Kevin Carroll

Can you believe we’re almost a quarter of the way through 2022 already? I think now might be a perfect time for a creative tune-up, and this week’s guest is a true instigator of inspiration — Kevin Carroll. As a founder, author, and public speaker, Kevin’s words and his work have influenced hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to tap into their creativity and accomplish epic tasks.

Our conversation touches on a number of topics, including success, longevity, curiosity, and perseverance. Kevin talked about growing up in Philly, being a linguistics expert in the Air Force, his time at Nike, and talks about how you can find your own “red rubber ball.” Kevin’s words were just what I needed to hear right now, and I hope they will encourage you as well. Trust me, you’ll want to listen to this episode multiple times!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Kevin Carroll:
Kevin Carroll, author, speaker, instigator of inspiration. I get an opportunity to spend time with co-conspirators and storytelling, creativity, innovation, human performance, and advancing the human condition in a good and positive way. So I get a chance to do that on a regular.

Maurice Cherry:
That sounds like a dream job.

Kevin Carroll:
I don’t know if it’s necessarily, you know, it’s so funny, one of the things that I tell folks is I don’t really have a job per se. I’m kind of like Tommy from Martin Lawrence’s show. So my friends always say, what do you do, what do you do? Because like you’re always here and there and there. And so, I think I just have discovered that folks see a talent or a gift or skill that I might have that would lend itself to a project or an idea or something that they’re trying to advance.

Kevin Carroll:
I don’t really see myself as having a job in a traditional sense, a J-O-B. I really do think that I have this career portfolio, I actually was reading an article about that, why you should build a career portfolio, not a career path. And so I think I have a series of experiences. So I have more of a portfolio than a career path.

Maurice Cherry:
How has 2022 been going for you so far?

Kevin Carroll:
Surprise and delight and expect the unexpected, that’s what’s been happening so far this year already. I’ve been really blessed and count my blessings. We’ve stayed healthy this entire time. I think that’s allowed me to double down on optimism and positivity and to put out in the world some good energy. And that good energy is being reciprocated and reflected back. It’s been really wonderful some of the different projects that I’ve been invited to be a part of, find opportunities, to do a little bit of travel already.

Kevin Carroll:
So, some really fun locations. I was at the University of Oklahoma recently where I did some work with students on campus, but also student athletes on the campus there, and also in the community of Norman, Oklahoma. So that was really exciting. And then I literally just got back from an event where I spoke to 5,000 people, a live event, and that’s the first time a large group like that has been together was in DC.

Kevin Carroll:
And I was telling a friend that I got a chance to see the African American Museum, the National African American Museum of Art. I had not seen it like sitting on the, as you drive by it. Most of the buildings, if you’ve ever been in DC, Maurice, I don’t know if you spent much time there, most of the buildings are white. And here’s this building that’s this beautiful bronze brown, and it just stands out, and it feels so warm and inviting. And so, I got to see that yesterday, actually, I got there on Sunday and we were driving through and it was a sunny and it just stood out, and I was so inspired to see that.

Kevin Carroll:
That event with 5,000 people was actually in DC. So, I think that was a great sign for me to realize that wonderful things are coming this year and that’s a great source of inspiration to see a building like that and to think about all the voices and actions and impact that black and brown folks have been making, and I want to join forces with that. So that’s my goal, is to keep advancing that kind of intention that you would find in a building like that.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. It’s definitely great to come across that sort of realization like that, especially during Black History Month.

Kevin Carroll:
Yeah. Right? It fell right on the last two days of Black History Month, so it was great timing to see that building. It wasn’t something that I was unaware of, I was paying attention to that. I also talked about the importance of being where your feet are and being present. I think that’s what a lot of folks don’t do a great job of is being present, so that’s something that’s really been helpful for me is being present.

Maurice Cherry:
I guess given that, what do you want to achieve this year? Did that kind of put like an idea in your head about what you want to do?

Kevin Carroll:
I don’t ever really have like a I want to grow my business X percent or I want to, I don’t have those kinds of metric measurable per se. My whole thing is just at the end of the year, can I reflect back and see that I advanced the human condition in a positive way, and I had in some way that really will reverberate. That’s a thing that I always look at is like, what were some of the moments, what were some of the things? And so, I just want to continue to do that.

Kevin Carroll:
A big thing for me is I’m chasing significance, not success. That’s what I’m chasing> success is attainable and you can have a measure of success at any age, quite frankly, but significance takes time, and that’s the long game, and that’s the collective measure of all the impact that you’ve had. And so, that’s what I’m pursuing. This year is just another part of that mosaic, of that journey and chase to significance.

Maurice Cherry:
You’re doing so many things, as you mentioned, at the top of the show. You’re an author, you’re a speaker, you’re an instigator of inspiration. And I’m curious, what does an average day look like for you?

Kevin Carroll:
Probably not an average day. It can vary. There’s always some structure to what I’m trying to accomplish each day, and I do like to make sure that I feel inspired at some point. I’m always looking for opportunities to connect with folks. I have a very curious spirit about me. I think a typical or average day can be captured in this quote by Albert Einstein, “I have no special talents, I’m only passionately curious.” So I like to be passionately curious each day.

Kevin Carroll:
And so, whatever that unfolds or brings my way, that’s what I’m about. So it could be doing three virtual keynotes because we can do that now. [inaudible 00:08:20] necessarily got to get on a plane, to working on a collaboration with a sports program or sports team or university, or doing some reverse mentoring with my godson, where he actually teaches me art or Legos or something, and I’m learning from him, and he’s nine years old and he’s brilliant. I enjoy doing that. I just think that every day that’s my end goal is, was I passionately curious today or not?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I definitely think that the way that these past few years have been, in many ways, it’s opened up a lot of different avenues for people to try different things, to just pursue different types of work and stuff like that. I like that idea of just being curious and kind of seeing where things go. For me, at least I can’t say it for the listener maybe, but for myself, that feels super aspirational to be able to have that kind of freedom to do that. You’ve been doing it since 2004. What’s been the key to your longevity with this?

Kevin Carroll:
I think it’s relationship building. And my attitude is, if you shine, I shine, and I don’t want to be transactional with you, I want to be transformational with you. And so, that means we’re building something, we’re building something. And you’re in the business of seeing what you can get from me and you want to be transactional. We probably won’t build together. But if you’re about building a relationship and connecting on a deeper level that I can help you shine and in turn, it’s going to reflect back and maybe not right away, it could be five, 10 years from then. But that’s all good, and that’s all love, and that’s the way that I’ve looked at it.

Kevin Carroll:
So relationships have been really, really key and critical, because what I’ve discovered, and I think it’s one of those really wonderful, unexpected things, is I’ve been meeting people. When you think about all the public speaking that I’ve done, I’ve done public speaking since early 90s, I’ve been doing that. “Formally,” I’ve been doing it since 2002, but I’ve been meeting young people, meeting individuals where they are for decades.

Kevin Carroll:
Those individuals have grown up and guess who they remember put them on back in the day? Me. So now they’re in positions of influence and decision makers, and I get these notes on LinkedIn, Twitter, DMs on Instagram, hey, you might not remember me, KC, but you spoke at my school. My mom got you to sign this book. I happened to be at this conference. And now I’m with this company, this business, I’m doing this, I’ve started mine. And I thought of you when this idea came up, when this project came up, when this conference came up, and I immediately put your name for it. That’s what’s been happening for 18 years.

Kevin Carroll:
And it’s been gaining more momentum, which has been really magical when you think about it. But I didn’t plan it that way. It’s just been organic the way it’s all played out. My wife always points out, she said, “You put all those seeds out there not knowing that they would grow into oaks.”

Maurice Cherry:
Just to kind of, I guess, peel the curtain back a little bit, you asked me before we started recording, what’s your end game with this, this of course being Revision Path and this podcast. And the way that you just expressed that I think maybe ties into what I guess I could see the end goal of Revision Path being, in that there’s all these stories about black designers and developers and creatives and such that people can learn about. And to me, my hope is that this helps inform as many people as possible, we’re out here, we’re a creative force, we’re doing this work, in terms of planting those seeds as you mentioned.

Kevin Carroll:
You know what else, you’re creating a time capsule, you’re creating a time capsule that’s going to be a way finder for the next generation. So you need to realize that. I know we talked about you creating some kind of other creative effort off of this. You know exactly what I just said, I know you wrote it down.

Maurice Cherry:
I did.

Kevin Carroll:
I know you did, because look, we did our little prep call, convo before this, our warmup, and this just came to me. This is a time capsule. And imagine if you’re a young person trying to find your way and we can only envision ourselves in a position if we see ourselves there, well, they get to hear ourselves, they get to hear these voices. So you’re creating this audio time capsule. Come on, man. That’s fire. That’s fire. I’m telling you, first one’s free, Maurice, first one’s free right there. There you go. Receive that bro. Receive that.

Maurice Cherry:
Before striking out on your own and doing your own thing, I think people probably know you well from your work that you’ve done at Nike because it sounds like it was a very, very unique experience for you. Talk to me about that.

Kevin Carroll:
Yeah, you had a couple other guests on here that are Nike alums, Jeff Henderson and Kevin Bethune, those are two of my partners in crime and positivity. So they’re good brothers and we’ve done some fun projects together. My time at Nike, I always reference it in this way that Nike let me fly my freak flag. Nike let me really stretch my wings creatively and to discover things about myself that I didn’t know or that were lying dormant because of other experiences, and I didn’t get encouraged to express it. And Nike gave me permission.

Kevin Carroll:
And in doing so, unlocked a lot of my creative energy and my creative confidence. And so, I think that’s been something I’ll always be grateful for at Nike. I think I reciprocated with creating a more sense of belonging and connection there at Nike and Nike at large, at the other locations around world. And so yeah, I got an opportunity to do lots of different projects and work in lots of different areas from footwear design to special projects with Tinker Hatfield and his group to being a director of internal communications, working there.

Kevin Carroll:
So Nike really gave me an opportunity to tap into a lot of my gifts and talents, and they saw value in allowing someone to have all these experiences. And remember I said, I don’t think I have a career path, I have a career portfolio. Nike was a place that let me put more arrows in my quiver of that portfolio, if you will, of that career experiences. And so, yeah, I’ve always felt that Nike was this amazing living lab for me that I got a chance to do and try lots of different things and discover a lot of things about myself.

Maurice Cherry:
I remember listening to an interview where you were talking about how Phil Knight, who is the, I think he still is or maybe he was, the CEO of Nike, but he kind of referred to you as the mayor of Nike.

Kevin Carroll:
Yeah. Yeah. He’s retired now but he was the co-founder, CEO and chairman at the time when I was there, 97 to 2004. He caught wind of some of the creative capers I was doing on campus and the impact I was having. And so, he asked me to have a regular meeting with him monthly and to discuss with me the people and the culture and how things were going there. He kind of coined that term for me, said, I might be CEO and chairman here, but you’re the mayor here and you know this place.

Kevin Carroll:
So, I would give him information and share how people were feeling, what was going on, and being that bridge for him, being an executive, you’re not necessarily privy to that. So I was giving him that insight and visibility to how the people were feeling, what was going on, and opportunities for him to continue to further advance the culture in a positive way.

Maurice Cherry:
I want to switch gears here a little bit. As I mentioned to you before I listened to some interviews and things, you really talk a lot about how like your personal story can be a catalyst for someone else to kind of chase their dreams. So I want to dive a little bit into your personal story. Tell me about what it was like growing up in Philly.

Kevin Carroll:
Listen, Philly’s grimy. I love Philly that way. And we take a lot of pride in that with our city and everything. My childhood was challenging because of circumstances that we were navigating as kids, me and my two brothers. And so, addiction and abandonment, upheaval and uncertainty, dysfunction and disappointment were the norm because my parents were addicts and my grandparents rescued us.

Kevin Carroll:
The thing that I think my grandparents, maybe not necessarily realizing it but because of their age, we had a lot of freedom as kids to make a lot of decisions that probably shouldn’t be making when you’re a kid, but we out of necessity and just they couldn’t keep up with us that way. So, we had a lot of freedom. And so, I discovered a playground in my neighborhood first that was kind of the epicenter of our neighborhood, but it was this place where I felt I belonged first.

Kevin Carroll:
And so sports was a big thing in our neighborhood and I realized that very quickly. And so I dove head long into sports and played every sport you could imagine, whatever the season I was playing it. But it was never for trophies or first place or medals, it was always for belonging. I loved being part of a team and connecting and being a part of that.

Kevin Carroll:
That was I think an unlock for me was being part of a team and finding a place to belong. And it was a positive way for me to channel a lot of the questions I was having as a kid because of the decisions my parents made. And so, sports really was a great outlet and a great coping tool for me to manage that. And then public library was another great place, I loved learning and reading. So I went to the public library a lot.

Kevin Carroll:
And then my best friend’s mom became my mom in many ways, Ms. Lane. And so she poured into me as much wisdom as possible every day. I had a key to their house since I was nine, still have that key to their house. Ms. Lane was the cheat code, if you will, for me. She gave me all of the different ways to unlock possibilities and potential. I always say it was just two words that she would speak to me, why not. And she would always answer any of my, like Ms. Lane, Ms. Lane, I got this idea. She’d always say, well, why not? But then she’d always follow up with, don’t talk about it, be about it. Lots of talkers and very few doers, which one are you? So I learned about action And accountability from her.

Kevin Carroll:
But also someone who was unconditional in their love and just hoped for me to be successful. And Ms. Lane was the person who poured that significance idea into me, that you are going to be successful because you’ve got intellect and smarts, but I want you to chase something bigger and grander, I want you to chase significance. So that’s where that all stems from.

Kevin Carroll:
So that childhood started off difficult, but I found a way to rise above it and didn’t do it alone. I think that was one of the key things for me was when I talk about relationships earlier, that’s where I learned relationships and the importance of them. And it served me well all the way through me being on my own now for 18 years. Relationships stem all the way back to my childhood.

Maurice Cherry:
It takes a village. Like you said, you were staying with your grandparents and then you had Ms. Lane, you had your sports teams that you were a part of. So you had all of these different influences as you were growing up.

Kevin Carroll:
And these crazy people at the playground, because playgrounds, they got some colorful folks that are up there. I tell people, I’m a mosaic of many people, drug dealers, abusers, and war veterans, and ain’t quite right folks in the head folks. Just all kinds of people were there, other kids’ parents, food service workers, custodians, they all poured into me. And my brothers. I know that I’m a mosaic of many people.

Maurice Cherry:
So, after you graduated high school, you went on to college, and then after college you went into the military, you went into the air force. What was behind that decision?

Kevin Carroll:
I became a young dad. So, I didn’t even finish college, I was in my junior year, became a young father, I was 20 years old. And I came home and my grandfather said, “So what are you going to do about this?” He said, “You need to do the right thing.” And he said, “You need to not repeat history and be an absent father.” And so that was a loud message from my grandfather. And so these are his sensibilities.

Kevin Carroll:
So I made a decision to join the air force, not go back to college. I figured I could finish it while I’m in the air force, but I wanted to provide for my family. So I went in the military, my uncle was in the air force, so that’s why I chose the air force. I told people, they said, why’d you pick the air force? I said, my uncle always was smiling, so I figured he must be enjoying it. So, that’s why I picked the air force over any other branch. And joined the air force.

Kevin Carroll:
That was first time I ever been on an airplane was going to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. And landed in Texas and had no idea that I would end up really enjoying the air force and learning so much about myself and discovering I had other gifts and talents that had not been discovered yet. I had a language ability in the military discovered that and ended up becoming a language translator in the military and working with a top seeker clearance and doing all this clandestine work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of crazy stuff. So I speak a bunch of languages, and did that in the military.

Kevin Carroll:
And once again, more relationships, I’m still connected to a lot of people that I met when I was in the air force from 1980 to 1990. So 10 years I was in there, I’m still connected to a lot of those people too. So, we go back to that, what’s that through line for me is relationships and the importance of it and not being transactional with people being transformational.

Maurice Cherry:
I don’t want to gloss over the language part because I think that’s something which is super interesting because when you were in school, you had started to learn Spanish, but you dropped out, is that right?

Kevin Carroll:
Yeah, I dropped Spanish actually. It was five minutes. It was an amazing five minutes, Maurice. I thought it was a silly class, so I walked out of class, but the funny thing is I never forgot that five minutes. [Spanish 00:23:32], literally that stuck. I was a bit of a knucklehead and young, and I didn’t realize I had a gift then. And the military, they test you and it’s smart, they test you in everything just in case you have a talent that hasn’t been discovered. And lo and behold, I passed this language test in the military in basic training. And that’s how I got uncovered.

Kevin Carroll:
And so, I end up learning Serbian and Croatian Czech and German and become fluent in those and do that work in the military. But yeah, that’s how it ended up happening. But I can always reflect back to the fact that I actually always had it in me, I was just a bit of a hard head back in the day. So yeah, had I hung in there, I’d have Spanish in my repertoire. I’m sure if I put some time to it, I can learn that too.

Maurice Cherry:
I think if you know German, German’s a romantic language. I think Spanish might be not a total one to one, but I feel like you probably could pick up Spanish pretty well if you know German.

Kevin Carroll:
They’re in that family. Germanic is a little harsher than Spanish. Germans, you wouldn’t necessarily equate that like romance language, it’s a little harsh, a little strong. What I’ve discovered is once you learn a language, you are what I say language curious, if you will. So you’re just open to hearing what people are saying and how they’re using their words and what does that word mean. I use Google Translate all the time. I really am fascinated with what was that language and what was that I heard.

Kevin Carroll:
I think that’s the thing that really helps you. And a lot of folks that are American aren’t learning other languages. And I think that’s a big misstep here in the US, because you go to other countries and people are fluent in other languages because they’re just open to that, and they’re also raised that way. So I just think it’s so important. You’re not going to learn a language only taking the class twice a week for 50 minutes though. It’s not going to happen. That ain’t working.

Kevin Carroll:
Oh yeah, I took Spanish in high school. Yeah, how often did you yeah, oh, twice a week for 50 minutes, I said, how much do you remember nothing? Nothing. Yeah, because you got to be immersed in it. So I think that’s the other thing too is you have to be curious about it and want to keep learning.

Maurice Cherry:
French was my language. My mom had, French is her first language. But she also studied French and stuff in school and everything. And so I remember being a kid, she’s a retired biologist, but she had all her college level French books at home. So, I started learning French in second grade, and then basically learned it from second grade all the way up until I graduated college.

Kevin Carroll:
You were around it all the time.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. That’s true.

Kevin Carroll:
Practice it. See that’s the problem is that if you don’t have a way of actually exercising and using the muscle and using the words to gain confidence, that’s why people fall off from their language learning. So you had a built in tutor, you had something there, you were immersed in it, you probably had either magazines or periodicals or different things you could read in French, all that stuff that immerses you, that’s what happened in language school in the military, it’s like you are fully immersed. I can sing Roll out the Barrels in Czech and all these other things.

Kevin Carroll:
We’d get dressed in cultural clothing and different things, so you really understood what it was you were learning. So full immersion is the key. That definitely had the right kind of environment to get really fluent in that language.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s so interesting when you kind of say it that way, especially about the Spanish part, because when I got to middle school, seventh grade, I wanted to take Spanish so bad. It was the first language elective that had filled up super quickly, because I was like, I didn’t want to take French because I already knew French, and I felt it wouldn’t have been fair for me to take French when I already knew it. Everyone else was learning it and I would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, [French 00:27:51], whatever. I would already know it. I was doing good in French, I ended up taking French, but I did want to take Spanish.

Maurice Cherry:
I can kind of understand a bit of Spanish now, but I mean, even with French, I can listen to French music, I can read French books. I can understand it. It does, like you say, knowing another language does kind of make you language curious and opens you up to just more culture I think.

Kevin Carroll:
More culture, which is never a bad thing. The world is flat now, we have access to everything from everywhere. You do yourself at a disservice if you’re not curious around these opportunities and things to broaden your viewpoint and outlook on everything. I’m so glad that you have languages in your life. Maybe that’ll be the takeaway from our conversation is get some language in your life. Foreign language, not just English language, foreign language.

Maurice Cherry:
You had 10 years in the air force. After you left there, what was your next step? What were you thinking about doing?

Kevin Carroll:
I got my degree while I was in the service. Got a certification as an athletic trainer, I was actually working some NFL summer training camps when I was in the military, did armed forces sports program. I was actually the only certified athletic trainer in any branch of the service, so I got a chance to travel in support of armed forces of sports program around the world while I was still in the service. So I decided I was going to do athletic training when I got out of the service.

Kevin Carroll:
So I left after 10 years, moved back to Philadelphia, actually was a single dad then, so raising my boys. And started working in high school as an athletic trainer and a health teacher. Then I got a job at college level as an athletic trainer. And then I ended up in the NBA as only the first black trainer in the history of the NBA for the Philadelphia 76ers, and the third in the history of the NBA. In 1995. And did that for two years.

Kevin Carroll:
That was the springboard. And my languages were the springboard to me actually getting noticed by Nike. So when I was with the 76ers, I actually got encouraged to use Serbian in the middle of a game to insult a player from the former Yugoslavia, [inaudible 00:30:19]. My coach told me to start saying something about his family when he’d run by because he wouldn’t expect it from our bench and distract him a little bit to save a time out. Literally that’s what my coach asked me to do.

Kevin Carroll:
So I start cussing at this dude every time he runs by and he’s seven feet tall. So I’m mumbling, whispering stuff every time he goes by our bench, and he can’t figure out where it’s coming from. So when he turns in the middle of the game and says, who’s insulting my family in Serbian over here, and the coach points at me goes that little guy right there. And Vlad is like, there’s no way. And I [Serbian 00:30:54], and he’s like what? And after the game, he came and approached me, and you’re going to love this because you’re based in Atlanta, he asked me to join the Yugoslavian National Basketball team for the 96 Olympic games in Atlanta.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Kevin Carroll:
And so, I joined them as the sports medicine liaison and their translator.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Kevin Carroll:
Black dude from Philly working with the Yugoslavian national basketball team. I got this crazy old school Polaroid picture of all of us. I’m the only raisin in the milk, I’m the only raisin in the milk. So it’s this really great candid picture of all us from a Polaroid from that moment when we were doing the pre-Olympic tour. That’s how folks at Nike actually found out about me.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. Languages really did unlock something for you. I mean, of course you kind of had the interest in sports, so, being an athletic trainer I’m sure it kind of was almost like a fulfillment of a wish that you kind of had as a kid, I would imagine.

Kevin Carroll:
Well, it’s so funny, I thought I was going to be in the NBA as all kids play sports, I’m going to be in the league one day, as a player I’m thinking. I didn’t think that my intellect and my ability to learn and then the understanding of games and then learning the science behind injuries and all that would actually propel me to that position.

Kevin Carroll:
So when I actually got to the NBA, I paused and really thought about like, whoa, I never thought it would be like this, but I made it to the league. How about that? And then of course, them haters from back in the day that told me it wasn’t going to happen, as soon as I got that gig, guess who was calling for tickets, Maurice? Yo Kev, hook us up with some tickets. Nah, remember that thing you said back in the day. I remember. I kept the receipts. No tickets for you, no tickets for you, no tickets for you. So yes. But I ended up getting to the NBA, which was a roundabout crazy way, unexpected way, but yeah, made it to the league.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow, man. Then like you said, that sort of opened you up to end up doing work for Nike and you started your own business. You’ve lived like four lives. With all these different careers and the way that they’ve all intersected, that’s fascinating.

Kevin Carroll:
It doesn’t make sense now when I say that it’s not a path, it’s a portfolio.

Maurice Cherry:
When did you decide to start writing?

Kevin Carroll:
So, Ms. Lane, my best friend’s mom who’s like my mom, she was the one who kept bugging me. When I got to Nike, she kept saying, when are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book? And I would always push back, Ms. Lane, [inaudible 00:33:37] for? And she was persistent. I want to say for at least five years, she kept bugging me, bugging me, bugging me about it.

Kevin Carroll:
And then finally I said, “Ms. Lane, who’s going to read it?” And she said, “Well, there’s another you out there that needs to know it’s possible. That’s who you should write it for.” Bet. That was the moment I went, okay, bet, I’ll do it. But then I went, I don’t want it to be like a regular book so I’m going to use all this creative energy I’ve learned at Nike and all these things, I’m going to create this proposal that’s going to be so amazing that they’re just going to clamor for this book.

Kevin Carroll:
And I put together this proposal that was unique and different, crickets. Nobody wanted do it. Rejection. In fact, one publisher said it was over-designed and too creative. And actually told me to dumb down my idea, and maybe they’ll consider doing my book. And then I made a decision I’m going to self-publish it.

Kevin Carroll:
So I started the process of self-publishing it in 2003. We got it done by 2004. And it took off, we sold 11,000 copies in nine months. I didn’t realize that was determined to be a successful book because in the industry, if you sell more than 8,000, which is basically getting beyond your friends and family, that’s a successful book. We had done that with just word of mouth, no back table sales. I wasn’t pitching it on stage or anything.

Kevin Carroll:
And someone at ESPN happened to get a copy of my book and they were starting a books division. And I got a call out of the blue from ESPN, they wanted to sign me to a book deal. And I was still at Nike when all that happened. And so, I signed a book deal with ESPN and Disney while I’m at Nike, and that really starts this great opportunity to write more books and everything.

Kevin Carroll:
But Ms. Lane was the person behind the decision to write a book, well, the indecision, but lovingly shoved me towards my destiny kind of moment and stuff. But I’d always loved books. The public library was always a really special place for me as a kid, so I’d always loved books. And I’m always surrounded by books. But I never envisioned myself being an author. That was never anything I imagined or thought of even in my quiet time. Now that I’ve done four books, I’m quite proud of them.

Maurice Cherry:
I love that you self-published first, and then the success from that is what sort of ended up having publishers kind of coming to you for are doing more books. I love that part.

Kevin Carroll:
Yeah. And I think that sometimes you have to know what you’re writing it for, what’s the end game, let’s go back to that, right? What’s the end game. And when she basically said, well, there’s another you out there that needs to know it’s possible, oh, okay, bet, I’m going to do it then.

Kevin Carroll:
So until you kind of have that in mind who you are doing it for, and then we just talked about this time capsule, I know for you you can see someone opening up this time capsule, if you will, figuratively and literally, with all of these gifts and they’re unearthing these voices and these stories. That’s the spark for you then, that’s catalytic. And so, she was that catalyst for me to share a story. Then I made kind of that like, well, I’m not going to do a regular book. Having that attitude.

Kevin Carroll:
That decision actually was so interesting with the book it won over 23 design awards, my book did. Working with a great design team and then working with a great print team that did the self-published piece, and ESPN didn’t change anything in the design when they signed me to the book deal, they just put their logo on it and that was it. And so, that book’s been in print with them since 2005 and still in print, and I think there’s over 400,000 in print now.

Maurice Cherry:
Katalytic with a K.

Kevin Carroll:
Yes. Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Now the metaphor of the red rubber ball comes up a lot in your books. Of course people can sort of check out the books and know what that’s about because you literally have one book called what is your red rubber ball. How would you suggest that listeners out there find their own red rubber ball?

Kevin Carroll:
So, it’s a metaphor, the red rubber ball, it’s literal for me because of sports and play, and the playground being the first place that I felt a sense of belonging and connection. But for most people, it’s more about the metaphor. What are you chasing? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What inspires you to go after it? And so, I think that’s a fundamental question. You need to know what inspires you to get out of bed every single morning. You have to have something.

Kevin Carroll:
And that became even more evident during this pandemic, because this global traumatic event broke a lot of people who didn’t have that clarity of purpose and passion and intention, and they felt lost. It derailed a lot of people. It broke a lot of people. And then there were some people who had this discovery moment, and they doubled down on the thing that they cared about, and they learned more during this pause.

Kevin Carroll:
And so I just think that the red rubber ball is about what are you chasing. What inspires you to get out of bed in the morning and that you want to chase it every single day? And then if you can be blessed and fortunate enough to find a way to blur your passion and your play, that’s great. Maybe you don’t necessarily, your work isn’t your play, but you can always know that this is something I’m chasing, this is something that inspires me and I want to keep that close. That’s the red rubber ball.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at your career and all of your life experiences that you’ve had, is this how you imagined yourself as a kid?

Kevin Carroll:
Never, never. I never imagined myself like this, honestly. When I first went to college, after high school, when I went to college, here was my job career idea. I was going to be in public relations in a bank. How random is that, dude? How random is that? But Maurice, this is how this got in my head. So, when I would ride the trolley, the trains in Philly and out on the main line, I would always see these men just dress sharp with briefcase. And so, I envisioned in my head, oh, they must work in a bank because I always see people dressed nice going in the bank. So, maybe they’re in there doing, I don’t know, public relations. I don’t know where I got that idea of public relations. So I said, I want to do that.

Kevin Carroll:
So when I went to college and people would ask me, so, what do you hope to accomplish? Oh, I want to work in public relations in a bank. I would spit that so fast, public relations in a bank. And people would always look at me curiously like, well, that’s very clear what you want to do. I was about them fits. I loved how cool they looked and clean and [inaudible 00:41:04], briefcase. And I obviously was interested in stories, public relations. But I didn’t have the word storytelling. And so, that’s what I thought I was going to do.

Kevin Carroll:
There’s no way in my wildest, wildest, wildest dreams, could I have ever imagined doing what I’m doing right now. Zero chance. The NBA thing was probably the only thing I might have spoke out and got laughed, basically just laughed at. And that squashed when I was a kid and my attitude was I’ll show you, you watch, I’ll show you. And then I end up in the NBA. That might be the only thing that I had an inkling of an idea. But of course, no one believed that would happen. But other than that, there’s zero chance I imagined what I’m doing right now, zero chance.

Kevin Carroll:
I just knew that I needed to be around a ball, so sports and play. Books, around education and enlightenment and just raising your game and elevating your game to learn more of the curiosity piece. And betterment. So people bettered me, and so, how can I better others? And so, those are my three Bs that I look that, the ball, books and betterment. And that’s kind of how I’ve always been about. I recently got that clarity, but those are three things that have been consistently in my life and a constant for me.

Maurice Cherry:
What gives you the purpose now to keep doing the work that you do?

Kevin Carroll:
There’s another one out there that needs to know it’s possible. Ms. Lane. So I made a promise to her before she passed away, it’s been eight years now, and I told her, I’m going to be the next you, Ms. Lane. I’m going to be that encourager for the next generation. I’m going to use technology and all these things, I’m going to have greater reach and impact, but I’m going to be the next you, and I’m going to remember what you said, there’s another you out there that needs to know what’s possible.

Kevin Carroll:
So that’s what gives me the passion to do this each and every day, that there’s someone that needs to hear from me, see a project I’m working on, maybe collide with somebody that I’ve already impacted, something like that. But I know there’s another one out there. So that’s what I do the work for on behalf of them.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you talked earlier about significance versus success. I’m curious, what does success look like for you now?

Kevin Carroll:
It’s happening. I’m doing it and I’m proof that you can find success. Your circumstances don’t have to dictate your destiny, you can rise above that. Got to have that passion, purpose, and intention, and that clarity around what it is that you want to chase. So, that’s success, I have that. Significance is what I’m chasing. So I can point to, like you said, I’ve had four or five different lives, they’ve all been successful. Easy to point to that.

Kevin Carroll:
But significance, I haven’t reached that yet. I haven’t gotten to that point where I’ve got this really amazing platform that I’m impacting lots of people on a regular basis. I’m doing it kind of in piecemeal now. I’m hoping, I mean, speak it into existence, I want to have a TV show. I want it to be a Saturday morning show, where I’m inspiring young people, and they’re seeing themselves in me. But not to be the host or anything, but seeing all these journeys and all these experiences that I’ve had, and know that it’s possible for them.

Kevin Carroll:
And so, how can I introduce them to all these different careers and show them this wonderful multicultural expertise that’s out there so that they can see themselves in these roles that maybe they quietly imagine themselves doing, but not speaking them into existing or letting anybody know that they really want to do that, because they’ve not seen themselves in that role. So how can I be that unlock? How can I be that way finder? How can I be the plug for folks? How can I be a cheat code? That’s what I want to do.

Kevin Carroll:
So, that would be the end game for me, is this programming of some sort, traditional, Saturday morning or on a digital platform, but have the reach an impact so that I can be that Ms. Lane for the next generation, that CEO, that chief encouragement officer.

Maurice Cherry:
I can see a Netflix series in your near future. I totally can see it.

Kevin Carroll:
That’s what’s up. See. That’s what’s up. Right? Your lips God’s ears. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s do this, Maurice. You’d be one of the people on the show, I’d be talking about you. We’re now interviewing Maurice Cherry and how he created a time capsule of black and brown voices to encourage people to go after it. See, there it is, it’s already happening. Episode five, limited series. Or it might be like season nine.

Maurice Cherry:
You dropped already so many pearls of wisdom in this conversation. It almost feels a bit selfish to ask this, but what advice would you give somebody that wants to sort of chart the same kind of I guess path, to call it that, how can someone follow in your footsteps? How can someone be like you?

Kevin Carroll:
Do you. Be the best you think is the advice that I’d love to give folks. I’ll go back to the original thing I brought up. I have no special talents, I’m only passionately curious. And I think curiosity for the win, FTW. Curiosity, that’s going to unlock, that’s going to help you stay in beta as a human being, always updating, always improving. I say this all the time, we’re so quick to update those apps on our devices and our computers, but what about ourselves?

Kevin Carroll:
We’re the greatest app ever created, Maurice. There is no app greater than us. We’re so quick to update those apps on the devices, update yourself. That starts with curiosity, that starts with wanting to raise your game. And that’s going to unlock all kinds of possibilities and potential because you stay in beta, you’re always in this mindset of improving, of getting better, of leveling up. And that’s the key. And so, that would be my advice, that would be the thing that I think would really make a difference for someone, to chart their own path to significance, and to have a career portfolio of lots of amazing experiences. And to go beyond just a path.

Kevin Carroll:
We go into a super highway, that’s what we want, super highway of experiences. I think it’s available for everyone and it doesn’t, I’m proof, circumstances don’t have to dictate your destiny. I’ve seen it all over the world, I’ve seen people do a lot with very little, we’re resourceful and resilient well beyond our circumstances, but we got to surround ourselves with the right other mindset and people who believe in the same things. Haters are your motivators, they’re going to be out there and they’re real.

Kevin Carroll:
But find people who are like-minded and about the same things and keep them close. Keep those people close because they’re going to be the ones that help you when you’re really struggling. It’s not a clean, straight path. It twists and turns and challenges you. I always say this too, Maurice, doubt is success testing you. When doubt appears, when doubt comes into your mind, that self-talk that you’re not good enough, this isn’t going to be available, this is never going to happen for you, are you ready to dance with doubt? Are you ready to fight the good fight on behalf of that hope, that dream, that aspiration that you have? Then you ready to battle, then you ready to dance.

Kevin Carroll:
And that’s the key. Are you willing to fight for this when it’s not going to be easy, when there are challenging times? That’s the key, because that’s going to unlock things that you never thought were going to be possible.

Kevin Carroll:
One of the things that’s clear, my journey, expect the unexpected, because there’s a lot of unexpected stuff that’s happened. It continues to happen in my life, and just expect that, and respect it.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, Kevin, I mean, again, you’ve given so much in this interview, my God, where can people find out more about you and about your work and everything online?

Kevin Carroll:
Just @ me, @ me, @KCkatalyst with a K, that’s easy. K-A-T-A-L-Y-S-T. Yep. So KCkatalyst. @ me. You’ll find you can find me on all my socials, is that, and it’s easy to find me linked in that way. You can find out more about me that way. And if I can be of service to the next gen especially or the young at heart, and folks that are just trying to advance something, I’m happy to do it.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Man, Kevin Carroll, thank you so, so much for coming on the show. I had an idea I think how the conversation went, because as I mentioned to you before, I’ve been listening to your interviews all day prepping for this, but I mean, the unexpected twists and turns that are just a part of your stor, I think what anyone will take away from this is that you are someone that embodies curiosity and really just a passion for learning that is definitely taking you to where you are now. The fact that you’re also still paying it forward to so many people is astonishing.

Maurice Cherry:
I see that Netflix series in your future. It may not be Netflix, maybe it’s Hulu. I mean, there’s like a dozen streaming services or something now. But I see it happening because this kind if message, it’s an important message, but I think especially right now, it’s so important because of what’s happened over the past few years. I think a lot of people have just kind of felt stuck, and this period of time has caused them to think about, well, what’s the next thing going to be. They need that catalyst, they need the KC Katalyst, that’s what they need.

Kevin Carroll:
My buddy would call me the hope peddler, he said, you out there peddling that hope. I’m like, that’s right, I got what you want, I got what you need. Come on. Let’s go. Hope will not be canceled, my man, hope will not be canceled as long as I’m out here.

Maurice Cherry:
Absolutely. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Kevin Carroll:
My honor and pleasure, man. Time capsule, I’m just going to leave you with that, Maurice Cherry. Time capsule. This is what your program is going to become, there you go.

Chris Burnett

I think my conversation with this week’s guest — artist, musician, and designer Chris Burnett — is probably the most chill interview I’ve done this year. Don’t be fooled though — Chris is a creative dynamo, and someone you should definitely keep your eyes out for in the future.

We start off with a quick talk about the creative scene in Los Angeles, and from there he talks about being an artist at heart and how his current editorial design projects have been keeping him active. Chris also talked about growing up as a skate kid, attending Cal Arts, and scoring lucrative gigs including a stint with Nike, as well as designing for Odd Future. Chris calls himself a creative superhero, and if you trust your heart and spirit, so can you!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Chris Burnett:
Hi, my name is Chris Burnett. I’m an artist, designer, musician, pretty much all around creative soul. It’s hard to peg me down.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s the year been going for you so far?

Chris Burnett:
This year and probably for most people, it’s been a very much transition year, buckling down on the things that I really want to be focusing on and being more selective with my time and my energy and my creative focus. So, it’s been good to narrow down the path of where I’m headed. It also coincides with me turning 30 in two weeks.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, it’s the beginning of a new decade, a new chapter. So, things have been shifting, but in a good way.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s good. What would you say you’ve learned about yourself since last year?

Chris Burnett:
I’ve learned that I’m an artist at heart. That’s ultimately what I really want to do with my life and my creativity. I’ve been doing graphic design at this point for maybe eight years professionally. As much as I enjoy working with clients and collaborating on projects, there’s this burning desire in me to just be the artist that I want to be, have gallery shows, release albums, have more maybe design collaborations with companies and do things like that. So, yeah, things are in the works, things are in the works. It feels good to head towards the ultimate dream.

Maurice Cherry:
Is L.A. a good city for that kind of creative collaboration? I feel like it is.

Chris Burnett:
Well, yeah, I mean, L.A. is such an interesting creative scene, because you get people who come here from all over the world to pursue what they want to pursue. So, I’m constantly meeting people from all different walks of life, different types of creatives, whether that be musicians, other designers, other artists. So, it is pretty good for that. Although a lot of my work does come from people just reaching out to me by email and the collaboration happens more in a digital space, but I’m opening myself up more to relationships that I’m developing in the city. So, I have people that I can actually meet with in person and maybe visit their studios and see what they’re doing. So, yeah, if you wanted to find it in L.A., you could, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. We just had a fine artist on the show a few weeks ago in L.A. His name is Gabe Gault. I don’t know if that name sounds familiar.

Chris Burnett:
I haven’t heard of him.

Maurice Cherry:
He painted the world’s largest mural in Toledo, Ohio. I think it’s like an ongoing project, but he does a lot of fine art work. I don’t know if you’re familiar with football, but his dad is Willie Gault-

Chris Burnett:
Oh, wow.

Maurice Cherry:
… who played for the Rams. Don’t get me talking about sports. I don’t know that much, but I do know that. It’s funny because I interviewed him and he kept throwing out like, “Yeah, my dad does sports. He’s in NFL and won a few Super Bowls.” I was like, “Okay.” It didn’t click to me after the interview to be like, “Wait a minute, who is his dad? Oh, it makes sense, because they have the same last name.” Yeah, I can imagine that L.A. is a really great place for that creative collaboration. We’ve been seeing so much Black creativity come out of L.A., I think largely, due to Issa Rae and Kendrick Lamar and folks like that. We’ve seen a lot of what feels like specifically Black L.A. creativity.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I’m loving every bit of it. I was just watching Insecure yesterday. I think I caught up on the latest episode, but just to see that creativity coming out of the neighborhoods that I grew up in feels like finally we’re getting the recognition that is well-deserved.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So, talk to me about Colibri Studios. That’s a studio that you began last year. Is that right?

Chris Burnett:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, I started Colibri Studios in the middle of last year. It was right when everything went into lockdown, actually, which seems like it would be the least opportune moment to do it, but there’s an interesting story to how I went about it. I was in New York. I was visiting a friend of mine, and I’ve been working on a necklace design. I found this charm that I really liked to go in the end of the necklace, and it had a hummingbird in it. It was the first time I was designing a chain and I was really excited about it.

Chris Burnett:
The hummingbird has special significance to me, because of the way that the animal moves throughout its life. It’s not really in your face. It’s secretive. But when you do see a hummingbird, it’s like this moment for you to be present with it and admire it. That’s how I feel about myself. I’m not really in the public eye per se. I’m not too show-offy. But when I do come around people, I make my presence felt. Honestly, I always see them, which is the weirdest thing. I’ll just be walking down the street and one will fly right in front of me. I’m like, “All right, there’s some weird connection here.” So yeah, I was designing this necklace.

Chris Burnett:
I get back from New York and the necklace is ready to be picked up. I get it and I’m so happy with the design that I thought, “That’s the logo. That’s the logo for the studio.” This was before I even really conceived of starting a studio. But once I had the necklace done, that was the moment where it was like, “Okay, this is a step in a new direction that you need to take.”

Chris Burnett:
It became more clear to me over time that I wanted to create a studio that really just was an umbrella for all of my creative endeavors, whether that be music, fine art, design. I found an office space in West Hollywood. I woke up one morning. It was on Craigslist, found the space. The first one I clicked on was the one that I’m actually in now. It all came together step by step. So, there wasn’t really a big plan that I was conscious of. It was more these little moments that led to the establishment of the studio. So, that’s what it is right now at this point.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, you mentioned it being this umbrella. I went on your website. You’re doing art direction, you’re doing graphic design, you’re doing collage and mixed media work. Again, you mentioned music being part of that as well. What made you decide to do such a broad range of services, as opposed to just graphic design?

Chris Burnett:
Well, I’ve always had this desire to really just be into one thing, but that’s just not how my life works. There’s so many creative outlets, and I’ve never felt limited to stick to just one. So, anything that I pursue, I want to do it to the best of my ability. If I can provide those services for other people, whether that’s producing music for people or working on an ad campaign for someone or just creating my own artwork that will eventually show in a gallery, I just wanted it to feel like it was a part of one family. So, that’s why I wanted to include all these different artistic mediums in it.

Maurice Cherry:
Talk to me about how you approach a new project. What does your process look like?

Chris Burnett:
Well, it really depends on the context of the project. So, if we can start with a typical design project, I’ll get an email from a random person. I’m always amazed by how people find me because I’m not on Instagram or social media. I’m hidden, right? So, I’ll just get an email out of the blue. Someone’s saying, “Hey, we think you might be great for this project we’re working on.” We move forward with a brief, which is them giving me a document of what they’re looking for and maybe the end deliverables and the goals that they want to hit. And then I get to work.

Chris Burnett:
The process of me actually getting to work is not really standardized in the sense that I don’t have a list of things that I do every time I start a project. It’s really based on feeling and it’s more intuitive, because it allows me to be a bit more spontaneous with the end product. If I had the same process every time, I feel like it might be too stale for me and I might come up with the same thing too much. So, I allow for space in between projects for me to just sit and think about new directions or think about things I want to explore and then try to align those new things with what a client might be asking. Typically, it works out.

Chris Burnett:
For the most part, a client will ask for what I’m already good at. They don’t really ask for things that are completely outside of my wheelhouse. That allows me to use the skills that I already have, but then push it in a little bit of a new direction. Sometimes that creates a back and forth where there’s notes and there’s feedback, of course. And then sometimes I hit it right on the head and people are happy with what I create first try. So, it really depends on the project that I’m being asked to work on.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I would also imagine, because like you said, you’re not on social media and folks have to go to your website and look through your work. By the time they’ve done that, hopefully, that’s a pretty good metric for you to see that this is someone that you would possibly want to work with. I’m pretty sure you have, but I don’t know. Have you ever gotten the client that has just been completely not a fit?

Chris Burnett:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. It’s funny, because me and one of my designer buddies, we always have this joke that what we show on our website is typically the type of work that we want to receive, which is why we put it there. But there definitely will be times where someone will hit me up and just be like, “Hey, I need you to design just a simple logo.” It’s not that I can’t design a logo, but that’s not really where my skillset lies and my strengths are.

Chris Burnett:
So, I can do it, but then the process becomes a little muddied when it’s not something that I’m too passionate about. They’re maybe expecting the crazy, colorful collage type stuff, but it’s a logo. So, I can’t really do that for a logo. Yeah, there have been moments where it doesn’t work, but I’m learning which projects to say yes and no to now that I’ve been doing this for so long.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What are some of the projects that you’re working on now?

Chris Burnett:
So, a lot of the things that I’ve been doing now is a lot of editorial illustration, which I’ve found that that really suits my strengths really well. It’s mostly image making, which is my favorite thing in the world to do is just create a compelling image to look at. So, when you pair that with an article for, say, The New York Times or the Guardian, that’s where I get to really flex my abilities. Over the past year, I’d probably gotten the most editorial illustration work than I ever have.

Chris Burnett:
There’s also a lot of merch design, merchandise design for artists in the music industry. That’s always ongoing. There’s always artists who need things to sell on the road or sell on their website. I help with a lot of that stuff. Some of its like under wraps because people don’t want to release info about music projects that they might be doing. But yeah, most stuff in the music industry and editorial illustration, I’d say, are my two big ones.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there a specific type of client that you prefer to work with?

Chris Burnett:
I’m always open to new types of clients, people that I haven’t worked with before just to be able to stretch myself and see, “What industries can I adapt my creativity towards?” But I think I do love working in the music industry. It’s fun to work with artists that you admire. It’s fun to work with artists that you’re playing their music in your car when you’re driving around and you get to work on something that’s for their project. It’s fun to be a part of things like that. I love editorial. I don’t know what it is about it. It’s just the pairing of an image with an article is like a dream project. It’s like they’re little, tiny dream projects, because they’re really quick and the turnaround time is super-fast, usually within a week or a couple days.

Chris Burnett:
It’s typically within those industries like editorial that there’s a little more room for creative freedom, because they’re trying to see how you would interpret the article and how that article maybe is reflected in your style and your own sensibility. So, that’s why I like it a lot, because there’s not too many notes. There’s not too much canceling of ideas. It’s very open ended, which I love.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. I don’t know why for some reason, I would imagine working with musicians might be temperamental, but I guess like you said, if it’s an artist that you really like, it probably makes it a bit of an easier match.

Chris Burnett:
Well, that’s a good point. I mean, they’re definitely artists I’ve worked with in the past who are artists. An artist comes in mind a lot. There’s a certain temperament like you said that goes along with it. But I think the reason that I enjoy it and the reason I think I’m able to do it is because I am also an artist, so I understand that sensibility. It allows me to be as flexible as I need to be when working with them. It also informs my own practice of how I go about my music or my art as well. So, it’s fun. It’s a double-edged sword for sure, but I do like it.

Maurice Cherry:
I just want to say to the audience, I don’t know if Chris is being a little humble now, but his music is really good. It’s really good.

Chris Burnett:
Thank you, thank you.

Maurice Cherry:
With your permission, I’d like to link to your SoundCloud because I was doing research for the interview and I just put the music on. I was like, “This is good. This is good.” I was like, “I can hear this on Insecure. I can hear this on Insecure. It’s pretty good.”

Chris Burnett:
Oh, man. I would love for that to happen, but this is their final season. I’m so sad. Yeah, but thank you. I really appreciate that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, no, I guess to that end, talking about Black art and things like that, we started to see over the past few years that with this influx in Black television shows and movies and stuff, we’re really starting to see a much wider range of artists, not just musical artists, but visual artists and stuff portrayed through these works. We had Gabe Gault who I mentioned before on the show, and he’s mentioned that his work has been in a television show. We had Dawn Okoro, who’s an artist in Austin. Her work has been on a BT show.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m wondering, because we hear so much about this Black creative renaissance and you hear about it through these visual artists, does that exposure help you in any way? I don’t know. Has your work been out there in that way where you feel like you’ve got an exposure because it’s been amplified through, say, a musical artist or something like that?

Chris Burnett:
Not necessarily. I guess this is a little hard to explain and this is the whole point of the studio, which is funny, is that because I think the hummingbird is such a secretive animal and it’s very hidden, because it’s so small and it moves really fast, I’ve settled into the idea that my work doesn’t necessarily exist in a public space as much as it could and I’m okay with that. I think when the time comes, some more visibility might help. But in the meantime, I still get to work with the people I love working with. Whether I’m publicly associated with them or not is not really what I’m focusing on. It’s just, “How do we make the best possible thing for this person? Or if it’s for me, how do I make the best possible thing for myself and share it?”

Chris Burnett:
I mean, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had moments where my work was recognized and especially recognized for the culture. There was an article in The New York Times Magazine, I think this was last year, I’m not too sure, but by Isabel Wilkerson. She just wrote a book called Caste that explores the idea of racism, but not through a racist ideology. It’s through a caste system, which is a whole another way of looking at it. I did these two collage pieces for the article in The Times. It was heavily centered around Black imagery and police brutality. That was the first time that I actually incorporated imagery into my work.

Chris Burnett:
It was a very enlightening moment, because I did the collages by hand. I was cutting out images of MLK hanging out with Mahatma Gandhi. I was cutting out images of African American men on the floor with police pointing guns at their heads. It was the first time that I started to have my work speak in a way that was relevant to what was actually happening. That was really eye-opening for me and that led me down a whole new trajectory with my art. But in those instances, I really enjoy when I can speak to what’s happening in the now and speak to the culture.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ve just always been really curious about that, because I want to make sure… I mean, I’m saying this like I’m the singular person that can make this happen, but I want to see that Black artists, visual artists, graphic artists, particularly with their work being featured in entertainment get just as much shine as the show that the artists featured on or the actor that might be in front of the art and the piece. I don’t know. Something like that, it’s making me think of… Are you familiar with Brent Rollins? Does that name sound familiar?

Chris Burnett:
No. Who’s Brent Rollins?

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, my God. So, Brent Rollins, so he was on episode 400, but Brent Rollins is like… I forget the moniker that I saw when I was researching, but it was like your favorite hip-hop artist’s favorite designer or something like. He designed the logo for Boys in the Hood when he was, I think, 19. He designed the logo for Poetic Justice when he was 20. He was rolling in that crew with Ice Cube and John Singleton back in the day. He did a bunch of work in the ’90s and 2000s Ego Trip. God, I can’t remember the name of the magazine. It’s escaping me but it’s episode 400 if people are listening. Go back and listen to it.

Chris Burnett:
Hell yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
There were these shows on VH1. One was called Race-O-Rama. One was called… I think it was White rapper showcase or something or a reality show or something like that. He had his hand in all these really interesting things around hip hop culture, but it was through his design and eye. So, a lot of stuff that you see in Vibe Magazine and stuff for the ’90s and 2000s was heavily influenced by him and his work. He is such a cool ass, behind-the-scenes dude.

Maurice Cherry:
Him and I were talking. He was like, “Yeah, man, I did this and did this. I exhibited here and there.” I was like, “Do you understand, I grew up on your work, watching your stuff, looking at your stuff at Vibe magazine, be like I want to design like that?”, and was just being so humble about it. I knew who he was because I ended up doing the research on it, but I don’t think the average hip hop fan knows who Brent Rollins is. That’s not to say that diminishes Brent’s work in any way, but why is he not as recognized as artists from that time?

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, well, I think there’s a couple of levels to it. I think, on a larger scale, typically, designers are in the background, because the work is what speaks to the public, right? So, if I’m designing a logo for a company, my face isn’t going to be the face of the company, but the logo will, right? So, there’s never really been a need for the designer to be in the public eye as much as maybe the person who runs the company, or say, if you’re working for an artist, the artist is the one who is getting all the focus. So, the designer falls to the background.

Chris Burnett:
I think we’re starting to see a shift in that, especially in Black culture, with people like Virgil Abloh, who became almost like designer of the year for every year for a long time at this point. But he came from Kanye’s group, and he started to create the idea that designer can be the public figure also and not just be the one that sits in the background. So, I think that tide is starting to shift and we’re starting to see it. It also happens in music too. Back then, producers were always just behind the boards and you never really knew who was producing the music, but now, the producers are just as big as some of the artists. So, we’re seeing that shift take place and I think that’s really cool. I don’t know if it’ll happen to me, but it’s all right. I don’t mind being in the shadows.

Maurice Cherry:
No, that’s true. I do hope to see that day where the designers and the visual artists get that same level of recognition or at least name recognition, where folks know. They look at something. You’re like, “Oh, that’s a Chris Burnett,” if they see a collage or something like that, that thing.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I mean, I’m definitely developing a visual language and a style that feels really specific to me. So, there are certain recognizable aspects of my work. As I’ve ventured more into music, I’m definitely going to be presenting myself and my person out there. So, maybe the moment where the tide turns and this all becomes more public is right around the corner.

Maurice Cherry:
There you go.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
So, tell me what it was like growing up in L.A.

Chris Burnett:
Growing up in L.A., yeah, I grew up in South Central, specifically Manchester and Vermont for anyone who knows that area. It wasn’t really the best neighborhood at the time. There was a lot of gang violence, a lot of drugs. Police relations with the community were not great. Growing up, there definitely had an impact on me, although my parents were very, very careful in what they allowed me and my older brother to do. We weren’t really allowed to go outside after certain time. I didn’t really have many friends in the neighborhood, because that was the way that I could get caught up in some of the wrong stuff.

Chris Burnett:
So, a lot of my time was spent creating indoors, whether that was drawing or painting or my parents would put me in art classes at a pretty young age just to keep me occupied and doing something that I enjoyed versus running around my neighborhood, getting into trouble, like a lot of the kids who were there probably did. It wasn’t until I went to high school that I was taking the bus to high school to public transport. That was the first time I got a little taste of freedom. I started skateboarding at the same time. So, I would take the bus to skate parks and start to explore a little bit. That was when I really started to understand the neighborhood a little bit better.

Chris Burnett:
It wasn’t as dangerous as it was when I was a little kid, but yeah, it definitely influenced my practice and my behavior in terms of I like the area I grew up in, because to me, it feels real. It feels very honest. Where I live now is actually a completely different environment. At this point, I’m not sure that I want to stay there as much, because every time I go home to visit my folks, it’s like, “Oh, I actually really liked this neighborhood.”

Chris Burnett:
Maybe I was scared of it when I was a kid, but now I’m an adult and I know how to move. Certain things become illuminated when you’re in different stages of your life. So, back then, it was a little intimidating, but now it’s more enticing, especially they just built the big stadium in Inglewood. That’s 10 minutes from where I grew up. So, there are things that are happening in that area that wouldn’t necessarily happen. Resources are coming back down there, which I think is great. So, I might move down. Who knows? We’ll see.

Maurice Cherry:
L.A. is so big.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, man.

Maurice Cherry:
I was there actually, for the first time last year. We were set to do a live tour throughout 2020 last year. We started off in L.A. and did our first live show out there.

Chris Burnett:
Nice.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I live in Atlanta, which is pretty spread out, but L.A. is gargantuan in terms of scale. I was in the Korea Town neighborhood initially and then we did the live show. We did that down in Leimert Park, but I didn’t really get to see L.A. I saw a couple of neighborhoods.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, yeah, there’s always the pockets that people go to, but there’s a lot of hidden treasures in this city. It takes time. It takes time of living here or just having the time to explore. You got to have a car. You got to drive everywhere. But yeah, it’s massive. It’s massive, massive, massive, massive.

Maurice Cherry:
So, you grew up studying art. You were taking art classes and everything. Eventually, you went to college. You went to CalArts. What was that experience like?

Chris Burnett:
CalArts, for me, was extremely transformative. At this point, I was coming out of high school. I took a graphic design course in high school. So, that’s how I knew that’s what I wanted to study in college. So, I applied to a couple different art schools in California. I didn’t really want to leave the state. The minute I stepped on the CalArts Campus for a tour is the minute that I knew that was the place I needed to be. I didn’t really even do that much research, I’ll be honest, but the feeling I got when I arrived there, it felt like I definitely made the right decision.

Chris Burnett:
The thing that I loved about that school was that there were so many disciplines in one roof. There was acting, there was costume design, there was character animation, there’s graphic design, there’s fine arts, there was music, there was set design. There was all kinds of creative people who come from all over the world to study and perfect their craft. So, that period of time really opened my eyes to all the things that maybe I didn’t get to experience growing up, especially because my parents were really careful about what I was exposed to. Once I got to CalArts, it was like, “Oh, I’m an individual now. I’m going to do it or what. I can explore. I can see what life really has to offer.”

Chris Burnett:
It was in a bubble of CalArts, but still, within that bubble, there were so many different pockets to explore. A lot of the friends I have now are people from that school. A lot of the people that I try to keep in touch with creatively are people from that school. It was just a really transformative time. I think it really allowed me to grow up. I’ve always been the youngest one in my friend circles. I have funny stories.

Chris Burnett:
When I got to CalArts, I still maybe looked like a 13-year-old or 14-year-old. It was very strange. People would walk up to me and say, “Do you go here? Are you lost?” I’m like, “No, man, I’m headed to the movie class right now.” It was really interesting. It was that time for me to grow up and grow into myself. I wouldn’t trade those four years for the world. Even though I picked up some student debt from it, we all have a little bit of that.

Maurice Cherry:
Is that where you met Bijan?

Chris Burnett:
That’s where I met Bijan, yeah. So, Bijan was my classmate all four years. What happens at CalArts in the design program is that you share a studio. In the graphic design program, you share a studio with your entire year level. So, there were about 19 to maybe 21 of us in our first year, which was pretty large for an incoming class. Bijan was in that class with me. We actually met the day we had a portfolio review. We didn’t know each other. We were just both coming from our high schools and trying to show our work to get accepted. He was literally standing in line right in front of me. Lo and behold, we both got accepted and ended up in the same class.

Chris Burnett:
Bijan was and still is one of my best friends. He became this creative rival, but in the best way possible, where if he was doing something, I would see what he’s doing and be like, “Oh, that’s really good. Okay, now I got to do something that’s really good.” And then he would see what I was doing and it would level him up and then he would level me up. We ping pong off each other like that until we graduated.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. It’s good to have that creative tension in a way, I guess.

Chris Burnett:
For sure. I’m really competitive. So, whether it’s in sports or in making a cool poster, I feel that edge or that desire to want to be the best and bring the best out of myself and others. So, we really thrived on that with each other.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. For folks that are listening, who are like, “Who is Bijan?” Bijan Berahimi founded… Actually, YouTube co-founded FISK together. Is that right?

Chris Burnett:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Maurice Cherry:
A studio called FISK, like the HBCU but not the HBCU.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, not the college. Everybody knows. So, this came about in our first year. It’s actually a collaboration between a bunch of our classmates. We wanted to create a website where we could showcase student work and just have a digital space for us to talk about design as students. A lot of us contributed to the website. We had a thing called Things We’ve Stolen, which was posters that we stole from the walls of CalArts. We would feature them on the website. There’s a large poster culture at that school. We would interview other designers who were working professionally and ask them questions about the transition from student life to professional life.

Chris Burnett:
We would have zines, where we asked students in the program to submit artwork, and then we would throw a party for the zine release. It was a myriad of things when we were in school. After we all graduated, we settled into our own pockets and practices. Bijan decided to resurrect FISK in Portland, and that’s when it became the studio. I wasn’t a part of inauguration of the studio per se, but the initial idea was a very collaborative thing. It still is to this day. He runs it out of Portland and has a couple employees and they’re doing great.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Speaking of Portland, after you graduated, you did eventually head to Portland, because you had an opportunity with Nike, which we’ll get to, but you had another opportunity that happened to you senior year where you got to work with a pretty well-known music group. Can you talk about that?

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, it’s actually a crazy story about how that happens. So, my third year of college, we had a project that was to design a magazine of a subculture, any subculture of our choice. I decided at that point, I wanted to focus on Odd Future because they had just started to gain a little traction. I think they were doing most of their stuff independently. It was something that I really resonated with, because of that DIY spirit and because they were from where I was from. It was just cool to see kids like me doing cool stuff. So, I decided to make my magazine about Odd Future.

Chris Burnett:
I designed the whole thing, printed the whole thing. I gave it to my brother, who was friends with Travis, who used to go by Taco, just so they could see it and be aware of me. I don’t know if Travis ever got the magazine. I have no idea where the magazine was. I would love to see it because it’s been so long. But I did that in hopes that that would be my connection point with them. So, they can know that I’m over here doing my thing. They’re over there doing their thing. Nothing really came of that. So, by the time fourth year came around, I was setting my sights on other jobs and other opportunities.

Chris Burnett:
Randomly, on a trip to Joshua Tree with Bijan, I get an email in the car from a guy who’s running an agency that’s handling all of Odd Future’s merchandising and branding and things like that. He goes, “Hey, Chris, I saw your work. Would you love to come work for Odd Future?” I was like, “What, a year later, what?” It was so random and I was not expecting it, but immediately, I said yes. So, that was midway through the end of my time at CalArts. I started interning there. So, I would have class. After class, I would get in my car and drive all the way back down to L.A. to work with them for a couple of hours, come back to school, do my schoolwork.

Chris Burnett:
That was a balance that I struck at the end of my fourth year until I graduated and then I just started working for them full time. That was a crazy experience for me. It was one of those dream moments where these are artists that I really respect and admire. They’re doing really cool things musically, visually. Just the fact that I got to be a part of it for that span in my life was pretty amazing.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a dope story. I mean, when you think of Odd Future and of course, Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt and-

Chris Burnett:
Jasper Dolphin.

Maurice Cherry:
Jasper Dolphin.

Chris Burnett:
Hodgy Beats, Left Brain, yeah, all the OGs.

Maurice Cherry:
When you think of their whole persona, it’s so hard to pin down. I feel like you could just say, “Oh, Black Skater,” or whatever, but it’s so much more than that. I think particularly Tyler, I remember Tyler had this show on Vice a few years ago called Nuts and Bolts.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I love that show.

Maurice Cherry:
He was doing all these different design things. He’s like, “Oh, I’m designing apparel, I’m designing a shoe or something like that. I’m designing furniture.” He was doing all this interesting design stuff. This was going on, I think, right around the time there was also this reality show on YouTube that I’ve mentioned on the show before called Lace Up, which is basically, a sneaker design reality show contest thing. Because you know, there’s a PENSOLE Academy in Portland.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, yeah, definitely familiar.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So, Dr. D’Wayne Edwards, by the way, but he runs that school. He did this reality show on YouTube, where he was bringing in designers to design shoes and stuff. I remember, I would watch that and I would watch Nuts and Bolts and be like, “Why is nobody talking about these design shows?” I mean, their style is so hard for me to pinpoint. I think most people know Odd Future because of their donut logo. But what stuff were you doing? How did that creative process look like?

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, that was definitely wild for sure. I mean, by the time I started helping with a lot of the merchandise and the clothing, there was definitely a visual aesthetic that was already established. That was primarily Tyler’s ideas and the group’s ideas. When I hopped on board, there was definitely a lane to work within. There was definitely visuals that I could reference, things that I knew they liked, things that I knew they didn’t like to stay away from. So, a lot of the times, what would happen is I’d be in the office with… There was me. There’s another designer named Aaron Martinez, shout out to Aaron.

Chris Burnett:
There’s another designer named Phil, who handled mostly the Golf Wang stuff, which was separate from the Odd Future stuff at the time. So, they were the two creative directors, for me, at least. They would pinpoint where I should take things and what directions I should go in. But a lot of the time, the guys, the group of artists and the music makers and the whole clique would just show up at the office. We would have these meetings where they would just pitch ideas to us. I remember Jasper one time saying, “I want a dolphin on the Empire State Building smoking a blunt.” I just graduated with a design degree. I was like, “How am I going to do this weird photo manipulated illustration and pull this off and then put it on a T-shirt? This is wild. It’s so weird.” But I ended up doing it.

Chris Burnett:
It actually became one of my favorite pieces, even those one of the strangest things in the world. Yeah, they would just come in. We would print everything out, have these just big jam sessions of getting everyone’s thoughts and ideas and opinions. If they liked what we did, they would rock with it. If not, they would exit immediately and say, “Do this differently,” or “Do a different thing over here and maybe change the color of this and tweak this a little bit.” So, it was a super, super collaborative process and really wild to just hang out with them, because this was really at the peak of their stardom as a group. Super interesting, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you have an Odd Future name? Did they give you a name or something?

Chris Burnett:
No, this is another thing that contributes to me being in the shadows. I didn’t really try to infiltrate into the group like that. I knew that they were already so tight knit and close friends. I’ve never really been the type to try to eat off of someone else’s success. So, I purposefully was like, “It’s cool. I enjoy working with you guys. I enjoy creating these things for you, but I’m just going to take my place in the backseat and watch you guys do your thing.” It was so fun for me just to do that. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I can’t imagine how some of those design sessions might have went. Just the ideas and the crazy shit that they come up with I imagine is… I mean, I think for any really strong visual designer, that’s a dream to have a client or to have someone that has that creative capacity to just do whatever.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, it was definitely really freeing, especially to come from CalArts, which was a similar environment in terms of the freedom of creativity that we had in school and to have that as my first full time gig, I couldn’t ask for anything better. It was great.

Maurice Cherry:
So, after working with them, you got an opportunity to work with Nike, which then eventually had you go to Portland. If you could sum up your time at Nike in one phrase, what would it be?

Chris Burnett:
Oh, man. One phrase, working at Nike, you put me on the spot. I would say high level hierarchy.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Chris Burnett:
I mean, I might have to explain that a little bit. When I say high level, I guess I mean, the quality of work that was being produced and the scale of work, the amount of people that would see it, the amount of reach that it had, that’s what I mean by high level. When I say hierarchy, there’s such a system in play. It’s such a large corporate company like that, that sometimes creativity and new ideas are not necessarily accepted, because it doesn’t fall within the framework of what has been successful for them as a company. So, I’ve always understood that before I started working there, so I wasn’t going in thinking that it would be another Odd Future.

Chris Burnett:
I went in knowing that, okay, this is going to be a big place where there’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of things that I can’t control. There’s a lot of things that I don’t have any impact over. So, it was a humbling experience to be able to contribute my ideas to such a large and fast moving company, but then it also, for me, told me that that environment wasn’t necessarily the one that I wanted to be in for a long time in terms of work in the design world. But it was definitely a great learning experience to get my feet wet. Being a professional was cool.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, we’ve had a few designers on the show before that have worked at Nike and I don’t know if they all liked it. In a way, it’s good, because it’s like, “Oh, this is Nike.” Like you said, there is this high level reach, but each person we’ve had on has said, it’s not a great place to work.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I mean, there’s certain aspects of it that are really difficult to stomach if you’re not capable of grinding it out. I think one of the bigger things that I had to do when I was there was just work a lot. When we needed to get a project done, we were up very late working on it on campus until it was done. It really instilled a good work ethic for me, but as far as being a sane human being, it did not contribute to that at all. So, yeah, that was a really difficult part of it, especially coming in as a young designer, who had new ideas and maybe I wanted to bring new innovations to the way they were thinking about design. It’s not that they didn’t want to listen. It’s that they already understood what works for them.

Chris Burnett:
So, for a group of young designers to come in and just shake everything up and try all these new things, it’s not really something they were looking for at the time. Now that Virgil cracked open the door with his initial The Ten collaboration, the shoes, where he was messing with the swoosh and change the game, putting it in different locations where they would never do that, it’s really opened the door for them to expand their creativity to a whole new level, which we’ve been seeing lately. But when I was there, it was still very much you play by the book, because this is the recipe that has worked for them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, if they know that it’s going to work all these different times, we’re not really looking for any variations on that. They just need you to do the same thing.

Chris Burnett:
Right. At the end of the day, if we’re being honest, they’re a company, they’re a business, and they need to make money. So, if they’re experimenting too much and it messes with their stock price or some of the shareholders get upset, it’s going to trickle down. That’s what I mean by hierarchy is that there’s so many layers to it, that it’s really impossible as one designer to go in there and really have your voice heard, but to each their own.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. But I mean, like you say, because of the crucible that that design environment is, like you say, it’s strengthened your work ethic and I’m sure probably has helped you out in some way now as a designer, just having that experience working there.

Chris Burnett:
Oh, yeah, for sure. So, there were two stints that I did at Nike. The first one was in brand design for sportswear and that was my first experience there. Honestly, all of my co-workers were amazing people. I had a great time working with them. It was, like I said, grinding out a lot, just working hard on campaigns. We were doing the overarching branding system that would then be sent out to all the different categories around the world. They would apply what we designed to whatever product was being released. So, that was really cool to see that.

Chris Burnett:
And then the second stint was for the Olympics, for Rio ’16. That was wow. If I thought the first stint was crazy, the second one was… I don’t even know how I lasted, but it definitely helped put a work ethic into my brain. So, if I need to work on something, I will get it done. There’s no excuses. They always said at Nike, there’s no finish line. That’s one of the taglines. The reason I say that is work just keeps on going and innovation keeps on happening. Things don’t really stop. Even though we’re running, we’re putting our all in, things just keep moving and keep going and keep evolving. It’s a tough environment to be in if you’re not used to that type of pace of work. But if you’re down for it, it can really instill a good work ethic in you.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s how I was when I worked at AT&T. AT&T was one of these places, you walk in and they have this huge banner over their big marble reception desk that says, “Shaping human capital,” or something. You’d go and there would be this never-ending firehose of work. I think when we go in, we were always six months behind on something. Salespeople just kept selling and the work just kept coming in. So, you’re never caught up. We had, I think, roughly about 36 designers that were working there in teams of 12. They had this floor to ceiling LED board. So, everything that you design had a point value to it.

Chris Burnett:
No way.

Maurice Cherry:
As a designer, I think when I started, you have to hit 36 points at the end of the week and then eventually up to the 40. But everything you design had a point value. So, if you design a banner, that’s point nine points. If you design a three-page website, that’s five points. If you design a 10-pager, that’s nine points. So, you could hit your total pretty easily if you just design four websites in a week or something like that. I mean, this was 2006. You would pull the order from the system.

Maurice Cherry:
They have this system called Ice Blue. I don’t work there anymore. So, even if all this stuff is proprietary, I don’t care, but they have this thing called Ice Blue and you pull your rec. So, you have to go to a file cabinet, fish out the envelopes, this is my paper, fish out the envelopes that had all the assets in it. It was usually printed out Word files, scraps that the salespeople got from the company of their logo drawn on a napkin or something. You have to go to the scanner. I’m dating myself, you have to go to the scanner. There was one computer with the scanner for 36 designers.

Chris Burnett:
Oh, my God.

Maurice Cherry:
So, you had to go to the scanner, scan your stuff in, mail it to yourself, because we didn’t have Dropbox because it didn’t exist then. You mail it to yourself, you get back to your station, and then you have to trace it out. We were using Dreamweaver because it’s 2006. You basically had to build a website, retype all the information and everything. Eventually, you got faster because it’s one thing to do the actual coding and the design work and Photoshop and Illustrator, whatever, but then you’ve got all this other operational stuff you have to do like pull the rec and scan and do this and return the folder and walk it over to QA, physically walk it over to QA and all this stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
Eventually, you get better just in terms of speed. So, I could knock out four or five websites in a week. If I got the packet in the morning, I could finish it by lunch. And then I could pick up on that lunch and then finish it by the time I was ready to go home. Again, this was 2006. So, this was right around the time when table-based layout was being phased out and CSS layouts were being phased in. I mean, we fired some people because they couldn’t get it. They did not know how to convert the tables to CSS, so they weren’t getting it. We fired people.

Maurice Cherry:
God, this was a long, long time ago. But eventually, I like made a little CSS work template or something that I could easily just plop in and change the value so I could get quicker with it. I still use that to this day, principles from that. But it’s one of those things where if I wasn’t in that type of design environment, would I even know to do something like that? You know what I mean?

Chris Burnett:
Exactly, exactly. So, do you think that having the point system actually helped people stay on track in terms of what they needed to get done? Because I mean, that’s almost public accountability for the work that you have to do.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, yes and no. For some people, it really freaked them out. Because if you didn’t hit your number, because you could see how everyone on the team was doing at any given point in time. So, you could see what your number was and who was above you and who was below you. So, it was one thing for you to know the number but now everyone else knows your number. So, you’ll be sitting at lunch and someone will come and be like, “You got to get the numbers up.” Keep in mind, we only could take a 15-minute lunch. So, you have to wolf down your sandwich or whatever that you brought from home.

Maurice Cherry:
And there would just be random people, random supervisors that don’t even work on your team will just come by you. Points look a little low this week. I don’t need that kind of pressure. I’m trying to try to get the work done. I don’t know if it helped. I mean, certainly, it’s one of those things where you either cut it or you don’t, but you definitely knew at any given point in time where you stood. Eventually, it got to the point where they upped the amount of points you have to get and then they lowered the point value of the items. So, you have to crank out more work to get to a higher target. It was a mess. I left there and said, “I have to do my own thing.” I didn’t want to work for another place after that. I think similarly, when you left Nike, you started freelancing too. Is that right?

Chris Burnett:
Yes. So, between those two stints that I just mentioned, after the first one was when I decided to leave. I just had a nine-month contract, so I never actually took full time at Nike. I was what was called ETW, it’s like a temporary worker. My contract was up after nine months. I decided that I wanted to try my hand at freelancing, which is something I had never done before. The funny thing is even coming off of the new work ethic that I just developed, all the skills and connections that I had made, freelancing did not really work for me. I think it was because I lacked motivation to do so just because I was coming off of nine months of very, very grueling work. Having this time to set hours for myself, it made me not really want to do that much work and almost like take a vacation.

Chris Burnett:
So, in that period of time, I was focusing a lot on my music and a lot of my artwork, but I wasn’t really successful at the freelance thing. So, by the time the Rio Olympics had come around, the guy who wanted me to work with him on his team, Ibrahim Hassan, shout out to Ibrahim, he became my mentor in that moment. He wanted me to come back and work on the Olympics. So, that’s when I went back. That was even more grueling than the first time, but I learned so much more by working with him and working with our team that it was very much worth it for me to do it.

Chris Burnett:
But after that, I knew that that was it, that I couldn’t keep doing it. That’s when I went freelance. The second time around it, it clicked for me. I’m not necessarily sure what I changed. I think I was just more hungry to make it work, because it didn’t work the first time.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. I mean, I think, with freelancing, for me, when I first started out, I left in late 2008, I just quit my job. I was like, “I can’t do this anymore,” and started my studio. I’d say maybe those first three or four months were rough, because even though I was like, “I got all the skills, I know people XYZ,” finding the work ended up being difficult. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t do it. It was just finding the right clients.

Maurice Cherry:
And then eventually, I did end up working for a client. It was a political client. And then working on that campaign kickstarted my studio and kept me going. If I wouldn’t have gotten into that, I don’t know if I would have continued freelancing. I don’t want to say I have to link up with someone. But once you got the right client and it clicked, then you’re like, “Okay, I can keep doing this.” It makes sense. You had worked with an agency called Ceremony of Roses when you were freelancing, right?

Chris Burnett:
Right. So, after I left Nike the second time, I think there was a stint in between where I went overseas, just to travel around for a little bit. That was maybe three months in Southeast Asia, which was really fun. By the time I came back, I did another short contract at Jordan, which was still on Nike campus, so in that world, but just for the Jordan Brand instead. And then after that, it was like, “All right, I think I’m going to move home to L.A.” At the time, that agency, Ceremony of Roses had reached out to me and was like, “We have a position open at our agency down in L.A.” It was literally perfect timing because I was already moving back home.

Chris Burnett:
That’s when I decided that I was going to take that job down in L.A. when I got back. They were heavily focused on music, so a completely different world than sports and branding. They had a lot of clients in the music industry. Their main bread and butter was merchandising and creating the brand that surrounded the artists, whether that’s from tour announcements and flyers and posters to actual merchandising to websites to things for them to post on social media. So, in a similar way to the agency that I worked with for Odd Future, who was just handling a lot of the creativity, that’s what Ceremony of Roses was, but in a updated and more efficient way, I’d like to say. I stayed there for about two years.

Chris Burnett:
My timelines are always a little foggy, but I stayed there for around two years in L.A., just doing a lot of work with artists in the music industry. Janelle Monáe had released her album, Dirty Computer. That was one of the bigger projects that I got to work on. Her and her team were fantastic just because they really trusted me and they gave me a lot of creative freedom to create pieces that worked with her album and with the whole concept of what she was doing. That was one of the highlights of that job for me.

Maurice Cherry:
Wonderland Studios has a great team.

Chris Burnett:
Oh, yeah, yeah, fantastic people to work with. So, I made a lot of good connections from that, from working with that agency. Yeah, we still work together today.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, cool. I know George 2.0. We went to Morehouse together.

Chris Burnett:
Oh, nice. Yeah, 2.0.

Maurice Cherry:
We went to Morehouse together. Now, this was back before she was doing the whole Android thing. She had the CD called The Audition, I think. I remember buying it off The Strip one day in the late 2000s, not late 2000s, way earlier than that. This was early 2000s. I’m not that young. But I remember getting her CD and being like, “Oh, this is really good.” Of course, they have the Atlanta connection, because she’s lived and worked here before and stuff. But their whole crew, their whole studio is doing great work.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I’ve always admired them because they operate in a way that’s different to a lot of artists. I think just their tight knit community of people that they work with, it was a real family vibe when I would connect with their team and we would talk and discuss work. It just felt really good to be around them, great people.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the people that have really helped you out as mentors throughout the years?

Chris Burnett:
I wouldn’t say that I’ve had specific mentors, where their role was to mentor me through the stage of life that I was in, but I think a lot of the times, the supervisors that I had at the companies I worked with took on that role in maybe a subconscious way. The first being a guy named Michael Spoljaric, who was the… I think, he was brand director or creative director. There’s so many titles at Nike that I forget what he was doing, but he was the head of sportswear brand design when I was there.

Chris Burnett:
So, when I got hired to work with them, he was the introduction into that world of professional corporate design. So, really, in terms of design and creativity, he really helped me to understand good typography, good layouts, how to design a book properly, what images to choose for a campaign, stuff like that.

Chris Burnett:
The next when I was working on the Rio Olympics, I already mentioned Ibrahim. He really became that mentor figure for me. He already saw that I had potential, but he fine-tuned it. That’s what I really appreciated about him was that he really got down to the nitty gritty and the specifics of things, the details of things, because every little detail counts if you’re trying to make something that is impactful. If you leave one little thing out, then it might ruin the whole trajectory of the story. So, he was really a figure like that for me.

Chris Burnett:
When I came to Ceremony of Roses, the two people who really stuck out to me was Brad Scoffern, who’s the owner of the company. He’s the one who brought me on board. I met him when I was working at Odd Future. He always remembered me. So, by the time he started his own agency, he immediately reached out to me and wanted to work with me. And then another guy at that company named Jared Hankey, who became my pseudo mentor at that time when I was working there, too. So, I haven’t really had specific people outside of work environments that have done that for me, but it’s always been supervisors or bosses or those who are in higher positions than me who can show me the ropes and keep me on track.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you call yourself a creative superhero. What does that mean to you?

Chris Burnett:
It means that I have a lot of superpowers. It’s always been really difficult for me specifically to classify what I am or who I am in terms of my creativity, because I can say one day that I’m an artist and then another day, I can say I’m a musician. One day, I can say I’m a designer. I can wear all these hats, and I try to wear them really well. I was always thinking of, “What’s just a cool umbrella term that I could use that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but does speak to the idea that I can do all of these different things?” I came up with that when I was designing the website for Colibri and it just stuck. So, that’s the moniker that I like to use if it’ll be on business cards or any little bios, but yeah, that’s what that means.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Now, I’ve read where you talked about your ultimate dream project, which was back when you were working with Odd Future. It was this collaboration with their brand, with Golf Wang and Hello Kitty. That was years and years ago. Is that still your ultimate dream project or do you have another dream project you want to do one day?

Chris Burnett:
I think I have a bunch of dream projects. That one specifically came about, my older brother, who’s also a designer, artist, musician, just like me, his name is Jordan. He was really into A Bathing Ape. This was before I was really knowledgeable about these brands at this time. He had this one shirt, which featured a character named Baby Milo, which was a very cute drawing of a little monkey. It was really simple and it had really thick lines. I was just obsessed with that illustration style for the longest time. I remember when I was working for Odd Future, Tyler had created a character called Shark Cat. He was really into cats. We used them a lot, a lot of the merchandise. I decided that I wanted to create a Shark Cat version of almost a Baby Milo-like character.

Chris Burnett:
So, I took this cat head that Tyler had come up with, and I placed it onto a very simplified body with the bold strokes and just really a cute little character. I wanted to use it for something but I didn’t really know what we would use it for. And then my boss at the time told me that Sanrio, which is the company that owns Hello Kitty, they were looking to do a collaboration with Odd Future. That was the moment that I was like, “Okay, Hello kitty is definitely in the same style of Baby Milo, and this is the moment where I can combine those two worlds. So, I can take this little Shark Cat character and I can take the Hello Kitty character. I can put them in one.” I must have created an entire capsule collection for them.

Chris Burnett:
And then I don’t really know what happened. I was told that the executives at Sanrio saw some of our futures videos and were like, “Maybe not, it’s not really in line with our brand aesthetic.” So, it never went through, but that was definitely just a dream project because I really was into the aesthetic of Hello Kitty and Baby Milo and wish that I could have combined those two worlds, but that never really came to fruition.

Chris Burnett:
But fast forward to now, my biggest dream project is more self-focused. I want to have a gallery show with… I’m working on a new body of work right now, some of the biggest canvases I’ve ever worked on. I want to have a gallery show where all of that new work is there. I want to create a couple of sculptures to go in there. I also want to perform my music at the gallery show. So, then it can be a full representation of my artistic abilities. That’s really what I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the past couple of months. So, that’s where my brain goes when you ask, “What would a dream project be?”

Chris Burnett:
If I could work with a client, it might be Tame Impala. He’s my favorite band. Kevin Parker, the guy who writes and records all the music, is the reason that I started making music. That happened at the end of CalArts, but we can get into that a little later. So, if I could work on some album packaging for him or do some tour visuals or just anything, even if I could just meet them and have a conversation, I’d be happy. But yeah, he’s a big influence on me.

Chris Burnett:
And then I also love the brand Fucking Awesome. It’s a skate brand. Here out of Hollywood, they have a store here. Jason Dill is the creative genius behind that brand. The reason I love it is because his artwork as an artist, as an individual artist, is the aesthetic of the brand. So, I don’t know if it’s still like this, but at a certain point, he was designing all the graphics. He was making all the skateboards that people would ride. That’s always just been a huge dream of mine is to either work with him or create a brand that follows in his footsteps, because I love skateboarding, too. I’ve been skateboarding for 15 years at this point. So, combining those worlds would be amazing to me.

Maurice Cherry:
I could really see that gallery show. I could even see a gallery show that combines all of this. You’ve got that, you’ve got the music. I don’t know. Maybe you have a small halfpipe in there doing some skateboard or something. I could see all of this taking place. It’s interesting now even looking at exhibitions and stuff like that, because we’ve had a few Black artists on the show, exhibitions now are so much more than just a painting on a wall. They’re really these immersive 360 creative experiences.

Maurice Cherry:
I mentioned Dawn Okoro before, and she did a show that had a punk band in it. So, she’s doing her art and has her art on the wall, but then also has a punk man performing. Wow. So, it’s like a whole environment that’s being created with exhibitions. Especially in L.A., I could see all of that really coming together.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, I mean, that would definitely be a dream of mine to have this multi-hyphenate experience for people to enjoy. A big thing for me is the more that I look at art, the more that I want it to not exist in just a white walled space.

Chris Burnett:
I understand that that allows the art to speak volumes when there’s nothing else to look at except the piece that’s on the wall, but I’ve also had this dream of having a gallery that’s outside and maybe an old, abandoned warehouse and seeing how the art that’s on the wall in the warehouse communicates with the actual aesthetic of a rusted-out building. I think that could create an interesting tension too, but a lot of these things that I feel like I’ll pursue once I established my footing in the art world and then I can maybe expand on some of these ideas. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, are you still pursuing your music?

Chris Burnett:
So, music for me has been really interesting in terms of my dedication to it. Honestly, this happens with a lot of the facets of my creativity. There are moments where I’m really into making music, and I’ll write a new song every day. And then there are moments where I just want to collage and I don’t even pick up the guitar or play the piano at all. Right now, I’m in a down on the music and I’m really focused on the artwork. So, it tends to fluctuate and I like that. Because if I was too obsessed over one thing all the time, then I think all my other things would suffer. I just can’t let anything go.

Chris Burnett:
So, I can’t ever stop collaging. I can’t ever stop making music, but they ebb and flow in ways that support each other, whether I know it or not. That’s how I feel about it. So, I am planning to release a project next year, but there’s not much in my mind that’s happening with it yet. But I know that it’s going to be released early next year. I’m sitting on a lot of music that no one’s heard. So, it was definitely enough to create a project and give it to the world.

Maurice Cherry:
All in due time.

Chris Burnett:
Yeah, exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you feel like you’re living your life’s purpose or do you think you’re still figuring it out?

Chris Burnett:
Wow. It’s funny that you asked that, because I would say that I learned what that was this year, specifically. It’s been a long journey to get to this point. I’ve always known that I wanted to do art. I’ve always known that I wanted to be creative. I’ve always known that I wanted to do music. But for some reason, recently within the past couple months, the specific focus has been on I’m an artist and telling myself that and believing it and moving towards it. As I moved towards it, the more it feels natural to me, which also tells me that hey, this is probably what you’re supposed to be doing. Because for a long time, I was in the design world. I was a graphic designer, and I would call myself that.

Chris Burnett:
I think the artist’s part of me was really sad that I wasn’t allowing myself to embrace that. I think at heart, I’m an artist. I can do graphic design, but I think at heart, my purpose is to create art and share it with the world. So, yeah, I think I’m getting there. It’s baby steps for me in terms of establishing who I am as an artist and sharing that with the world and being a bit more open with what I’m doing creatively, because I tend to sequester myself a little bit, but that’s all starting to change. So, I’m pretty happy about it.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What do you want the next chapter of your career to look like?

Chris Burnett:
Next five years, definitely doing more art shows. I think the ultimate goal for me is to have a bunch of solo shows and really focus in on creating work that challenges the way we think about life, that challenges the way that we interact with each other. Yeah, I see myself really settling into the art world and becoming the artists that I know I can be. It’s been so long, because when I graduated with a degree in graphic design, to me, that felt like, “This is who I am now, and this is what I have to do.” After working so long and reaching a certain amount of success that I am satisfied with, I realized that there was just something missing.

Chris Burnett:
So, this year really marks that transition that I mentioned earlier into me fully embracing me as an artist and maybe moving away from a lot of the client work and focusing in on the work that I want to be doing for myself. So, in five years, I’ll be 35. So, hopefully, by then, I’ll have a couple solo shows under my belt. I’m definitely getting better at playing guitar. That’s one of the things I’m focusing on too. I want to put a band together so that I can play shows in Los Angeles, eventually tour around the world if that’s a reality that presents itself. Yeah, but really focusing in on the artist’s aspects of me and myself. That’s where I see myself in five years.

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

Chris Burnett:
So, you can go to colibristudios.com to pretty much see everything that I’m doing. I’m not on social media, and I don’t really like Instagram. We could have a whole another conversation about social media. As much as I understand that it’s something that allows you to connect with people that may have never seen your work before, something about it just doesn’t feel right with me.

Chris Burnett:
Especially given the past couple years that we’ve all experienced in America, we’re starting to realize and understand the effects that these platforms can have on our mental health and our well-being as individuals and our relationships with other people. I’ve decided to remove myself from it. So, I can have a different type of perspective. I think it served me pretty well. So, I only have a website. That’s why I’m saying that. It’s colibristudios.com. That’s where all my music is, photography, artwork, design work, everything. That’s me.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Chris Burnett, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. One, for just telling your story and really given some insight into the work that you’ve done, but I think also, it’s important when we hear your story and hear you talk about the passion behind your work to know that creativity is something that we all in some way can tap into.

Maurice Cherry:
I think it’s one of those things where as a kid, we have finger painting and all this stuff. But then as you get older, doing things in art design tend to be looked at as more of a hobby and less of a profession. It really seems like you were able to really lean into a lot of creative work, work with a lot of really interesting and creative companies and people. I’m excited to see what you’re going to do in the next five years, because I think it’s definitely going to be something worth talking about. So, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Chris Burnett:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world.

We accomplish this through graphic design, presentations and workshops around I-D-E-A: inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

If you’re curious to learn how to combine a passion for I-D-E-A with design, check us out at brevityandwit.com.

Brevity & Wit — creative excellence without the grind.

Jeffrey Henderson

Being confident with your creativity will take you far as a designer, and this week’s guest is a perfect example of that. Jeffrey Henderson is the founder of AndThem, an NYC-based creative collective that focuses on building creativity and business within Black and brown communities.

We started off talking about plans for the summer, and then Jeffrey spoke about his innovative agency model and how he uses it to help give back to the next generation of creatives. We also talked about his 15+ year career as a footwear designer for Nike, Yeezy, and Cole Haan, and how he brings that knowledge to his current work with creating his own footwear designs. Thank you Jeffrey for being a shining example of what it means to use your talent to bring the world to your feet — literally!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Jeffrey Henderson:
So I’m Jeffrey Alan Henderson I’m a creative based in Harlem, New York, team of about 10. We take on, everything from product design to content creation.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s the year been going so far?

Jeffrey Henderson:
Oh, the year’s actually been pretty good. And we actually had a nice growth year. Not in terms of state business, business has always been pretty standard even when we went through trials and tribulations of COVID. But I think I brought in some young folks for the first time and made it official kind of last year. And so we had some growing pains in terms of people just learning how to be creatives in sort of corporate settings and non corporate setting. That was very new to a lot of us. And having an agency built like that this year has been a, I think, an extension of that. But now that everything’s opening, the team is definitely more seasoned, so a lot more exciting because of the things I know we can take on. So it’s been pretty good.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m pretty sure people listening can hear the birds in the background. So, it sounds like you’re hit like some idealist spot right now, which is good, which is good. I think after the year. After, after the year, I think all of us have had a little bit of a mother nature’s is gladly welcome at this point. Do you have any plans for the summer with the agency?

Jeffrey Henderson:
Oh, this summer where we’re trying to get back together during, I guess January of this year, we had pretty much all 10 folks in Harlem, essentially, about five of them stayed in, we have a studio here and apartment that we actually rent out as an Airbnb, but when we don’t, it’s actually our studio. So everybody was sort of working together. And that was, I guess, when the world was still kind of closed. And so we’re going to try to do a little bit out of that again, since we can’t really travel to the places we need to travel to get work done, we’re going to just come back to New York, settle down and keep growing.

Maurice Cherry:
Now with And Them and sort of the changes that have happened over the past year. I mean, you said business has been pretty steady, and I know that you do a number of different services. Can you just talk a little bit about what And Them is and how did you come up with the name And Them?

Jeffrey Henderson:
And Them comes from when I was a Nike employee in Japan. I had a lot of free time in the mornings where I would have to work with the team that was in the U S. And so during those phone calls every now and again, I’d have an hour in between and there was a creative by the name of Kevin Carroll who’d just left Nike, he’d written a book, Rules of the Red Rubber Ball. So he became sort of internet famous at that point, hired a team, he had about six people doing everything from PR to creative, strategy. He had been working with them for about three, four months and it just wasn’t clicking. He ended up calling, I think, myself, Jason Mayden who’s now at Fear of God Athletics, D’Wayne Edwards who runs PENSOLE. And he’s like can you like, just sit on these meetings and help me out, but I don’t want to threaten my team. He started introducing us as you know, was just Jeff and him. It was just D’Wayne and him kind of nonchalantly. And so the joke was, we just became an them like this [inaudible 00:06:00].

Jeffrey Henderson:
I just kept it. Kept the name because it also represented the fact that when we work with, whether it’s Yeezy or FC Harlem or local restaurant around the corner, we’re not trying to showcase our brand we’re trying to showcase your brand. We were doing something with Revision Path, it would be Revision Path and them. It’s just us trying to help out folks who sort of need, I think, a boost. I live right down the street from Harlem Hospital so there’s always a siren now and then.

Jeffrey Henderson:
In the last year we definitely picked things up because what really happened was this is probably three years ago now I was working on a project, launching Everlane’s new footwear line that they put out the tread. And while I’m working on it, Michael Price with the CEO, he keep asking me like, how do you do X, Y, Z?

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I’d be like, oh, you just call this person. And it’s like, I just saw him asking questions. And he kept looking at me like you have all these people, why don’t you set up an agency? And I was like, yeah, nah, that’s too much responsibility. Like I did all that. Like at Nike you have a report. Like it was all just too much. But a year later it was like, okay, all these people who, and it sort of came by, honestly, in that people who were working on teams individually, when I got there, they just sort of were like, yo, can I do a project with you , you have anymore? So I just kind of brought them with me. So they kind of became my and them. So I just, if we want to call it, I’d be like, yo, why don’t you sit on this call and won’t you take this and if there’s money left on the table, we’ll split it. So that’s sort of just evolved to the fact that I just had a few really talented young folk who probably weren’t either seasoned in corporate or had already tried corporate and was like some just wasn’t feeling right about it so they were like, I’d rather hang out with you, work on projects. So I became normal. So we’ll be doing a lot of product design and graphic design. And then one of my best friends, creative director, who he taught himself to be sort of art director holding the camera. He was doing, working at a not-for-profit basically counseling kids and got a camera. And we were coaching his basketball team together and he said, you know, my dream is I want to shoot the NBA in the Olympics. And he’s like, that’s my longterm dream. That’s what, that’s what I want to do in life. Three years later, he ended up doing that. Like, it was all sort of like this whirlwind of like, he worked for the Nyx, he shot for FIBA in Brazil, the Olympic basketball games, like, oh, I should’ve made my dream a little bigger than that. And so he sort of come on with his team. So all together, we tackle soup to nuts, anything from product creation, manufacturing to content creation. So that’s kind of where we are and what we do.

Maurice Cherry:
It sounds like it all kind of came together pretty easily. I mean, since you had already this network of people and you had creatives that were drawn to you because of your work, it sounds like it didn’t take much to kind of build a team.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I think it really goes back to one of the things that happened In my old Nike days, it was very much this thought of you kind of were put on a track or plan to be a design manager or design director. A lot of times people would be put in design manager roles so they could kind of learn the procedures, the processes, the operations part, so that when they became a design director, they at least know what those things were as we started looking at bigger picture in terms of product creation. So I kind of took a big tune to what the operation side was. I was, I think, I learned from some really great people who just knew how to grow and manage people because I needed a lot of that because I was literally making up as I went, I didn’t have a design degree. So anybody who could help me, I was in their office, left and, trying to figure out how I screwed up. I just took those lessons and while I was working on the creative side, building all those other kind of tools and components taught me how to get the most out of people and how to help them get the most out of themselves. When I ended up in random spots, I wasn’t just worried about is the color right, is the engineering proper is the functionality working, is the design modern. It was also how you doing as a person? Are you doing the right thing? And so it really like became, I didn’t realize it was that obvious until this young woman, Lauren Divine who’s great material designers, [inaudible 00:10:18] This is probably the early days we were over in some broken down office building And I was probably in and out of LA for maybe a year and then one day, I guess I didn’t show up for three months cause I was either doing something else I didn’t didn’t need to be there and I got there, she came and gave me a big hug and she’s like, finally, you’re back our manager I was like, your what? I was over here, drawing shoes what do you mean? She’s like, no, no, no, we need like this set up and this meeting organized and this, that and the other, and this is what you do. I was like, okay, honestly, didn’t sign up for that, but the reality was I did sign up for that. I mean, I just became a mentor to a few people who just sort of needed the ins and outs every now and again, it wasn’t like I was their manager manager, but I was, I don’t know, helpful in helping them get things straight when they needed it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Especially if you weren’t in a traditional corporate environment where people were set to be your manager or mentor. So that sort of turned into an easier way to then run this sort of organization that we just pick projects and started out really me just no one, some people who were like, yo, you want to do this project? Yeah, I got nothing better to do, but I mean, it’s real. Like I ended up falling in love with things that I know nothing about just because it’s different. Like we have a project now with a friend of mine, she’s CEO at this wellness brand, wellness and beauty called ASA there and it’s all about circularity, sustainability and reality is like, I walked to the conversation, going to look, I’m not like a big sustainability dude, that’s not my thing thing. I kind of know about it and I’m more interested in it because I have learned over the last, I think two years, how much it affects black and brown communities first.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And so I have a little bit of interest in it, but I can’t say it’s like, I wake up everyday like, oh, I care about this. But ever since being in this project, like now I’m like forced to like, oh, this is real and I’m going to the grocery store I see tons of plastic and I’m like, oh, how do I fix, how do I help? How do I like live here to these compensations? So it just becomes a, I don’t know, we find ourselves in new conversations that are helpful because I think it’s, it helps us to become creative, but it also lends we have a skillset that we were using somewhere else that now we can apply it to something that we all care about.

Maurice Cherry:
I think that’s, especially when you have a, a collective like that that’s, what’s important is that you’re able to bring your expertise and the mind trust of the people that you’re working with to a project or to a brand it’s not necessarily that you’ve done it before, but the collective knowledge is enough where you can go into the project and still know what needs to be done.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I think that’s very true. I think our, I don’t know, collective unit is hard enough. I don’t know questions, concerns. We’re not people. I think some of the more senior folks on our team, like we’ve heard it before. It’s very enlightening that we have sort of like these 22 year olds who chime in knowing that look, I don’t know everything, but here’s what I’m thinking and it sort of like it brightens up our eyes to go, oh, never would have occurred to the old crowd in the room as to think about things like that because like we’re not digital natives or we’re not focusing in certain places. We don’t go to certain parties. We don’t hang out in certain worlds and I think they ended up bringing something new to the table while absorbing what we offer them so when they get to touch base and go, oh, let’s see what Lowy Frames is like a place that does fine art restoration and gilded frames. That is a new conversation for all of us. But the young folk, they don’t realize it’s new to us they just, everything is new to them. It’s kind of eyeopening to watch them grow.

Maurice Cherry:
And you know, and one thing that is really important to note here for people that are listening too, is that , these are young creatives and you’re giving them the ample space to make these sorts of decisions or determinations or comments or observations. It sounds like in a safe environment, if they say something that may not go over well with the client or something, they’re not immediately asked, I would imagine like it’s sort of a, they have a space to, to fail, which I think as a young creative is probably important to have because there can be so much out sort of like outdo pressure placed on black and brown creatives to kind of be brilliant right out the gate and not make mistakes.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I think it is sort of, I mean, the conversation we were having before we got on here about the, I think understanding of what it means to be black in any corporate environment to be brown in any corporate environment, the idea that this is like a second culture, a second language that you have to bring to the table and learn, I think often the idea of assimilation or the idea of fitting in or not making people uncomfortable. Like it was so ingrained and in the reality is I think I was trying to be part of that in the nineties, I was just, wasn’t really good at it because I was trying to go, okay, I know your music I noticed that. And I really didn’t because I really wasn’t listening to it. But I think there’s this innate need to sort of like, see if you could fit in and our group is like, we don’t really have that as much as like, you need to know this part of the culture in order to do the job. If you don’t, don’t sweat it. I mean, if you make a mistake as you’re going through, because it’s all different and it’s all new, pay attention. And I think that’s the part where I, from all my failures of walking into situations and not knowing my first days, going from Nike to cohort where it was like, I wasn’t making sports shoes and that’s all I knew to oh, now we’re making a small number. Like Nike, the minimum you could do in a shoe with like 30,000 pairs of shoes, I got the cohort and I was like, oh, we did 30,000 pair. They were like, we’ll like, I’ll be celebrating with 30,000 pair it’s just a different mindset. I didn’t know. And I think I kind of have this, I’m happy to open my mouth and sound dumb 10 times out of 10, just because let’s get it out the way cause I don’t want any assumptions of me walking out the room, not really knowing, I think having my team, watching me say stupid things all the time and I do it for almost for their entertainment. I still call it tic-tac, I still talk about things, old guy, just so they know, I’m not afraid to sound stupid in the meeting and you should be okay because as long as you know, which is supposed to know and you do your homework, you’ll be good. And I think that’s, it’s really, uplifting to see these young black and brown folk be able to hold their weight and going to conversations as well as watching whoever the client is kind of go, oh, y’all know what y’all doing. Like yes we do. That’s all good.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I think that’s, I mean, honestly just for me as, a designer, as a self-taught designer, that’s just even great to hear. I mean, I’ve had other studio owners and such that have been on the show and I’ve even talked to like just studio owners through AIGA and other design organizations and it’s true. Sometimes if there is a leading creative at the head, like you would be with, with And Them, there’s almost this need for them to come off as the creative expert. Like they have to be the captain of the ship and you are the captain of your ship, but at least what you’re showing is that you’ve built enough camaraderie with your crew. So you all can come together and work on things and it’s not just you dispatching people to do work. You know what I mean?

Jeffrey Henderson:
No, it’s definitely I think, and you talked about it, getting people to come in and do podcasts I think there’s, on top of being black or brown in the industry, I think the conversation around being a creative also comes with a certain expectation. You may actually be an introvert or you might actually just get put in boxes and the sales team and marketing team be like, oh, well don’t talk to them till you want to have something creative and cool. But then when to drag the cool out of them. And I think to me, that’s what kind of puts folks in a box they’re afraid to talk there’s like a lot of this, that and the third. And I think I was lucky enough to be placed in environments where I like for real in the last two years, that’s when my friends laugh all the time. I don’t want to be on podcasts, I don’t want to talk, I never want to hear myself talk, but it’s just what it is. But I also know that folks are like, I learned something from you can you do that more often? It’s like, all right. It’s just easier if I can’t call everybody on the phone so here’s the podcast and I’m just going to ramble on, I think for hours at a time. But I think the idea that someone can offer you an opportunity to stand up in a meeting and give your options. And I was at Nike and I do believe I should have been like not fired, but somebody should have, could have reprimanded me over and over but they were like, yo, this is, this is how you grow and these are the bullets you take, you just come in and like, say something.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I think there was quite a few people like who were Nike like, oh, didn’t say it but I kind of felt that like, oh, like Jeff’s getting run cause he’s black. Or he used to go in there. Like I could be completely wrong, but yo, that’s how I felt like thinking that. But I also know some people were like, yo he’s in the room cause he was bringing something different and all y’all had the same skillset so even if it’s not what you think is the right answer, we’re going to let them go and if it doesn’t work cool, but if it does work, it’s going to work in a much different way than you guys. And I think I was given enough room, like the fact that I went in to quit when I was at Nike, because I was feeling like this wasn’t going the right place and they sent me to basically run for [inaudible 00:19:29] in Japan. And I was like, okay, it was wild. But I think that it’s a case where there were the right people in the right rooms who were talking about this a lot, like the difference between mentorship and sponsorship and I’m kind of back in mentor mode, but I think having the idea and notion, I started understanding once I got at a higher clip at Nike that I didn’t have to be somebody who’s mental, I just need to go into rooms and be like, why aren’t you highlighting this person’s work. And basically looking at people like they were wrong, if they didn’t, I didn’t know whether they were doing good work or not I was just asking them and if they feel guilty about it, that should probably tell them something.

Jeffrey Henderson:
But I think that level of sponsorship became important and even though the mentoring was there, but I think having, and I know people who did that for me, it was either told them he asked her or I sort of knew, or I know that I would get no, no, no, no, no, then it get quiet for about a month and then next thing, Hey, we think you should do this opportunity. When somebody says something, clearly somebody says something so that I think is a part that seeing more of that from folks in or outside of corporate work, it’s just kind of important.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, And Them does a lot of different things. It’s hard to, I guess sort of pinpoint exactly what you do. Like if you go to the website for example, and click on FAQ it’s questions that sort of allude to the services that you could provide, like developing products, designing products, shooting actions, shooting commercial, shooting style, making logos, these are all services that we can do as long as you’re asking the question on what is it that we can do for you for your project.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Yo, I love you. You do all your homework. So reality is our main strengths, if we have people who help build Nike product, Yeezy product, Everlane, especially footwear, that’s our main bag. Then I kind of went out of my way, when projects and apparel came out, I was like, I need people who know how to do this. And I just saw that I literally went on LinkedIn and was like black and brown people who do apparel, please check here. The funniest joke about a member of our team, Shauna K is I was in the line at FedEx on 125th, and in walks behind me, Dapper Dan’s assistant Ashley. I look at her, she looks at me and she’s like, what do you want Jeff? I was just looking at her, like I wanted some, I was like, I need a black woman and she was like, I know who you need.

Jeffrey Henderson:
We didn’t discuss exactly what I meant by that. That could have gone a thousand different ways. But I was like, I want a black woman creative who is just starting out because we need to round out this team and we didn’t have that on a team. And she was like, you need to meet Shauna K, just finish FIT, she’s looking for work, getting a bone that was probably on a Friday. Miss Shauna came on a Tuesday, W]we had our first meeting to work on a Friday. That’s how quickly it went. But I think that’s the part where we knew we had product creation folks. I wanted more folks to kind of round that out. Then John Lopez on his side, again, shooting the Olympics, work for the NYX’s he’s dragging me around like, I just rented this $70,000 camera for a day Jeff let’s go out and have some fun, like, okay, I don’t know what that means. So being able to do those big, specific things were important, but we had both worked at meaningful places. Then we brought in Brie La Bossier who is sort of like, keeps us all saying as a kind of design manager, project manager, kind of everything. So what ends up happening people like, can you do this, can you do that and it’s like, well, I remember when I first left Cole high, I was sort of like free to do anything. I was like, I am not designing shoes ever again. That was my thing I wanted to do since high school, I was going to design shoes. So I had a good 15 year ride of doing that. I was like, yo, I’m going to do everything else I’m done to wear shoes, like start my new life.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Like I’m going to do branding, graphics, marketing, whatever it is, I’m not going to do shoes anymore. Two months after that, I was on a plane to go do Yeezy, it was just ingrained in me. But in those two months I started writing more. I started this random e-comm site with a bunch of my friends just to sell t-shirts, basically to ourselves, called Good Things. I was learning how econ works. I was learning a little bit about SEO and digital and all these other pieces that just started to round out. As I started getting deeper into conversations, I was like, oh, once you get through that first layer, you kind of know enough to be dangerous. Then we thought I’d taken on projects. And like our learning path really came with working with kind of nonprofits and small businesses because I didn’t know how to make a website or do anything.

Jeffrey Henderson:
But there was a restaurant that I ate at pretty much, three times a month, 4 times a month. He was like, yo, I need a website. Okay. Let’s build it. Let’s figure out what that looks like. Let’s figure out all the pieces behind it. And so working with people to kind of figure out and small businesses and nonprofits to kind of learn at least the lingo, how it works, sort of brought us to the stage of, oh, now with our knowledge of, anything from Nike to the New York NYX and NBA and Yeezy, oh, okay. We can start taking this to more people in different ways and definitely either being the conversation we were having before, intentionally this is going to be a black and brown group of people working on stuff. And so you can hire us intentionally cause you want black and brown.

Jeffrey Henderson:
You can hire us intentionally because you want a diversity where you’re just hiring us because we are good, we don’t really care. We’re going to come in and it’s going to have like we jokingly laugh, we had to do a photo shoot and we’re like, who knows somebody, wait. Like we can’t just because it was for a brand. It was this wasn’t a, like we’re trying to cross over, it was like, it was literally for a brand that has, I mean, all the founders are white and it’s like, yo, we don’t want them to look like they’re doing black face by, oh, everybody in their ad is black, a brown, like this should be pretty diverse. But in order to be diverse we can through some white folks in there, like we look across the room like who do we know? But it was this funny game of like, we don’t know, no white folks, but.

Maurice Cherry:
I just have to pause there. That is, to me, that is hilarious because the inverse of that probably happens in every creative studio at least once a week. Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So we are like the exact opposite. And one of the things that’s like amazing is we had a basketball shoot and this happens pretty much with every client, especially in color. And some say it like, and they even say a day one, or they say it, at least when they get to a photo shoot a week or product on the table is that one of the models came out. We had a shoot that was supposed to go from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM in the park. We had some gears set up or got to shoot when it got dark. We all showed up one time at two o’clock we’re getting shots in and eight o’clock it was pitch dark. This was fall. That was probably like nine o’clock. We’re still out there still shooting good night shots. One of the models, like he was leaving on a bike.

Jeffrey Henderson:
He was like, yo. And I had to record him saying, he’s like, yo, like I’ve been in shoots before. And sometimes it’s your homeboy and it’s cool. We all hang out in the end product is like, okay. Sometimes I’m at like these professional shoots and it’s all good, we all know each other and we’re good but you know, in and I’m out cause work to do. He was like, this was like the party with real work. He was like, y’all onto something. And it’s that vibe that again, we’re doing things like in ways cause we don’t know any better. We’ll do it professionally, we’ll have the call sheets up, we’ll have all the emails and testing codes, all the protocol, new we’ll look up at Brie because she’s worked at like startups and stuff.

Jeffrey Henderson:
You will look up and Brie, because she’s worked at like startups and set up organization, things like, oh, you got to sign your paperwork. They don’t do the insurance. You want to showing up. At the same time, we’ll be out there enjoying each other’s company in a way that’s relaxed and a barbecue sort of atmosphere, which a lot of folks look at, like, I don’t know, but then what ends up happening? Like we laugh, cause it’s like the young crew, they’re like, yo, they go get an internship somewhere else. And they’re like, this is not we doing over here. And I’m like, okay, well we get some more projects and we can tackle some more work for you. So we’re doing something to have a little fun, but it’s definitely, it’s definitely the other side of the coin in terms of it’s just black and brown and it’s kind of what it looks like.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean what it really sort of boils down to, I think is two things. One you’re introducing to these creatives, at sort of the beginning stages of their career, a new possibility for what work can be, which is, or for what creative work can be, which is that it’s infused with play. We’ve had a lot of people on the show that are in the advertising industry and such, and they always talk about the long hours and the shoots and none of it sounds fun. They’re able to be creative, but it doesn’t sound like they’re really enjoying the job, you know? I think the second thing is that you’re inviting in this new tradition of this is what creative work can look like. So you’re saying yes, you can do this and also it can be fun. It doesn’t have to be stuffy or bureaucratic or anything like that. Yes, there are certain protocols that have to get done, but the magic and the environment that you’re able create is how you get your best work.

Jeffrey Henderson:
This was probably midway through dependent. It was maybe three months in and the team was feeling a certain way cause we had just, well, we had set up, I was looking for a full studio for us to work out of. This was probably end of 2019. Because I wasn’t finding exactly the space I wanted I sort of was feeling a little grumpy about it, at the same time I was working with the spot on 118th Milbank Children’s Aid Society. And it’s a afterschool program set up in Harlem basketball courts and swimming pools kind of have everything. When Zion Williamson lost his shoe, he did it on the algebra courts of Milbank, but it also has these classrooms, they actually have a onsite nursing office. So it’s pretty well-developed. And so the classrooms needed a little update. So I went to the folks there I’m like, look, tell you what, instead of me paying for a regular lease, I’m just going to update one of these classrooms.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And we’re going to work here in the mornings until two, when kids show up. Would that work and they, before I could even finish, they’re like done show up whenever. So we put some big screen TVs in, we put some tables, chairs, we were getting prepared, then COVID hit. So we kind of got locked out like everybody else. So the team was still in a certain way cause they had gone to two or three meetings and would just get to know each other and they were liking the vibe, but we shut it down from soon. Brie, our project manager, also runs a community kind of center for creatives. So she was like, we gonna have book club. So Saturday mornings from nine to 11, like one Saturday morning, Saturday mornings, we started meeting and having book clubs. What was happening was there were elements that were going over the young folks head just in terms of here’s things you ought to know whether it was in design or government or sales or e-commerce, whatever things that need to be had, or we need to discuss we’d discuss it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And so she set up these meetings and buy a book. It was more like here’s an article to read or a the Netflix video to watch. And so we discuss it and three or four in, I was like, we’re taking away from their Saturdays. I was like, maybe we should turn it down a little. So we took a week off. They complained like nobody’s business. And were like, yo, why are we doing book club? Okay. And some of this was because everybody was sort of quarantined. Everybody was locked away. And so I thought, okay, we’ll do this bit because everybody’s locked away. Once we all get to go out and see the world, we’ll slow it down, did not stop. It just became this thing that everybody did together had conversations that were sort of like, this is serious and this is a safe space.

Jeffrey Henderson:
By then, we all got to know each other. So we give each other grief like nonstop, but it’s sort of a safe space for creatives to kind of, we show our work on Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon. That’s when we talked about work, work, work. But on Saturdays, and it’s not mandatory. Some people want a squad, like they’re like, no, I don’t need that. Cool. But the other half they show up religiously and the other place they go, well, let me see what the topic is. And then I’ll drop off. There was definitely this added piece of like, there’s just a conversation that, especially for creatives, especially for black and brown folks, being able to, I think, chop it up in that that sense is special. I mean, you kind of have to make space for that.

Maurice Cherry:
I liked it. There’s a section it’s not on the And Them side. I think it’s on the good thing site. That’s called book club where you sort of have some writings and things. I want to talk about that later. And I know we spent a lot of time talking about And Them, but let’s kind of shift the focus here because really this interview is about you. You’re originally from Ohio. So where you grew up, what was it like there?

Jeffrey Henderson:
That’s funny cause my wife and I laugh about this all the time is that my, wife went to stolen. So it’s a big deal. She’s from Philly. She went to Spelman. So she definitely talks about HBCU and what it meant. And it was never like my sister went to Wilberforce, going to HBCU was never anything that felt like I needed to do because, and I credit, this is like, we’re looking at 30 year anniversary. Or what is it? Yeah, 30. I graduated from high school, 30 years ago and 91. And I graduated with, out of the hundred kids in my class. It was 96, black folk, just black. Like one side of Baden was, is black, black, black, black, black, like just all black. And so, and I would joke with people like, I didn’t know, white people until I got to college, like literally, like I knew white people from the folks that went to our school weren’t that many or I saw them on TV.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So I would joke like white people were kind of imaginary. Like, it wasn’t a real thing. I learned about cultural and all that, it just didn’t really exist. And I never met anybody who was really like that. And so there’s a certain confidence that I had of being… Only having to worry about my culture. And so when I got to college, when I got to Purdue, it was very much like, oh, here’s another culture. I was like, okay, cool. But now I just care about engineering. Like, all I want to do is get into design and Nike and I’m supposed to study this so I’ve never worried about embracing anything of them, I’m just going to focus on school. And so after two years of that, I actually, at the one year I was like, yeah, I’m done would be in the middle of nowhere. Let’s go have some fun.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So I moved to Atlanta, nothing but black folk. And so that became a thing. And I think when I left and went to Nike, it was a strange sort of weird balance of me trying to figure out what was, what, and I honestly try to, and I don’t even know how to put it, I was trying to fit in, but I guess I wasn’t really trying that hard cause like everybody I knew was basketball, sports, marketing, brand Jordan. Like it was just all the black and brown people like it was. And I kind of hung out with whoever, but that’s just where I’ve found myself, other people who, I don’t even know if it was like, I found them as much as they were like, yo, we’re doing these things. You want to come hang out. And they were the normal things, like whatever, if it’s a barbecue or whatever.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it was like, cool. I don’t know that I went out of my way, but it was this confidence that none of us really settled in until I moved to Harlem like three years ago. And when I got to Harlem, I was like, yo, this feels just like, they know how this feels just like being in Atlanta. And one of the things that kind of brought it up. So we did this project with the Apollo and it was about sneakers. And about education and someone had, was like we have to tell people why we’re doing something at the Apollo around sneakers. And I was like, no, we don’t, we don’t have to tell anybody. Like, if you ask somebody about sneakers and they’re black, the culture kind of says, they’re going to tell you something about it. They will tell you they couldn’t afford something.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And they going to tell you that knew somebody who had it. They going to tell you their own personal story, but we don’t have to have a conversation about why. Cause you’re the Apollo like is blackity black, black, black, black, like it’s just there. And I think that part, going back to Jefferson township, they know high aware, like our Italian immigrant history teacher went out of his way to make sure we understood that Lincoln didn’t free the slaves because he liked black people. He went out of his way to make sure like, nah, like this is what you need to hear. And that was just a school we grew up in. So like when I got to other places, like really that’s what y’all are. Whether they were black schools, white schools, like we learned it a hundred percent the way I think is discussed now. It was never a question for me or any of my friends going up.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I would say it’s a wild ride for me. It was the best place to be from, a little too small for me. Definitely getting out to the rest of the world was meaningful, but I would not replace. Oh, by the way, they know how it has its own sort of history with crime, drugs, sneakers, and everything else to where the most prominent sneaker mall in all of America was the little mall on the west side of Dayton that had the best foot locker sales, period. When I got to Nike, sales people were like, Salem mall. They did a lot of business. If you track east St. Louis, Dayton, Ohio or Memphis, it’s where underground railroad, there were a lot of stops, three major ones. So it’s why Wilberforce the central state are there. It was a lot of black folk who work there. When drug money started coming and drugs started working their way north, those were the same three places that folks stopped. They know how it kind of grew, music and drugs. It was a big thing especially in the late seventies, early eighties.

Maurice Cherry:
We had one other person on the show from Dayton. hannah Beachler she was episode 300 back in 2019. You said that initially you kind of like said it really quickly. I was like, wait a minute, what else do I know I’m going to show has been from Dayton. Cause I remember at least one or two other people. But her specifically, I remember because of that episode, but were your parents really supportive of you going into design? I’m curious, you know, you said before, if you ask any black person about sneakers are kind of, they’re going to kind of already have a cultural connection to it. So I won’t ask you that specifically, but were your parents kind of behind you going this route with your career?

Jeffrey Henderson:
In no way, shape or form based on this. My mother was a teacher and the reality is she didn’t care what I did as long as I tried my best and did my best, she was a person who, no matter what it was, she put that art on the refrigerator because you did it and you worked really hard and she was a middle school teacher. So she kind of had that in her, you can do whatever you want. I believe in you, yada, yada, yada, to the point where you almost didn’t believe whether she meant it or not. Cause she said it like everyday at all times, but you always had someone who was in your corner. So I think my mother wanted it to happen because I wanted it to happen. But you have to realize like this was 1991, sneakers weren’t a real thing.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it was sort of a side conversation to the point where it wasn’t till I got to Cole Haan where the question is why does Nike own Cole Haan? Because it wasn’t making any money for Nike, the brand. And it was because an ADA still Knight knew that the industry common thought was if you wanted to make money and sneakers, you had to sell brown shoes, sneakers didn’t make money. And so he bought Cole Haan in order to make money. Well, fast forward, he and a few other people made sneakers like the regular topic. So sneakers weren’t a real thing and the reality is my father, who I didn’t have like the best relationship with, he didn’t say anything, he watched because I was getting this engineering degree from some prestigious schools and I had a co-op, I had an internship with AT&T and he was like, oh, Jeff is set.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So he didn’t say a word. He just let me be yada, yada yada. And so I graduated with a degree in engineering with three years of internships with AT&T. And at that time AT&T was one of the biggest design engineering companies in the U.S. And I did not pursue going to AT&T. I took a job doing blueprints in Beaverton, Oregon, and my father didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a word. The only reason I know, I mean, I know he didn’t say a word, but maybe three and a half- four years later, my parents come out to Oregon. I think by that time we had maybe had like a first kid Draymond was like a year old and they’re watching Draymond. So I come home after work and my father had come to, I don’t know if you know anything about that campus, but the Michael Jordan building is, that it’s not center of campus, but it’s middle of campus.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And right next to it is this track under the trees and there’s basketball courts right next door. And so my father ran track for university of Michigan. So I was like, you can go work out and on the track, just pull up the car and tell the guard you’re there. And no one will care. And so I guess he did that. And then when I get home, after that day, my mother’s laughing and I was like, what’s so funny. It’s your father finally gets it. And I was like, what do you mean? He gets it now? He had never said anything to me. He never complained about me working at Nike, nothing. I would sit there and shoot.

Maurice Cherry:
that’s probably why he wasn’t complaining.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I mean, he, I kind of saw it, but again, he was like, my son has an engineering degree, took his first job blueprints at Nike. And then he got a job drawing, kids, shoes at Nike, and now he’s doing basketball shoes in that, he just, it just seemed add up in his mind of what engineering degree and get like a real job in his mind, which was, being from Ohio, you can go work at a car company and do like, what are you doing out here in the Pacific Northwest? And I guess he started talking to other runners who on the track and my father was a runner and I didn’t care anything for that. So he was bonding with the people on the truck. Oh yeah. My son works over in design, like over, like in that building. Now we all know at this point, like designers at Nike are treated like they can walk on water. So when he started saying, my son works over in design, two things happened.

Jeffrey Henderson:
One, I was one of four, I don’t know, black designers in Nike, all men. So they either knew who I was or they were just Ooh, your sons at the time. And so they started talking to him and he started realizing, oh, maybe this is a thing. And so he started asking him what they do. And they were riding up, rattling off things like I just signed a deal for the NBA or I did this and all that, big that he actually understood. And at that point, that’s when he was like, oh, now because my father and I didn’t have the tightest relationships, he never said anything to me for or against. But from that point on, I knew that at least he knew that this wasn’t a mistake that I had made. He knew that like, oh, this was something that was real. So then he wore the shoes with a little more pride. Meanwhile, my brothers are walking around like, oh yeah, that’s yours. My brother designer. It didn’t matter what shoe it was. My brother did that. You know, my brother, my brother, he did everything pretty much. He did that.

Maurice Cherry:
Tell me what it was like living in Atlanta when you went to Georgia tech, because you went, you lived in Atlanta during, I think it’s peak Atlanta. It is Freaknik. It’s the Olympics and I think also the burgeoning hip hop scene there with so-so Def and stuff. What was it like being in Atlanta during that time?

Jeffrey Henderson:
So I as the biggest nerd who didn’t care, just [crosstalk 00:42:56] . I’m merely to go, I’m coming down here. I’m going to find a wife. It’s chocolate city. We’re all good hanging out. And I hung out hard for three years. As the biggest nerd, not even cool whatsoever. And it was everything you just named. It was pre Olympics. Everybody was gassed up. It was… What is it? My buddy’s roommate was a bouncer at the gold club and magic city. So we would just go sit at the bar with no money, just try and pretend like we fit in like, knowing we had zero money and we just sit at the bar and order water.

Maurice Cherry:
That can still happen today in Atlanta.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And we go in cause I get bored or whatever, and it’s like nothing but rich folk in here and its like, wow, and we would just leave after like 10 minutes. We were just like, making sure everything was good. But that was the level of everybody was sort of chilling. And yeah, we went back to Atlanta maybe three years after like, yes, not the same, my boys, were still living in like, it’s different now, but it was one of those. We were also in college. There’s nothing that will compare like as an adult to those three years when we were in college with no real responsibilities, other than staying alive and making sure you took some classes. Between going to school in Atlanta and moving to Tokyo was an ex-pat life is good. But those were big time.

Maurice Cherry:
I feel you, man. Last week, actually this past weekend, I was talking to my best friend from college. So I went to Morehouse here. He and I were just talking cause his 40th birthday was last week. And my 40th birthday was a couple of months ago. And we were reminiscing on the past. We were looking at old pictures from back then and stuff. It was wild. So I was in the AUC, right near the turn of the century. I came in 99, 99 going into 2000 and stuff. And I worked for this website. I worked for this website called College Club. That was sort of a precursor to Facebook and I was one of the campus representatives. So what that entailed was that you went around and you basically captured campus life. We had these big Sony Marika, digital cameras that you had to put a three and a quarter inch floppy disc into and take pictures and stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
So we were just looking at old pictures and stuff like that from the past, like, man, it’s such a trip how Atlanta has changed since then, because yeah, when you’re here in college, I mean, and I don’t know if it was like this at Georgia tech, but certainly at Morehouse in the AUC, the clubs would send charter buses to the campus to pick you up, take you to the club, you go and do whatever you want at the club and they’ll bring you right back to campus. So you, ain’t got to worry about trying to catch Marta, trying to catch a cab or trying to bum a ride from, from somebody to get back.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And that’s come down during [inaudible 00:45:49] and they’d be like, oh, this is amazing. And I was like, no, this is terrible. Everybody’s life is traffic jam. And it’s all these people from everywhere, hanging out and it’s like, yo, I can go on a random Tuesday to Fitz Plaza and it’d be bought out like, we’re good. And it’s just the mall, like it’s just the mall.

Maurice Cherry:
So I missed that Atlanta.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I mean, I can’t tell you whether it’s changed. All I know is I’m old now

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, it’s changed. It’s changed ain’t that shame. So, I mean, there, there might still be that same liveness depending on what the event is, and this is probably pre pandemic, but now we’re probably in the gunshots. There’ll probably be some kind of violence that breaks out. So it’s yeah, it’s definitely not the same.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Harlem is tying to trying to figure out where it’s going to be in that level. Which again, when I moved here it was like, oh, I’m not sure. We’ll figure it out. Yada, yada, yada. What I really loved about being in Atlanta and I think it was a combination of the immigrant culture that was there that I didn’t know was going to be there. The Atlanta population that was like, it was Atlanta. And then it was the rest of Georgia. And if you don’t know, if you just moved it, you don’t know the immigrant population, I lived off of Buford highway.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh wow. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
The food was amazing. And so, that had sort of, like, if you don’t know Atlanta, those things don’t mean anything to you. Harlem is kind of the same way. And so being able to pick up those pieces of going from oh yeah, I miss it. And I didn’t really realize it until I got to Harlem and started walking around. I was like, yo, this feels like swats. I feel like there’s a mall here that’s Greenberg. I feel like there’s something here and I think that goes to the creative conversations that I’m having unapologetically. It’s kind of black folk. And then I encourage what designers, Sarah she’s from Columbia. And I’m like, yo, bring Columbia to the projects that we work on, please just bring them all in there. I want to see that. I want to feel like your home is there because folks kind of want that from a creative vision at this point. And if they don’t, I don’t know what to do with them. Like maybe they’re my clients.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So what I’m hearing is correct me if I’m wrong here, because I’m coming up to a question with this, but you grew up in Dayton, you went to Purdue, which is right across the way in Indiana and you come down to Atlanta and then after that, you’re sort of in Tokyo, what were you searching for during that time

Jeffrey Henderson:
Being in Tokyo or?

Maurice Cherry:
Talking about like the entire journey? Was there a feeling that you were chasing or what was your drive throughout that period of time?

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s this unadulterated push for something different, something new. There was a Twitter post a while ago with like when somebody go invent some new animals. Cause I want some new meats. I’m tired of eating the same meats and I’m kind of like that guy of growing up. Like I always wanted the new music, but I thought everybody else did. And then as I got older, I still wanted the new music. I wanted the new shoe. And it’s like, this is definitely like a knee of all things. Like I see somebody wearing a pair of shoes that I have. I’m like, yep. I got to put those shoes away. Everybody’s on this Jordan one thing. And I’m like, oh, I just put those away. I can’t walk out the house and it’s not because I’m a sneaker dude is because I just feel a certain way.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So going to Purdue, middle of nowhere, west Lafayette, they had what I thought I wanted, but it was also something different. Tokyo was like, yo, this is the wildest place on earth in terms of the visuals and the culture and the class and the people, language, everything was like, yo, I want to do this. And then I got done doing. I was like, yeah, we’re good. Let’s go to the next place. It just became this constant hunt for something new, which I still kind of have. But I think as I’ve gotten older, the combination of new plus know, I just like home, I like walking out the house, totally feeling like I’m at home and think all those other times it was me going what’s the next thing? When I got to Nike, the first thing I said was, I think this was a conversation with tinker.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And he was like, what do you want to do? And my first words were not basketball. Cause I grew up playing basketball. I knew basketball. It was just a second social life for me. And I was like, I want to do soccer. I want to do something I have no business doing so I can be in a whole nother world to see something totally new and meet new people or sweat up or the kids, the first place they told me the basketball, but even then I was trying to do something that I don’t know. I drove everybody crazy because I was trying to do something different. And I think what’s interesting is that question also pretty much pegs was my creative kind of processes was like. It was interesting cause Nike figured that out before I did. And so to fast-forward through all the headaches of my first five, six years at Nike, before I got to Japan was what they taught me was that if you put me in a functioning business where everything is great design is great and everything’s working, I will jack it up basically.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Cause I asked all the questions, why are we doing this? Why aren’t we doing it? What else could we be doing? Almost getting just to the point of start over. And so they figured out, yo, let’s go to places we know should be big, that need changing. But the people there aren’t ready to change it. So basically I became one of the people that Nike would throw into a situation that needed to be changed, but they didn’t know how to get the people in the business changing. And so I always say my first conversation of solving any problem is why? Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What problem are we trying to solve? If we don’t get to the original why then we’re just putting band-aids on things. Just cover it out and go about, let it go to the next day.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And so I have this underlying question knowing at me like, yo, it could be better. It could be like better, better. It could be really better. So let’s get to the wire matter. And so I think going to new places, whether it was going to Purdue or going to Georgia tech or going to Beaverton or going to Tokyo or coming to New York City, it was always like, yo, I want to get to something new with something different. Then eventually it came to like, I’m ready to chill now. I get me. And so how can I provide opportunities for my young team? And I tell them all the time, I don’t want you here. I want you to go to your Japan. I want you to go to your mind. I want you to go to your, whatever that might be. And then you can come back if this is the right place, but go see the world. Cause it’ll make you stronger and give you new points of view that you won’t get if you just stay home.

Maurice Cherry:
What’s something about footwear or just footwear design that the average consumer doesn’t understand?

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s funny. We just had a conversation about why I do shoes and it’s always this funny business thing is that I [inaudible 00:52:46] . I will measure people from the ground up. They’d be like, what shoes you got on? And it’s not always the measurement that people think, oh, you have expensive. Like, no, no, I can kind of take you. My stereotype is nothing based on anything else you have other than look, I see what shoes you have on right now and how you’re wearing them. And I’m going to make some calls about you whether I’m right or wrong. And I think that is probably been one of the best articles I always point to for people is Tressie, McMillan, cat, and room for Zuora. I can’t remember the exact title. Cause every time I look it up, I get lost.

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s the reason poor people can’t afford to dress poor. And it talks about how the world expects you to, if you go into apply for a job that’s like at Walmart that pays nothing. If you’re black, you have to dress better than the job. You have to show up with something that you just have to otherwise, you’re not really right. That’s something that other folks don’t have to worry about. And I think to some degree that’s been sort of ingrained into my thinking, stems from Dayton, Ohio, like, this is kind of what I see. And I think working on shoes, whether it was one of the things we approached it easy with, it was like, it should be like the most democratic shoe that anybody can wear with colors that don’t distract or compliment or fight or cause fear. And then the project like I’m doing now like…

Jeffrey Henderson:
I don’t cause fear. The project I’m doing now, for personal, 99 products, it’s a basic running shoe that is meant for anybody to pull it off. Whether you’re a teacher, either student, or head of the class, in the back of the class, it’s for everybody. I think that sort of thinking goes into product that most people write off or they don’t even think about, they just go, “oh, I’ll just buy whatever shoe and I’ll wear it.” Maybe 15 years ago, you could have said that about most of America with cars; that their car really represented what they were doing or where they would going. They put a lot of effort and energy into the point where people stopped caring about cars so much.

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’d be like, “oh, I’ll just get a used car.” That still says something, it means something that people would put a lot of energy into cars. Today, people still put a lot of energy into the shoes they wear, even when they play them down.”Oh, you know, this is just like throwaway shit.” I laugh because people say, oh, I don’t really care what kind of shoes I wear.” I was like, “okay, then why don’t you wear some bright red clown shoes?” And they go, “well, that’s stupid.” I go, “oh, so you do care.” You do have a uniform. You do have an opinion of what you wear, so it’s not that you don’t care.

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s just that you don’t care to keep up with the people who you think care too much about Smith. So I think in the design process, it’s sort of identifying what people want for function, want to say about themselves and how it fits into their overall wardrobe. Shoes is something else, that you may wear a different shirt every day in a different pair of pants every day. But you might wear the same shoes every day. That’s going to say something about you, like your haircut. It’s going to say something about you and you choose to be there. When you’re designing for people, you kind of have to want to be on their person, like every day, because that’s what they might use it for.

Maurice Cherry:
So earlier you were talking about how you were working for Nike and you were sending home shoes to your dad, shoes to your brothers, how your brothers were saying, “oh yeah, my brother designed this shoe.” All these different kinds of shoes. Can you name some of the shoes you have designed? Some of the more well-known footwear designs that you’ve done?

Jeffrey Henderson:
The big ones are probably the Yeezy three 50 V2, to go on the Grand Max Plus 2009, those are probably the bigger ones. Then there’s 1,000,000,001 other shoes that made it or didn’t make it. The shoes that I’ve made that sold 10 times more that were like the shoes called the Nike Basketball Air Glide. Not to be confused with the Zoom Glide that came out 15 years later, but the basketball Glide was a $55 white leather basketball shoe that sold for three years more than anybody could count, just because it was at a price point. It’s interesting, I think less about those shoes. People always go, “you’re missing the lead, like talk about those shoes.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it’s more like, “nah,” I’m more. And maybe it’s because I’m old, I’m more interested in the people who I’ve helped become designers for them about their path and remembering when they didn’t know any better, just like I didn’t know any better and Ray Butts and Andre Doxy.”You need to work on this, and you need to work on that.” They took me under their wing and made sure I did the right thing. That’s my biggest high, I probably did that for my mother, but it’s more about the folks who I could teach and seeing what they do with it. And also them calling me back, I remember when somebody at Denver was like, “yo, I used to be mad at you when you told me to do things and now I’ve got an intern and I’m like, yo, I’m so sorry.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
It just comes full circle at some point.

Maurice Cherry:
So after Nike, you went to Cole Haan for a couple of years, but you said Nike had bought Cole Haan, correct?

Jeffrey Henderson:
Nike bought Cole Haan in 88 and then they sold Cole Haan in 2013.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Was it a big shift design-wise going from athletic footwear to a wider range of footwear that Cole Haan would offer?

Jeffrey Henderson:
I wanted it to be. It’s crazy because I went from Japan to Nike running, which was probably the biggest leap I made in terms of learning skill set of being in design and design leadership. Then I did sportswear for not even a year before, we just need to get out of Oregon and go to New York city and with Cole Haan. I was so excited to get the Cole Haan and learn more about dress shoes, and how the last word and how you all the technical benefits and leathers. And like that was like, it was a whole thing. I was going through women’s dress shoes. Like this is again me chasing something like new and different, like, so one day and probably a week in Mark Parker shows up and I had just probably no more than like a month before that we had presented like a line that kind of for at least five years changed, like the direction Nike sportswear that was received really well.

Jeffrey Henderson:
We got high fives, lots of praise, yada, yada, yada. And he was in that meeting. It was like, this is really good. So about two weeks of me being at Cole Haan and I was just visiting for like a month, I was like, yo, I’m going to learn all this figure out what’s going on. It’s going to be good. Parker shows up. And he comes into like, I had this makeshift office and I had like all these pictures plastered on the wall of like Tom Ford and Gucci and churches, like wind tips. And I was trying to learn like dress shoes. And he was like, what’s this? And I’m like, yo, I’m trying to learn like dress shoes. This is new to me. Like I’m excited. He was like, yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Why don’t you do what you did in sportswear? And I looked at him like, okay.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I knew exactly what he meant. He was like, I need you to do something different that like learn dress shoes. And he meant I should learn dress shoes. And he was also like, don’t show up and give me a wing to show up and give me something different. And so immediately we did the lunar ran light in kind of an hour because it was a marketing guy and a engineering guy were like, “yo, what if we did this? And I was like, yeah, we, I did loner for like three years in running and sportswear. Like we can do this in 10 minutes.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And so me learning everything about dress shoes and fashion, in the three years, it was all good, but it was literally like let’s do something to their credit. Everybody was right, because it became the hallmark shoe, it was the coolest shoe for all of three months. And then it just became every IT, lawyer, everybody who wanted to wear a sneaker group had to wear a dress. You wear that shoe to this day. Right. It’s still like, oh no, it’s not the coolest shoe in the world. But it’s definitely something that I don’t know. Every insurance guy has a pair.

Maurice Cherry:
How have you seen footwear design change over your career?

Jeffrey Henderson:
What’s been both. Probably. It’s kind of annoying to like some overhead to solve for where design is. One way, you go to this design school, you learned these rules, you make something and you draw it, you go into the factory and you build it. Now, to me, it’s really encouraging to watch folks who basically just Photoshop some colors together and throw some shoes together. And like it equates to, they may take the Jordan One and flip it in colors. That’s new. And the purist will be like, well, that’s not design it. Just the color. And I’m like, yeah, but at the end of the day, if somebody puts it on and gets value out of it and they feel a certain way, I think that’s valuable. Even if the shoe was already designed and someone added their own touch to it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So I don’t necessarily think negatively about it. I do know that if you want somebody to make a new shoe, you probably should pay someone who knows how to make new shoes. But also I’ve seen plenty of designers and it was true at Nike people who would draw the most amazing shoe. And then they were colors that were terrible, like completely unwearable. And you’d be like, “yeah, yeah. Just, just send that over to my guy over here, let her do it. Let, let her put some materials on it.” You did your job, you made an amazingly functional, beautiful, physical thing. Now let somebody else add the color and whatever else that makes it wearable. And that’s a whole other job. That’s a whole other skillset that just because you drew a shoe, doesn’t mean you’ve actually had that skillset. So I think seeing that become a more regular part of the industry of people being elevated, I think is very worthwhile.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you’ve done work with Allbirds before and there’s a lot of these kinds of, I thought they came about in the last few years, a lot of these minimalists kind of shoe designs, there’s Allbirds, Greats, Vesey. There’s probably a dozen or so of them. What do you think about those kinds of shoe companies?

Jeffrey Henderson:
I love the energy they bring in, my work with Allbirds is literally, they kind of thought they might want to do something. So they hired me for one small project and I was like, you guys will be big. Can I hang out with you on it? They said “We don’t want that much. We don’t want that bigger relationship.”

Maurice Cherry:
Oh wow! Okay.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I don’t need to do that. Well, and it was one of those to their credit. I think they focused on doing something that no one in the industry thought was the right thing to do. If you ask everybody in the industry, “Hey, would you make a wool shoe?” The first thing I got is it gets dirty. It gets like, don’t do that. Dave leaned in heavy and the way they did it through DTC through a community built on starting with Silicon valley and working his way to wall street.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I think they chose a community that traditional sneaker folks didn’t have an idea about. I think to the credit of a lot of those companies, a lot of them have been people who follow in those footsteps, no pun intended to do the same thing as with like, I loved like what great submission was like, just to bring something that was quality and simple. I think they may have lost track of that along the way. I think you do, you try to run with the sneakerheads, like you get lost in like the energy and the same and the cool kid and they stock X and all the other stuff, instead of just like, it’s a business, make a dish that people want. And I think there’s credit in doing that without having to follow.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I think a lot of the brands that are making stuff now, I kind of liked them. They also give people the benefit of they can walk out their house without having the same shoe. If you walk up, do you want me to house with a pair of SES on and no, one’s going to be like, oh, y’all got the same shoe. And if you do, there’s a bonding moment. But if you tried to bond with everybody who had on a pair of air max, you wouldn’t go that far.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. I can see that. I think one thing with those sorts of shoes, I don’t know if they are sitting in warehouses or if they’re made to order. But of course, I think with the rise of these are certainly an increased public perception of easy to obtain footwear that wouldn’t necessarily be through Adidas or Nike or something like that.I’ve seen shoes on Instagram that were clearly just, I don’t know if it’s a drop shipping sort of thing, but you’ll see some shoes on Instagram. They clearly are just parts glued onto a sock that they’re selling as a shoe. And you think, “oh, this might be good in these sort of still shots,” but then you actually get the shoes and they smell like industrial strength adhesive and you have to air out your apartment that may have happened to me. I’m not saying it did or didn’t, but [crosstalk 01:05:30] that may or may not have happened. I plead the fifth, it’s my show. But, I think what it does is that at least democratizes the aspect of footwear design, where you have these independent companies designing shoes that are also able to appeal to people that are different from before, the bigger brands that are well-known for designing shoes, like a Nike or Adidas.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it forces the bigger brands to innovate when they really may not have had the catalyst to do so. I would equate what Allbirds did for sneakers is exactly what Tesla did for electric vehicles. Toilet had been sitting on electric vehicles forever and they weren’t trying to make it the cool kid car. It was just an electric vehicle. We make it so what, and Tesla was like, no, we make the electric vehicle. And I think there’s going to be the evolution of anything else, you’re going to find some companies that make something that’s not all that great. And hey, if you’re going to go out there and try everything, you got to be willing to be like, if you’re the one who’s not going on the open, you’re trying every restaurant. Sometimes you go fast in here, your food, but if you’re the person who wants to be that person, who’s like, yeah. Before anybody else sees it, I’m going to try it. You may stumble upon the next thing. I’m curious, what are you wearing? What is your go-to shoe at this point?

Maurice Cherry:
My oh Jesus, oh boy. It does get personal because I hate shoe shopping. I absolutely hate it. It is up there with going to the dentist. It’s shopping for shoes. I do not like it. [crosstalk 01:07:06] I have sort of wide Flintstone, ish feet. And so as a kid, going with my mom to the store to get shoes was always a hassle because one of my feet is decidedly about a half size, bigger than the other one. And also because my feet are wide, most shoes that come in like a medium are way too small for me. Like I can’t even get my foot in it. So I’d have to get a larger size because that would then kind of widen the width of the shoe a bit. But then now I’ve got all this like floppy toe room at the end. And my mom’s like, just put a sock in it, like just stuff a sock in it.

Maurice Cherry:
So it doesn’t get the crease or whatever. But then that [crosstalk 01:07:50] hurts while you’re walking and you’re trying to run. It’s a, it’s a whole thing. So I’m not a big, [crosstalk 01:07:56] I’m not a, I’m not a big shoe shopping person. It wasn’t until I know that was well into adulthood that I saw a podiatrist and actually got like my feet measured and all this sort of stuff. And I had been wearing the wrong size for well over a decade, wrong size shoe. [crosstalk 01:08:13].

Maurice Cherry:
I wear about a size 10 extra, extra, extra, extra wide, like a 10 40. And usually what I was getting was, and I mean, you know, growing up, of course it would change as my foot change. But like right now I usually rock about an 11 is pretty good. But like if one was an 11 and the other was an 11 and a half, that would be perfect because even on the other foot, which is bigger, it’s still like very constricting and most wide shoes are hideous. You’re a footwear designer. Even talking about this, the desire for like medium shoes. I mean, the sky is the limit. You get to watch shoes and everything looks like orthopedic shoes. Why is that?

Jeffrey Henderson:
So there’s a little bit of like the bell curve. And so quite typically the design goes to, and you’ll notice that most things, when they’re in a smaller size, they can be more cute, more appealing. And so,

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, they’re dope. Like I can, like, you can get them in different colors and they look nice and then you get to the wide shoes. And it’s just like, it’s like what I call the PE teachers, which are the monarchs from Nike. Like that’s all you get. [crosstalk 01:09:27] I know, I know that’s probably,

Jeffrey Henderson:
That’d be the cool kid shoe.

Jeffrey Henderson:
But a lot of it is definitely built on again. If you’re making your money in one area, a lot of brands don’t then spend a lot of time in other areas. And so you get some brands who may find that’s a niche customer. So my guess is you bought more than your fair share of New Balance.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh my God. Yes. How did you know you’re reading my mind? Yes. There was a time in my twenties where I had not a lot of different colorways of New Balance, but the new balance, not the nine nineties, those were ones I ended up getting before. But like the, I forget the number. It’s like new balance five somethings. I had those in probably every color.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it kind of becomes your uniform and it’s time to, okay. But then when is that? What ends up happening? Two things happen. Everybody who has that same point is wearing the same thing. And then you get lumped in a box.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And then it’s one of those, oh, you have wide feet. So you have to wear new balance and then there’s not enough, let’s do something different. [crosstalk 01:10:37] And so you have to refine the brands that sort of, I don’t know, care, or we’ll show you something different and it’s not easy.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. It’s the new balance Five, seven fours. I had them in so many different color ways. Cause they, I mean, and on 11 they still fit. They still were pretty wide, but I had those for a long time and yeah, there was that association, which is actually why I stopped wearing them. Well, that in my podiatrist was like, you need to stop wearing these. They’re not doing any favors, like stop wear these shoes. Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So it was funny as it was a podcast or was a clubhouse and my friend Simone runs it and she had the president of Rihanna’s brand owner [crosstalk 01:11:18] and hear her talk about inclusivity and design that what Rihanna wanted. She was like, look, there were two things that quickly and easily made, making intimate wear for a diverse population of women. Important one was really easy. And that was just shades of nude. Like just what colors you chose. She was like, that was really easy. Every brain could flip that switch immediately and go from like two shades of nude to 20 shades of nude because there are different colors of people. And she was like, that was actually, it’s more of like a decision you have to make. And then it’s a supply chain thing and some operational, the blah, blah, blah. It’s pretty easy. The really difficult one is when it comes to physical shape and sizing, because one, you have to have people in the building who can relate and understand.

Jeffrey Henderson:
She was like, not everybody in intimates is the same size 16. Sometimes you’re 16 up top. Sometimes you’re 16 on bottom. Like it’s just different shapes. And if you can’t have a real conversation about it, cause the right diversity is in the room is not in the room. Then you just end up making, like, we just took the same thing and made it bigger. And then you don’t write answers and then you get what she put it. You’ve been with skinny people think that people want, and she was like, it’s not that blunt, but you also get what skinny people think super skinny people want. And she used those words. She was sort of getting like, yo, like it just doesn’t help. And they don’t know. So until you bring people in the room who have wider feet or like our last version of the, and that was one of the things Rihanna said is like, no, when you make the larger sizes, it better be just as beautiful when a person is when you make the medium size.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Like that’s just what it should, what should be done. And so when we were making the next versions of the point, I had a lot of flat, cause I know a few football players who were like a size 15 and I shoe only went up to a 14 and it was like, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. Yeah. Like what are you doing this next batch? And it costs money. Like we had to make molds, we’ve gone up to a size 17 with these things shoes and we’ll try to go up more, but like it costs money to get there and you need people to actually support like, so I sent you a link, you’ll see it, the jokes, John. But that shoe comes in like four E in terms of width [crosstalk 01:13:34] so there, and you’ll try more and it’ll be different. And whether is your cup of tea or not? The idea is that when you wear them, you’ll notice some wind here and you’ll see like, oh, it doesn’t have to look hideous. It doesn’t have to look [inaudible 01:13:50] And it’s kind of, okay. So I think design can bring that to people, especially in shoes.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, So, so to answer your earlier question about what I’m rocking. So I do have kind of my two that I tend to sort of vary between one is like a, all black, like Reebok walking shoe. I don’t know what the name of it is, but it has like this air bubble in the sole. So like it’s very bouncing. Like I wanted some just like straight up like black minimalists sneakers that I could just throw on with anything. And then I do have a pair of monarchs and I actually had to stop wearing because the cushioning was too much. Like it was like, my foot was in like a spaceship and it’s funny. Cause I remember when I first got those shoes, I would get so many compliments on them and I’m like, thanks. And I didn’t know if it was for real, cause I honestly got them because they came in a wide with my podiatrist’s had recommended it.

Maurice Cherry:
And when I first put it on, I was like, oh, so this is what it feels like to walk without foot pain. Like now the shoe actually like, but I still have that one for every now and then, but I just bought three pairs of shoes recently.

Maurice Cherry:
I don’t know if this is because I got the vaccine and I feel like I need to go out in the world, but I got three new pairs of shoes recently and they’re different in different ways. So one is a Fila shoe.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s the Oakmont mid and my, my podiatrist, I recommended it cause it had a thick sole and he’s like, you kind of need more of like a, almost like a boot type of shoe as opposed to maybe like a low sneaker type or something. And so I have those and those are great. Those are ass-kicking shoes. Like I love those shoes. And then I got a pair of Hoka, Bondi seven. I just got those a couple of days ago actually. And I might send them back. They’re too bouncy. They feel like I’m wearing moons shoes. Like if I needed to jump and reach high things, I would probably keep them. But like I’m walking and I’m like, whoa, like I’m literally, like I literally have a spring in my step is what it feels like

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s meant to be. It’s meant to do that. So it’s good in terms of the functionality. It’s not the functionality you’re looking for.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And then I got another like honestly I got a card in the mail from DSW that was like $25 off a shoe. I’m like, let me just get some more like knock around shoes. And I got some Sketchers, like slip ons there, the ultra flex 2.0 Mercon slip on sneaker and they’re okay. But like one of the shoes fits and the other one is too small because it’s not wide enough for the other foot so I can still wear them. But they’re just like, they’re okay. And I mean, after the discount, they were like 25 bucks. So I’m like, yeah, this is, this is just something I can just throw on and like check the mail or something like that.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So we’re going to get you into some Johns. You’re going be to, you know, say nothing but good things. We gonna see you on the gram And then you had to give all praise if you like it. And if you don’t, you never heard of it. So its all good.

Maurice Cherry:
Ill Put a link to this in the show notes so people can see it. Like I’m looking at it now, the Jackson YC, John, they come in like this lemon ice, yellow, like ch like classroom, chalk yellow, which is an interesting color way. I like it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
They also come in gray suede, I think there’s a gray suede

Maurice Cherry:
Oh yeah, I see I’m scrolling down. I see now

Jeffrey Henderson:
Scroll down.

Maurice Cherry:
The yellow was interesting though!

Jeffrey Henderson:
And that was based on, so my brother, his kidneys started failing his feet, started swelling and he needed wider shoes. And so I put them in some Birkenstocks, which he was good with, but he needed like some actual real shoes to get around in. Cause he’s in Ohio and it was winter. And so I was working with his brand in China and they made the shoe for seniors. The name of the brand is Zulee’s and so, and the shoe was like, I don’t know, it’s kind of the way they created. It was very much like old people shoes.` It’s like, it just had this diet to this sort of function first and it just didn’t look cool. And I was like, yo, can we make these in first suede? And then can we make them in like some monotone colors that I don’t know, you think you like, look good?

Jeffrey Henderson:
And they were like, well, that’s not what old people want. I was like, well, how do you know? Like, and they were like, all right. So they blessed us with some pairs just to try out. [crosstalk 01:18:04] And people were like, yo, I can look good. Like, and we kept getting hit with, I don’t want to wear them out. And it was like,

Maurice Cherry:
oh, interesting.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Because they were all suede. And they were like, I don’t want to get them dirty. Cause they look so nice. It was like, like stop wearing the shoes that you hate because you can get them dirty and wear these. And it was interesting because we made our conservative desks that, you know, we’ll make them in gray and we’ll make them in yellow thinking that, you know what? People will want the gray because that’s normal. But you know, we’ll get some daring people to wear the yellow and it kept going back. Like I think we sold out of the yellows in most sizes. So you have your side, it’ll be lucky. But for the most part we have grays left cause people wanted like they wanted to stand out in the way that wasn’t like clown, but also they didn’t want to look like I am the old person I am. And I think that, again, it goes to, wasn’t so much about the design, the design should work, but sometimes it’s color and materials [crosstalk 01:19:00] that kind of plays into how people feel.

Maurice Cherry:
It is an appropriate amount of swag. Like I’m looking at the photos, like there’s this one where this dude is getting into like a rag top convertible and like his, the color of the car and his shoes are pretty much the same. I’m like, that’s kind of dope. And he’s cause he’s wearing a black jacket. It has on yellow shoes. And then you see like the black rag top in the yellow paint, like okay. Bet. All right, cool. Well, we will definitely talk about that after we stop recording. Cause I would definitely be in the market for these look, these look great. And it’s interesting that there’s this personal story behind the design too. What I get, you know, from just talking with you and learning about your history and everything is that eventually you always bring it back to the work, which I think is something that is indicative of people that really have a passion behind what it is that they do.

Maurice Cherry:
Like even with the name of your studio being “And Them” like you’re taking the onus and the focus like off of you, it’s really about how the work is being received in the world and how people are using it. Which I think is super, not just, I think super important, but also super inspirational for people to see, because I think especially for younger designers there.

Maurice Cherry:
can be this, want to kind of do the biggest flashiest stuff all the time. Or like, like that’s the stuff that they want to do that they feel like may point out the thing in their career or like put them on the map or something like that. And really if the work that you’re able to do is like really changing people’s lives and affected them. That’s hopefully just as, as good as a takeaway from the work that you do.

Jeffrey Henderson:
No, I think that’s well said. I think even the work that you’re doing, like you talked about, like it took you a number of podcasts and a number of like folks in the outside, like co-sign for credibility to be there with other people. But the reality is you are going to do it because you thought it needed to be there. And I think that’s very important. So people don’t understand that sometimes people won’t come out to you first show people won’t come out and see like the first game you play in cars may not be great. But if you know why you’re there and you keep working on your craft, you get better.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And that’d be great, but if you know why you’re there and you keep working on your craft and you get better, I think it then pays off, and it doesn’t always have to be, “Did I have the biggest show on the planet?” Sometimes it’s just about, “Did I do really good work and were people happy?”

Jeffrey Henderson:
So, no, it’s definitely whenever we can use our skills to make friends and family happier, and when they bring us new friends and family that we can work with, we’re happy to use our skillset to make other lives better.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I don’t know that we technically announced it. I guess they announced it. We’re working with this Reinvention Lab out of Texas, this group out of Teach for America to kind of… We ran a shoe contest, and they got to actually find organizations within their group to design shoes and they got to work on it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And what’s interesting is there’s going to be a winner, and we’re actually going to sell some of the shoes that they made. And they were like, “Oh yeah, we don’t care if we won any more.” Just going through the presentation process, how designers look at things, how they have conversations about things… Just the design process was new to them. And that helped them understand what they bring to education and what they bring to laying out curriculum, which I sort of, I don’t know, I hang out with Chris Emdin, whose HipHopEd, and the way he talks about pedagogy. Those are things that I take internally as normal, but they had to go through this class. They had to do this competition to take in and be like, “Oh, design thinking is not just for designers. It helps us.” And so that was really gratifying to see. Or even just our approach and our process could bring, I don’t know, something to other people.

Maurice Cherry:
And speaking of school, I mean, you’re on the advisory board for a school in New York, the Business of Sports School. And most recently you became a board member at Knoll. For you, what’s the importance of sitting on boards like this?

Jeffrey Henderson:
It’s… Another thing that I sort of got dragged into, and some of it’s because I’m old, I hang around old people and they are on boards and they say, “You’d be good at this.” I didn’t really know what a board did or what it meant. Now that I’m on two, I can sort of surmise that it’s definitely one of the, for most businesses, the biggest form of sponsorship you can get. Because as much as mentorship and execution are good, if the people who are sort of guiding the people who are in charge understand the entire, I think, operation and process, the better it is for the people who are doing work and the more diverse of an angle you get. And so at BOSS, this a sports school, it was…

Jeffrey Henderson:
And one of my best friends on the board, we were having this discussion around college visits. And so BOSS is a school in Hell’s Kitchen, most of the kids come from the Bronx and Harlem. In terms of who could attend, they’re changing up a little bit how who gets into the school, but it’s definitely an open enrollment. It’s not based on higher test scores and they don’t pick who they get into the school. It’s just kind of an open free-for-all in terms of kids that get to the school.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So it’s not built on kids who are automatically going to Harvard who have family history and education and college background. And so one of the things that they’ve promoted, I think for good reason, is they want to make sure that kids have an understanding of what college is, and so they go on college tours. And so the college tours were happening around junior year, and I said, “No, it’s too late.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And my friend Marie, who works for SMY, her son at the same time… I think both of our sons were in college, were in high school and around junior year at the same time. And she chimed in and was like, “No, you have to understand. My son, this is the biggest time of his life. He’s visiting all these colleges. And it’s really important. It’s shaping who they are.” And I was like, “Yeah, but your son has heard about college since he was five years old. Some of these kids, none of their family is going or has gone to college. And so this is a new concept. They’re expecting them to go work. Some of these kids, their family is wondering why they’re finishing high school, literally wondering why they’re finishing high school, when they could go work and put food on the table. It’s a different conversation. So can we please take them freshman year, even just to one college campus? Normalize the idea of college in their brains before they’re taking an ACT, before they’re taking a prep test. Can we do that?”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And what’s funny is she saw that, and she was like, “Oh.” And because this was happening at the board level, this is well before the teachers had to choose where they were spending money or where they were scheduling time, and so offering a more diversity of voice, at a school like that, I think was powerful. But there’s quite a bit of diversity on that board. When I got to Knoll, there wasn’t that much of diversity of thought on the board. And it was interesting, because when it first came up, I was like, “Are you inviting me on the board because I’m Black?” And they were like, “Well, that’s helpful.” And I was like, “Oh [crosstalk 01:26:00].

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I was like, “Well, are you inviting me on the board because I’m creative?” And they were like, “Yeah, it’s a design company, and we don’t have creative people on the board. There’s a misstep there.” And I was like, “Oh.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And then later on, someone was like, “Yeah, scary enough. You’re also young.” I was like, “Oh, I haven’t been young in a while.” But I was the youngest person on the board. And I think, again, being able to have diverse levels of thought at a board level where it’s really only about sponsorship, it’s really about giving direction to the real leaders and responsible folks who run something, being able to give them a sounding board and holding them to task on, “Are you getting the most out of your people? And by the most, are you just even listening and can you hear their voices?”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I think when boards start to diversify, I think… And I mean, the same is true in C-suite. I have a whole thing about, “I love all my friends who are D and I experts at every company, but you wouldn’t need them so much if the C-suite was diverse. You’d have other problems to fix because then those folks would make sure that there was a diverse hiring thing.” Maybe not all the time, but there’d be more folks to sort of like, “Let’s get after diversity in bigger ways.” And I think to me, the board level helps usher and push along those movements. So I’m very, very happy that folks sort of tapped me on the shoulder. One, I didn’t look like the average board person. I also went in saying I wasn’t going to act like the normal board person. And I think they were actually quite excited that I wouldn’t be. So I was blessed to end up in conversations that they wanted me there, as opposed to they felt like their hands were tied about having me.

Maurice Cherry:
So I mentioned before we started recording that I had done my research. I read through a lot of articles that you had written up on the GwoodThin.gs blog, and they’re also syndicated on Medium.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I apologize for [crosstalk 01:27:58].

Maurice Cherry:
No, no. I actually want to talk about that. What does writing do for you as a designer?

Jeffrey Henderson:
Writing is probably, and this plays into, I don’t know, the background of introversion of I stumble across my words. If I’m having a conversation, I’m one of those people who goes, “Oh, I wish I would have thought about that when we’re talking” because I can’t think on my feet like that. And so being able to write, a skill that my sister made sure I… She saw that I had a little bit of a talent. My sister’s 13 years older than me. So she saw I had a little talent and made sure my teachers knew and forced me to write more and more when I was in high school. And that just became a way for me to, almost in a journal way, sort of write down what my thoughts were when I knew I couldn’t finish them in other ways, or I really didn’t feel comfortable talking to other people.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And also allowed me to… And when you get old and have kids, you sort of see that, well, your kids aren’t always listening to you. And I, for sure, didn’t always listen to my parents or my elders, but if you write it down and leave it so that when they’re ready to take any of the information, it’s there for them. And so for me to write it down like this… And people bring up some of those Medium posts all the time like, “Oh, I read such and such.” I don’t even remember writing it. It’s from 2016. And I might’ve just copied and pasted it from a Tumblr post from 2012. But it’s more of my journal, this was kind of going on or a thought that popped up in my head that I may have wanted… or someone asked a question that I wanted to answer for that person, but also wanted to answer for multiple people.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So being able to write, to me… And it’s funny because people often talk like, “Oh, you write the same way you talk.” And it’s like, “Well, that should be the same way with everybody, I would think.” And so I don’t use complete sentences, and I’ll stop in the middle of a sentence and just go into the next thing because it’s really just my thought… And my kids hate it. They’ll read and be like, “You have no focus.” Because they took real writing classes and I’m like, [crosstalk 01:29:57]. “You’re smarter than me because I can send you to a school that you can be smarter than me, so leave me alone.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
But for me, it’s sort of this unfiltered way of throwing down whatever is in my head. And I might evolve six months past whatever I wrote, but my journal is sort of me documenting my thoughts so that if it’s helpful to somebody at a time, it’s good. And also there might be hope that there’s some things that I’m sort of fighting against or don’t want that one day it’ll be sort of useless because they’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, we don’t have those problems anymore. We’ve moved onto new problems.” But hopefully that becomes the case.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I have to say I could not stop reading. I think you’re a fantastic writer. I think you should keep it up.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Thank you. No one knows that I’m paying you in shoes to say that, right? Okay. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
Look, I was going to say that before the shoes. No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. No seriously, though, I mean, as I read through it, I think it’s important not just as you’re talking about to push your thoughts down, but as you also said, for other people to see, and not just your kids, but for other designers to stumble upon, “This is what it’s like for an agency owner when they’re working on projects,” or, “How do you think about the work that you do in your creative process?” That kind of stuff tends to not really get shared, certainly not from other black designers in that way.

Jeffrey Henderson:
I was listening to, I think one of the interviews you had before, and I think you brought up that you could throw something in a Tweet and how deep does it go, but how long does it actually stick? It kind of gets lost in the universe.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I think when you actually write a book, there’s a little bit more staying power. And I think those long reads that challenge you to follow a story that imparts information, I think, are very powerful. And I think there’s also just… Some people would rather have the 300-page book about a topic and some people want a TikTok version of the same thing. And I think everything’s not for everyone. So how I communicate may not be for everybody. I apologize that you had to read through all those, but for some people they enjoy reading them and some people are like, “Yeah, I read the first three lines, and I was good. Way to go.” And that’s okay. [crosstalk 01:32:05].

Maurice Cherry:
No, I read through all of them because some of them you’re talking about different projects that you’ve worked on. There was one even about the recent board appointment that you had mentioned. So it was just good to sort of see it, see how you perceive the world through your eyes and your words and how that all… Because for someone like me, I wouldn’t know what that’s like, but to read your words on it, it’s like, “Oh, so that’s what it’s like.” Just to kind of see that perspective is important.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And it’s really powerful when you don’t have enough voices in jobs from people who look like you who might be able to say things and sound like you, not only for you to hear and go, “Oh, okay. This is what it’s like when I get there.” But also I think I wrote one article about of the nicest guys I know on the planet. He posted on his Instagram a photo of the Nike design offsite. It was a picture of all the Nike designers and pretty much all white folk with… You can pick out the three or four people who aren’t white.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jeffrey Henderson:
And when I saw that, I had anxiety just looking at the picture. Because I remember going to those offsites going like, “This is weird,” and not knowing who to tell or who to say it to except for people who were there.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And we were all kind of looking at each other like, “Yeah. But it is what it is.” Someone just posted the phrase, “It is what it is” on Twitter. And I was sort of like, “That’s a very dark expression for Black folk because it’s almost like you’re giving up, like a loss of hope.” But “it is what it is.” It’s not what I think other people might think it means. It’s definitely like, “We’re done here. There’s nothing we can do. It is what it is.”

Jeffrey Henderson:
And I think changing that at Nike became something so many of us focused on that, I don’t know… I don’t know if we were able to put a dent in it as much as we wanted to, but it definitely some days felt it is what it is.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And that picture brought out all that anxiety. And I told him. I was like, “Yo, are you okay? I’m going to actually use the article. I’m going to write your name and say what a good dude you are but also explain this is the truth.” And it’s funny how many people who reached out to me after, on both sides who were like, “Yo, I thought this and I didn’t know how to feel, and I didn’t know what to say.” Depending on, like, on each side, which is kind of interesting. And there were some people were like, “Yo, you never acted this way when you were there.” And it’s like, “Maybe I did and you didn’t notice.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Or, “Maybe when you knew me, I was going with ‘it is what it is.’ So what’s the point in telling you about it?”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
So writing is a way to sort of, I don’t know, let people see what it really was, even if you couldn’t do it in real time.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think it can also sort of serve as a mirror back to you, particularly in terms of colloquial language. You have one post on here called Who All Gone Be There, which is so common, I think, for any person of color they’re going somewhere that’s mixed company.

Jeffrey Henderson:
[crosstalk 01:35:12] talking about.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. You’re like, “Who all gone be there? I need to know what I’m stepping into,” or something like that. Or even there’ll be posts that are named after song titles. There’s one called Shook Ones or something like that. Or even one where you’re breaking down the cost of a shoe, you know, or the materials and everything that go into it because people will, I think, certainly with the inflated sneaker economy now, people will look at a shoe and wonder why it costs that much, but not thinking of everything that has to go into it with research and materials and all that sort of stuff.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Right. And what’s funny is, I think… And I watch what’s happened in the last 20 years with journalism is that, I don’t know, maybe 20 years ago there would be, especially sports journalists, I think that’s kind of where it started with like, “Oh, this is the hip hop journalist, and he speaks in a vernacular that connects to the people and uses hip hop slang,” and yada, yada, yada. It’s one of those. Or “Y’all just letting him write and just write what he would write to his friends.” And so for me, I think that connection point of calling it Shook Ones is not… I’m not trying to connect with you. I’m not apologizing. It’s just like, “You know where it’s from. I know where it’s from. So that’s how we communicate. That’s how communication works. I don’t know any Billy Joel songs to impart to you how I’m feeling about it, so I can’t do that. And if I could, then I would connect with… Are there Billy Joel people listening?” No shade to Billy Joel, but that’s sort of… I’m just talking the way I talk in the group chats with folk.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah,

Jeffrey Henderson:
So it’s sort of… And I think that was… And writing helped me… I talk about this a lot. I grew up swearing like nobody’s business, and I don’t know if we cool. We know what you like. I could swear left or right. Writing helps me like, “All right, let’s change some of those words. Sometimes it bes what it bes.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And to your point, it also, you know, even, I think, as it reflected through the makeup of your team, it shows them that being able to express themselves authentically doesn’t make them any less of a professional.

Jeffrey Henderson:
You know what’s wild is… And I talk about this a lot with folks who are of my age group, who are in this weird late forties, early fifties, where we sort of went through a history of trying to code switch. And like I said, I don’t know if I’m necessarily good at it. I think I tried it enough, but I don’t know that anybody bought it. But the idea that young folks don’t care to code switch.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Henderson:
They just show up how they show up and talking to folks who are my age. It’s like, “Yo, don’t get caught out there code switching because the young folks would call you out on it and they ain’t listening. They don’t have time for you to be worrying about what you got a bonnet on at the airport. It’s just not [crosstalk 01:38:08].

Jeffrey Henderson:
It should just be you every day. And it’s difficult because we came from an age group where we were taught when you show up, you’re in their space. You need to respect [crosstalk 01:38:18].

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, respectability politics.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Exactly. And it’s sort of… I was lucky enough to… And I say this all the time. I have amazing credit only because when I got my Discover Card in college, it was like, “Yo, you can either pay this much or you can pay this little bit and all these other numbers about what you pay for the next six months.” And I was like, “I’m too lazy to do that. I’m just going to pay the big number.” So I never had debt because I just paid the big number. So it’s not because I was smart and knew, “Ooh, I want to get good credit.” It was I just don’t want to deal with the headache.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Same is true about… I was just like, “I don’t want to wear a tie to work ever. I don’t want one of those jobs. I’m not going to go work there. I just want to wear sneakers to work.” I just chose that, not knowing it was going to be… I didn’t choose this because it would make me money. I didn’t choose it because it would provide me money to buy a house and not have to assimilate so much. I did it because I just liked sneakers and I liked the culture. And I think young folks are more and more for the technology to exist, they get to do the same. They’re just trying to figure out what it all means because they’re being told by older people, “Oh, it’s adulthood time. So now you have to follow in line and you’ve got to wear your hair a certain way.” And they’re like, “No, thank you. But [crosstalk 01:39:33].” So I think it’s cool that people can be who they’re going to be and old people like me get to help them do that.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing?

Jeffrey Henderson:
Yo, this drives me and everyone else crazy that I want to be able to just walk down the street and not have to go anywhere and everything comes to Harlem because we made it possible. I went from, I don’t know, doing product design a few years back to ad and content creation. And now I’m missing a call right now about NFTs, which I had no idea about, but, “Okay, let’s go learn about NFTs and the process and the drops and all this other stuff.” And it’s one of those… I think the strategy mindset, the creative mindset, and a little bit of, I think, luck along the way of having some wins, folks invite us to parties, whether it’s just me or my entire team. I think people trusting my team as they get better. And the team’s starting to have their own sort of mentees below them to kind of grow the business for all of us.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And even if they go run and create their own agency, it’s all good. I kind of want this fun growth to keep, I think… I used to say making stuff was cool, and now I’m to the point where making stuff has taken a different personality, given my thoughts on sustainability. And sometimes it’s not making stuff is the answer, but figuring out how…

Jeffrey Henderson:
My biggest thing in terms of conversations in the last probably three months has been on housing justice here in New York City. And I think that’s not the standard conversation for maybe a creative, but I think the thought process and the connections and the ideation that myself and my team, the folks I hang out with and bring to the table just, I don’t know, open up the vision on some of those things. And I think that’s what I mean when I say putting things… And I’ve always said this. If you can create, I don’t know, some systemic change in Harlem and Atlanta and Oakland, in places like Detroit, I think if that starts to stick and ownership becomes a big piece of it, I think there’s some conversations that are really going to be had.

Jeffrey Henderson:
And then their less talking about, “Oh, well, I don’t know if we’ll give them a chance, but we’re good. We did this. We’re good.” And I think that’s where I’d want to be. Even if it’s not me, I’m just hanging around people who are doing those things. That’s my five years from now.

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

Jeffrey Henderson:
So definitely come hang out… For the most part, if you want to find out about all the fun we’re having, find us at GoodThin.gs, G-O-O-D-T-H-I-N.gs. I’m sure it’ll be in the bio and byline. That’s where we have our fun. That’s where we give back to the community. That’s where we show how we hang out. You want to book us for business? Definitely come to andthem.com. We keep it professional. You can write us checks and we’re all good. Ready to do stuff. And then definitely, I don’t know, we’re making some shoes. We’re doing apparel next. You can see NinetyNineProducts and Jackson YC. my guy [Royce 01:42:42] is doing Silk City. We got a few hustles going on, some fun. So please, you don’t have to read all the reading [inaudible 01:42:49] is doing. Greatly appreciate it, but you can come check out and see some of the creative stuff we’re doing.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s good reading, y’all. Don’t listen to him. It’s good reading. Jeffrey Henderson, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think, you know, from hearing your story, from looking at your work and, again, even from the research that I’ve done, to me, there is a certain deep sense of thoughtfulness that you bring to your work that perhaps I don’t know if you even recognize how thoughtful it is in terms of doing work for the community and making sure that you’re creating this nurturing space for young creatives and everything. I think it’s something that more of us need to see in the industry. We need to see, of course, I think just more Black agency owners, but also more Black agency owners that are kind of bucking the trend or changing the paradigm or showing that it’s okay to be thoughtful and do great work like this and not have to stick to, you know, any sort of archaic or a draconian style of running a business, that you can do great work and have fun and it can be a nurturing space.

Maurice Cherry:
And I definitely see that care and thoughtfulness that you bring to your work, and I’m appreciative of it. I’m sure that folks listening think that way as well. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Jeffrey Henderson:
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be on that list of hundreds of people who you bring in, I think. Visibility too. I love what you’re doing. So however I can be a part of this, I’m happy to help. Thank you.

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We accomplish this through graphic design, presentations and workshops around I-D-E-A: inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

If you’re curious to learn how to combine a passion for I-D-E-A with design, check us out at brevityandwit.com.

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Julian Williams

It’s a new month, and I am beyond excited to share with you my interview with Julian Williams. He may be young in age, but his impressive body of work rivals those of designers with years more experience. We talked a few months after he completed work on the Biden for American campaign as their lead opposition brand designer. Pretty cool!

We spoke about how he landed on the campaign, and Julian shared the differences between working with clients in the U.S. versus clients in Europe. From there, Julian took me through his history as a designer, including working for fashion designers Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld, a stint as an intern at &Walsh, and being a designer at Nike while in The Netherlands. Julian also shared how his passion for voguing and the ballroom scene helps influence his work, and he gives some great advice for graphic designers out there looking to find their own style. Julian’s motto is about making good work with good people — something we can all take to heart!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
So tell us who you are and what you do.

Julian Williams:
Hi. My name is Julian Williams, and I am a graphic designer and art director based in Amsterdam.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Before we get more into what you do, and your background, and everything, tell me how are you feeling right now? I know it’s late. For folks that are listening, we’re recording it’s 5:00 PM ish my time, but it’s several hours ahead where Julian is.

Julian Williams:
No. I’m feeling wonderful. We’ve had a lot of really good, sunny weather here in the Netherlands after the canals froze over about two or three weeks ago. And I think that’s been keeping my mood very, very high. I’ve been having some good work lately too. So I’m feeling quite happy and quite good.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How has the year gone so far for you?

Julian Williams:
It’s been great, actually. I think now that kind of … in the Netherlands, we’ve been in our own lockdown. And we also have had for the majority of this year 2021, a curfew. But I think we’ve all kind of acclimated to that and are just kind of used to it. We can’t go out past a certain times and I’m just like I’ll get some projects done at home. I’ve been playing guitar a lot and writing some music when I’m not designing, or working for clients, or doing some personal work. So yeah, I’m doing pretty good. I think the year’s been going great so far.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. What would you say the general, I guess feeling is like in the city? I know that might be a little difficult to gauge.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. It’s interesting here. I’m in Amsterdam, which some people really look towards I think when they think of the Netherlands. And there’s a lot of controversy going on right now with the pandemic. There’ve been a lot of protests centered in Amsterdam of people who don’t agree with lockdown measures. And it is creating quite a bit of tension. There’s even been small instances of violence around the country based around lockdowns and stuff. So I think things feel a little tense. And also, people have kind of been doing what they want for a while and not being as careful I think, as other European countries. Like it took us longer to have a mask mandate than a lot of other countries. So yeah, I think there’s a little bit of tension in the air. But mainly, people are just kind of sticking to themselves and going about their days. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Interesting. I figured America would have a monopoly on people acting in public around-

Julian Williams:
I thought the same actually. I was like oh man. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was like, “I’m in Europe. We have everything together. We got it going.” And lately in the last few months, the Netherlands has also not been doing so great with their vaccine rollout. And I’ve been talking to friends in the U.S. who have gotten their shots and stuff already. And I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to be August or something by the time I get vaccinated.”

Maurice Cherry:
I feel like it might be that way here as well. I mean, I’m in Georgia. Which is I think as of our recording, the state that is the worst in terms of vaccine rollout. If it’s not the worst, it’s one of the worst. It’s circling the bottom, 49 or 50, something like that. So we’re not doing too great either. But I can wait. Really, I was concerned about whether or not my folks got the shots and my grandparents got the shots, which they did. So I’m like I can wait. I work from home. I’ve already had to do this for a year. I can wait-

Julian Williams:
That’s the feeling I have too. I’m very fortunate with the kind of work that I have as well. So I’m quite good being at home. A lot of the stuff that I like to do, I can enjoy in my living room. So yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Talk to me about what kind of projects you’re working on now.

Julian Williams:
Right now, it’s quite interesting because … so I have entered into the world of freelancing, which is not something that I’ve been crazy used to before, but it’s something I’m loving a lot right now. And I am actually working with a company called Meow Wolf that was started in Santa Fe, New Mexico where I went to university. And they have acquired some spaces in Las Vegas and Denver. And they make these kinds of insane, it’s so difficult to describe what I’m working on now. These insane interactive, almost museum spaces that are also story-based. Each place that they acquire kind of has its own narrative. And I’m doing work for their space that’s going to be opening later in the year in Denver, Colorado. And I’m really excited to be working on this because a lot of my colleagues are former professors and classmates of mine, who I saw all the time in Santa Fe. So it’s really been great to kind of reconnect with those people after so many years and make cool stuff like we used to.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. So you still kind of keep in touch with folks, and friends, and everything from back home?

Julian Williams:
Yeah. I definitely make a point to have conversations with former classmates, and friends, and teachers about things I think are interesting and design. Because when I was in university, I really believe that those were the people and the parts of studying that gave me the most. Just talking to people about things that they were interested in. And yeah, I make an effort to keep that going, even though we’re not in school anymore. And I think people feel really engaged by that sometimes.

Maurice Cherry:
How is the design scene for you in Amsterdam?

Julian Williams:
I love it. And I feel really happy that I had the opportunity to study American design in the United States, and then just kind of get thrust into this other design world. It’s interesting because I started my career in Europe, but I was studying in the United States. I feel like there’s kind of a seriousness to design in Europe that obviously in some parts of the United States exists as well. But there’s just something about the way that people approach the execution of design that I think is quite rooted in history and design movements from the past. I mean, in the Netherlands, you can see the influences of Mondrian and quite prolific artists and designers all the time in repeated and interesting ways. So yeah, it’s interesting. It’s quite cultural here. It’s quite serious.

Julian Williams:
And then I think I’m also fortunate because I’m in Amsterdam, and it’s such a multicultural city, that it’s great to see outsiders like me come in and have a play with that kind of design language, and kind of bring our own taste into that.

Maurice Cherry:
Now I know that you just came off of a pretty big design gig. You were working for the Biden for President campaign.

Julian Williams:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Tell me about that.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. Coming onto it was rather random. So pandemic is happening. I’m in my apartment in the Netherlands. I was sitting on my couch. And this person I had never met before in my life named Robyn Kanner sends me an email saying, “Hi, I’m creative advisor for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. And we’d like to talk to you about potentially coming on and working for the campaign.” And it was quite a process from that first email to signing the contract and being like okay, I’m part of the team now. But gosh, it was a fantastic, exciting, fiery, wild, interesting design experience that I feel so fortunate to have been part of. And I met incredible people working on that team on something that we all felt was so important.

Maurice Cherry:
Was it difficult working with, I would imagine the team is mostly U.S. based, but was it difficult trying to kind of acclimate to that?

Julian Williams:
Well yes, you are correct that it was U.S. based. I was actually the only person on the campaign based outside the United States. It was not difficult for me though, because I am quite used to adjusting my life to other time zones. My mom is German, and my dad is American, and we’ve always moved around the world as a family and had to talk to family in the states when we live in Germany, and talked to family in Germany when we’re living somewhere else. And I also told them I’m willing to adjust my entire life to work on this. If I need to sleep a few hours in the daylight and then be up all night, I will. It’s funny that’s what I thought it would be. And then it actually just ended up being I was just awake as often as possible to work on stuff. Because you never know what’s going to happen when the president gets COVID and then you have to make content based on that or not make content based on that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And you were working specifically with opposition research, right?

Julian Williams:
Yes. So in my interview, it was funny. I remember Robyn Kanner asking me, “How would you feel about designing content that I don’t know, maybe attacks the president of the United States?” I was just laughing. I was just like, “I feel amazing about doing that. And I also have a bunch of content that I’ve been making for years on my personal platforms showing that not only can I do it, but I can do it quickly, and I can do it in interesting ways. So let’s get to it.”

Julian Williams:
And yeah, then I was hired as a middleweight designer on the campaign, and then I was quickly promoted to lead opposition brand designer. And I developed with Robyn the art direction for how the Biden campaign talked about the Trump administration and the things that the president had and mainly hadn’t done.

Julian Williams:
It was a really interesting opportunity for me because I have a large background in really graphic design, a little bit of art direction. But I loved this because I have quite a political background. Before I just decided to study graphic design, I actually wanted to go to West Point and study political science, serve in the military, and then go into politics. That was my plan. And I had been talking to my parents about it for a lot of time up until my last semester of high school when I did a complete 180 and I was like, “No, I’m going to be working with something visual for sure. Or I’ll go crazy.” But I’m so happy I got to do this because a large part I feel of what I was doing was strategy-based. Stuff would happen and we had to react to it quite quickly, especially around debate time. And I actually really loved the engagement and almost weirdly thrill of having to quickly concepts visualize and then execute designs based on things happening in real time. I loved it. It was quite interesting.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s quite a shift. And I’ll ask you what it was just growing up and everything. But yeah, that’s a go from wanting to be in the military and politics to switching over to graphic design, that feels very sort of left brain, right brain in a way.

Julian Williams:
In high school, actually I did a lot of things in high school. I was in theater, I was running cross country. I was in choir. I was like, “Let me do everything.” But my actual kind of baby was speech and debate. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the NFL, the National Forensics League.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Julian Williams:
So the National Forensics League is this thing in universities and high schools. It’s an institution in the United States that is the main program for public speaking debates and extemporaneous speaking in the United States. And when I was in high school, I participated in debate tournaments around Texas. And in my last year, I forgot if I represented El Paso or Texas in the national competition in Birmingham, Alabama. I loved to debate. And my specific category was CX debate, which is evidence based debate. And I loved it. And I’m really happy that I did that when I did, because I think that has made me quite comfortable going from verbal communication to visual communication. And then talking about that visual communication when I need to.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s interesting that you were able to kind of transfer those skills over like that.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. Yeah. It really worked out like that.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at your time on the campaign, what do you remember most?

Julian Williams:
I remember working with really strong women and a really diverse team of people. A lot of colors on our team. A lot of gender identities, a lot of sexual identities. My bosses Robyn Kanner and Carahna Magwood are two amazing, intelligent women. Also just really inspiring. Carahna is a mom. She was deputy design director of our team. And now she’s working at the White House I believe as creative director. She’s running creative at the White House. I forgot what the official title is. But she’s raising a five-year-old and guiding an entire team of designers, reacting to content, driving her kid to school while on meetings with us. And I remember just thinking, “Gosh, this woman is Wonder Woman. Wow, I’m so inspired by this.” And it really became this little family. And it was also so interesting because no presidential campaign has ever been like this, and hopefully no one ever will be.

Julian Williams:
A bunch of us never met. I was on the other side of the world getting on phone calls with people who are just waking up. We had a morning meeting every day. We had an evening meeting every day, every single day. Every single day for four months that I worked on the campaign. And I’m so happy we worked the way … for something that serious, I feel like we didn’t have a choice but to work as a family. And I think the thing that I just remember is just how diverse, and engaging, and interesting, and fun, and exciting this family was.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Folks that have listened to the show knows that I’ve worked on a political campaign before. It was just a mayoral campaign. And I was on there for I think from February to November. So 10 months-ish doing design, and new media, and everything. And this was back in, I’m dating myself. This was 2009. So this was right after Obama got elected. And this was the first set of real municipal races in the country that saw what Obama did with social media, and with great graphic design, and everything. And they wanted that. I’d say every candidate that I had run across including the one that I worked for, they wanted that Obama sort of shine and everything. And it was so interesting trying to navigate that time because there was no handbook.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, the people that did that first campaign, some of them of course went off to the White House. But nobody really knew how to do any of this stuff. I mean, now it’s common. Now if you’re running, you have to have all these things kind of in your toolbox, in your campaign toolbox. But back then, I had found some girl on BlackPlanet that did custom MySpace pages. Again, dating myself. We had a custom MySpace page. We had a Flickr page and a Meetup page. We tried to get on every sort of social network that we thought we could find constituents on or at least try to connect with people on. And it was just such a different time from then and now.

Maurice Cherry:
But I know what you mean about those daily meetings. And you really get close with those people in a very short amount of time. I mean, I feel like any campaign, it’s like a little mini company in a way. And then of course once the campaign ends, everyone kind of goes their separate ways. Some go with the candidates, some don’t. For me, I was at that time also starting out with my own studio. And it was so beneficial to me afterwards. Because I had now this Rolodex of contacts that I could reach out to.

Julian Williams:
I do feel like that as well. It’s also interesting that you mentioned people wanting what Obama had on his campaign in their campaigns. Because I think in the world of design that happens, and it did happen for our campaign, with really simple things. Like after Obama’s campaign, everyone wanted to use the font Gotham. A bunch of people were using Gotham. And it’s interesting something that we did. So before I entered the Biden campaign, I hated gradients. Just gradients. I was like, “I’m not putting gradients on anything that I make. They’re hideous, no place for them.” And freaking Robyn Kanner made me fall in love with gradients, made our entire team fall in love with gradients. And she was constantly talking about how gradients were so she used the word luscious. It’s actually kind of an inside joke within our campaign, this thing of luscious gradients or something that we applied to a lot of the visuals that we made. And then kind of towards the end of the campaign and after our campaign, a bunch of other campaigns like the runoff election in Georgia, they were using gradients as well. Which is not something that’s very common to I think a lot of political campaigns before. So it’s interesting how this stuff becomes cyclical and these influences kind of trickle down. They wrote the book. So let’s work in the way that they worked.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. No, I think we’re starting to see a lot more … I mean, this is probably a weird observation, but we’re starting to see a lot more design in politics in several different ways. I think one, of course in the way that we’re talking about, which is for advertising a candidate or particular cause. Usually a candidate is using some combination of red, white, and blue in a very sort of discrete fashion where you don’t see things like different topography, or gradients, or halftones, or any of that other sort of stuff. But I think also what we can see from just what’s happened in this country over the past few years is how design can be used in a negative fashion to disinform people to have wrong information out there, all that sort of stuff. So I think it’s kind of always around, but it feels like it’s certainly become a lot more prevalent and known to more people over the past few years just how much design has been kind of a double-edged sword in politics.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. That was something that I had to, I feel I applied a lot of that kind of research into the way I went about creating the art direction for the opposition of the campaign. And it comes directly back to the debate world that I was talking about before. In CX debates, often there’s a topic every year. And at the time when I was a senior, it was transportation infrastructure. And the main topic for the entire country or all schools the entire year was should the United States increase investment in its transportation infrastructure? And you actually have to learn to both affirm and negate that statement. You have to play both sides. And I always feel like understanding that is so vital in getting your message across.

Julian Williams:
Often now, I find myself telling younger designers when they’re making something, like if they’re making a poster, don’t go to designers asking for the opinions. Obviously you should, you should get as much help as you can. But in a way, the people who aren’t designers are the ones who you’re communicating to. And that was something I tried to always keep in the back of my mind to think about it’s best if we get as many votes from everyone so it’s good to understand the viewpoint of everyone and the way that people view the current president, if I’m trying to create content that is attacking him, and decreasing his power, and making him look smaller than he is. That was something that my team and I felt maybe hadn’t been explored as much in previous campaigns.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And also, I have to say of course you all did a fantastic job. After the campaign ended, did you have an opportunity to work for the administration, or did you just decide to sort of stay freelance?

Julian Williams:
Yeah. So I actually did a little bit of work for the inauguration just for a hot second. That was really nice. And everyone had the opportunity to kind of apply to positions at the White House. I kind of wanted to get back to making more connections. And I think that’s kind of the way that I’m approaching the work that I look for right now. I say that my biggest dream is to make good work with good people. And I think this last year, that’s really become a reality, and I’ve had a taste of how amazing that is. And I want to just keep meeting more people and working on diverse things. And I do definitely see myself coming back to the political world in the future. Although, I think the thing that drove me to do it this year, with this last year was just the urgency of this campaign had to go the way that it did, or so much would have gone wrong.

Julian Williams:
And I’m really happy that they hired me because I brought a whole different perspective anyone else who was working on the campaign I feel, in the sense that I was telling my coworkers, “This affects the whole world. If this man remains president, there are people in the Middle East who are going to have a lot of problems.” My two countries had a fantastic relationship with each other before Donald Trump was president. And it actually really pains me to see the two leaders of the countries that I’m from having the conflict that they do.

Julian Williams:
So there was a whole lot of other things kind of riding on this election for me. And to have an opportunity to be a direct part of effecting that in any way was really important to me. So I feel myself being drawn towards working in politics in the future. I kind of hope that I don’t feel such a drive and need to be involved in politics in the way that I did last.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. That’s probably for the best. I’m sort of speaking from experience. Again, not at the level that you have. But yeah, it’s good to have that experience to be able to work in that sort of crucible of creating work, but it’s so much better to be outside of it. You just gain a different perspective. So yeah. You mentioned Santa Fe. Is that where you grew up?

Julian Williams:
Where I grew up is a loaded question. Okay. How much time do you have? So I was born in the Southwest of Germany in a place called Kaiserslautern. My mom and I’s hometown is Ramstein-Miesenbach, which is right next to Kaiserslautern. And I lived there for five years. And then my family moved to El Paso, Texas. And El Paso has always kind of been what I consider to be my American hometown. We spent a lot of time in Germany and El Paso because my dad was in the army for 30 years.

Julian Williams:
So we were in Germany. Then we went to Texas. We were in Virginia a bit, we went back to Germany. And then high school time, ended up back in El Paso, Texas. So I was in the Southwest. And that’s kind of what got my eye towards Santa Fe. And Santa Fe, New Mexico one is my favorite place that I’ve been to in the United States. And I think it’s the most beautiful place. And it definitely was where I needed to be.

Julian Williams:
I have a special connection to Santa Fe, Mexico City, And Amsterdam. I also spent a lot of university time traveling to Mexico City. My school had a sister school in Mexico. And a lot of my friends live in Mexico City and got quite close to that city. But those three places, I just had this feeling. Whenever I was there, I was like, “I’m meant to be here right now.” And it’s not a feeling I’ve had about anywhere else that I’ve lived or been. And yeah, I feel really fortunate to have been in Santa Fe when I was there. It’s such an amazing place. And Santa Fe University of Art and Design, I kind of describe it as a lovely experiment gone wrong. Because unfortunately, the school closed down the year after I graduated. But for the time that I was there, it was fantastic. That such talented engaging students and teachers, we were kind of like this little artist colony. Just making stuff, just wiling out on some art. It was great.

Maurice Cherry:
How many people have asked you if you know the way to Santa Fe?

Julian Williams:
I feel like actually only people in New Mexico ask me that question.

Maurice Cherry:
Interesting. Okay. So with all of this kind of moving around and this really sort of melding and meshing of cultures, I would imagine that you were exposed to a lot of design probably just through all of these different stimuli.

Julian Williams:
Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think I’m really, really fortunate for that to be the case. I mean, I do kind of feel like I have to acknowledge that there’s a little bit of privilege that is associated with that. In the sense that me being a citizen of two countries has a lot of privilege behind it. I can work anywhere in the EU. I can work anywhere in the United States. So now in the last year, I’ve been giving a lot of talks to university students. And I always make sure that I mention that, because it’s not always so easy I feel for people to have some of the experiences that I’ve had. I mean, I definitely have things going against me like working as a Black person in the creative world obviously has its drawbacks around the world. But being a citizen of these places does give me some advantages of having lots of different cultural influence in my work, opportunities to meet people, and work with people, which I feel very fortunate to be a part of. And I hope the stuff that I’m doing is giving back to people around the world in some way.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I was curious about kind of your influences. Because when I look at your work, like the work that you have on Instagram, the work that you have on your website, it’s so strongly topography based.

Julian Williams:
That’s very funny to hear. Sorry, go ahead.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you heard that before?

Julian Williams:
No, it’s so interesting. When I was in university, everyone was afraid of topography. We had a wonderful topography instructor named Arlyn Nathan. Bless her. A fantastic, fantastic teacher. I believe she attended Yale. And all of us were always so scared of typography. Topography is like the most difficult part of graphic design. And I think I still feel some of that. I still feel quite intimidated by typography. But I often find myself engaging with things that intimidate me. So maybe that’s what you’re seeing is me being a bit of a masochist maybe.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I mean there’s that. I think the way that you approach it certainly is in a very kind of I don’t know if I want to say brutalist. First of all, I didn’t go to design school, so I don’t know these terms. But when I see it, it’s in your face. You don’t miss it. There’s no subtlety about it. Which I like. I like that.

Julian Williams:
My actual introduction to design and typography, when I went to university in Santa Fe, I barely actually knew how to navigate the internet. A home computer wasn’t something that … my parents were a little strict. So they were like, “Yeah, do something that’s not on the computer.” So when I got to university, I was quite intimidated because it seemed like everyone knew Photoshop, and people knew their way around the internet. And I definitely didn’t and didn’t even know how to hold a Wacom pen.

Julian Williams:
And actually when I got to university, the thing that I gravitated towards was graffiti and spray paint. My dad was in the military. I wasn’t running around at home with cans of paint, getting into trouble. Because I would have problems when I come home. But when I got to university, it was something I was really interested in. And I think that is kind of my first jump into the world of typography, and communication specifically. I was meeting graffiti writers in Santa Fe. I was spray painting legally, sometimes not so legally, and doing quite in your face messaging things. And I think that is maybe what I see in my work now. My relationship with typography is quite loud and informative, I think. And it’s been quite an evolution from those freshmen days of messing around with some cheap spray paint cans. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Graffiti. That’s interesting. I don’t know why I’m not thinking that there would be graffiti in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But-

Julian Williams:
It’s great. It’s great. And also, New Mexico has a large native population. and that comes into the work a lot as well. I’ve met quite a few native graffiti writers around Santa Fe. Really awesome stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, one of the first design gigs that you scored right out of college was actually pretty big. You worked for Nike, or you interned for Nike, and then you later worked for Nike. Is that right?

Julian Williams:
Correct. Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
How was your experience?

Julian Williams:
It was really fantastic, interesting, challenging at times. I think definitely the hardest point in my career. I got interested in Nike as a student because Bijan Berahimi, a designer who runs a studio in Portland called FISK, fantastic design studio, came to my university and gave a workshop with his friend Chris Burnett based around Nike because they had both worked at Nike previously. And we made all this interesting work. I remember being really stressed out about the work for some reason. I was just thinking I have to make the most amazing thing. Because this is based on Nike, and they’re such a big place. And I stayed up until 4:00 AM working on this little poster I was making. And I left the lab crying because I just hated what I made. And I went back to my dorm room, and actually someone had set off like the water sprinkler in the dorm. And all me and my friends had to sleep in this brightly lit storage shed off the side of our dorm for an entire night. It was just the worst night of university ever.

Julian Williams:
But I talked to Bijan a lot at that workshop, and he actually reached out to me a little bit later to work on some freelance work for Nike. And my mind was just like, “Man, Nike. I really feel good when I work on this stuff. And I’m so interested in it.” And I saw that they were hiring a design intern in Europe. And I applied, I had an interview, and I got the job. It was so funny. When I got the phone call, it was 4:00 AM in New Mexico. And some number I didn’t recognize called me, and the person on the phone was like, “Hi, are you Julian? You’re going to come to Amsterdam and work for Nike.” And out loud on the phone I said, “Fuck.” It was the first thing out of my mouth. I was just like I’m in New Mexico right now. I’m about to get on a plane to a place I know nothing about.

Julian Williams:
But I did it. And I came to the Netherlands. Nike’s European headquarters is in a village called Hilversum a few minutes away from Amsterdam. And it was really challenging. I think I was still working on my thesis. I was halfway through my last year of university at the time. So that was another thing. I was still working on schoolwork while working for one of the biggest companies in the world as my first career thing ever. But I also feel like in that time, I was kind of relearning how to be European and how to engage with Europeans on a creative level, on just conversational level as well. I feel like I kind of in a way, had a little bit of an American handicap when I started working at Nike.

Julian Williams:
But there was a point where I just kind of pushed through and stopped worrying so much about this stuff, and was just making work in the way that I had learned to in university. My design professor David Grey, who he was kind of a mentor of mine in university. He really had us just kind of sit down and make things without worrying. Obviously we have to think about the process at some point. But our really early design practices revolved around making. And that was also something that we did in our workshop with Bijan. And I started working in that way and also bringing a bit of analog stuff in. And stuff just started clicking, and I stopped worrying about stuff. And all the things that you learn about how to present decks, and how to talk to clients and stuff just kind of came naturally.

Julian Williams:
It is difficult though, working in that kind of world. So I finished my internship, and then I was hired as a brand designer at Nike. I do feel that Nike has a very large hierarchy problem. I think that titles matter to people a lot. And I don’t think I realized it at the time that it was actually quite toxic. I think it still is quite toxic, which is unfortunate because Nike is my favorite brand. They produce some of my favorite design work in the world. However, yeah, just this kind of ranking stuff was not something I was aware of until I later left Nike and worked at other places and realized it’s not supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to feel my opinion maybe doesn’t matter as much as this person because they have a higher salary than me.

Julian Williams:
I also feel like sometimes if you’re a minority working in creative at Nike, sometimes your expertise in certain cultural things might not get taken advantage of in a correct way. I mean, I was 21 and 22 when I was at Nike. I was the target audience. Young, male, interested in street wear and sports. And I don’t know, I wasn’t trying to go around being this loud intern like, “Listen to me. I know.” But I feel like maybe it’s just the thing of missed opportunities.

Julian Williams:
I also feel like, and just to be quite candid, I think it would be difficult to work as a creative at Nike if I were a woman. Without getting too into that, just Nike is a boys club. It’s a straight, cisgender white boys club. I mean I worked in the European headquarters. I witnessed it there. But I actually heard it echoed heavily in Portland where the global headquarters is. And I think it’s a big problem. And I think it’s come to light a lot in recent years. And I hope that things are being done to change that.

Julian Williams:
And also interestingly enough, I lost my job at Nike. I was fired actually. Which at the time was really devastating. And now, I’m actually very thankful for it, and thankful for the opportunity to talk to young designers about this. And the reason I was fired interestingly enough, I had been about 10 months into working as a brand designer. And I was asked to give a design talk to a university in the United States. And my Instagram at the time was all personal design work. I was making a lot of posters based around political things that were happening in the world, stuff that Donald Trump was tweeting. Or just poems songs, honestly whatever I felt like. It’s just a typical design Instagram. And I gave this talk, and the talk was about me studying in Santa Fe, getting my job at Nike, the way that happened. I actually made a poster based on that phone call I mentioned earlier where I was like, “Fuck.” And I took the word fuck, and I put it on top of the Nike swoosh. And I posted it to Instagram. And the caption I wrote was, “Just finished wrapping up a wonderful talk with my former professor and his new students at university of so-and-so about my wild life at Nike.” And I tagged Nike.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh no. I think I see where this is going.

Julian Williams:
So I think I gave the talk on the Thursday, posted that on Friday, came into work on Monday, worked all day, got asked to come into the back Nike office, and was just told, “Yeah, we have a zero tolerance social media policy. We have to take your laptop. We have to take your hard drive. We have to escort you off campus, and we’re terminating your contract.” And I was 22. Yeah. In hindsight, I do sometimes kind of wonder. Because at the time, it was wintertime, things were really busy, and the environment was quite tumultuous. And I wonder if there were other things that maybe influenced a decision. Because my team was devastated. They were actually talking to our leadership basically saying, “This is ridiculous. There’s no reason why you can’t give this person a warning. They obviously love this brand.”

Maurice Cherry:
Did they even give you a chance to explain the context?

Julian Williams:
I was shocked and I said, “You can read this caption right there. It’s very obvious that I have no malicious intent with this design.” At the time, it really sucked. I asked a random person to take a photo of me standing, at the time, Nike was having their just do it campaign with Colin Kaepernick where he says, “Stand for something. Even if,” I forget the phrase of the campaign. It won a bunch of awards, it was brilliant. But there was a big poster of Colin Kaepernick. And I was being escorted to the main office to be taken off campus. And I asked some random lady to take a photo of me in front of that for some reason. And I actually show that photo when I give talks. Now it’s just me looking devastated in front of Colin Kaepernick because I just lost my dream job.

Julian Williams:
Now though I have to say, I am extremely thankful that that happened. Because I think when you’re a student, sometimes people look at Nike as the end all to the design world. It’s the top of what you can be. And then when I got into it, I realized no. The thing that I love is working with cool people. And I’ve met some cool people at Nike, and I’ve met some not so cool people at Nike. So I want to see where the other cool people are. And I think if I hadn’t been fired actually, I would probably still be in that world because I didn’t know any better at the time. And yeah, nowadays I feel really thankful that that happened, because some amazing stuff happened after that. [inaudible 00:43:44] first though.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I told you kind of before we started recording that I’ve had a few other black designers that worked at Nike on the show before. And they’ve all kind of pretty much said the same thing about just how the work culture is and everything. So it’s sad that that’s the case from such a prolific brand. But I have to say, you said you were 22 when that happened?

Julian Williams:
Yep.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s the best time for that kind of stuff to happen in your career is. No seriously, at the beginning, that is the best time. And I don’t know what it is, and I guess I’m sort of looking at my own story here too. I also got fired from a job for it wasn’t a social media post. It was a blog. Actually, it was several blog posts. I’ll tell you after we stop recording. But yeah, I got fired in a very similar fashion from a job. And I wasn’t a designer. I was doing customer service or something like that. But it was after I got fired from that job that I got my first real design gig that then sort of kick-started my career. So I mean sometimes, you have to have a setback to have a comeback.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. And I also really established my own personal design practice at that time. Because to be honest, after I got fired from Nike, for a few months, life got quite hard. It just so happened that the time I lost my job was also the time the contract for the apartment I was living in was ending. So I wasn’t job secure. So then I became not house secure as well. And I ended up couch hopping for a few months. And I hated being a burden to other people. My friends were quite helpful. And to them, it wasn’t a big deal at all to have me on their couch for a week or so. But I just felt so bad.

Julian Williams:
But what I will say is in this time, I was making design work like crazy. And just for no reason at all. And the kind of mindset that I had, I was giving myself ridiculous design briefs. I was like I’m going to design a passport for the moon for the future when we colonize the moon, and I’m going to create a rave poster for the planet Venus in a made up language. And the kind of mindset that I had, because I had only worked for Nike. So all the work I had to show was from Nike. And I didn’t like that. I was like if I’m going to interviews and stuff, I need to be able to show some different kind of stuff. I mean, I can make a bunch of different things for Nike, but I don’t want to just have swooshes all over my portfolio.

Julian Williams:
And going into interviews, I was showing this personal work actually as if it were real work. I wasn’t even mentioning, “I just made this one.” I just showed the things. And I was like, “Obviously, no one’s asked me to make this. But I’m showing you that if someone did ask me insanely to design a passport for the moon, I would be able to do that. And if I can do that, I can do whatever you want me to do for your brand. I can design a website for you. I can design a clothing line. Let’s get to work.” And I was making stuff like every single day. I was like if I’m not going to be working, I’m going to be working for myself. And I’m going to have some tools in my back pocket to show people what I love to do. And yeah, I’m really happy that I did.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s good that you kept on kind of designing and sort of honing your craft at this time, even when you sort of had this other insecurity, just in terms of where you’re going to stay and where money is coming from. That didn’t deter you from still creating.

Julian Williams:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you also have worked as a graphic designer in the fashion industry for a few well-known designers. Was it different doing design work for a fashion brand versus more of a sports brand like Nike was?

Julian Williams:
Definitely. Actually, the first job I did after losing my job at Nike, I worked as a freelance designer for Karl Lagerfeld for quite some months. I have an interesting story about that as well. I got the interview with Karl Lagerfeld. I had actually used the last of my money to move everything I own into a storage unit. And I was staying at a friend’s place. I ran back to the storage unit, got whatever the nicest outfit was that I could put together, which was quite nice if I do say so myself. I had some Nike shoes and some things. They were just in storage. I went to Karl Lagerfeld office, had my interview.

Julian Williams:
A few days later, I get a phone call. “Hi, we loved you. We’re looking forward to work with you. We’d love for you to come in and start on Monday.” I said, “Fantastic.” This is not a lie. I put my phone down. I went to use the bathroom. I came back, I picked my phone up. I opened Instagram. The first thing that pops up, Complex News, Karl Lagerfeld has died. And I was like, “Is it me? Am I cursed?” That is not a lie. It happened exactly like that. A few minutes later, I got a phone call back from the project manager saying, “Hey, don’t worry. We still want to work with you. Can we move your booking by one week? Because everything is on fire.” And I was like, “Yep, completely understand. Let’s do it.”

Julian Williams:
I loved working for Karl Lagerfeld. I got to do a lot of things that I hadn’t been introduced to before, like art directing some product photo shoots. They gave me a lot of creative freedom because they at the time wanted to revamp a lot of digital and social content. And I think that’s one of the reasons that they went with me. I think that like you said, it’s a fashion brand. It’s not sportswear. They might have some sportswear items every now and then. But I think they were looking for someone like me who had had a different kind of experience to bring a bit more interesting content.

Julian Williams:
And then I went on to work for Tommy Hilfiger, which I felt kind of walked the line of the two worlds that I had worked. Sportswear, and then a bit more fashion-y stuff. And I really loved working for Tommy Hilfiger. I think they did the opposite of what I was missing at Nike. They appreciated who I was as a person, the interests that I had. And thought how can we apply this to our work? An important part of my life actually outside of design. So I Vogue. And maybe some people don’t know what that means when I say that I Vogue.

Julian Williams:
But voguing is a community and a culture of people that was started by people of color in New York, in the United States. And these people gather to have kind of these competitions/performances called balls that incorporate a bunch of different things like fashion, and dancing, and creating outfits, and sometimes drag. And at the time, I had been voguing for about a year or so, maybe a year and a half. I had started voguing because voguers have things called houses, which are basically groups of people who compete together at these competitions, at these balls. And the main house of the Netherlands is called the House of Vineyard. It was started by Ms. Amber Vineyard who came to give a voguing workshop at Nike, spotted me. And she came up to me. And when you participate in these balls, it’s called walking. And you walk different categories. There are categories like face, and you have to show your beautiful face. Or there’s body. And you have to show that you have a luscious or muscular body. And there are performance categories like Vogue femme, which is a fantastic expressive dance and performance style.

Julian Williams:
And Ms. Amber Vineyard spotted me at her workshop and in the crowd. And she came up to me and she said, “You need to come to my balls. You need to come to my classes and meet my ballroom children. I see you walking this category and this category.” And gosh, it just thrust me into this insane, fantastic, beautiful world of queer Black arts. And I met so many talented people, and it became such an important part of my life. I really see a lot of these people as family who I see all the time, we confide in each other. We actually have we call them mothers and fathers. They’re the ones who kind of like lead the houses and the ballroom children. And that is something that I became quite comfortable talking about in my work.

Julian Williams:
And when I have interviews with people, when I went to interview at Tommy Hilfiger, my eventual bosses who I was interviewing with asked me, “What do you do?” When I worked at Nike, it had also kind of become known that I Vogue. And at the time I was a little like I maybe don’t like so much that everyone knows that I do this. So I was going to try to kind of keep it a little on the down well when I started working at a new place. But I was like, “It’s an interview, whatever. It’s fine. I can tell them.” And I told them, “I Vogue. And I vogued around Europe and around North America.” And on my first day of work, a bunch of people came by my desk and they’re like, “You’re the voguer, right? You do this and this.”

Julian Williams:
And Tommy Hilfiger head of influencer marketing actually came to my desk and was, “I need you to tell me who the interesting people are in Amsterdam right now. Because we want to work with these people in the correct way.” Which I appreciated so much. Because I feel like in the world of fashion and these brands and stuff, ballroom is becoming quite popular right now. .It’s becoming quite marketable. And a lot of times, people do it the incorrect way. So it makes me quite comfortable when people approach people within the scene, so that they make sure that they’re doing it the correct way.

Julian Williams:
And when I worked at Tommy Hilfiger, I managed to get some really close friends of mine booked as models for campaigns. Because they actually came up to me and they were like, “We want you in the campaign.” And I was like, “No, no, no, no. I’ve been voguing for about a year and a half. I know people in the scene who this has been their life for years. And if you want them to turn the party, I have some dancers set up for you, and some performers, and some beautiful, fantastic people. Let’s go.” And I can’t describe how amazing it feels to go to a fitting and see your friend who is perhaps queer like you and maybe a person of color like you. And we don’t always get these opportunities that other people have. And see them smiling back at you in full head to toe gear from this world famous brand. And then the next day, they’re on a photo-shoot voguing doing the thing that they love. And they’re getting paid for it. That to me was, I was just like this is what this is all about. When stuff like this happens, I’m so happy about the field that I went into.

Maurice Cherry:
Look at you putting on the homeys and everything.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. I keep people booked and busy.

Maurice Cherry:
So basically, season three or Pose is going to be about you.

Julian Williams:
Can we talk about it? Can we talk about how Pose is ending and it’s just so sad? Actually, Tommy Hilfiger, right before I left Tommy Hilfiger … gosh, I really feel thankful for my team at Tommy Hilfiger because they wanted to hear what I had to say about things. And it feels so good when you’ve come from somewhere where maybe that hasn’t always been the opportunity. And we were doing a campaign when I was there that was honestly based around working with underrepresented voices and amplifying those voices. And we ended up working with people in the ballroom scene. We worked with Indya Moore. The campaign is live right now actually at Tommy Hilfiger. We worked with Indya Moore who plays Angel on pose. They’re a fantastic part of the ballroom scene and a queer icon. And we worked with [Kittie Smile 00:55:26] who is also in the ballroom scene in Paris and throughout Europe. And my team was asking me the correct way to reference things that they didn’t know about. Spent a lot of time talking to my team about the correct use of people’s pronouns. It’s just great when people, and it always felt authentic and genuine. It never felt like a cash grab. Because the stuff we were making was cool too at the end of the day. And I think people appreciated that as well. It was really an experience that I enjoyed.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s awesome to hear because oftentimes when you see, I think probably from the consumer standpoint, when you see brands start to venture into, I don’t even necessarily want to say venture into what’s cool. But I think certainly when they end up venturing into ethnic or queer content or something like that, people always sort of wince like, “What is this going to be?” One, because I think they’re just protective of their individual communities. And two, they just want to make sure that it’s done right and with respect and homage. And it’s not a cheap knockoff or something like that.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. One thing that was interesting in one meeting, and I’m really happy that people listened to me on this. So we were doing this project to amplify certain people’s voices. And it was kind of brought up. Someone was like, “Yeah. And if we work with Indya, maybe they will want us to put on a ball. And we have all these ballroom performance.” And I told them, “You know what? You need to ask this person what they want to do. Because in your head, what you’re doing right now is projecting. You may have a projection of what you imagine this person will want to do. And you may think Indya wants to put on a ball for this community. And then you go and talk to Indya and they say, ‘I want to have a talk show where I bring on queer people and talk to them about what they think needs to be changed in the world around us to make their lives better.'”

Julian Williams:
I was like, “You never know.” And that was another thing that I felt comfortable voicing. And people were comfortable receiving that feedback, and applying it, and making the work better. And I’ve been gay and Black my whole life. I think I know this world. So it’s great that people recognize that and understand that maybe, I have something to offer. It also feels good that the fact that being a queer Black person in Europe and the United States has not always been easy or fun. And it’s great when it is. And it’s something awesome. I mean to me, being queer and Black is fun and great all the time. Maybe not to other people, but that’s their problem.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, I should also mention that while you were doing this at Tommy Hilfiger during the day, you were also interning somewhere else at night. Is that right?

Julian Williams:
Yeah. Sorry. So I was working for Tommy Hilfiger. And then around February of 2020, I was contacted by Jessica Walsh of the studio &Walsh and formerly a part of the studio Sagmeister & Walsh. And Jessica Walsh and Stefan Sagmeister have honestly just been huge inspirations to me since I started studying design. I feel like when I was a student, I was like, “These two are pushing communication to where I want it to go. They’re doing interesting things.” Also a thing that I really respected and that inspired me was that they would make projects just because. They would make projects not to get paid for anything, just because they want to do stuff. And I always felt that that’s so important to just make things because you love design. I hope if you’re in the world of design, you’re doing it because you enjoy doing that.

Julian Williams:
So I was sitting on my couch. I had been working at Tommy Hilfiger for quite a long time actually. And I got an email from Jessica Walsh asking me if I wanted to intern remotely for &Walsh. And I jumped about 10 feet in the air and emailed yes back immediately. So for about three months, I would work during the day for Tommy Hilfiger. And I would come home and remotely work for &Walsh as an intern. And it was fantastic. It was just like wow, what an amazing team. what an intelligent team. What a diverse team, which I already knew this before working for Walsh. But working there really cemented in me that diversity breeds better creative work. It just makes sense just to have that many cultural, and intelligent, and visual backgrounds coming together to make awesome stuff. Yeah, it works.

Maurice Cherry:
Your inbox must be the place to be. You’re getting all of these amazing offers and stuff. This is wild. And then of course after you’re working with &Walsh, that’s when you started with the Biden campaign.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. Yeah. And it was another one of those kinds of, I was on my couch and I get this email that changes your life. I actually later found out that Robyn Kanner my boss at Biden approached Jessica Walsh asking for a designer. Because I interned for about three months. And then I freelanced for a little bit of time for &Walsh as well. And Robyn approached Jessica asking about a designer, and my name came up. And I think that’s what led to me interviewing for the position of designer with Biden for America. And I feel very thankful for people who just kind of put my name out there and stuff. I really love designing so much. And I love getting to make work with great people for great causes whenever I can. It’s not always possible, but I try to strive to be a part of that stuff as often as I can.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at the entirety of your career so far from interning at Nike, to Lagerfeld, and Hilfiger, &Walsh and everything, and even the Biden campaign, what did those experiences teach you as well?

Julian Williams:
Again, I get to talk to students now. And I’ve been having … oh God, I really love these talks because the questions that these students have just get more and more interesting and more and more personal and engaging. And I think that it would be so crappy of me to give a talk and then not give someone something that they can work with. I’ve had this in the past where I’ve been to a talk with a creative, and it just kind of feels like them talking about themselves the entire time.

Julian Williams:
I actually have three things that I tell people. One is to make things. And I feel like maybe the three things I have to say are quite obvious things. But I’ve met so many older designers who are just like, “You’re going to get older and you’re just going to get tired of design.” Because they see me making all this personal work and they just … and I just do not accept that. I love what I do. And I feel that just because I work, doesn’t mean that I can’t also make things just for the hell of it. Make stuff for no reason. Make stuff not to sell something. So I tell people to make things as often as I can, as often as they’re able to. Something else I say is to, and this is something I … I always was able to do this even before getting into the professional world.

Julian Williams:
But it’s worth it to invest in learning how to talk about yourself and your work. And I also, I always add onto that, I know that it’s not easy for everyone to get on a soap box, and talk about themselves, and things that they’ve done. But what I think is maybe a little more within reach for a lot of us is talking to our colleagues, and our friends, and our classmates about the things that we’re interested in, the things that we’re not interested in. And then that facilitates language about the way we think about work and maybe kind of guides us towards talking about our work. Because you can be the best designer, the most creative, innovative designer in the world. But if you aren’t able to kind of put yourself out there and talk about yourself and work, I think sometimes that may lead to problems.

Julian Williams:
And the last thing, which has honestly become my design manifesto in recent years is people matter. So don’t be an asshole. That also may seem quite simple. But I think one of the most important things I realized is that lots of the time, I feel the people matter more than the work in multiple ways.

Julian Williams:
One thing I tell students is, “When you go in to an interview, the people have seen your work. They know it. They’ve seen your Instagram, they’ve seen your website. The thing that they’re looking for is who you are. Because you’re essentially making a contract with them to be with them for a long period of time. So they want to see if you’re going to get along, if your values align.” And I think understanding that is important, and also just understanding that we should always carry ourselves with empathy. And I don’t know, just not being a jerk. That seems really simple.

Julian Williams:
But this isn’t related to the question that you just asked, but I do want to mention it. Something I end with is another kind of fortune cookie kind of lame thing to say. But it’s never too late to do anything. And I actually usually end my talks with students talking about my dad. Because my dad, he served in the Army for 30 years. He retired from the Army two years ago at the rank of command sergeant major. And I really feel appreciative of my dad. I mean, he supported his family for years. And I really think that my dad is an example of what a soldier should be.

Julian Williams:
I’m not a very pro military person, not a very pro United States military person. I think that my dad embodies what a soldier should strive to be. My dad was like, “My country is a world superpower. I’m here for my country if I’m needed. And I’m here to educate young soldiers about the ways that they should carry themselves with respect and treat other people with respect around the world.” And my dad has been so helpful to women within his ranks, and people of color, and queer people. And I feel so happy that people like my dad are there, because they often aren’t in the United States.

Julian Williams:
But my dad originally joined the Army to get money to go to art school. When I grew up, he was always drawing in sketchbooks and stuff. Well now that he’s retired, my dad has started studying graphic design at the age of 50. And I can’t begin to talk about how amazing this is. I was actually invited, so my dad is studying right now at community college. I think he may transfer to university later. But I was invited to give a talk to his class. And it was just the most incredible thing ever. And having conversations with my dad about what I do and giving him advice on work is … I think he tells me he’s inspired by me, and I’m just incredibly inspired by him doing what he wants because he loves to and understanding that it’s never too late. And he doesn’t care if he’s in a class with 19 and 20 year olds learning about design. He’s so excited about everything. And he’s learning some stuff that I don’t know about. My dad knows more about after effects than I do now. I need to catch up to Command Sergeant Major Williams.

Maurice Cherry:
Look at that. So you even had an opportunity to speak to your dad’s class?

Julian Williams:
Yes. And it was fantastic. And the questions they asked were really great. They were asking, because we’re living in this Zoom call world right now. And they were really asking me ways to kind of stay inspired and what I make content about. It was just wild to having my dad be my student for an hour.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious, have there been any kind of particular challenges that you’ve had to face, I would say as a black designer in Europe. But aside from that, you’re working between Europe, between the United States. I would imagine even just the volume and the quality of work might be different. Have you run into any challenges thus far? I don’t want to say thus far in your design career, because you have, because you’ve mentioned them. But I guess as it sort of breaks down among certain identities, like you mentioned you’re Black, you’re queer, you’re American, you’re German. Have there been particular challenges that have come with that for you as a designer?

Julian Williams:
Yeah. I think I’ll kind of just start talking about from racial, nationality view. So I always grew up between United States and Europe. And the way that racism exists in those places, their origins and the way it exists now is different in different ways. I feel that more outright directly racist in your face, things happen in the United States. And I’m actually nowadays quite fearful of those things, because they’re amplified by things like people being able to purchase weapons. So in a sense, if someone’s racist to me in the United States, I may hold my tongue about it because my mind is kind of like, “Well, they may have a gun if I say something.” Really, I fear for my life.

Julian Williams:
And I also tell people, because people in Europe ask me about my experience as a person of color in the U.S. And I tell them I feel like I think about my race every single day that I’m in the United States. In Europe, I don’t think about it every day, but I do think about it often. And also, the ways that racism happens to me, especially in the Netherlands is different. Do you know what Black Pete is?

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Julian Williams:
Yeah. And that’s such a weird thing that is always a conversation here in the Netherlands. So yeah, just in case people may not know, there is a caricature here in the Netherlands. In Dutch, he’s called Zwarte Piet. And he is basically a Golliwog. He is a Black person who kind of accompanies the Dutch version of Santa Claus. I’m mixing languages. Santa Claus is called Sinterklaas. And it’s tied to the origins of slavery. And people here in the Netherlands will cover themselves in blackface, draw on red lips. White Dutch people will draw on red lips, put on an afro, and gold hoop earrings. And it’s really ingrained in the culture here and is a conversation every single year. And black people in the Netherlands and decent people are explaining, “No, this isn’t okay.” There’s a whole campaign called Zwarte Piet Is Racisme, which is Black Pete is racism, that comes up every year. And there are people who say, “It’s part of our culture.”

Julian Williams:
So here, it’s funny. That is not life-threatening racism to me. But in a sense when stuff like that happens, often the excuse that people use is, “It’s not so bad. We’re not the United States. Our police aren’t killing Black people,” even though they are in lots of places in Europe. So I’m kind of told to silence myself a little bit.

Julian Williams:
I’ve also in the professional world have had experiences here. I mean, I’ve always physically worked as a designer in Europe. I had a little bit of freelance work when I was a student in the U.S. But for example, something that I really vividly remember, I went to have an interview for a little freelance gig in Amsterdam. And I was waiting in kind of the main lobby of the office building. And I could see the person who was going to interview me come down, but she didn’t know what I looked like. And it was raining outside. And a man came into the building, and you needed a key card to come in. And he buzzed himself in. And he was a white man. He had an umbrella, he had just gotten into the building. And the woman who was interviewing me came down and she stopped. She looked at me and then she looked at the man who came in and she said, “Julian?” So I was already like well, I’m obviously not her visual representation of what she thinks someone who would fill this position is. And I’m pretty sure it’s because of my physical appearance, because I am a Black man with dreadlocks. And somehow, that means that I can’t accomplish my job.

Julian Williams:
Which now I’m kind of like, “Well, that’s their loss.” But it’s unfortunate when you realize that kind of stuff. When you realize that that is the way that people go about … and it’s rancid to me because I definitely don’t ever think like that. I don’t think that someone’s physical appearance is going to affect how they can accomplish work.

Julian Williams:
So it’s interesting my kind of experience and relationship with racism in the countries that I’ve lived in and am a citizen of throughout my life, and the kind of give and take that I have to deal with personally and professionally. But one thing that I refuse to do is silence myself anywhere.

Julian Williams:
So actually, it was interesting this last year, Black Lives Matter protests obviously, I won’t even say erupted because I was in Black Lives Matter protests in Santa Fe when I was a student. But I feel like they were on quite a global kind of stage last year. And we had Black Lives Matters demonstrations in Amsterdam and in Belgium. And I made sure that I was a part of those because I felt that it’s important. Especially here where the kind of relationship with racism is, “It’s not as bad as in other places. So deal with it.” And the POC communities here are fed up and we’re like, “No, we need to have these same conversations.”

Maurice Cherry:
You mentioned earlier when you were talking about your work with Tommy Hilfiger being into voguing, being in the ballroom community. How has that influenced your work?

Julian Williams:
So ballroom has a lot of interesting language that has kind of shifted through various communities. I feel like a lot of terms that maybe people, adopt or appropriate, different people might say different things, come from ballroom language. Like for example, the phrase reading. If you read someone, you’re kind of insulting them maybe in a roundabout way. That’s something that comes from ballroom. There actually used to be a category called reading where two people would stand apart from each other and they would just say vicious things to each other. And whoever said the most vicious things won. That’s a kind of like mainstream phrase now. I hear more people saying things like reading, what’s the tea, oh girl. And this kind of language, it’s very important to ballroom. But it’s also vital to queer people. Throughout the world, queer people and Black people have created coded language to survive. That is a fact dating back to the days of slavery. It’s a fact dating back to the ’80s in England and the United States for people to survive.

Julian Williams:
My relationship with the ballroom world and what I’m really thankful for about the ballroom world is that the seniors, the teachers of ballroom who are older, who lived through that nonsense, who lived through the AIDS epidemic, are doing a fantastic job of making sure that the young people entering into the ballroom scene understand where they’re coming from. That this is not just a competition. It’s not just us dancing. This is about us being alive and living our truth.

Julian Williams:
And I try to reflect that language and that communication in my work. Something else I’ll say that’s important about ballroom is the entire idea of ballroom. I maybe mentioned this a bit earlier, is that minority communities don’t often have the same opportunities that straight, white, cisgender male dominated people enjoy. And ballroom is kind of a play on that.

Julian Williams:
For example, there’s a category called executive realness. And there are categories called realness, which are about … realness is kind of like, a category called male figure realness is about a maybe gay, effeminate man who goes up and portrays himself as his straight counterpart. And that is a direct commentary on the fact that gay people in the real world outside of the ballroom very often have to do this to stay alive. They have to pretend to be heterosexual to be alive. So ballroom is always kind of about embodying the lives that we don’t have the opportunities to have as queer people of color. Executive realness is a category where you walk up to the judges dressed in a suit. Maybe you have a briefcase. You’re trying to show yourself as an executive, as an owner of a company. Which I mean we can see what the owners of companies and CEOs look like. They don’t very often look like people like me. And ballroom kind of challenges that, and gives us an opportunity to show that if we have the same opportunities as you, I could be an executive. Because I can dress like this, and I can walk the walk, and I can talk the talk, and I can present myself that way.

Julian Williams:
And it’s made me have some interesting thoughts about how I apply language to my work, how I apply typography. It’s also given me an interesting relationship with fashion. I’m very interested in fashion. My interest in fashion has evolved through my life. When I was living in Texas and stuff, I did not know anything about Jean Paul Gaultier or Saint Laurent. And it was actually kind of a joke when I joined Nike and other fashion brands that I didn’t know this. But I came from this world that kind of wanted to touch that. And ballroom people also are people who want to touch that fashion world, but maybe can’t because the lives that they live. So we’re driven to create stuff ourselves, to create amazing outfits that could be on the runways in Paris. And now we’re seeing with things like Pose and a lot of ballroom people are walking fashion shows in Paris and New York and stuff, that now it’s coming back. Now people want us. Now they’re seeing they’ve had it right the whole time. And we’re like, “Yeah, we’ve known this. It’s nice that you’re catching up.”

Maurice Cherry:
What’s the best advice that you’ve been given about design?

Julian Williams:
It’s funny. Something I think about often kind of contradicts some of my own advice. But I think there’s kind of give or take with both of them. One of the piece of advice I was given is you can stand next to your poster. Basically saying once you make something as a visual communicator, ideally, someone will look at the thing that you’ve made and understand the message that you’re trying to convey. So you can’t stand next to something you’ve made and explain it. Which maybe goes a little bit against how I’m saying you should be able to talk about your work. But that’s, I think can apply to different things like the process and stuff. But that is an idea that I often come back to that you can’t stand next to your poster. You can’t stand next to your work and explain it to someone. So create always keeping in the back of your mind that this is for someone who knows nothing about what you’re making.

Julian Williams:
And kind of an offshoot of that, another good piece of advice I got at Nike actually was sometimes we would be in meetings. And when you work at Nike, you drink the Nike Kool-Aid. Everyone knows the brands. We all have our little acronyms for different stuff when we work there and stuff. Something one of my bosses said in a meeting that I found to be quite profound and I ended up saying it in other companies I worked for was, “Guys, let’s take the Nike glasses off. Let’s look at this as if we weren’t working here and we knew nothing about this.” And I think that is super powerful. And I’ve actually found myself in meetings with places I worked on in the future saying this. And I think it has a power to change a room, to have people look at projects differently. And understand at the end of the day, we are visual communicators. We have a job to accomplish. We have messages to communicate. And if we don’t do that successfully, we aren’t doing our job.

Maurice Cherry:
What is it that keeps you motivated and inspired these days?

Julian Williams:
These days? I already talked about my dad. And that is something that lately I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.” But I think talking to younger people and seeing the way that they engage with social … oh my God. I’m saying younger people and I’m 25. Just to put that on there. Oh my God. Am I saying younger people already? Oh man. No, I am a millennial though. And the way that Generation Z interacts with technology, the fact that they have access to so much information so early is, I think other people are afraid of it. I’m like, “Hell yes, let’s turn the party. Make some cool stuff when you’re five years old.” That’s awesome.

Julian Williams:
But also the way that they’re involved with social things. Like after working in politics and stuff, I do wish that it would speed up a bit. But I don’t feel so much worry for when I’m 40. Because I know that the people behind me have their heads in the right place. They know what’s wrong and what’s right. And they understand how the world should be. And I think that they’re really making an effort to educate one another about what’s right and wrong, and the barriers that they need to break once they kind of get to the ages that we are at, where we’re more able to make some of that change. And some of them are saying screw that, we’re going to start making change now even though we’re 10, 12 years old. Because the internet and technology allows us to do that kind of stuff, to communicate with like-minded people. That’s what keeps me inspired. Maybe that’s not so much on a design level. But on a social change level and maybe creating content in the future, that’s what inspires me.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? It’s what, 2026. You’ll be 30 years old. What kind of work do you, I didn’t mean to scare you there. But what kind of work do you see yourself doing?

Julian Williams:
I react to whatever is happening. When I finished the Biden campaign, I didn’t know what the next step was. I think there’s two things I’m interested in. One of them will definitely happen I know for sure. The other one I’m not so sure. The one I’m not so sure about is I would like to have a design studio of my own with other people. I’m also quite curious in that studio being a remote worldly design studio working with people all over. I’ve seen in the last year how common that’s become now because of the world that we’re living in right now. And it works. And I think it’s creating some interesting work. So having design studio might be interested.

Julian Williams:
The other thing that I definitely will do at some point in the future is I want to be an educator. I want to be a teacher in the field of graphic design. I actually feel like I have an ethical obligation to do so. I think it would be incorrect, I can say I’m quite happy with the career that I’ve had so far. I think that I’ve gotten to do some amazing things. I’ve definitely done some things that have been dreams of mine. And I feel so humbled, and fortunate, and privileged to have been able to do those things. And I think it would be incorrect for me to not pass on what I learned or the ways that I came to do that kind of stuff to other people. I actually feel like I need to be teaching at some point.

Julian Williams:
Even though I feel like it is an obligation, I also am very, very, very excited to do that. Especially after talking to students. I’ve never really given a proper design talk until this last year after I finished with Biden. I talked to my dad, I talked to some schools in New Mexico. I just spoke to the University of Arkansas who have some wonderful students who ask some really engaging questions. And it’s making me so excited. Because the best way to learn from people is to have conversations about what interests them and stuff they’re working on. That was the way that I learned about design when I was at university. No syllabus, no lesson plan is ever going to be more valuable than talking to your mates I think.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I know what you mean there. I mean, I’ve got this podcast where I get to talk to people from all over the world, which is great. So I definitely get a chance to … I have to say that’s the one thing that really kind of helped me get through even just this whole pandemic is being able to still connect with other creatives and talk about their work, and what they’re doing, and things like that. So, yeah. Well just to wrap things up here Julian, where can our audience find out more about you and about your work online?

Julian Williams:
So my website, which maybe it’s due for an update is J-O-O-F-W-O-O-F .com. That’s where you can find my kind of portfolio stuff. If you want to see the really fun stuff, follow me on Instagram @joofwoof. That’s @ J-O-O-F-W-O-O-F. You can find some voguing there, mainly design. I post a lot of my personal work on there. I talk about Phoebe Bridgers a lot who is a musician that I love and am a bit obsessed with. And I often find myself talking about her in these talks I give to students, and there’s always some students who feel the same way I do. So that’s really exciting. And you can follow me on Twitter @joofwoof J-O-O-F-W-O-O-F as well for some fun, maybe weird wild content.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well Julian Williams, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Even just as the time that I spent just researching and finding out about what you do and about your story and everything, I’m like, “This young man is so talented.” I cannot wait to see what kind of work you are doing in the next five, 10 years, whatever. I mean, even just the work that you’ve done so far, the fact that you have all these cultural references and experiences that you can pull from. I mean, I’m captivated by your story. I hope that people listening to this are captivated as well. So just keep on doing what you’re doing. Because it’s working, man. But again, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Julian Williams:
Oh gosh. Thank you so much. [German 01:25:51].

Sponsored by State of Black Design Conference

State of Black Design Conference

Texas State University’s Communication Design Program and the Common Experience are excited to announce the State of Black Design Conference, presented by IBM, April 9-10.

The theme of the conference is “Black Design: Past. Present. Future,” and the event will bring together aspiring designers with academic and industry professionals for networking opportunities, career development workshops, and important panel discussions with leaders in the field.

If you are a company looking to diversify your workforce, or a designer of color looking for your next role, be sure to attend the State of Black Design Conference. Recruiters have until April 5 to register.

Get your ticket today at https://txstate.edu/blackdesign, and follow the event online on Instagram or Twitter.

The State of Black Design Conference is presented by IBM, with additional sponsorship from Adobe, Civilla, AIGA, Texas State’s College of Fine Arts and Communication, and the School of Art and Design.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world.

We accomplish this through graphic design, presentations and workshops around I-D-E-A: inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

If you’re curious to learn how to combine a passion for I-D-E-A with design, check us out at brevityandwit.com.

Brevity & Wit — creative excellence without the grind.

Jason Murphy is a legend in the design industry. He’s most known as being one of a half dozen design directors who oversaw the brand for Nike, but he’s also created concepts for BET, SEIU, Discovery, and many other companies and brands. Now Jason is doing his own thing as a creative director and chief creative officer, so we had a great conversation not just about his past success, but also about the future.

Jason walked me through a typical day for him, and we spoke about his talk earlier this year at the AIGA Design Conference and went from there into his time at Nike with the Nike Equality Campaign. Jason also spoke about how the Organization of Black Designers influenced him, shared what it was like working at BET in its heyday, and talked about the design scene in Portland and what he wants to do next. Jason calls himself a lover of all design, and after this interview, I couldn’t agree more!


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