching it. It actually starts next week. Time for me to start designing the deck. But the incredible thing about the program in particular so the Bomb Harvest Scholars Program is within the School of Business, but it is for a select group of students who really care about social impact. And so a lot of their courses are focused on it. Obviously, you get an MBA, but a lot of courses that you have to take in addition to the MBA requirements are social impact focused.

So the project management course, I’ve done lots of project management, so I hadn’t thought about it as like, how do I teach it? I was like, It’s just something that I do. I’d gone to trainings for it throughout my career, but had not thought about, how do I teach this and then how do I teach the social impact piece? And so I actually really excited about how this class was taught. I have kind of mapped the class into different sections, and each section is a different aspect of the design thinking process. So it starts with empathy and goes to reflection. I also take the design equity framework. If people aren’t familiar, it’s the kind of typical design thinking process. Empathy empathize. Define ideate, prototype iterate, and do it all.

Over again. But I’ve added kind of equity pauses, which is a term that I learned from another designer, and reflection at every stage. So I talk about doing all of those things within project management because I think that’s really what project management is. It is like working with people. It’s understanding people. It’s trying things and then doing them again, and then trying it and doing it again. And so I’m really excited about it’s. A project based class.

Every single person in the course, it’s usually a small class, but every single person, I encourage them to choose a project that they are working on at work, or they’re all adult professionals who have jobs and do this MBA mostly on the side. And so they choose a project from work. And then I want you to change something at work or a project that you’ve always thought about doing, which you have never actually had the time to do. Like, let’s use this class time because you have to take this class. Let’s do it now. So people have come up with incredible things. Someone came up with a youth program last year, which I was really excited about. Someone revamped their entire board of directors processes, which I was impressed with.

She’s on the board of a nonprofit and was like, we just don’t fundraise right? How do we rethink the fundraising strategy and how do I lead my team through a process? A lot of the work is quite meta, where they’re redesigning experiences that will be redesigned. So they’re coming up with a project plan. So I bring a lot of the design thinking aspect to the course in addition to trying to give people practical skills on how do you manage a project, like what tools are we using, are you using Trello? Are you using Monday? Are you using Asana? How are you assigning roles to people? Are you thinking about equity when you’re deciding roles for people, how do power dynamics come into play? So really intertwining all of those things. And so I’ve learned so much from all of the students because they all work at different places. Some people are working in consulting, some are working in education, some are working at healthcare nonprofits, and so they all are working together. A lot of it is group work, but the end project is individual. So I hope that they’re learning from each other about what each other is working on and challenged with. So I love teaching that class.

It’s also not that long. It takes a few months. And so it’s what I look forward to every end of year. It’s a nice close out to the year.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, it really feels like a perfect way for you to take all of these skills and things that you’ve learned throughout your career and pass that on to the next generation of, I want to say of innovators. You mentioned at the top of the episode that you had applied for this development program as an innovator, and the more that you talk about your career and the experiences you’ve went through, I’m like, I can see it plain as day. Like, you’re really out here changing minds and hearts. It’s so awesome.

Sam Viotty:

It’s nice to hear. I hadn’t thought about yeah. I guess when you talk to someone and hear it back, it definitely feels different. So thank you.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, I think what’s probably most interesting about you and your career and what you do is that you take design. And design is such a broad category. I think even when you tell someone you’re a designer, if you tell five different people, you may get five different definitions of what that even is. I mean, for you, what does design mean? Like, what’s your personal philosophy? When it comes to that?

Sam Viotty:

I believe everyone’s a designer. I also believe it’s people who want to take on that role. Like, if you want to be a designer, you can be. I think the most important thing about being a designer is understanding who you’re designing for. Graphic designer, and I someone who is a programmer, experience designer will have. What we have in common is, who are we designing for? The graphic designer is like, I’m making a poster, or maybe they’re making a poster, and they’re like, okay, well, who’s the poster for? I’m like, I’m designing a program. Well, who’s the program for? So really getting to the meat of how do I understand people? And for program design, I think it’s beautiful because it’s everything or experience design is everything. What I said earlier was, it’s what things smell like, what you’re touching, what you’re seeing, who you interact with, when you interact with them.

When we show you something, all of those things make an impression. So I think about design as design is everything. Yeah, I look at and now that I’ve been in so many different sectors, and I know that design means so many different things, I see design in everything. I can’t open a door without being like, someone made this and thought about how humans will open this door wild. So, yeah, designs and everything. I think it’s a branding. As I always say. It’s a branding, marketing.

Maurice Cherry:

It sounds like you’re really interweaving with design, at least with the way that you’re approaching design. Everything works together. All these processes work together. Nothing is in a vacuum. And I think that’s really a holistic way to look at design, because for years, people always say designers are problem solvers, but the problems they end up solving tend to be UX problems or browser problems or things like that when there are so many other things out there in the world. You mentioned healthcare. Government is another one. Government services.

There are so many huge systems that we encounter every day that could use that design eye and that design thinking. And so I hope that people listen to this conversation and start to think of design in a bigger way. Like, think outside of just what you see on a monitor or on a phone. Like, think of design in a broader sense.

Sam Viotty:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think you’re spot on.

Maurice Cherry:

What’s inspiring you these days?

Sam Viotty:

Thank you for asking that. Color. Color has been inspiring me. I started reading. I went to the library and I started reading Color — I have the book right here: “Colors for Designers: 95 Things You Need to Know when Choosing and Using Colors for Layouts and Illustrations”. And I’ve been having, like, a lull in inspiration, and I never really learned about color theory formally.

And so I’ve just been so excited about color. I’ve been going on hikes recently, and so I’ve been obsessed with the sky. I go on runs, and there’s a beautiful sunset on Monday, and I counted eleven colors in the sky. I was just like, wow, what eleven different colors? And so I’m, like, training my eye to see different colors and hues. So I’ve been really inspired by that. I started reading. I just finished the book “Stay Inspired” by Brandon Stosuy…or Stossai? Finding motivation to your creative work.

And it’s a book of just, like, a bunch of activities to get you motivated and inspired to do creative work. And so much of the book has you tap into childhood experiences. So I haven’t been writing all the activities. I’ve been at least thinking and meditating on them. And so that’s been really fun. So thinking about my childhood as inspiration for things that I create and do now has been really cool. And then, yeah, just thinking about color. Lots of color.

Lots of just trying to find inspiration and creativity. My end of year project right now is trying to create an art book. And so very similar to the fade on kind of like big coffee table books, I want to curate some type of yeah, I’ve never tried. So I’m going to just try and map that out over the holiday and see what I can come up with. Have a little theme. I love material culture, so I think that’s going to be the theme for the art book, is thinking about material culture and how artists use different materials to create meaning. So I’ve been doing lots of research. So that’s been my end of year inspiration.

Maurice Cherry:

At this stage of your career, even just looking back to where you’ve come from and where you’ve worked and the impact that you’ve had, how do you measure success now? What does it look like for you?

Sam Viotty:

So do I feel happy? Do I feel good? Do I feel motivated? Has been whether or not I feel successful or those are my metrics for success. Are things feeling right? Feels a little woo. Woo. I think it’s because I live in La now. I don’t think I’d ever talk like this before, but yeah, a lot of it is. Like, how do things feel? I think I’ve had a lot of moments in life. I have ADHD. I also have quite a bit of anxiety.

And so a lot of my life has been me trying to get around those things. And so my metrics of success now have been, do I not feel anxious? How often have I been feeling anxious? Is it less? That seems great. That feels successful. So, yeah, just kind of just like, monitoring my mental health and feeling good about where I am in life right now and being content, spending a lot of time just being happy with what I have right now. It’s hard because I think, how do you balance that with wanting more and being ambitious? I’m wrestling with that now, but just be happy with what I got.

Maurice Cherry:

Is there anything that you want to do that you haven’t done yet?

Sam Viotty:

Yeah, I really want to curate a show. Like an art show. I say it every year. So now that I’m saying it out loud to you and shared with the public, I think I have to do it. So maybe it’s on the 2024 docket. Yeah, I really want to curate a show. I’ve always said I plan for it, I figure it out. But maybe 2024 is the year that I start actually doing it.

Maurice Cherry:

You’re right there in La. That’s a great place to do it. I know that United talent artists has an artist space, but, I mean, there’s just so much art and design in Los Angeles. I feel like you could definitely make that happen.

Sam Viotty:

Thanks for saying that. I live close to the UTA artist space, and I’ve contacted them before just for other stuff, so yeah, thank you. You know what? Yeah, it’s going to go into the like when I envision boarding for 2024. This is it. Thanks for this.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. What kind of work do you see yourself doing in the next five years? I mean, I feel like you’re someone that, because of the skills and experience you’ve had, you could really almost go anywhere. Because what you do is you help build systems and you help build processes to work through things. So say it’s five years from now, what kind of work would you like to be doing?

Sam Viotty:

The thing that I have not dove into that I would like to do more is or just curation in general. So I think I want to move to a space where I think I’ve spent a lot of this part of my career being like, I want to be the artist, I want to create, I want to work with people and uplift them. I think I can do that in a different way. Whether I’m curating music shows, which I’ve started to do with Rosedale curating an art show, just like doing more curation and leaning into, I don’t have to be the person that’s doing the thing. I can support the people doing the thing. And so I think that’s where I want to go, and I want to do it across I imagine it being across a bunch of different sectors, and maybe it’s not just visual art. Maybe it’s also fashion, and maybe it’s also interior design and objects and vintage and stuff like that. So I want to dive more into my creative self of putting things.

I feel like a lot of the work that I do ends up being behind the scenes or I don’t get to share it very often, or it doesn’t feel like I share it very often on a public platform. So I would like to move into that space a little bit more.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to wrap things up here. Sam, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work, your projects? Like, where can they find that information online?

Sam Viotty:

I occasionally post on my personal instagram, which is @samviotty, S-A-M-V-I-O-T-T-Y. But my art stuff is at @theviottystudio on Instagram, so both of those are on Instagram. I occasionally tweet. I’m @samviotty on most things. I think I’m also the only Sam Viotty. So if you google Samantha Viotty or Sam Viotty, I’m pretty sure you’ll find me anywhere that’s mostly I respond to DMs. People can also email me at hi at sviotty dot com. So happy to chat.

I love just talking to other people about what they’re working on.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Sam Viotty. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, when I was doing my research, and I think what really kind of blew me away was, like, this is a program designer that’s like, trying to change country music. It felt like this weird sort of combination. But now that I’ve talked with you and I’ve gotten the sense to kind of see how you work and how you think, you’re the kind of person that I feel like the design industry needs to have more of. Like someone that can really synthesize all of the things that design can do and use them in ways that can help forward, move people forward, move systems forward, move companies forward. I mean, there’s been so much talk about generalist versus specialist, right? And I think what you embody is, like, the true kind of generalist type of designer that I wish more designers were like.

I wish more people were able to take their knowledge and think of it and use it and apply it in ways that can really sort of benefit the world. I mean, we live in a very crazy time right now, and a lot of the systems and practices and things we have are designed and can be and should be redesigned. And it’s just so empowering for me to see someone like you that’s doing this work out in the world, and I’m glad to share that with the audience here. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Sam Viotty:

Thank you. I’m so happy that you have this platform. It’s incredible. Everyone I’ve listened to a few episodes and people are really inspiring. So I’m honored to be on the show. So thank you so much.

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.

Sponsored by School of Visual Arts

The BFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts consistently produces innovative and acclaimed work that is rooted in a strong foundational understanding of visual communication. It encourages creativity through cutting-edge tools, visionary design techniques, and offers burgeoning creatives a space to find their voice.

Students in BFA Advertising are prepared for success in the dynamic advertising industry in a program led by faculty from New York’s top ad agencies. Situated at the center of the advertising capital of the world, the program inspires the next generation of creative thinkers and elite professionals to design the future.

School of Visual Arts has been a leader in the education of artists, designers and creative professionals for over seven decades. Comprising 7,000 students at its Manhattan campus and more than 41,000 alumni from 128 countries, SVA also represents one of the most influential artistic communities in the world. For information about the College’s 30 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, visit sva.edu.

Jailyn Easley

For Jailyn Easley, combining design and technology with her work is like second nature. As a member of Accenture’s experience design team, Jailyn uses her phenomenal design skills with cutting edge tech like machine learning and mixed reality to create next-level work. But her journey as a designer doesn’t stop there!

We began our conversation talking about Jailyn’s brand design work with the popular Atlanta restaurant Slutty Vegan, and she shared how growing up in Baltimore and working with and being taught by luminary Black designers Leon Lawrence III and Jennifer White-Johnson helped hone her design skills and put her on a path to continuing her studies in Atlanta. We also spoke on Atlanta’s growing status as a creative hub, and she shed some light on her latest project titled 100 Days of Design. You’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for Jailyn — her star is on the rise!

Links

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Jailyn Easley:
My name is Jailyn Easley and I am a Baltimore race creative now currently living and working here in Atlanta. I specialize in design strategy and interactive designs, so I like to do a lot of things that are dealing with just different design trends and things that are going on currently as well as emerging technologies that some people may have heard of such as MR, Mixed Reality or VR, certain things like that. And I like combining the two worlds to see the different possibilities or opportunities that we’re able to reach.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. And now you just recently started at Accenture, is that right?

Jailyn Easley:
Yes, back in October, yep.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. What’s an average day like for you there?

Maurice Cherry:
So at Accenture I work in our innovation hub, which is the largest office in the Southeast region. I currently do experience design, so I help support our internal teams and whenever we have different clients that come in that want some sort of consulting workup done, we help support those pods that do mainly more of the strategy and business side of things. So they’re the ones helping close the deals and everything while we’re on the back end doing all the visual assets.

Maurice Cherry:
If a different client comes in, then we would make all types of assets, everything from digital signage to say welcome to that company name badges. We would do PowerPoint decks and we kind of come up with the theme around what the visual looks like for when that company comes in to do that workshop. So it’s a pretty interesting time. I get to learn a lot of different technologies and softwares and things like that. For example, I’m working in [inaudible 00:04:45] right now, which is kind of interesting because I never thought I would be actually doing real motion design stuff. So it’s pretty … It definitely pushes the limits when it comes to combining technology and design.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. It sounds like it’s pretty fun so far.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, it’s awesome. I love Accenture. There’s so much to offer there.

Maurice Cherry:
I would imagine working in some place called like the innovation hub, that sounds very next level futuristic kind of stuff.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, we definitely, there’s so many things that Accenture is working on in house and just their dealings with other companies and things like that. We get a chance to put our hands in every little pot. So for example, we have a 360 camera that we’re testing out right now to see how we can use it within some of the workshops and helping to get that innovation piece, I guess, to the clients or communicated well to the clients so that they can see that part of Accenture as well.

Maurice Cherry:
What drew you to working for Accenture?

Jailyn Easley:
I think just the way that their company is progressing. They’re definitely not a brand new company, but a lot of the things that they’re doing in the market, they’re definitely dominating and being able to push the limits when it comes to thinking outside the box honestly. Because so many different problems to solve that we’ve done on the job and it’s just like whatever the client comes in for, we always find a really interesting way to problem solve around it. Honestly, coming out of SCAD, something that I wanted to do was being able to combine strategy and design. I liked the concept thing around designing and coming up with the theme and the abstract for it and everything like that. So I really was kind of drawn to that strategy and that consulting so to speak side of Accenture, so that’s definitely something that drew me forward to them.

Maurice Cherry:
And now for those that are listening and may not know specifically what experience design is or why you would combine strategy, which is something that’s probably more left brain cerebral with design, which is more right brain and creative, can you talk a little bit about that?

Jailyn Easley:
Accenture has a few different necks when it comes to their overall brand. So they have an Accenture strategy, they have an Accenture interactive, but I think the interesting part about that is that they co-create in one space. So definitely the importance to that, we’re being able to come up with different and innovative new looks on something that could have been easily solved with one, two, three. A lot of times that strategy involves using some sort of new technology, whether it’s a software or whether it’s an actual physical item. We use these things on a day to day basis, like artificial intelligence for example. We use it when we unlock our iPhones during the day or when we’re logging into our computers, but it’s never seen to solve a problem but more so just be a whistle and bell.

Jailyn Easley:
I guess just trying to incorporate that into day to day life is going to start to make it easier for, I guess for all users. An experienced design is something that some people might see as when they think of experience design, they think of user experience which in a lot of cases is UX and UI so to speak in industry term, that’s doing a lot of wire framing and looking at apps and the development or more so the design of the development. So you’re doing a lot of sketching, you’re doing a lot of prototyping and things of that nature. But in this sense, experience design is being able to create an experience for ideation for co-creation to happen. Because that’s ultimately what’s going to help take our clients to the next level is being able to co-create one room and come up with a solid solution that has to deal with pushing the limits as well as sticking to what the company’s core values are.

Maurice Cherry:
Now before Accenture you were doing art direction and doing brand design for a very popular local restaurant here in Atlanta. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, so before I came to Accenture I was working with Slutty Vegan. A lot of people know them as like the hot vegan burger joint and it’s definitely quite the experience having worked with such an amazing team like that. Back in I guess November of 2018 their team had a social media challenge which was package designing. Of course people knowing that I’m a foodie and I had been telling people, “Hey you guys should eat at Slutty Vegan. The line is super long but you guys should eat there,” to people sending me these different or the post from the package design challenge. So I ultimately ended up entering and I was like, “Okay, There’s some other designs out there and it should be interesting to see if I even make it to the next round.”

Jailyn Easley:
But then a few days later I get a notification that, “Hey, you made it to the top 10,” so of course people are voting on line. And I’m every day searching through the comments and even Jermaine Dupri voted on mine, which was kind of crazy and ultimately ended up winning the design challenge in which they paid me for the design. But then they also made me their personal freelancer. So all of their design needs were I guess driven towards me. And then with that, them having posted me on their social media, I also got all of these different freelance clients and I mean I was working on like 10 clients a month at one point and it was just crazy. So then once I was like, “Okay, freelancing was nice and everything,” but I think I was ready to make that full time commitment with Slutty Vegan as they were with me.

Jailyn Easley:
So probably around May of 2019 they hired me on full time and so I was able to create so many different types of designs for them. Everything from the bags in their restaurants to the fry cups. They just came out with the new Slut Sauce in stores near you soon and a few different other items that have reached a lot of people ultimately. And something that was also interesting, Pinky originally told me, she said, “I want you to put your name on the design.”

Jailyn Easley:
I was like, “Wait, you want me to put my actual name on the back?” Like, “Yes. Put it on there.” So I ended up putting it on there. She uses these bags every day now. So I have different people following me and out to me every day just because of something that I did almost or I guess almost like a year and a half ago now. It’s definitely been a great experience and I still work with them to this day, just on a freelance base. But definitely something that I recommend for any designer that wants to push their limits. Working with local businesses is a great idea.

Speaker 2:
Wow, that’s a pretty awesome story.

Jailyn Easley:
Thank you.

Speaker 2:
I mean you want a design contest, ended up working with them and they even, of course, I mean trust your work enough to want to work with you, but then to also say put your name on design. Like you never hear companies try to put that much investment into their design in that way or to their designers. That’s really good.

Jailyn Easley:
Exactly. And you know, the really cool thing about Pinky was that anybody that she hired on, she had known already that they were I guess contractors so to speak, so they still had their own businesses but Slutty Vegan was one of their clients. So she always put it as, “This is going to be that company that helps you step forward into whatever you’re looking to do.” So I definitely thank her for supporting my designs and being able to … I mean like I said I branded so many different things that, some that I can’t mention because they haven’t rolled out yet, but others that reached so many people, it was definitely a really good opportunity.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. I have yet to make it to Slutty Vegan. I keep hearing about the lines and that puts me off because I don’t want to go and have to wait an hour in line. I don’t even know if there’s a good time to go. I’m assuming it’s still super popular where people are waiting in those long lines. Right?

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah. I mean literally you’re with everybody else in Atlanta. They’re like, “I would love to go to Slutty Vegan, but the lines are always terrible.” Okay. So here’s a cheat. So I would say go on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon are usually the best time. So that 4:00 to 7:00 period because there’s usually no line there.

Maurice Cherry:
Good to know. Good to know. I’m going to have to edit that out but no. So at the top of the show you mentioned being from Baltimore. Tell me about growing up there.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, so I am born and raised Baltimore. Family is from there. Went to an all girls high school, the oldest all girls public high school in the nation, Western High, as did all of the women in my family. So it was a traditional thing. So my high school was originally where I started doing design and I had taken a few AP art courses, which were pretty much just graphic arts instead of visual arts. So there I started playing in Photoshop and seeing what the different effects would do and I was able to get a few portfolio pieces out of that to insert when I went to Bowie State. So from high school, Baltimore was a really interesting place to grow up because when you’re younger you never really reach out. As an adult you might go to D.C. from Baltimore just because it’s an hour away but you’re never in D.C. unless it’s a field trip or something like that. So it was pretty interesting being so close to another really popular city but never really interacting with them I guess.

Jailyn Easley:
And so I went to university, I went to undergrad at Bowie State University, an HBCU out in Laurel, Maryland. And so there, I actually met one of my design mentors and one of your previous interviewees, Jennifer White Johnson. She was my professor at Bowie. So she was really influential in my life and still is. She is an amazing visual artist. She is definitely a master of all tricks. I mean every time I see something different on her Instagram, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, you’re doing this now.” She’s amazing. And she definitely helped me get through those college years of designing and just being able to articulate yourself as a designer of color and getting out what you’re really wanting to express. So that was pretty interesting. And she also definitely pushed me to go to SCAD during my, I guess senior year towards the end of Bowie. So she encouraged that move and when I moved down to Atlanta, I definitely kept in touch with her as well. Just sending her stuff and keeping up on what she was doing definitely inspired me to keep going as a creative. So yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
So talk to me a little bit about just what it was like in that sort of Bowie State learning environment. You’re right, we did have Jennifer, she was on the show I think two or three months ago, a few months ago. But I’m curious because I’ve heard a lot about Bowie State and I’ve certainly heard a lot about the program through Jennifer, through other teachers that are there. From your perspective as a student, what was it like?

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, so originally I honestly did not want to go to Bowie. I didn’t want to be in the state of Maryland. But you know when you have tuition and stuff it kind of limits you. So I ended up going to Bowie. A friend of my dad’s, which was another one of my professors, he showed us during my last year of high school, showed us around that building, which is the VCBMA, Visual Communications and Digital Media Arts building. So they had everything from theater to design and they had all these nice computer labs and it just set the tone for me to say, “Okay, if I really wanted to be in an environment where I’m able to flourish and also work amongst other designers that are my age and also that look like me then this would be where I would want to do it.”

Jailyn Easley:
So especially at an HBCU, I knew that that was something that I wanted to do straight out of high school was that I wanted to be around my people. So I went to Bowie and my years there were pretty awesome just with my … I guess there I was Campus Activities [inaudible 00:18:14] Vice President there and I was on a lot of the initiatives under VCBMA, so different art clubs and things like that. And also, I would work to get sent to different conferences. So throughout my time at Bowie, I think they helped me go to two different conferences. One was HBCU South by Southwest, which is [inaudible 00:18:37] by a startup called Opportunity Hub that’s local here to Atlanta actually. Also a computer graphics conference called SIGGRAPH, which is over in LA. And they have it in a few different other places.

Jailyn Easley:
So it opened the door for me to say, “Whatever you want to do, you have that ability to do it, so why wait?” Something that I was passionate about, this was something that had allies in I guess. Because sometimes when you don’t have friends that do the same things that you do or they don’t really understand your thought process and lot of things, then you get a little discouraged or unmotivated in some ways. So good to have a support system around me that cared about my growth and I also cared about theirs. And I’ll say that also about the professors. Many of them were supportive and one of them helped me get my first internship with another one of your interviewees, Leon Lawrence. I actually worked with him. That was my first design internship during my senior year. I commuted back and forth for a whole semester from Bowie to D.C. every two days or so. And I went to go work at NACo, the National Association of Counties, over in D.C. near the Hill. So that also was another step-

Jailyn Easley:
[inaudible 00:20:00] that also was another step in my education, I guess, that kind of opened my eyes to say, “Okay, there’s not just design for aesthetic or design for whatever. There’s designed for political things too.” That was something that I hadn’t even thought about. It was really interesting the way that he kind of ran his team as well. It got me exposed to a lot of different types of methodologies and just ways of doing certain things. Also, I ended up learning some different softwares there as well. But overall, being in college at Bowie you have the HBCU life mixed with the design life mixed with just being a part of the campus, so to speak.

Jailyn Easley:
Again, I was Campus Activities Vice President, so we kind of helped throw homecoming and spring fling and all those different events. I guess on top of that, I also helped design for those things too. I was designing all of the homecoming posters and all of the posters for different activities going on at school and any events and stuff like that. So that also kind of gave me the experience that I needed when I started venturing out to do more freelance work. So it was like, “Okay, I have something to build off of now.” It was definitely a really huge experience from me there.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Shout out to Bowie state and there. One, I’ve heard a lot about how great the program is, but hearing you talk about it from the student end to see just how encompassing it was, not just to you as a designer, but also to you as a black person because you’re also working in these design environments with other black people. So you’re able to see kind of, “Oh, this is what the possibility can be for someone who looks like me.” You know what I mean?

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. When you first got down here to Atlanta, what was your first design job? I feel like there’s a story there.

Jailyn Easley:
I signed up with a recruiting agency, which was the Creative Group and usually they have different clients and they’ll place you at these different places if fit the criteria or whatever have you. So I ended up interviewing with them. They didn’t have anything at the time, but I was interested in just being able to help, I guess other creatives get different design jobs and just being able to help also other creatives of color get design jobs because I felt like that was something that I had had a little bit of experience in on the design in, as well as on the the mentoring end, so to speak. So I ended up getting that job, which was just being a recruiter for different companies and things like that. So if, let’s say if Home Depot needed a website designer, we would help find them and place them there. That was really my first introduction to the business of design, so to speak.

Jailyn Easley:
I got to learn a lot about what design agencies function like on the internal scale. So being able to know what a creative director was, what an art director was, what they did, what kind of projects they worked on, and more so for me, help me progress, what are they looking for in resumes? What’s the price point for those? How do I get the most out of what I’m doing now? So that kind of helped me or so to speak, pushed me to be able to start to venture out to these different companies and say, “Hey, I want to start applying for certain places so that I feel like I have kind of a wealth of knowledge to be able to compare.” I wanted to start to apply for jobs at that point.

Jailyn Easley:
I think my first job here as a designer was more so freelance. So I was doing a lot of freelance for clients around the area because Atlanta is a really big place for entrepreneurs and everybody owns their own business here. Everybody has a store. They have social media presence, so everyone needs a logo done or some branding or some packaging for a new product they’re coming out with. A lot of my time was dedicated to helping other people kind of progress the branding of their business and sitting down with them and kind of looking over exactly what they needed to help, I guess progress with whatever visual assets they were trying to produce. Whether that be an apparel line or a candle line or a music label, whatever have you.

Jailyn Easley:
Then my, I guess Slutty Vegan was technically black my in-between job because it was still a startup environment, but I didn’t really have a design team there to support me and kind of balance with me. So I guess Accenture was my first real design job, so to speak, where I have some say in the creative decisions where I’m able to kind of produce what I want and have voice, so I can help support these different workshops and helping to gain the clients and things like that. Yeah, [inaudible 00:25:28] was definitely, I guess my first real industry job, so to speak.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s really good that when you started out here, it was in a capacity where you could really kind of see what companies were looking for in terms of hiring because… So I’ve been here now in Atlanta for 20 years now and I’ll tell people, like designers that want to come here or designers that are interested, I’m like, “Atlanta is great for freelancers, but it’s terrible if you’re looking for work,” because like you said, there are so many people that are doing something. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken an Uber or Lyft somewhere and I happened to mention I’m a designer. All of a sudden, “Oh, let me get your card because I’m looking for somebody. I need a logo for this.” If I was still freelancing, I could be getting work left and right, but then I’ll have people that will contact me. They’re like, “Oh, I’m moving from New York or San Francisco and I want to know what product design jobs are down here.” And I’m like, “I don’t know.”

Maurice Cherry:
Also, the Atlanta, and I feel like maybe this is starting to change, but I still feel like the Atlanta business landscape doesn’t really respect designers, at least not in the same way as say New York or Silicon Valley when as it relates to kind of the competitiveness and the types of jobs and the amount of jobs that are available. Atlanta still feels like it’s a little behind in that respect. I’m curious when you were doing the recruiting, what is it that companies are looking for outside of what’s on the resume?

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah. Atlanta, like you kind of said, it’s definitely a pretty big, I guess business park so to speak. I say that in the way of there are a lot of companies starting to move here on Georgia grounds just to get a little bit of the tech scene here because outside of Silicon Valley, Atlanta is definitely starting to be a hub of innovation that’s growing. There’s so many different startups and other technologies here that companies are wanting to move here. So these companies are primarily looking for… A lot of them like… Okay, and I’ll say this too. There are certain companies that like people that are fresh out, people that are going to schools like General Assembly, which you could do UX and UI and graphic design, that some people that are coming out of Georgia State or local colleges like SCAD too. But then there are some companies that want people that are seasoned professionals, so they want the people that have maybe freelanced for Cartoon Network and ESPN and all these other places because they understand and they can kind of bring something to the table.

Jailyn Easley:
So I’ll say a place like the Home Depot, they have a huge hub here in Atlanta, but they definitely like to hire on a lot of the new talent because that’s what kind of keeps their designs fresh and that’s what kind of keeps their, I guess everything moving for them is they’re getting those people that are fresh out and they know the industry, they know what trends are going on. So they like that. It definitely just depends on your tenure and where you want to go. But in addition, they’re looking for people with obviously, their own full websites that are interactive, that look really good. They’re looking for people whose resumes are super on point as far as layout and simplicity goes, a really big trend, and this is nothing new to you or anyone in the industry is minimalism.

Jailyn Easley:
So everyone likes to see something clean because honestly, maybe half the time, when the people that are hiring these designers aren’t designers themselves. The person that hired me at Accenture isn’t a designer in any way, shape or form. So it’s pretty interesting. You would be surprised to know that a lot of these companies are having a design manager who may not have anything hands-on to do with the design that’s hiring this person; definitely just to keep the perspective fresh in terms of what you’re putting out their stuff. Those are just a few things, but if you go to any of these recruiting agencies, they’ll kind of tell you what the client is looking for in that particular instance just so you’re getting the best out of that situation.

Maurice Cherry:
Interesting. I had the roughest time with design back when I was really looking before I started… Well, not really before I started my studio, even when I was winding my studio down, it was tough. I remember going to one, and I’ll name names because I don’t care, but I went to not the Creative Circus, I think it’s the Creative Circle or something. They all have, “creative,” in their name in some [crosstalk 00:30:21] or whatever. But this was like the Creative Circle and I remember going and I had my resume and I had shown that I had my own studio here called, “Lunch.” This was at the time, I think we had just passed the eight year mark and I was like, “Yeah, I’ve done my own studio work for eight years. But then before that, I worked at Web MD, AT&T and whatever.”

Maurice Cherry:
I remember the recruiter looking at my resume and she’s like, “Uh-huh (affirmative),” and then she put like a big X over my freelance experience on my resume and said, “So it looks like you stopped working in 2008. What’s that about?” And I’m like, “Wait, what? Do you not see the 2008 to 2017 part here where I clearly have been working and I’ve won awards and here are the awards and everything?” She’s like, “Yeah, none of that really matters. We’re looking for people to have actual employment experience because we have to be able to check references and make sure that you’ve actually done the work and not just sat at home and said that you’ve done the work.” And I was like, “Well damn, okay. That’s rough,” but the reason I’m asking that is because I know like we said, there’s a lot of people here that do freelance work I’m basing it off my experience, I can’t really talk to others, but it seems like that freelance experience often doesn’t count sometimes.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah. Sometimes in some instances it doesn’t for when you’re trying to get into those Fortune 500 companies. They want to see what, “real work,” you’ve done so to speak, and I say that quote unquote because they can see the you did this and that for this football team or the NFL. They want to see these big, large names that kind of strike some sort of excitement within them because if you’re doing anything on a smaller scale, they call it mom and pop shop stuff. So it all depends on the job that they’re looking for.

Jailyn Easley:
But I’ll say when I was working with the Creative Group, we looked for all levels of people, people that were still in school and there was some people who were like, okay, we really wanted them for a particular job, but they were still in school and they didn’t have any real work experience. But then there were some people with 15 years plus work experience that we were like, “Okay, this person looks good because they’ve had this experience with A, B and C.” Definitely just depends on the scenario there, but I would say choose wisely and don’t put all your eggs in one basket because like you, I obviously didn’t have that well of luck with recruiting agencies because I ended up working for one.

Maurice Cherry:
That makes sense. I feel like the Atlanta ecosystem is very unique in that we have these top art schools like SCAD and Art Institute.q We have even really great programs at four year institutions like Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Emory, et cetera, but then we’ve also got all these HBCUs here. So you have this really interesting mix of talent from a lot of different points of view, a lot of different backgrounds, all different types of experience. It just seems like the Atlanta market has not necessarily found the best way to really tap into that. I still get conversations from people like, “Oh, we can’t find diverse candidates for our hiring pool.” In Atlanta? You mean to tell me in Atlanta, you can’t find a black designer? I refuse to believe that, but whatever.

Jailyn Easley:
I was going to say something that, going back to Accenture, that I really admire about them is they not only promote diversity and inclusion, but they are one of those companies that shows it. I always kind of joke with one of my other senior managers and she’s like, “This is as many black people as you’re going to see in one environment at one time, so definitely soak this up.” I’m like, wow. It’s a huge mixing pot when it comes to so many different backgrounds and where people are from. I’ve met people from all different places all over because it [inaudible 00:34:37] all these different offices. It’s something that I’m happy to be a part of and I’m glad that they’re actually promoting that when they’re recruiting from these different universities and stuff like that.

Maurice Cherry:
At your current stage right now, you first of all, congratulations. You recently graduated from SCAD, so congratulations on that.

Jailyn Easley:
Thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
Between that and the work that you’re doing at Accenture, how do you see the current design scene or the current design community in Atlanta?

Jailyn Easley:
I would say that the creative community here in Atlanta is diverse, not only in capabilities. There’s so many different types of design and creative, so to speak here; everything from set design to creative direction to brand design, but also, actually in I guess, physical appearance there are different types. I knew that going to SCAD it wasn’t going to be an HBCU or a PWI necessarily, but I was interested to see what that experience would be like. Surprisingly when I got there, we were probably still the minority, but there were a lot of different kinds of people there. There were Nigerians, there were Asian people, there were people from Columbia and Brazil and it was just a huge opportunity to be able to gain those different perspectives and just about what other people are thinking about and what other people are doing in their design. I still have really good design friends that are from all different backgrounds that kind of offer their own I guess, pizzazz, so to speak, to design. They definitely are able to articulate themselves in a whole different way than maybe you or me do.

Jailyn Easley:
It’s really interesting to see that scene of people coming into the corporate world and of course, you want to keep up with different classmates and things like that. So they’re working at different agencies that deal with different ad agencies or they’re working on freelance or they’re working in the corporate space. It’s definitely becoming more of a… I guess corporate is starting to catch up to where the younger designers are just in terms of different trends that you kind of see going on in design right now and just through what their product is or what they’re advertising, what their ad looks like when it’s put out. So that combination of designers and environment is really starting to I guess, make Atlanta so to speak. Whenever anyone asks me, “How’s Atlanta,” or, “What are you doing down there?” Or, “How’s the creative scene?” It’s always something different going on. There’s always sort of installation going on or pop up or vendor market or even conferences. There are so many different meetups here.

Jailyn Easley:
Having worked for the Creative Group, one of my recruiting tools, so to speak, was meetup.com. So we would find events that had to deal with design and we would go to them to find people that we wanted to kind of recruit for the Creative Group. We would go to different events just that were being held based in UX design or based in development or there were all different kinds of designs. There were study groups, there were just having fun kind of game night design types of things. It’s definitely a really interesting combination of people versus environment.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. So one of the projects we’re working on right now is called, “The 100 Days of Design.” Where did the idea come from for that?

Jailyn Easley:
I had just been kind of looking to doing a different medium of design. I had been doing your black and white graphic design, so to speak, which was using Photoshop and different Adobe tools to help with the designs. But I wanted to start illustrative style just because it was something that I had seen but I had never tried. Honestly, I was a little afraid or intimidated because I had seen so many different renditions and interpretations of different artists doing their own illustration.

Jailyn Easley:
So I started doing, “100 Days of Design,” and I looked for a challenge actually, to do, but I couldn’t find anything. I think there was one, but it started in April and I was like, “Well, I want to get started now.” So I made up my own challenge and it’s probably some other designers have probably done it, but I just called it, “100 Days of Design.” So each day, I am pushing myself to not only create one thing each day, but also share it because something that I had seen in the past just with my own work, was that, especially a lot on my social media with Instagram and Facebook and things like that, was that I hadn’t put too much of my work on there. I wanted to get into the habit of being able to share my work with others, not because I wanted them… Well, I guess not because I want to promote myself, but just because I wanted to get my art…

Jailyn Easley:
Not because I wanted promote myself, but just because I wanted to get my art out there into the world and you know, not just have it on my website or because I was actually talking to a friend and he was like, “You should start to put your stuff somewhere else other than your website.” And I’m like, “Well, why? Like why does it matter?” He’s like, “It’s a way of expression.” Because he’s a photographer. So, if you’d look at his Instagram, it’s all his work as opposed to just pictures of him and random stuff. So, it’s just a way for me to be able to push myself to create every day, to keep going, to be able to route to different opportunities with my design and see where I can push the limits personally. So.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How’s it been going so far?

Jailyn Easley:
It’s good. I am not the best when it comes to time management. So, I’m still definitely trying to figure out a good schedule because with me working full-time plus I do yoga after work and still kind of studying it and I got my certification in yoga last February. So, still kind of studying it whenever I have the time to and doing design and it’s like I wanted to be able to, I guess, find some time for myself to do something that I like to do while not sweating all day and working hard diligently all day.

Jailyn Easley:
So, besides that part of it, I think it’s going pretty well and I’m starting to explore the different types of illustrations I can do and different ways that I can start to incorporate different things like color palettes and themes and things like that. So, it’s gone pretty well.

Maurice Cherry:
Well the good thing is you don’t necessarily have to do it every day. So, like a hundred days, there’s 360, well, this year there’s 366 days. So, you can get a hundred days out of that, doesn’t have to necessarily be consecutive.

Jailyn Easley:
Right. I’ve been like some days I’ll group them together. Like this past weekend I just grouped Friday through Sunday together. I was like yeah, here’s all of the weekend stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean that’s kind of what you have to do, especially when you’re working full-time and you’ve got other stuff going on. I did a project back in 2015 called the Year of Tea. It was a podcast and I would do a different episode, like a short episode, like less than five minutes reviewing a different type of tea or a different brand of tea or whatever. And I didn’t do those every day. I would batch them, especially if I knew I was going to be off at a conference for a week or off somewhere else, I would just batch them so they would schedule to go out. Now I kind of shot myself in the foot a little bit because I said like a year. So, I had to do it every day. A friend of mine, Diane Holton, who has been on the show, she’s a deputy art director at AARP in D.C. And she did a whole thing also on Instagram, a whole like daily-ish design practice called Daily Digits where she fashioned numbers out of different found objects. So, like she would get-

Jailyn Easley:
I think I saw that.

Maurice Cherry:
… like little candies and make the number eight or something like that, you know? Oh, you heard of it?

Jailyn Easley:
I think I saw it because I had followed Diane at one point. With the whole D.C. And Bowie thing, they always brought someone new from the creative D.C. space to Bowie, so I think I had met her.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, she did the campaign, well that wasn’t a campaign. I know she did end up doing a campaign with HP on the whole like thousand, she did a thousand of them for Daily Digits. So, it was just interesting seeing how she would take these random objects and just make numbers. Like I’m looking at it right now. One of them, she took Kit-Kat wrappers and made 997 and then she used ramen noodles and flavor packets to make 998. Used gummy worms to make 999 so it’s interesting how you see all these different objects and figure like, oh, what’s a way to create something out of this? You know, that’s a really good thing. I wish more creatives did that just as a practice, not necessarily to have like a body of something to show off, but it does kind of, it engages that sense of discovery and creativity that sometimes can get lost if you’re just doing a nine to five or if you’re hustling as an entrepreneur, you kind of lose that spark a little bit unless something new comes along and then this forces you into that on a pretty regular basis, I think.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, absolutely. And, and I’ll say, going from the startup life with Slutty Vegan and it was kind of like a 24/7 thing because it was weekends, it was during the week, it was all the time. So, ultimately I was doing stuff for them, but I never was able to kind of get out my own creativity and be able to push myself to say, “Okay, let’s think of something new. Let’s create something new.” When I came over to Accenture, it was like, I’m still in this transition period and I had some other things in life going on, so I wanted this time to be able to start fresh this year. You know, not having made any resolutions, but more so just intentions of being able to help myself grow and help that self-discovery, like you were saying. That kind of made that internal spark from me because it was something that, when you haven’t done it for a while, it’s like you almost a little bit lose that motivation.

Jailyn Easley:
And that’s something that is what makes you, you, it’s something that encourages you do better. It encourages you to keep going and it encourages you to be this free being. So, it was something that I wanted to be able to still have and say, “Okay, this is something that I’m going to do for me.” I’m just more so sharing it just to get into the habit of sharing it. But this is definitely something that is all for me and not to, like you said, have a huge body of work, but just to have, to see my progression over my works and to see which ways I can do different things here and there. So.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So, just to kind of switch gears here a little bit, what are you excited about at the moment?

Jailyn Easley:
Currently … Okay. Can I name two things?

Maurice Cherry:
Sure.

Jailyn Easley:
One is a quick thing, so I’m excited about South by Southwest this year. I want to go, and obviously Accenture being a huge company in innovation they’re always doing different events there. So, not only for them, but I went back in 2017 and it was, even without having a conference ticket, I mean we had one, but outside of the conference is where the installations were and the companies were doing these huge pop=ups and all different kinds of stuff. So, I would love to go back to South by Southwest this year. So, that’s my number one thing.

Jailyn Easley:
Number two. So, at my job right now at Accenture, we are trying to push our internal teams to start doing more things that are combining technology with design and more so, so that it makes sense to them combining technology with strategy, so to speak. Because when you’re talking to them, it’s more so just about the tactics behind things and how you’re going to do what you’re going to do to get there. But the what and the how that you’re going to get there in. We’re trying to make that aspect of it technology.

Jailyn Easley:
So, for example, we have an internal application that allows you to use this artificial intelligence and this augmented reality to be able to present these huge PowerPoint presentations just at the touch of your fingers, but certain things like that. Obviously, it sounds like a really extravagant idea, but things like that take time along with testing and just being able to figure out the kinks, figure out where it works, push its limitations, see how it engages with its audience and things like that.

Jailyn Easley:
So, certain things like that within our hub we are kind of testing just to see what, I guess, how we can advantage it the most. So, that’s definitely something that I’m excited about as well.

Maurice Cherry:
What’s something that perhaps not many people understand about you?

Jailyn Easley:
Oh, I would say a lot of people don’t understand my perspective. Having come from Baltimore within the inner city goes to school there and coming from there to Bowie to Atlanta and going to different places along the way. A lot of people don’t understand my thought process when it comes to how I’m thinking about things. And I guess the fluidity in which I’m thinking about certain things, I always like to get variety and get other people’s perspective and get just a round table view of what’s going on. Because I feel like before we do any problem solving or solution oriented tactics, we need to figure out what’s currently at the table and get it from each angle. So, I’m always the one to say, “Well, have we thought about this? Well, how did we get here if we haven’t gotten there?” Or I’m always the one to ask questions.

Jailyn Easley:
And to some people it may come off as, well, maybe I don’t want to use the word arrogant, but sometimes it may come off as like a know-it-all type of situation, but more so it’s just pushing people to be able to understand the different sides of one situation. Because outside of your view, there are the person that you’re talking to and the people that they’re talking to. So, always pushing people to see the different perspectives in life.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the people that influence you?

Jailyn Easley:
Some of the people that influence me, I would say a lot of them are within the educational sector. Two of them which I went to Bowie with or which were my professors at Bowie, one is actually Jennifer White-Johnson. She definitely had a huge impact on my college life when it came to design and things like that. But also another one of my mentors at Bowie, Tamisha Ponder, she is my yoga mentor, so to speak. So, I have my design, I have my yoga. They definitely helped shape the person I became at Bowie from the different programs that I had joined with both of them in it, or the different events that I attended that they may have hosted or certain things like that had an influence on what I thought or what I made of the different topics that were brought up.

Jailyn Easley:
And just being able to get exposed to certain things like that, as opposed to just doing the college thing, going to class, going back to my room, being really interactive with things that were going on, not only on campus but outside of campus, what can you do? They would always push me to do things off campus because one of them did go to Bowie and the other, I think, Jennifer White-Johnson went to UMBC. So they were like, do things outside of here. Don’t just say here, venture out. So, that’s definitely something that impacted me throughout my college years.

Jailyn Easley:
And just now to this day, they both give me a really positive influence on life. And I would say one other person is a professor that I had at SCAD, Judy Salzinger. She is definitely a character. I love Judy so much. I remember one of the first things she said to me, she was like, “You know what Jailyn?” I say, “Yeah?” She said, “You’re a smart ass.” And I laughed. [inaudible 00:52:40].

Jailyn Easley:
I was like, okay, good. Yeah, Judy is amazing. She was also one of those people that helped me see the different views on things. She was a professor for a few of my classes at SCAD, but she’s also the chair of the department of advertising there. So, just through, she took us on different field trips and just from sitting and talking with her, she was an industry professional before, so she had some experience in the things that I wanted to do and the places that I wanted to go. So, her being kind of my on-site influence because she was here in Atlanta when I came down here. And then just having my two other mentors back home and keeping up with them still. So, it was kind of a nice, easy balance between the three of them and the impact that they kind of put on, not only my design life but life outside of design as well.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Like it’s 2025 what kinds of things do you want to be working on?

Jailyn Easley:
So, in 2025 I would love to, over the years just start to learn how to design in these different softwares that are dealing with virtual reality and augmented reality. Hopefully wouldn’t take a full five years but definitely would be looking into starting to utilize that in people’s day-to-day lives. These are things that some people think are just the bells and whistles on the car, but in reality these are the moving parts to it. And these are things that we can start to incorporate into what we’re doing on a day-to-day basis. So, I would love to just be able to kind of articulate that with a company that is that forward thinking and that open-minded, so to speak, to give that leverage towards me to be able to help promote these different technologies and help put them in a way that is not only solving a problem but also is, obviously visually pleasing. So.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more about you and about your work online?

Jailyn Easley:
So, you can go to my website, www.jailyneasley.com. J-A-I-L-Y-N E-A-S-L-E-Y. And you can find me on Instagram @finessewilliams, like finesse, F-I-N-E-S-S-E, finessewilliams_ _ on Instagram.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. I like that for Finesse Williams. That’s dope. Well, Jailyn Easley, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think as I mentioned to this to you, when I reached out before I was like we’ve actually had crossed paths before. This is back when we were trying to do our whole student perspective series. I think you were still at Bowie at the time and I think to look at that and now especially as you’ve talked about your story coming down here to Atlanta, going to SCAD, working with these brands. It’s amazing how much you’ve been able to accomplish in really a fairly short amount of time and I think it’s great that you’ve had the support of other black designers and other really honestly black people in entrepreneurship and business to make that happen. And I feel like that’s something that we just need to see more of and I’m really excited to see what you do in the future.

Maurice Cherry:
Like as I was hearing you talk about this, you reminded me a lot of someone who we’ve actually had on the show three times now, Sarah Huny Young, who, she’s now … What does she want Sarah do now? She’s a DJ now, I think, but she’s been a pivotal part of design and stuff for like the past 15, 20 odd something years. There’s like three interviews over on the site so people can listen to it. But as I was listening to you describe all of these different experiences you’ve had and working with all these different brands, I was like, I can see just how grand your career is going to be. So, I’m glad to have the chance to talk to you at this stage of your career and see just how things are going. So, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Jailyn Easley:
Yeah, well thank you for having me.


Submissions for Volume 2 of the design anthology RECOGNIZE open on March 1! For more information, visit recognize.design!

Sponsors

Facebook Design is a proud sponsor of Revision Path. The Facebook Design community is designing for human needs at unprecedented scale. Across Facebook’s family of apps and new product platforms, multi-disciplinary teams come together to create, build and shape communication experiences in service of the essential, universal human need for connection. To learn more, please visit facebook.design.

This episode is brought to you by Abstract: design workflow management for modern design teams. Spend less time searching for design files and tracking down feedback, and spend more time focusing on innovation and collaboration. Like Glitch, but for designers, Abstract is your team’s version-controlled source of truth for design work. With Abstract, you can version design files, present work, request reviews, collect feedback, and give developers direct access to all specs—all from one place. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to www.abstract.com.

Kevin White calls himself a “UX strategist”, but that title barely scratches the surface of what he does. Aside from his work as a senior experience designer, he’s also a talented illustrator, a design educator, and a devoted family man. But according to Kevin, his origin story as a design professional is an example of what not to do. (Naturally, I had to know more about this.)

We started off talking about the ubiquity of UX in today’s modern design industry, and from there Kevin goes into the early days of his career, and we take a slight detour to discuss social media, sound design, branding, and even the historical archives of the Internet! We touched on a lot of topics in our conversation, but I think what stands out the most is that there is no one true path to becoming a designer. Learn more about Kevin in this week’s interview!

Did you like this episode? Get special behind-the-scenes access for just $5/month!

rp_patreon_banner


Revision Path is sponsored by Facebook Design. No one designs at scale quite like Facebook does, and that scale is only matched by their commitment to giving back to the design community.
fbdesign_logo_75
Revision Path is also sponsored by Glitch. Glitch is the friendly community where you can build the app of your dreams. Stuck on something? Get help! You got this!
glitch_75
Revision Path is also brought to you by Google Design! Google Design is committed to sharing the best design thinking from Google and beyond. Sign up for their newsletter!
Revision Path is brought to you by Mailchimp. Huge thanks to them for their support of the show! Visit them today and say thanks!
mailchimp-logo