Isiah Xavier Bradley

Isiah Xavier Bradley was born to be an artist, and you can really feel his love for the craft just from spending a few minutes chatting with him. The Seattle-based illustrator loves all things comics related, and his body of work is filled with superheroes, aliens, mages, and all kinds of other fantasy figures.

We talked about some of his creative projects, and we spoke for a bit about diversity in the fantasy illustration space, as well as how he approaches storytelling through his art. Isiah also shared his story of growing up in Philly, getting inspired by his father (a painter!), and finding creative community both online and offline. Isiah is looking to achieve great things and grow as a professional illustrator, and with his enthusiasm and talent, he’s well on his way of making that happen!

Interview Transcript

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

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Hi, I am Isiah Xavier Bradley and I’m a freelance illustrator and comic book artist.

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

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
It’s been going wonderful. It’s been wonderful. It’s been unsuspected, but just wonderful accomplishments have been happening. Recently, I was at the Western Hotel and was doing an event with two other artists and we were hired to do a 10-minute painting of Seattle’s like landscape of the space needle and the mountains, and of course, we had to include someone drinking coffee in there because there’s nothing but coffee around in Seattle everywhere, but yeah, that was one of the events that I recently did about maybe two months ago, and that was just amazing fun. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was like I get caught off guard about like how many wonderful things just happen out of the blue. It’s like you don’t know when it’s going to happen or what’s going to happen, but with all the work, just paying off and networking and pursuing, it’s just this year has been a wonderful surprise of many things I got a chance to experience and to do and people to meet. It’s been awesome. It’s been an adventure-

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
… seriously. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have any plans for the summer?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. Well, right now, I’m going to be going to see my friend later in this month to Las Vegas. I mean, I know it’s not exactly summertime, but it’s close enough. So, I’m going to go see her. We’re going to work on some storyboards together. Besides that, I plan on spending as much time as I can outside painting and enjoying the fresh air because in Seattle, it was just way too cloudy and I needed some sunlight, but that’s it so far for now.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at this time last year, how would you say you’ve changed or how have things changed for you over the year? What’s different? What’s new? Anything like that?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I would say my mindset has definitely been changing. Last year it was like my art was still, like my career was still growing and I was getting more people and more companies to hire me, which felt really good, but also I had to work on my mindset about what success was and about how my career is growing. For being an artist, there’s no chart to show you. Like when you meet a goal, there’s like no reward or some outside source, especially when you’re a freelancer, to say, “Hey, yes, you made it. Yes, you did it,” and everything and that was something I had to get used to because it was like I’m my own boss. I have to be the one to do that for myself. So, that way, I can acknowledge the work. I was doing the hours, the hard projects, the tight deadlines, or I had to change my mindset to recognize the accomplishments I was doing and also to be completely self-aware and present.

That’s another thing. I was working out more and I’m working out more now this year. I was realizing that physically, like they always wanted to make characters like toned and skinny and muscled, and realizing how that had a negative effect on people and it’s including myself because I was like, “I need to show that beautiful is all different types of shapes and sizes.” Beauty is diversity. That’s like with my character, Sandra. Actually, I was inspired by Lizzo because I was watching Lizzo and Lizzo was just this beautiful, powerful, thick queen and I wanted to create a character that was like that. So, I created a character called Sandra. She has this huge ice ax and she’s just around this really cool character that just doesn’t take nothing from nobody and it’s her own person and as I’m talking to you now, I’m looking at the poster above my desk and it’s like all my diverse characters. I have Native American. I have Mexican. I have Black, Afro-Latina, and different types of body types, and I just feel like that definitely contributed to how I was thinking differently last year and this year and how it affects my artwork now.

With that experience, it definitely helped me become more of a better artist and more in touch with myself too, about finding that beauty about myself too. So, now I’m able to take that and put it into my art.

Maurice Cherry:
You touched on something now that I actually wanted to discuss a little later, but we can jump into it right now. Is representation, and I’m using air quotes over representation because that’s such a broad spectrum of what that could mean, but is that something that you feel like has to be a part of your work? When you think about your individual identities, do you feel like I need to put that into my work in some way?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Absolutely. I think it’s important. For example, Ariel, that was a huge debate just because of the color of her skin, but the people that I saw, like Black little girls and Black women seeing Ariel being a Black mermaid and having that such powerful, positive enforcement, I’m like, “Yeah, we need to have more of that. People need to feel like they can do that too,” and sometimes people just need to see that like I did. Like for X-Men, Storm, that beautiful Black queen goddess. I love her so much of the X-Men. She’s great. She definitely was an icon for me and diversity and acknowledging that I was like, “I have to make sure that I represent more of that, bring that out more into the world so that way people of color can feel beautiful too and people with different body types can feel beautiful too.” It’s just like diversity is absolutely needed because it’s all around us and it needs to be accepted.

It’s something that’s so natural and for it to not to be celebrated as such, it hurts and especially towards our younger community, our younger community needs to know that, yes, you can do this. Yes, you can be that. I dream of a future where everyone is just represented equally and accepted and loved. So, we can all just create beautiful things because imagine what we could create if all of us were just getting along together and just sharing our beliefs and whatnot, but we don’t have to agree on it, but it’s just something that could be so beautiful. So, absolutely diversity needs to be in my work. Absolutely. The more weirder, the more unique, the better. I just want that. I yearn for it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, there’s that adage that goes like, “You can’t be what you don’t see,” or something like that and I think certainly along the lines of illustration, animation even, there’s been such an explosion at least over the past decade or so where we’ve seen Black and brown artists, queer artists, et cetera, that are creating works in those images and putting it out there in a way that… I mean, some stuff has even been on streaming series and things of that nature. You started to see such a huge explosion of this diversity through the medium of illustration or animation over the past 10 years and it’s really been something to see because along with that, there’s also all these other stories that can be told because it’s coming from people with these different perspectives or because the characters are not the average white character, et cetera. There’s just more opportunities and possibilities for storytelling.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Absolutely, absolutely, and I feel like some companies or people would just be nervous about tapping into it too, because it’s change and people can be very scared of change, but it’s like we need that change. We need it. Even though it’s scary, it’s like we need it because it’s like we can’t keep repeating ourselves over the years over and over and over. No, we need to have that change right here, right now, so that way in the future we can have a better opportunity for everyone and then everyone can just feel that self-love more and capable. Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s talk about your work as a freelance illustrator. What does a typical day look like for you?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, actually, it’s weird. My mind likes to play tricks on me and what I mean by that is sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and I will be ready to go. I’ll just jump right into it. I’ll just get up and brush my teeth, maybe splash some water on my face or take a shower, or I’ll just wake up and I’ll just go to my art desk and start painting out of nowhere. I feel like those are my go-get-it days. Today is definitely one of those days where it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and do my work and be focused,” which is like I made that conscious decision to go into that. So, I would wake up, make a list because for me, I can’t think of things in my head of what to do. If I do that, I easily get overwhelmed.

So, I have to make a list and that list keeps me organized and not only that, but checking it off actually makes me feel like, “Oh crap. I’m actually getting stuff done. I’m actually doing it,” and it’s like, “I’m not going to focus on how long it takes me. I’m going to focus on getting the goal done,” because once I get that done, it’s going to feel really good. Then I can go on to the next one and then I’m just like, “Yes, I’m doing it.” On off days, I wake up and I have no energy in the morning and I have to wait till 12 o’clock for my whole body to feel that full awareness. It’s like, okay, I’m ready to make art and I think that’s why it’s so important to be self-aware because if you can be completely self-aware and present about how you’re feeling physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, that you will be able to conquer yourself.

You’ll be able to be like “I know what you’re thinking,” and be like, “I know what to do.” It’s like if I’m at home and I’m trying to work and I can’t focus, I know to remove myself from that space into an outside space or a completely public space where I can focus and get things done. So, it’s about doing that work and realizing what works best for you and for me, it can just flip. It can be vice versa, but I’m working with it. It’s been doing wonders for me. I’ve been able to get more work done, especially from working from home because you could get so easily distracted, distracted by video games, distracted by cooking food.

I mean, I love food, but also I got to do my work or movies and whatnot and I think as long as you’re completely self fully aware, you’re good and breaks. I always try to take a break after probably between hours or every other three hours perhaps. So, I’ll take a small break or I’ll just get up after 15 minutes, after I realize that, “Hey, my focus is slipping. I’ll just get up and walk around, stretch my body out, just get it physically active, walk away from the project and maybe go for a walk outside,” and then I’ll come back and my mind is refreshed and I might be able to point out some things I didn’t notice before. So, yeah, it’s all about just knowing how your body and your mind think and just utilizing that for your advantage. That’s how pretty much my take goes. Natural chaos. I like to call it natural chaos.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I think you touched on something that a lot of people probably like at the start of the pandemic had to come to grips with when working from home is that it’s tough to work from home. It takes a lot of discipline to not fall into just doing something else. Like you mentioned, I could play video games. I could eat. I could do whatever. I could watch TV, whatever, but knowing that you have to get the work done is it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge and I think for a lot of people when the pandemic started, that was something they had to come to terms with. One, I think it’s just outfitting their place to be a place to work because the office is the office. Home is home.

Now, you’re bringing the office to your home. How do you make that happen? It’s a process to get to that level where you can feel like you can really wake up in the morning and get into a flow state and get work done at home. It’s harder than I think a lot of people realize.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Especially when you’re own, you’re your own boss too. You have no one looking over your shoulder. You are completely free. You get to decide exactly what you do and how you do it and it’s a blessing and a curse because you’re like, “Dang it. I need to focus.” So, that’s why it’s always good to know yourself, to be like, “How do I function? What can I do to make sure that I am actually getting work done?” It’s so easy to fall into that trap and being a freelancer is more than just one job. You have multiple jobs. You’re the manufacturer. You’re the producer. You’re the advertiser. You’re the financial budget person. You’re the stock person organizing your area, make sure you have enough materials and whatnot and all that.

It’s like you’re playing multiple roles. I don’t think many people realize when you’re playing freelancing, you’re literally your own army unless you are hiring somebody else to help you, but it’s hard times. Not everyone can be affording that, but if you also have that capability to do that stuff by yourself, then go for it. Just make sure you’re giving yourself breaks and affirmations. Affirmations are really important for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you do a little bit of everything from comic books to trading cards. What does your process look like when it comes to approaching a new piece of work? What does that look like?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I usually like to feel it out. Like what is this image going to convey? What is the vibe I’m trying to give it? Because doing illustrations, and any kind of illustration, sketch cards, book covers. It all leads down to storytelling and it’s so important that you recognize body language, colors to evoke mood, the perspective, the layout of the image. Everything adds to the story. So, I try to keep that in mind while I’m looking for references and I try not to spend too much time on references because I find that you could spend a lot of time looking up references and then you lose too much time that you could have used for the project.

So, I try to do at least an hour of references, or under, and then I just go in there and do really quick, bold sketches. I think that doing bold sketches allows you to develop your idea much quicker and gives you a bit more of a confidence booster. It’s like I know what I’m doing. I know what I want to go for and it just helps you move things along in a much more progressive kind of way and afterwards, after thumbnail is chosen or making a discussion, depending on the client, sometimes clients have notes about something they would like to have changed, or sometimes you’ll just get lucky, which thankfully I’ve been very lucky where I’ve had customers where they’re like, “Oh, it’s perfect. Keep going.” I’m like, “Great.” So, I’ll just go onto the next step and I’ll do a loose sketch.

Back then I used to do sketches where I would just go from very loose sketch to a very, very tight sketch, but nowadays, I go from a loose sketch to half tight sketch because I like to add more details with the color. So, after I’m done doing a tight, but not full-on sketch, I like to do a quick color filling, and that quick color filling allows me to play with the color and see what works, what’s more powerful that serves the image in the story and then after I get approval for that, I just go in there and start painting it like I would traditional art. I don’t know if many people would do it this way, but I like to stick to three, four layers max only because I was raised by my father to do traditional art and when I went to art school, I learned digital art and then it took me a while to feel comfortable with digital.

So, I took that mindset and the way I used traditional paintings, I took that method and applied it to digital and now that I have less layers and I’m working on it like I would traditional, it actually turns out much more the way I would want it to. Yeah, it is weird. I think it’s just because I was just so trained for so many years. I was doing traditional art way longer than digital. So, that’s programmed in my head, but it worked nicely for me. I really like how my digital artwork comes up now. I still do traditional, of course, because I can’t let that old-fashioned love go. That’s my first love, traditional watercolor, acrylic color, pencil, love all that. I would just apply that method and it would just work nicely for me and that’s pretty much my process right there. Just remembering what you’re trying to tell, what the story you’re trying to tell, and long as you keep that in mind along with the body language and the color and the way that they’re just presenting themselves, the character or the environment, that’s the best way to create that image you’re trying to make.

Maurice Cherry:
Now. You mentioned storytelling. How do you approach storytelling through your art? Is that a separate process?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, well, first thing I did was I did some research. I actually had a friend, Tony Atkins. He’s a DC comic artist, and I think he’s the one that recommended me to look at this. I’m not 100% sure, but I have this book here called Framed Ink, and it’s called Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers. It’s so such a good book. I recommend this book for any artist who’s trying to do illustration or comic book art. Technically, it’s for comic book artists, but after reading this book, it allowed me to take that method and apply it to illustrations and it talks about everything. It talks about what direction the trees are going in. If the trees are somewhat bending towards the focus point of the piece, it actually creates more of a focus point. If you’re looking downwards or upwards at a person, let’s say upwards, it gives more of a towering kind of vibe where you feel small and they’re big and threatening and whatnot.

Even the dramatic lighting, when I was doing comic books, I was working on some stories where sometimes I wouldn’t even go in full detail. In the area, I would just put a Black background and add dramatic lighting to their face because sometimes the character would be sad or upset and I really wanted to capture that and it gave it a traumatic effect. There are so many little things you can do, and even hands. Hands are a big thing too that give a big personality in storytelling. So, if someone’s more gentle and calm, maybe their fingers look more elegant and soft and not so stiff and someone’s mad or trying to cast an aggressive spell or something like that. Maybe their hands are a bit more provocative or a little bit more like gnarly or something like that. There’s so many aspects to storytelling.

And also another thing I loved to do. I haven’t done it in a hot minute because I’ve just been painting crazy, which is look at movies and notice how they have the camera set, what kind of colors they’re choosing. It’s just like watching movies can teach you a lot about how to do storytelling and I’m trying to think of what was like a good movie I think that was pretty good. I would say I liked Ultraviolet with Milla Jovovich. That was a good one for how the perspectives were. They did the crazy camera angles and the way they showed scenes through someone’s shade. They’re wearing shades and then you could just see a picture within their shades. It’s just so many interesting ways for you to do storytelling. Maybe the person’s drinking a cup of coffee and you see them talking, but you’re not focused on them, the reflections in the cup of coffee. It’s just so many fascinating ways to do storytelling.

So, I would say for sure, just also pay attention to people out in public, just like we’re not having a conversation. They’re not all standstill and stiff like some action figure. No. They’re either hunched over or they’re leaning one way or the other, or it’s all about just pay attention to those small details and if you gather all those, those things to come together. You can come up with some really cool images. So, I would just say people watching, movie watching, sometimes even video games, but it depends on the video game. Like God of War, that’s a good storytelling for sure. If you’ve seen God of War, the video game, you would definitely see what I mean because it’s so well done and put well together, but that’s why I would say that and this book called Framed Ink for sure. It’s so good.

Maurice Cherry:
Speaking of video games, as I’m looking through your portfolio and seeing your work and everything, a lot of it is based on fantasy, science fiction. You’ve mentioned comic books being influenced by that. What really draws you to those as genres? What draws you to all that?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. I fell in love with comics and fantasy, sci-fi stuff when I was a kid. I was so obsessed with it. I wanted to submerge my mind into that world. Something about it just seemed like so much fun and it seemed bright and exciting and just something that just reached out to me. It all started with the ’90s, those beautiful colored costumes and Storm making her speeches and you didn’t see, but my hands just reached out to the sky like her. Just like what else was fantasy like Yu-Gi-Oh!, the monster designs. I was just fascinated by all this. I was watching cartoons absorbing it like a sponge and I was so into it and I had so many action figures. I still do, and honestly, it was like my dad introduced me into fantasy art as well, because he’s an artist and he would do a lot of these paintings at home where they were just fantasy-based, abstract kind of fantasy combination.

I just grew really fascinated with it and to be honest, I was like, when I was a kid, I was bullied and that world of fantasy and superheroes honestly helped me with my day-by-day life. It just brought so much happiness for me and honestly, I think that’s one of the main reasons why I became an artist in the first place. So, anyone else who was different like I was, they could look towards that and maybe get inspired by a character because it was like I was just so inspired by so many other characters too that made me just feel like I was capable. Like being different was great and awesome, and I just think that that’s definitely what drew me in. It’s just that entire world is something that made me happy, really, really happy and it still does.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there a lot of diversity in that space? I mean, of course, there’s the different stories that are being told, but in terms of other artists and things like that, is there a lot of diversity in that fantasy space?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
In terms of other artists?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I feel like for sure, like back then, when it came to it, like at the time I wasn’t aware, but Larry… I forgot his last name. But Larry is the producer and artist for the ’90s X-Men and it wasn’t until maybe five years ago I found out that it was a Black man and I was just astounded and so inspired. I was already inspired by the X-Men. The fact that it was created by a Black man, I was about to burst in tears happy because it just made me so ecstatic and I was like, “Holy crap. Someone who made something that inspired me and that just touched me in so many ways,” and oh, it was empowering. It was just amazing. I would say for sure that was just an important part of my art journey.

And now, since him, I didn’t notice too many. Even before I met him, I didn’t even notice too many Black artists, or at least they weren’t acknowledged at least because I feel like when it came to especially the comic book industry, that a lot more artists were not being acknowledged for their work. I mean, thankfully now it’s becoming more of a thing, but it should have been a thing already. It should have been like they should have been recognized for their hard work for sure. I didn’t know that many. I know a couple now. I follow a couple now on social media, which is great, but I just feel like we need more because especially for big projects like Dungeons and Dragons and Marvel, like thankfully Marvel’s now definitely for short, like not even artist-wise, but actor/artist-wise, we’re getting more people like Monica, Miss Marvel. It’s just having more people of color. It’s just awesome and I feel like now we’re getting more people of color who are artists arising more, especially during the pandemic because… Well, I think the pandemic’s over now-ish, but I think a lot of people realize that you can make your own business. You can be a freelancer. You can do this.

And them realizing that really did reveal more to social media. Like, “Hey, we’re here. I’m queer and I’m a person of color and I’m here,” and because of that I am happy that that happened, that people were able to put their stuff out there more. So, now I can actually see more and honestly, I’m just really happy about that. I think that would be the only good thing that came out of the pandemic. The only good thing was people realized, hey, I can start my own business. Hey, I can do this. I can make art and people can buy it, and with that, I would just have more rising, more rising and I just want that for everybody. More people to bring their voices forward because I didn’t have enough of that when I was a kid. I didn’t and that’s why I don’t know many people by name, which is unfortunate, but now it’s happening. So, yeah. Now, I can full on support.

Maurice Cherry:
I just looked up who you were talking about. I think it’s Larry Houston.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah, I was looking at his last name on the Storm piece he signed for me, but I couldn’t make out… I was like, “Darn it. That’s too many swirls. I can’t read it.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, Larry Houston was the producer and director of X-Men, the second season. I’m looking at his Twitter bio, but he’s like Fantastic Four, second season, Captain Planet, Johnny Quest, GI Joe, GI Joe movie, The Karate Kid, Care Bear. I had no idea. I had no idea he had such a impressive resume.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I only knew he did the X-Men. I didn’t know the other stuff. My goodness.

Maurice Cherry:
And actually speaking of X-Men, like I know there’s the new… I think it’s like the reboot of the ’90s Cartoon is supposed to be coming out I think this year, maybe next year, but that has a Black director at the helm too, Beau DeMayo.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been following it too. I was like, “Yes, I need to see this.” It’s like it’s supposed to be a continuation off the ’90s, which I’m very curious about how that’s going to go because first off, that show was just… It was ahead of its time. It tackled racism. It tackled speciesism. I think that’s how you say. You know what I’m talking about? I forget the correct terminology, but anybody who was different, that was not normal. Anybody who was different, they were just looked upon as a freak of nature or something like that and just to have a show that was empowering people who were different, it was a huge gift. I don’t know honestly if I would’ve been an artist if X-Men didn’t exist at that time for me when I was a kid. I don’t know because that was just a huge motivator, huge inspiration for me.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s switch gears here a little bit. I know we’ve talked a lot about your work and you’ve led us into your process, but you’ve also given us, I think, a bit of a window into where you came from and where this love comes from. So, let’s talk more about you. Let’s talk about you. Are you originally from Seattle?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
No, I am from Philadelphia.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Most of my life, I’ve been an Philadelphian.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. What was it like growing up in Philly?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh goodness. First off, concrete jungle. No trees around. Some trees around, but not that much. Going from Philly to Seattle was definitely an adjustment. Goodness gracious. In Philly, I’m just remembering, like I was living with my parents. I went to art school. I went to Northeast High and that was in the Northeast Philadelphia and that was definitely a school I enjoyed for sure because I had so many good friends there. I was a part of the choir, so that was another creative thing, another creative outlet for me and I was working on comics and this is before I was overthinking some of this stuff. So, I was able just to draw without overthinking it and actually made a little bit of profit there too.

So, it was super fun just to draw my own comic book, make copies, and my classmates were like, “Ooh, we want to buy one. We want to buy one,” and it was just super, super fun, but the area I was in definitely was more concrete jungle. I don’t think I got inspired by the area I was in, more by the people I was hanging around with and my dad when he was working on this art and my brother too, and it was just like I had a good community over there. I’m very grateful for having so many awesome people there that inspired me to continue making art and going hushing over there in Philadelphia was great. Was there for four years. I met some very good friends of mine and they’re still friends of mine, which is a blessing because it’s hard to find some true friends and it was just a wonderful experience, and honestly, it also helped me find more of myself too, just like people there who knew me through and through.

Before even I knew me, it was weird. It was like, “Where are you, in my head or something?” No, it was just an awesome experience. Plus the food was way cheaper than Seattle. It was also dangerous because I could get me a plain pizza at large for 11 bucks and I would go for it, but over here in Seattle, it’s like a large plain pizza is like 26. So, it’s like, “Okay, maybe that shouldn’t be ordering so much over here. Maybe I should learn how to cook.” So, when I came up here to Seattle, it was definitely more of a, okay, let’s step up this adulthood more. Let’s learn how to cook. So, I did that and goodness gracious, I had to build my entire art studio again because I had no scanner. I had no art desk. So, it was just starting all over and fresh, but being in Seattle, I love the nature. Nature is gorgeous.

If you ever wanted to get away, obviously, you could just take a bus to a park somewhere and just chill there. It’s like nature is right there and it was just so nice to have that accessibility. There is definitely a Seattle freeze for a couple, maybe a handful or two. Over here where it’s like some people are just like they’ll pretend you’re not there or if they need to reach for something, they’ll just reach right in front of you and I’m not used to that. I’m used to Philly kind of interaction which is like, okay, if you need something, I’m going to say excuse me and then get together, but thankfully, a lot of people weren’t born here and moved here and you can always tell because those are the people that are just like, “Oh, hello. How you doing?” They actually will have a conversation with you or have eye contact with you, but thankfully I’ve had the pleasure to make friends with a lot of people who weren’t having the Seattle freeze symptoms.

They wouldn’t have the Seattle freeze symptoms. They would just be completely themselves and open and nice and kind. Yeah. So, be over here in Seattle and Philly, I could tell you that the difference is that for sure is like, “Philly, you just need more green. You need a lot more green,” and then Seattle’s like, “Seattle, you just need to look more fun. You need to have a little bit more fun.” Yeah, it was definitely like a process and adjustment for me to go from East Coast to West Coast. Such a huge adjustment, but I’m still me. I’m still a Philadelphian. I even consider myself to be a little bit of Seattleite, but Philly come first because I was there most of my adult life. So, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
What made you decide to move to Seattle from Philly?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
I wanted to be with my ex at the time. So, me and him both moved to Seattle and at that time, I was going through a lot of struggle, a lot of inner struggle, inner demons, what’s that? Imposter syndrome. My friends were trying to help me and my family were trying to help me and they were all so wonderfully attending and want to make sure I was okay, but I was not going to be okay until I was going to want to be okay or figure out some stuff. So, when I moved over to Seattle, it gave me that breathing space for me to figure out what’s going on with me and it took a hot minute too, but thanks to therapy, thanks to journaling, thanks to working out, thanks to being self-aware and giving myself those self-love affirmations, all that helped me become much more of a happier person to get in touch with that inner child that was suffering from all the seriousness of adulthood.

It’s like I know we got responsibilities, but also we are supposed to live our life and have fun. I can’t lose that part of myself because that part of myself is a huge part of why I’m an artist. So, I have to make sure that I’m taking care of myself and giving myself that time and space I need to do what I need to do to make sure I am in a better place, and when I’m like that, I’m actually able to be there for other people more. I’m able to handle more. It’s just something that I think that everyone needs to take into consideration. It’s about like self-care, self-love, self-expression for sure. Self-expression because too many people hold things in and it builds up like a volcano and it explodes and it’s not fun. That was one of the things.

I was just like, “I can’t be living my life like that. I want to be happy. I want to make my work and be proud of the work I make and I want to be there for my friends and not feel exhausted or forced and doing all that work. That self-work allowed me to become much better.” That’s what I would say.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you been able to tap into an artist community or a design community in Seattle?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Took me a hot minute, but I find it a little hilarious because I didn’t think it was going to work, but I went to a comic book store, Phoenix Comics & Games, in Capitol Hill, and I went there, and I was looking at the local artists and they had local artists putting their comic books on the rack and I was like, “Oh, let me see if I could find somebody,” and thankfully I found my friend Tim, and his book, I think it’s called Enter the Wolves. He had his phone number and contact information in there, or was it just his email? Either way I contacted him and he responded and we met up. This is before I had any of our friends at all here on the West Coast. So, I went to go meet up with him. We hung out, had a cup of coffee, talked, and it was like later we decided to start making it a thing.

Let’s get together and draw and then we would do that and then we started to bring more people into the forward people. He knew people I would probably meet that were interested in meeting for the art meetup and it’s just now a regular thing and we’ve been doing it for years now, just doing our art meetup and drawing and just having a blast because one of the huge things I missed in Philly was my art community, was hang out with my friend Laurie and Kat and we would just hang out together and I loved that. I didn’t realize how much I would’ve miss that until I moved to Seattle and it was no longer accessible and I needed that back in my life or at least closest to as I could get. So, having that art community is a huge blessing and it’s awesome and it also helps me focus too.

It’s like, “Ooh, if I’m going to be home I’m going to have to adjust myself, but if I go out and meet with my art friends, then I have no excuse. I can just go in there and start drawing because I’ll be fine and chill with my folks.” So, absolutely worth it of trying that, just emailing random artists like, “Hey, you want to meet up and such like that?” I’m just glad that I did that because usually I get social anxiety and I get nervous about talking to people, but it was like, no, I’m not going to let that stop me from making new friends. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to do it. Yeah, I’m just very grateful for that. Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you spoke earlier about Larry Houston, but I’m curious, are there other artists or illustrators that have influenced your work the most?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Jim Lee.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Because he was drawing the X-Men back in, I think, the ’80s, ’90s-ish. Like I said, I’m a huge X-Men fan. You just don’t know. I have so much X-men on my wall about besides that. No, Jim Lee, it was definitely for sure because I loved the intensity he will put into his ink work. It was just so comic bookish style and it really made the X-Men look really cool and I was just like, “Oh my God, I could just read this all day.” Another artist I would say is Ross Straus. Him, I enjoy because of a lot of his potent color. Like my art teacher back in Hussain would talk about how juicy the colors are, you know? When we’re painting, she’s like, “Get the juice in there,” and I’m just like… ever since then when it comes to my art, I just have to put juice into my color.

It’s like I need to make this a little bit more pow in your face. So, yes, that was definitely another one. Alex Ross is another one. He is much more of a traditional. He does works in, like I think traditional acrylics or oils. I’m not exactly sure, but he does work with traditional mediums and his work is taking the comic book world and making it more into a realistic kind of vibe and he does a lot of dramatic lighting too. So, I just loved it. I just love how he was able to take that world that was fiction and bring it so close to reality. So, sometimes I’m doing my work. If I’m working on a cover or something like that, I’ll step on comic book style. I’ll probably go for an illustration style just because it gives it a completely different vibe. It gives the character more of a breath of life kind of scenario.

I mean, I love the graphic feel, but something about just seeing a character that looks almost realistic. You’re like, “Oh crap.” You’re just like, “That looks great,” and one more is Simon Bianchi. I hope I pronounced his last name right, but I believe he is a French artist who works for Marvel and he does a lot of acrylic watercolor kind of techniques where it’s a combination of realistic and comic book style and I just loved how he would illustrate such a dramatic use of colors and his hair detail. He would draw a lot of detail in the hair, but it would just look so beautifully well planned. I can’t even get into full detail about how his stuff works, but Simon Bianchi is definitely an artist I studied especially back in art school. When I was learning watercolor, I would just look at his pictures and I would just paint what I saw.

I would just paint up a panel I saw of his I really enjoyed and because of that, I actually got much better with watercolor the next year because watercolor was literally the first medium I was trying to get really good at and it took a hot minute for me to understand how to manipulate watercolor, but now it’s like after all those years of studying and investing time and studying that medium, watercolor, I just was excited to actually be able to utilize it to make an image the way I wanted to because watercolor is very, very tricky. So, thank you, Simon, for doing that for me because now I know how to paint.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you mentioned that your father was a traditional artist. Was he an illustrator also?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
He definitely did his own paintings. He didn’t do it professionally, but he wanted to, but unfortunately he didn’t have the support of his family, like not the way that I do and I’m just grateful for him to give me that support because he knows how hard it is out here in the creative field because so many people want to jump in and do it, but my dad still does make art till this day. Like I was talking to him and my mother for Mother’s Day and he showed me these pieces he was working on. It was so beautiful, abstract, gorgeous, surreal kind of fantasy and it just makes me so happy that he’s still making his art because this is a part of who he is. He might not be doing it professionally, but at least he’s still doing it and I’m just happy and proud of him for that.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. What advice would you give to any aspiring artist? They’re hearing you talk about your work and your process and they want to follow in your footsteps. What advice would you give to them about just starting out in the industry?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Number one I think is patience. Patience with yourself, patience with the process of making art and patience with the process of getting work if you want to pursue it professionally. It took me a hot minute before I started to get more commissions coming in manually, and it took a while for me to get to that point where, hey, I don’t have to look for commissions. People just come to me and asked me, “Hey, can you do this for me?” All that took a while and like I said, without that actual chart to show you, hey, you’re on step two now. You’re on step three. Woo. Without that, it’s so easy for you to feel like you’re not moving. You’re standing still, like your career’s not going anywhere, and especially if you are starting off with illustrate, like you’re starting off by making art and you’re not at the level you want to be, it’s so hard to be patient with yourself, especially when you’re comparing yourself to other artists.

I think people need to have much more patience with themselves and understand that what’s going to get you there is consistency, to keep trying, to keep painting, to try new things, to share your work. Don’t be afraid to share your work. That’s something that I still struggle with sometime. I mean, I know I have a lot of content on my social media. Yes, I do, but there are moments where my partner will catch me. He’s like, “Don’t overthink it. Just write out your stuff and post it on there,” and I’m just like, “You’re right. I just wanted to be perfect,” but there’s no such thing as perfect. The best way to be perfect is to be yourself authentically and then there you go. Just be your genuine self. That is perfection.

I would definitely say that that’s something that that’s needed is patience. No one’s going to give you a timeline of when you’re going to get that job either and that’s frustrating. I could totally get that, but you also just got to… Like I said, you got to be patient with that process. You won’t know until it actually happens in that moment. Like this podcast, I didn’t think I was going to get interviewed for a podcast and next thing you know, it just pops out in a moment. I’m like, “Oh, wow. Okay.” I’m like, “Fine.” Even the Western Hotel thing, that was another random thing, and I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Another thing I would say for sure is give yourself affirmations for sure. If you had to make yourself that list and cross something off that you got done to get that pat on the back kind of feel, then do it. I would say go for it. That’s absolutely necessary because it’s so easy for you to do things and then forget what you do because this happened to me before and still does sometimes. You forget what you do in the day and then you feel like you’re like, “Oh, I could have done more.” It’s like, “No, no, you’re doing pretty darn good. Look at that list.” I think it’s definitely important to give yourself that affirmation and also to sometimes take a look back at your old art and look at your art the way it is now so that way you can give yourself that affirmation of, oh, I did grow. You know? Because it’s like it’s so… Being an artist is a marathon. It’s not a race. It’s a marathon. That’s what I’m saying to be consistent and with that marathon you’re running, it’s so easy for you to feel like, “Oh, I’m not growing as an artist.” My skill level’s not improving or whatnot and it’s always good to look back at your old art pieces and don’t compare to other artists.

That other artist is on a completely different path than you. Not every artist is going to get a job the exact same way. Not every artist is going to get noticed the exact same way. It’s so different from each other, it’s frustrating because you wish that there was a book to go ahead and tell you like, “This is exactly how you do it.” Oh no, there’s no book. You just got to put your stuff out there and be consistent and don’t be a butt hole. That’s another thing. When you’re talking to people, always want to be a genuine person, but also treat that person with fellow respect. No one likes to work with somebody who’s mean or nasty or comes off as aggressive. No, like this is networking and building a relationship, a friendship. You want to make sure that you are presenting yourself the best way you can be that is genuine and true, and I think that’s just something to absolutely consider as well and another thing I think that’s beneficial is trying out new things.

Like I’ve done watercolor, acrylics, used acrylics as watercolor and on canvas, digital painting. Now, I’m starting to get into story boarding and sculpting. Sculpting too. It’s like you are an artist and yes, you have a preference, but it’s always refreshing just to get into something just a little bit new and it keeps your excitement up. It keeps you like, ooh, I’m so excited just to try that out. You’ll see what comes out and everything. I’m painting on canvas now, and usually I don’t paint on canvas. I usually leave that alone, but with that 10-minute piece painting I was doing at the Western Hotel, that was something that really brought that out on me that I was like, “I want to paint on canvas. I want to try that out.” I feel something that’s pulling me towards that and it was like that kid-like spark that was like, “Ooh, I need that.”

So, now doing that and looking at the canvas, I’m like, “I am happy,” and I think that’s definitely something important to do is don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and don’t be afraid to show your art, self-affirmations and patience with yourself, and one more I think is self-awareness, and self-awareness, I mean by that is just acknowledging if you are upset about something because being an artist isn’t just drawing pictures. It’s you’re putting your energy into that piece. You’re giving parts or you’re putting parts of yourself into that piece, and if you’re upset or going through something, it’s going to show up, or you might not be able to draw as well. You might not be able to think as well. That’s why it’s so important to be self-aware about what state of mind you’re in, and it’s all about just giving yourself that attention, acknowledging that you’re not okay or you’re upset, or maybe you’re just tired and burnt out.

It’s good for you to acknowledge this and to know this so that way you can just take care of yourself, give yourself a hug, or get a hug from a friend or talk to somebody you trust, and this is definitely something that will help you out for sure because being an artist, and especially in a world like this, it’s stressful. It can be very stressful, but it’s also very, very rewarding, especially when you are just giving it your all and you see it pay off. It’s something absolutely worth it, and long as you are just making sure that you’re your own best friend, you’re going to get there just like you got to make sure you give yourself some loving and you got to make sure that you just acknowledge when you need something, and I think that’s important too. That’s my advice.

Maurice Cherry:
Do you have a dream project you’d love to do one day?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, okay. It’s on my list. It’s on top of my list. I want to be a cover artist for Marvel, because I just like doing illustrations. I just love doing the storytelling. I want to be a cover artist. I want to do full-on paintings and do stuff for them. I want to do stuff for Wizards of the Coast because I love the overall style of their world. They’re just this beautiful like… It’s like Renaissance paintings. I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about, but it’s like they have that soft glow. It’s like the way they paint them. I was going to the Seattle Art Museum, and I was noticing these pieces that were back in the day Renaissance Times where I have no clue how they did it, but the way they painted, it’s almost looked like they were computers themselves, but you could still tell it was by an artist, of course. The way they just captured a glow or the texture or the way the person was, like the way they were standing. It’s just like their bodies weren’t even stiff. Something like that. It’s just like, “Oh God. Yes. That is exactly what I need.”

Maurice Cherry:
We had someone on the show a couple of months ago, Lauren Brown. I think she’s an art director at Wizards of the Coast. I’m looking now. Yeah, Emmy Award-winning illustrator and art director at Wizards of the Coast. She’s here in Atlanta too. Yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, nice. I’m going to look them up.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes. Yeah, so there’s a lot. I mean, there’s certainly, I think as you sort of mentioned that, I think that opportunity is definitely going to be out there for you because as I talked about earlier, it just seems like there’s more and more Black people, really people of color, but I’d say Black people specifically that are really being out there, especially with the major titles. I’m really surprised to see how many are doing things for Marvel. We’ve had a few motion graphics designers that have done work for some of the movies, like Black Panther or into the Spider-Verse. It’s amazing how we are starting to get out there more. I mean, granted, it’s still not super diverse like in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like that’s going to happen for you sooner rather than later. I really think that.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, thank you. Yes, please. I want that as like I can feel my spirit trying to grab it with its hands. It’s like I want it. It’s like I need that because in the future, I want to have my own company, like Marvel or Wizards of the Coast where it’s like I’m able to give those same opportunities for other people of color and especially Black people. It’s like there’s so much talent there and it’s like it’s so untapped and now we’re just tapping into it. It’s so much more like Woman King. Oh my God. [The] Woman King, Viola Davis, like oh my God. Thank you for doing that movie because that was amazing. Michelle Yeoh about… What’s it? Everything In Our Place. That’s a long title.

Maurice Cherry:
Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yes, that’s another one. It’s like see what happens when people of color and diversity is represented. You get awesomeness. You get wonderful stories. It’s just something that is needed and in the future, if I can provide that opportunity for more people, I will. If I can reach back and grab my fellow artists and be like, “Hey, I did not forget about you. Come here. I got something for you.” I want to do that and I feel like that’s something that a lot of people of the community should be doing. It’s the only way for us to excel and expose ourselves to more and get our names out there because there’s so much that haven’t been shown yet and we’re just tapping the tip of the iceberg for all this. I just think it’s going to be amazing and I just can’t wait to be a part of it.

I just want to be a part of it, and I just want to be there with my fellow nerds, my fellow awesome nerds and yes, just being in a convention surrounded by people who are raised in the same world that you were raised in. You know, just like anything, like fantasy, sci-fi, comics, movies, games, all that. It’s such a beautiful way to bond with people and to share that. It’s so much fun and I feel like one of the biggest things, adults forget to have fun and to be a kid again, and honestly being an adult, you’re just older and you forget to tend to that inner child and it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. So, it’s when adults go to conventions and it’s like someone who’s like 50 and they’re still buying action figures and whatnot, go for it. Do it.

You work so hard. You get that action figure. You get it and you flaunt it like seriously. It’s just like we need to make sure we’re balancing out that fun and I feel like that’s what my work and the industry of creativity gives to people, gives you that permission. Even though you don’t need permission, you should be having fun. It gives you that childhood like happiness, and I think that that’s why the reasons why it’s so important to be an artist is to bring that out of people so people can still feel that. I think it’s still so important for it. I think it’s very important.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? I mean, I feel like you’ve already spoken some of that into the universe now, but what do you want the next chapter of your story to look like?

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Oh, goodness. I have visions of how I want things to look like. As I say this to you, I’m actually looking at my manifestation board. It’s something that I’ve come to really enjoy doing because I’m looking at my manifestation board and some of it’s already come true, which is great, but in the future, I would like to go to more conventions for sure. That’s something I love doing, just to be in that world full of people who enjoy the same things I do and to interact with them and to show them my work. It’s one of the greatest gifts to create art and someone comes along and they’re just entranced by it or they are feeling things because of it, that the art has moved to some kind of way, and I think that is awesome. So, I definitely will want more of that.

I haven’t had my work in galleries before, so I am focusing on getting my work in galleries too, because now painting on Canvas, it’s like I want to develop so much art on canvas, bigger size, small size, all the size. So, I definitely want to have more of my work in the galleries and I want to have my comic book up and have it out there because it’s like my own stories I’ve had on my mind for a while. I started to give it some more work recently, so I was like, “I’m grateful that I’m starting to get back into that,” and in the future, I would definitely love to have a comic book made officially, have a shiny cover, and maybe a 3D model made of a character.

Five years from now, I just want to be making art like crazy and I want to be a part of those teams that make fun projects like people at Marvel, like the people who get to be a part of the whole process of the movie and whatnot. I would love to be a part of that. I would love to be part of a company like Wizards of the Coast where it’s like I can give contributions to like, hey, let’s make this character, whatnot, and just design new stories and characters and whatnot. I would love to do that just to be fully submerged more into my craft, and I think that’s something that I have recently come to full-on terms, which is like acknowledging that this is not only my career, but being an artist is my life and I love being an artist. So, it’s like I just want more of all of that. I am greedy and I want all of that.

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

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Well, I do have my own personal website. It is my full name, www.isiahxavierbradley.com. You do have to include the Xavier in there because otherwise you’re going to get the Black Captain America, which-

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah, that was his name from… I remember that from the show, from Falcon, Winter Soldier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yes. Yeah. I’ve always found that hilarious. I was like named Dr. Superheroes, even my middle name. I’m like, “Oh my goodness.” I’m like, “I think I was born to do this.”

Maurice Cherry:
It’s destiny. Yeah, it’s what it sounds like.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Yeah, like universe, you have a heck of a personality, don’t you? Also, I do have Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, which all you can find under my handle, Isiah_XB, and then there’s my Facebook as well. You can always go under my full name, Isiah Xavier Bradley and my page would show up. Just include that Xavier part, and we’re all good, and most people get confused with how to spell my name, so I am going to say it’s spelled I-S-I-A-H, and then underscore XB. Most people spell Isiah with two As. For some reason, mine is just with one A. I don’t know why, but okay.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. There you go. Well, Isiah Xavier Bradley, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on this show. I think if there’s anything that people will get from this interview is that you have this joy. It’s not even passion. I mean, I will say passion is probably there too, but you have this joy about just the fact that you’re doing exactly what it is that you want to do that is infectious. You’re excited about the genre. You’re excited about your work. You’re excited about all these things, but you’ve also taken the time to make sure that your own self is prospering and well throughout all of this.

I mean, the world is changing at such a rapid rate. I mean, you talked about self-care and rituals and things of this nature, so I really get a feeling that people will listen to this and they’ll get a really good sense of you as an artist, as a creative, and hopefully we’ll follow your work and we’ll see that Marvel cover one day. I’m putting it out there. We’re going to see you one day, but yeah, thank you again so much for coming on the show, man. I appreciate it.

Isiah Xavier Bradley:
Well, thank you so much for your time, Maurice. I really do appreciate it. This has been awesome. You really made up my day. I can’t stop smiling right now. I’m just excited, just like I’m going to start painting all day today, like I was already drawing and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to get into it real good.” So, thank you so much for your time and this opportunity. I’m really grateful, Maurice. Thank you so much.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

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Maxwell VanHook

“If you have a vision for yourself, go for it.” When Maxwell VanHook told me that before our interview, I knew that he was about to drop some serious knowledge. And he did not disappoint!

We started off in an interesting place — the home — and he talked about how newlywed life and how he’s been re-evaluating the concept of work and code switching in this current age. He also shared a bit about his work as an associate creative director for Amazon Devices, and his role as co-host of the weekly IG Live show Designing While Black. For Maxwell, trusting your voice and values has been key to his success…and I definitely agree with that!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Maxwell VanHook:
I am Maxwell VanHook. I am from Baltimore, Maryland, currently. In my professional life, I am an associate creative director on the Amazon devices team. That basically entails anything that has Alexa in it, but it also involves the devices that Amazon makes. You can think about your Echo Dots, Echo Shows, Kindles, emerging platforms like Amazon Luna, which is cloud gaming. Outside of my professional life, I am a music lover. I’m also the co-host of Designing While Black along with Bekah Marcum. That comprises who I am. First and foremost, I would say with all of those things, I like to show up as a friend. I’m just a friend, support system and a champion of other people’s dreams. I like to see people succeed. I’d like to see people win.

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

Maxwell VanHook:
The year’s been good. I’m not going to lie to you. When COVID hit, I think that I had some psychological and emotional barriers. No, just in terms of shifting my schedule. I had a routine. I would get up every day, probably around 6:37 o’clock, do whatever I need to do for the morning, get dressed, go to work, probably get coffee when I went to work. And so it gets monotonous. All of that broke down once COVID hit. And so now, I’m at home. Now, I’m with my wife and I’m with my cat. Nobody’s really going outside. And so I had to create new routines for myself. I had to learn how to work out within at home, I had to learn how to run within my home, I had to learn how to make sure that I was keeping my mind active outside of my day-to-day work. I also need to figure out how to keep myself emotionally and mentally stable.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so it’s been good because I learned a lot about myself. I really had to scrutinize what I wanted from life and it allowed me to be still. I know that there were a lot of things that came along with the pandemic. But now that we’re somewhat out of it, I actually appreciate it because it allowed me to sit with myself and really be introspective about how I wanted to move forward in this next phase of life. I just turned 31 not too long ago. And so I feel like I’m at a crossroads in terms of who I want to be. This has been good for me.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I think a lot of people now, especially peer in the states who have hopefully gotten their vaccines or they’re seeing now that just restrictions are being lifted like nationwide and in many places, I think a lot of people are at that point of reexamining and reevaluating where they’re at now that they’ve come out of this and trying to figure out what moving forward looks like, because I think there’s been this big push to get back to normal. You got to get back to normal. But it’s almost impossible in many ways because the world is just a different place. We’re different people now that we have all collectively went through this extended trauma. It’s hard to just snap back into what you used to do before all of this.

Maxwell VanHook:
Now, it was important for me… I realized, especially like on a work-front, there are certain conditioning that you go through in terms of how you show up that especially in physical spaces, like when you walk into a corporate office and you’re not the dominant culture. And so things like code switching, dialect altering, I was with… not too long ago, we had someone that we interviewed and they used the phrase telephone voice. These are things that I feel black and brown people use every day to survive in these spaces. I just had to do a deep conditioning because when I was at home, I was way more relaxed. And then I realized that I’m not in the physical space with you and I’m not going to become someone different when I’m outside of my home.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I had a conflict with myself, like internal conflict. This is the space where I am authentically myself, this is the space where I can be free and open and now I’m bringing work into that space. And so I like, “No, I flipped that on its head. Anywhere that I show up, that’s how I’m going to be.” And so working at home actually allowed me to do that, getting on the phone and not really caring how I’m phrasing things, not really caring on what type of vernacular I’ll use because I was just embracing fully who I am. Especially when you put it in the context of the pandemic, you realize, “Hey, life can be snatched at any moment. It’s up to us to live use the agency to own your life.”

Maurice Cherry:
That’s interesting. You’re like reevaluating… it’s funny… well, not funny, but I like that you said that you’re looking at home and how you bring work into it, because certainly for a lot of folks, having to work from home, it’s been tough, I think, for many people to really make that delineation between like, “This is work, this is home.” Even if you’ve got a dedicated space, you’re still bringing a totally foreign thing into your sanctuary. Home is where you… That’s where you sleep, that’s where you let your hair down, that’s where you let your defenses down. But now, it’s also your workplace and your gym and your daycare and all these other things now. Yeah.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah, all those things converged. When they converged in that manner, I just started to look at how I was showing up and then also how I was relating to people. I think you discover things about yourself throughout life because I believe that we’re fluid beings in that way. And just being able to sit at home, knowing that this is my space and I own it, I couldn’t even access any form of code switching or altering, if I wanted to, because it just wouldn’t sit right with me. And that just ultimately led me to say like, “Why was I doing it in the first place? Also, who told me to do this?” And that was another thing like, “Who told me to do this?” I was like, “No one told me to do this? This is a decision you made and you have to break and work to get out of this.”

Maxwell VanHook:
And so if there is a danger and not code switching, that’s just something that I’m going to have to deal with, but I would rather live my truth. I feel like most people should live their truth in that sense. There’s so many people who stay away from their unique sensibilities or their unique form of expression because of how other people will perceive it and that stops you from that expansion. That’s the goal. I’m trying to expand, I’m trying to try as many things as I possibly can. With curiosity comes failures sometimes. I don’t even look at failure as failure. I look at that as a lesson, a learning lesson. I want to fall as many times as I can. I want to show up in any form that I want to show up in. Yeah, I just want to own my space. I’m trying to walk away from conditioning that may have happened beforehand.

Maurice Cherry:
Does Amazon foster that kind of exploration for you as an employee?

Maxwell VanHook:
I don’t necessarily know if Amazon fosters it. But I will say that when I came to Amazon, I was met with some very real confrontational energy in terms of the people that I was interacting with. I know there are horror stories about Amazon. I do not believe that the majority of them are true, just not in my case. But there was this presence of trying to be A type, trying to be the best, trying to always be on. And for me, there was the double whammy of walking into a social environment inside the building where nobody looked like me, and then also outside of the building, nobody looked like me. And so I don’t necessarily know if there was a support system there. I’d argue that there wasn’t and they’re trying to build it now to foster that individuality and that freedom of expression, but it forced me to build my own.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so in that way, I would appreciate the experience of coming to Amazon, being able to live in Seattle, because it put me directly in line and maybe come face-to-face with who I am as a person, as a designer, especially as a man. And so it was like a forcing function. If I was half stepping in in who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up, I couldn’t really do that there. And so there were a lot of things that I just started to think about differently life-wise once I started working at Amazon. More specifically, like my wellness, like self-care. I didn’t even get a therapist until I came to Amazon, which is odd, it’s super odd. That shouldn’t have been the case. I probably should have always had a sense of reflection or someone to help me process, but that stuff did not happen until I came to Seattle.

Maurice Cherry:
Interesting. We’ll talk about what brought you to Seattle and everything later, but I want to focus now on the work that you’re doing at Amazon. You said you’re an associate creative director when you’re working on Amazon products, devices I should say, Amazon devices. Amazon has been in the device game for a minute. I think everyone knows about the Kindle, but now there’s Echo, like you mentioned, there’s the Fire TV, there’s the Fire tablet. Amazon has also acquired other electronics companies. And so there’s wearables, there’s the ring security system, all this sort of stuff. There’s a lot that goes into devices at Amazon. Just like as broad as you can, and if you want to go into specifics, that’s fine, what are some creative considerations that you have to think about when it comes to Amazon devices because you’re really working with an entire ecosystem of tech here?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I would say at the center, there’s a leadership principle called customer obsession. Really without getting into too much jargon, essentially at the epicenter of any Amazon product or any Amazon device is this human focused, this human lens. Always creating product and always creating innovation with your audience in mind. And so anytime that I am getting ready to create a campaign or I’m getting ready to market a product, I always think about the audience that I’m trying to serve, because if I’m not thinking about that, then I’m probably being a terrible designer.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I would say that one is that audience, but then also balancing that as you go through and you’re innovating from device to device, realizing how these technologies may create tension points. You want to look at like Echo Dot, for instance, the way that it functions is it very much so has to record. And so it’s constantly listening. It’s pinging to see if it’s being called every so often. And that’s why when you say the key phrase, Alexa, it’ll activate. And so how do I humanize technology like that? How do I humanize emerging technology to show people like, “Hey, this is new, this is novel, but it can fit within your day-to-day lifestyle and it can be a benefit to you”? And so that’s how I think about marketing any product with Amazon. What is the human entry point? What is the human lens? How does this product help serve the customer base and how does it help enhance their lifestyle?

Maxwell VanHook:
I worked on a product, a service within the Alexa app not too long ago, which is probably one of my proudest projects. It’s called Alexa Care. Essentially, it’s for the more senior, elder loved ones in your life. It allows people to stay in touch with those loved ones without infringing on their day-to-day lifestyle. Imagine you have a grandmother who’s 75, 80 years old. She lives by herself at home and you live maybe in another country or another state. How do you stay in touch with her? And so those are the types of products and that’s essentially how we would want any of the Amazon devices to show up. It needs to be a benefit, it needs to enhance, it needs to be brought into the life of our everyday customer and improve. If it’s not doing that, then we probably won’t make it.

Maurice Cherry:
Now that you mentioned, I’m thinking of other kind of Amazon devices. I think these might’ve been some that were discontinued. I remember at one point there was a… I think one was like a camera or a camera wand or something that went with Amazon wardrobe that would analyze your outfit. It reminded me of Clueless, like the opening scene in Clueless, where Cher is picking out her outfit on the computer and the closets got the dual conveyor belt curtains, or whatever, or the rods, or whatever, but thinking about like, “Is that really a benefit? Do I need to do all of that if I’m getting ready in the morning?” Probably not. I think Amazon discontinued it fairly shortly. But when you put it in that way of like the devices need to be a benefit, then I see why Amazon has made such a, I think, deep strides into the home with their devices.

Maurice Cherry:
The Echo is something that easily can blend in with your decor. The Fire TV it sits behind your TV, it’s out of sight. The ring it’s literally outside the house. You don’t really even see it. But the benefits that it adds, whether that’s security or extensibility or smart home functionality, stuff like that, it’s interesting how all of that still works together under the Amazon brand because now it, of course, ties into the services, it ties into Alexa, it ties into purchasing, or whatever that you want to do on the website.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. It’s really important to look at the ecosystem of devices that we have. I don’t even think there’s a lot of things that Amazon tries. I would say a year-over-year, we’ve increased our device output like 10 fold. I expect it to continue to grow and grow. Really, I think the goal is to provide through Alexa a service that can be personalized to the end user and can function in a way that benefits them specifically. I imagine a world… And these are not conversations that I’ve had with anyone in terms of how Alexa functions. But I imagine a world where there are no devices and potentially Alexa is integrated into the home itself.

Maxwell VanHook:
I could imagine like seeing a tiny home, it could start off there and it could just have Alexa integrated into. You don’t need to have these one-off devices in order to have it function. Imagine it already being built into the smart appliances, imagine it already being able to interface with your computer. You don’t need to have a suite of devices that ties into the Internet of things in order to function efficiently. That’s what I think is going on with most AIs. I think the overall goal is to arrive there and the device is just to open up new spaces and open up how customers relate to the voice assistance.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, because I imagine you get a ton of data with just seeing how people talk to Alexa, how they interact with the different devices, and then you can use that, of course, to upgrade the experience. But then as you said, you can venture off into greater implementations. Like I know there’s the Amazon Go store, which I think started in Seattle. I’m not sure if it’s started to spread nationwide yet, but it’s almost like a person list convenience store. You can go in, pick up what you need and walk out. As you’re doing this, you’re automatically being rung up, like the things that you’re buying are being tabulated, you’re charged when you walk out the door, and you don’t have to interact with a person. You just go in, do what you have to do, walk out.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I think, if I’m not mistaken, not too long ago, and you probably find this online, they just opened up a full fledged grocery store here in Washington.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, wow.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I’m going to have to go check that out. Even like that concept, it’s interesting because it’s not like we haven’t tried that in history before. I look at the, on a smaller scale, like a lot of the grocery stores already have some form of self-checkout. But even the human psychology behind self-checkout, you look at it, realistically, if you were to assess how long it takes you to go into a store, get what you need and then go through the checkout line by yourself, it probably on average takes you a lot longer rather than having else. But it’s the thought that you are going to be a lot faster than that person who may be checking you out in line, which is interesting. But also even seeing Amazon try something like this and be relatively successful has a lot to do with studying the human behavior. But yeah, that’s not the first time in human history that we’ve we tried that before. [crosstalk 00:21:10].

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, no, no, I’m thinking specifically of the automat, which has been around since like the late 1800s. When Amazon is doing at least in… if you look at from the automat to the Amazon Go store is essentially taking that same concept and almost treating the store like a vending machine and just having this layer of technology that handles interactions throughout the entire process.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah, no, it’s crazy to see. I remember the first time that I actually went into… because I work in Day 1, and for anyone who doesn’t know what Day 1, it’s one of the buildings. I believe it’s actually the building that Jeff Bezos is. And so within the verticals and the business orders that he cares about, they all exist in that building, with the exception of AWS, Amazon Web Services. I remember when I first went into that store and it was such a weird thing. It was like coming from where I come from, just be able to use an app, walk in and walk out, and I stopped myself and I was like, “Am I like really…” It’s almost like you feel like you’re about to steal something like, “Am I really allowed to walk out with this?” Yeah, but it’s interesting in that I think as they become more successful with the rollout of the stores, yeah, you’re going to see a lot more of it.

Maurice Cherry:
I can see Amazon coming out with like the Amazon house of tomorrow. You know what I mean? It’s almost like those old Tex Avery cartoons where you got all the machines and robots doing stuff. It’s so interesting because these are concepts… Just this whole thing about home automation, for example, we’ve been fed that for like 50 years now. The Flintstones and all those little animals and shit doing stuff for them in the cave, we’ve been fed this whole thing about having the house work for us instead of us working in the house for such a long time. And so now you’ve got a company like Amazon that’s able to really do that through their devices. Other companies have gotten on this too, but I feel like Amazon was really one of the first to really do deep penetration into the home largely because I think it was tied to commerce.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah, no, I also think it’s so interesting to see the exponential growth of technology and the rate of change and the rate of innovation and technology. I’m sure that you’ve watched Black Mirror.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. And so I remember the first season and I was like, “Oh, some of the things that are happening in this series, like the grain, the grain where you can run back all your memories, that’s super far away.” And then season-by-season, I think I realized by the third season, I’m like, “No, these are things that can happen now.” And so I’m looking back because I always feel as though like art imitates life. I think we seed ideas within the consciousness of society and then some person out there will have the goal or have the genius to make it. And now, I think we’re at a crossroads where it’s like, “All right, you put that into the world, I can make that tomorrow.”

Maxwell VanHook:
And so yeah, I think you’re 100% right. We’re going to look probably within the next few years, there will probably be some sort of smart home that will have all this integrated tech. I think we’re at a stage where that next technological revolution, if it’s not already here, it’s getting ready to come underway. It’s pushing up against our beliefs about identity in how we think about ourselves. Going back to Black Mirror, that episode about VR and video games, I forget the actors that were in it, but…

Maurice Cherry:
Is this from the latest season, the Striking Vipers?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yes, Striking Vipers.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, yeah.

Maxwell VanHook:
That was so interesting to me because it introduced a new topic, because that technology is not far away. It’s right around the corner. I want to say not to get too graphic, but there are streaming websites that people probably sit or shouldn’t be going to that get a lot of data and they have invested and have given seed money to companies who are creating bodysuits that can sense like AR/VR touchpoints and mimic haptic feelings throughout the body if you’re wearing these suits. And so, yeah, like seeing an episode like that and knowing… because I pay attention to angel investors, I’ll pay attention to what people are doing in the market, knowing that there are websites who want that technology and are spending money in order to make it happen means that that conversation may not be that far down the line. And that to me, it’s somewhat terrifying, but it’s also really interesting.

Maurice Cherry:
No, no, I totally get what you’re saying. I didn’t even think you were going to go that way with it. But now that you’ve mentioned it, I can see that. I was thinking more so about like now how… A couple of weeks ago I had this guy on the show, Brandon Groce, and we were talking about the metaverse and about how there are online personalities, YouTubers, podcasters, et cetera, that have a virtual realish avatar, like a VTuber or something like that. We’re starting to see it on YouTube, for example, people that have these online-ish identities that are getting some level of fame. There’s Dream, there’s Corpse Husband, there’s probably a few other folks. It’s like these are real people. No one knows who they are, what they look like, but they’ve presented this digital 3D avatar of themselves. They’re able to use that to, I guess, be themselves online in some sort of way. But to go back to what you said with the Black Mirror portion, I do see how that’s not too far away at all. Between augmented reality and things of that nature, it’s pretty close.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. Even what you just said, I love to unpack that even more, because in a sense, it’s the most ideal version of yourself. That’s what I think in a real way because I’m conflicted about social media and how it’s used, but you curated. A lot of people do not give this holistic presentation. It’s not like a direct one-to-one to your everyday life experiences. Yeah, you just amplify that and then now I can actually physically choose what I look like. If I want to be part animal, part human, or if I want to be a cyborg, I can do that. And now, we’re all in ready player one.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, absolutely.

Maxwell VanHook:
I can imagine that that’ll happen. Yeah, not too long from now. I feel like I’m watching kids now and at least my… I have a godson and he constantly in his video games. If he’s not in his video games, he’s watching streamers. I hear you on that one.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s switch gears here a little bit. I know we’ve been talking about your work at Amazon. One of the other things that you do is that you are a co-host of a show on Instagram called Designing While Black. Tell me about that.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I think Bekah and I met in my first year at Amazon. And so Bekah is my co-host. What we realized is that internally there were no spaces for designers to come together, meet politic, learn from one another, and generally just have a social bond that feels like support. We wanted to change that. And so we got together. I want to say one day, we went to a mini golf session and we sent out a blast. We expected like five people to show up. I think like over 30 people showed up. So now, we realize like, “Oh, there’s a community within Seattle that we really, really need to access.” That’s where black designers of Seattle came from, just trying to create a space where black designers who may feel other, who may feel like there’s no one who shares the same interest or even walks in the same spaces that they do. There is a social circle out there that they can access.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so a lot of the times like when we were starting to have these gatherings, we weren’t talking about design at all. We were just having fun. We would go, pick a place, we would eat, and we would just fellowship. And then we slowly started to shift that and it became a little bit more educational. We started to bring people in like Tim Allen, I believe you had Tim Allen on your show.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), from Airbnb, yup.

Maxwell VanHook:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). We brought in Jessica Rochelle, Timothy Bardlavens. And so we were bringing in these different people who were really able to share knowledge, share their experience, and uplift the designers within our community. And then we were getting reached out to from agencies or other bigger tech companies because they wanted to host us in the space and then the pandemic hit and then things started to take a bit of a low. We try to figure out how to navigate the new world and the new situation that COVID presented to us.

Maxwell VanHook:
One of the things that we thought about was having a Zoom. But then outside of that Zoom, because we were specifically talking to designers within Seattle, we were really, really interested in being able to reach a larger audience. And within that larger audience, really speak to emerging designers. People who are either in middle school, high school, college, and wanting to walk in the same spaces that we’re currently walking. And it’s like, “How can we reach out to them? How can we give them content that can encourage them and allow them to know that there are people out here who look like them and are doing this work?” Because I firmly believe like if you don’t see yourself, then you may not believe it’s possible.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so that’s where Designing While Black came from. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, scrutinizing it, trying to design out the materials in the brand and a bunch of different ways. One day, Bekah and I just sat down and like, “We’re just going to do it, do it. We’re going to get out within a week, we’re going to bring on…” I think our first guest was Alyssa Johnson, “and we’re just going to keep going every week, short form content, bringing the people that we know and make sure that this gets in the hands of the right people.” And so uplifting those stories and disseminating them to the people that can access those younger folk who want to be creative and want to do design professionally, that’s our main goal.

Maxwell VanHook:
As COVID restrictions start to lessen and we get back to peopling again, our goal is to get right back into those physical spaces and those physical venues, and then maybe we can start to do those shows in a more brand way. But that’s where it started. I think her and I really, really believe in education and we both stand on the shoulders of the people that came before us. Like I specifically, one of my design mentors was in my church. I know that that’s not like a common story to have a professional graphic designer who can talk to you at the age of 14, 15 and guide you. But I want to give back to other people what he gave to me. That was the overall goal of just doing the IG Live show.

Maurice Cherry:
What have you learned since starting the series?

Maxwell VanHook:
One, I’ve learned that there are some magical black folk out there, real like, “You start to like.” You’ll sit down with some people and you think that you have a full understanding of everything that they’ve done. And when you sit down and you have a conversation with them and you really have to assess and dive deep into their life and their work, you start to realize like, “Yo, there are black people who are innovators in every single type of design that you could think of.” And that’s really encouraging to me, especially in the spaces that I travel. But I think the biggest thing is that like, “Yo, we’re killing it out here. We’re killing it out here, and not just when it comes to being like a director or a VP or an executive.”

Maxwell VanHook:
I met a young woman the other day, her name was Kiwi. She’s currently in school. But she was a producer on MasterClass. Yeah, and she has spent time producing for films. She just completely shifted and decided that she wanted to become an instructional, or she wanted to become not only like an instructional designer, but industrial designer more so. That’s probably like the most amazing thing like being able to meet people who have had just so many different types of experiences in life and aren’t afraid to try new things. That probably is the biggest thing that I’ve learned. I do want to ask you, as you were building out your platform, what probably is the biggest roadblock that you faced just in terms of making sure that, one, it was reaching the people that you wanted it to reach?

Maurice Cherry:
It’s a good question. I think it was two things. One was really me trying to get out of my own way. I think I certainly was trying to do, especially early on, a lot of partnering up with other entities to try to reach an audience that I just didn’t have yet. I should have been spending that time really cultivating the audience that I did have, like the ones that I knew were listening and were leaving reviews and stuff. Instead, I would try to talk to another design podcast or another design organization and see if there’s ways that we could work together and do some stuff. Oftentimes the answer to that would be no answer. It just wouldn’t go anywhere, even though I’m reaching out.

Maurice Cherry:
I think that’s probably been a big roadblock. To be fair, I’d say money is a continual roadblock. But in those early days, there wasn’t really a whole lot that I really needed that money for in terms of I think I wanted to have it as a status symbol to myself that I’ve created something that companies will pay me for. And of course, I would use it for operational resources and stuff like that. But I spent way too much time trying to chase sponsors and chasing audience I didn’t have and I should have been really focusing inward on cultivating the audience I do have and making them really rabid fans of what I’m trying to do that can see the vision that I see. I would have done that. Because yeah, in those early days, there was… I’ll say this, it was certainly not as progressive as it is now, not by a long shot.

Maurice Cherry:
When I was reaching out to people in 2013 and 2014 there was a lot of, “Oh, we’re post-racial, we don’t do this sort of stuff anymore, et cetera, blah, blah, blah,” which then just made it difficult when people ideologically feel that the work that you’re doing for some reason is racist and it’s not. It’s like, “Oh, well, I don’t see why you would think that.” The tenor of the design community was not as open and accepting and as, I’d love to say the word woke, but it was not as woke now as it was back. Back then, people were really closed off to like, “No.” Now, it’s a lot more open. I think there’s a greater consideration and a greater perspective for what black designers are doing and what they can bring to the table and their voices and such.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I want to think back to when I first discovered your podcasts. I think, for me, especially I was young. I was fresh in the design game. And so you don’t see a lot of examples of people have had robust careers. I probably didn’t meet too many people outside of my actual mentor who had decades worth of experience in design. And so being able to access your podcast reassured me that like, “Not only can I have a long career in this, but I can aspire to do great things.”

Maxwell VanHook:
And so, yeah, I just wanted to I appreciate the platform that you built in that sense because it does not only spread knowledge, but it also reinforces some things identity-wise within a young designer to know like, “Hey, there are people who are out there and there are people who are great and they’re killing it.” And so, yeah, I was really, really, really excited when I found the show. I don’t even remember how I found it. I can’t even remember how I found it. I may have been searching online. It probably was like Facebook back then. Yeah, I would just check in, listen and use it to build not only my knowledge of self and what was happening in these different spaces, but also to explore new territories.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I’m certainly glad that you found it. It’s interesting because like I said, I’ve been doing this for such a long time. And oftentimes, it’s probably different with what you’re doing with Instagram because you have a live audience. But with podcasting, a lot of this is pretty solitary. I don’t really know how it’s being received unless someone leaves a review, or they write me an email, or they send a tweet, or send a DM on Instagram. Other than that, I’m just pushing episodes out into the void. I can see that they’re getting listened to and downloaded, but I don’t get that direct feedback. And that could just be honestly because of the medium. But yeah, no, I’m glad that you found Revision Path and that it was able to serve as an inspiration for you.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I feel like we should give people flowers again maybe on the internet. We don’t do the best job of that, especially when you look good like the vacuum that is Instagram in the light system. But as I live and breathe, I just wanted to let you know that… And I definitely share your podcast with young designers and people that I mentor because I don’t want people to think it’s just me out here. I’m tired of that narrative. I’m tired of the narrative of being like, “Oh, I was the only one. I’m the only black designer that I know, I’m the only black designer for 100 miles.” Is exhausting. I don’t subscribe to it. I don’t want to hear it anymore.

Maxwell VanHook:
I also want to change the narrative in terms of how people of color relate to design because I tend to think that the way that you think about something has to be vastly different than the way that another person thinks about something. And the way that you will build something is going to be vastly different than the way that someone else will build it. I think inherently, black people are designers. Even thinking about systems that were placed on us and how we’ve navigated around them, we’ve organized. We have created structures, we have created innovation and process to be able to by step roadblocks that have been placed in front of us.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I think that that’s a part of your heritage, that’s a part of your legacy. I think if you want to be a designer, you can do that. It’s just a matter of sending your mind to it. And so I tell people that all the time, especially younger folks like, “This is a part of your ancestry, bro, you’ve been creating long before you were in existence. It’s in your blood. Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s not.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Speaking of ancestry and going back, I want to go back to where you grew up. You’re originally from Baltimore, born and raised. Tell me about what it was like growing up there. Did you feel like you got a lot of exposure to art and design as a kid?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. Both my parents are like… We’re really supportive of the arts. My dad, he forced me to take drama classes oddly enough. He came to me one day after school and was like, “You’re signing up for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. You have an audition two days from now.” And then my mom would make sure that during the summers and after school, I was doing some sort of arts and crafts. Baltimore has this program called TWIGS. It’s attached to this high school called Baltimore School of the Arts. And so when I would leave my middle school, I would just take a bus there. And so I’m learning foundational principles of traditional art. And also from year-to-year, I’m switching off. Maybe one year I’m doing more traditional art practices and then the next year I’m learning how to act.

Maxwell VanHook:
And then that evolved. As I started getting a little bit more focused, my mom would take me to MICA. Even in middle school, I was able to get a lot of exposure to institutions that existed within Baltimore that solely focused on art. And then when I went to city, city is… I’ll say it’s the best high school that exists within Baltimore, but they have a program called International Baccalaureate. That allowed me to get a little bit more focused when it came to how I was telling my stories through art.

Maxwell VanHook:
I had some teachers who were just really, really helpful and set the foundation for how I wanted to express myself. And one day, one of those teachers came up to me and was like, “You know that you could do this as a career.” I was like, “Huh, I didn’t really think about that.” This was just something I would do when I was just chilling or late at night or when I have free time. And so once he expressed that to me… because I was going to go to school for communications, which would have been really, really bad. But I had made the connection that what you’re probably passionate about, you should follow that. You should figure out how to do that as much as you can.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so what they saw in me, they really, really poured into me. And then I talked to my mentor and he opened up that lens a little bit more and he was like, “Hey, you could go to school for graphic design. But I see something different happening in the space. And so you’re going to need more than one skill when you graduate from school. He’s like, “Don’t do graphic design.” He’s like, “There are programs out there now that will teach you those principles, but you need to be more in the digital space.” That’s how I ended up majoring in multimedia and I got crazy amount of exposure to different things.

Maxwell VanHook:
I want to say we were doing physical computing. I was messing with Arduino boards, trying to figure out how I could trigger light within a physical space, doing sound production, messing with middies, a bunch of stuff like video production, pretty much all the different types of design and art forms that you could think of. I just had so much freedom, I think. Out of all the majors in that school, we had the most electives. It was wonky. I want to say like three to four years after I left, they shut it down. Yeah, they just rolled it into graphic design.

Maxwell VanHook:
But even that was indicative of the fact that graphic design as a major or as an industry had changed, and we were using new terms and I had no idea what a user experience designer was, but also those lines hadn’t been defined yet. But to go back to Baltimore, that’s my heart and soul. Even though I’m in Seattle right now, the goal is to always return back to it. It’s taught me a lot, is where I get my grip from, is where I get my perseverance from. It’s the place where I learned to be me. And so me and my wife, we’re here in Seattle now, but the goal is always to go back home.

Maurice Cherry:
Now growing up in Baltimore and everything and with what you’ve just described, when did you know that this was something you really wanted to do for a living? Did it click at any point growing up?

Maxwell VanHook:
When did I know that this was something I wanted to do for a living? It’s really odd, but it was probably my senior year of college because I wasn’t really sure how viable a design career was. I was going back and forth and as I was starting to get closer to graduation, I was having some apprehension. It was like, “Do I just go get a master’s degree?” Both of my parents have master’s degrees and they’re both educators. I just thought that that was the path. And then my senior year, I had a teacher… It’s interesting. He led our whole program. I had him like freshman year and he leaned on me. He’s like, “You don’t understand any of these programs.” He’s like, “You have great vision, but you can’t execute on any of your visions because you don’t have the technical knowledge.”

Maxwell VanHook:
And then I had him again in my senior year and he did the exact same thing, except it was a different message. He was like, “You could be so great.” He was like, “You could be so, so great.” He was just yelling at me. I could see this passion in his eyes. I’m seeing all my other classmates and they’re walking in with projects that are half thought out, or they did the night before. He’s just letting them come in and out, come in and out. What you said to me is like, “You’re not the same as them.”

Maurice Cherry:
In a good way or a bad way?

Maxwell VanHook:
In a good way, in a good way. He’s like, “That’s why I’m yelling at you.” He’s like, “I can see you doing this for the rest of your life.”

Maurice Cherry:
And so that really set you on that path. Yeah.

Maxwell VanHook:
It set me on that path because I woke up and was like, “Oh, do I need to get a master’s? Why am I going to get a master’s degree?” I lit fire within me because I didn’t have that confidence yet. There was nothing saying that I was meant to do design full-time, there was nothing saying that I was going to work at Under Armour, there was nothing saying I was going to be where I am now. And that teacher, yeah, it came full circle. Like first year, lit a fires like, “Oh, you got to learn these programs.”

Maxwell VanHook:
And then it was like my last year. I still remember this man. His name’s Chris Garvin. Yeah, just leaned on like… just yelled at me and would not do it to anyone else at all. But I think I saw him maybe like five or six years after that because my brother ended up going to that school and I thanked him, because there’s a level of care. You need a support system of people who are going to hold you accountable, but also people who see you as greater than what you see yourself as. That was important for me. But yeah, that’s when the switch turned. That’s when it turned and I was like, “Oh, I can do this, I can do this. I can see myself as a designer professionally.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And speaking of which right after you graduated, you ended up working at Under Armour and you stayed there for what? Six years pretty much?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. That’s an interesting story. I want to say I was up late at night once Saturday evening, probably like Sunday morning, around twelve o’clock in the morning. I’m on Craigslist. I’m just applying for anything. I have my busboy job. I’m like, “I got to pay off these loans quick as possible. I’m working as many shifts as I can. I’m not trying to live in my parents’ house forever.” And so I’m like come across this ad that says, “Oh, we have a contract position for a designer working with a sports organization within Baltimore.” I’m like, “Hmm, what could that be?” I was like, “Could it be the Orioles? Probably not. Could it be Baltimore Blasts? I don’t know.” I was like, “It’s not going to be Under Armour. They would just have it posted on their site.”

Maxwell VanHook:
Got a call probably… I’m in church. I got call around nine o’clock. Someone leaves a voicemail. It’s like, “Hey, we want you to come in tomorrow, take a test.” Still don’t know what it is. Go in, fail the test. Yeah, failed the test. There’s an old version of Photoshop that I’ve never used before. Completely different set up. I think around that time it was like CS3. There might be like CS1 or something like that and they still send me in. They send me in. I’m at the door. At this point in time, my parents are telling me like, “No, the only way you get the job, dress up suit and tie, blah, blah, blah.”

Maxwell VanHook:
I have a suitcase on, I have a suitcase, Maurice. I have a suitcase. I pull my portfolio out of a suitcase. This a woman, she comes and she gets me. The first thing that she says to me, she was like, “Don’t worry, you got this.” The person interviewing me, comes like, “You got this.” I don’t know what she saw in me. She was like, “You got this. This is yours.” This is as someone else’s walking out. I know that they’re interviewing other people. But yeah, I ended up getting the job. I walk away from that interview, by the time I catch the boat back across the harbor in order to go home, I get a call and saying, “Hey, they want to bring you in.”

Maxwell VanHook:
What started as a contract position evolved into a six-year career with Under Armour. They were a fledgling team. I worked on the e-commerce team there, really supportive people. It was a blessing because I got a lot of experience that typically contractors don’t get. I was able to work in their custom CMS. I got to see how you grow a business, how you grow a platform. We essentially went from just supporting ua.com to looking at the whole digital consumer journey. It was like ua.com and then now all of a sudden it’s emails, it’s social paid and organic, it’s apps. I’m looking even at designing for touchscreens within retail stores.

Maxwell VanHook:
I was only like 23 years old. And then we go from there and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Hey, we got all these different channels that we need to marketing now. The brand team can’t support all of these. You all need to figure out how to extend these stories.” That’s when the art direction experience comes in. And so now I’m in studio and I’m internalizing these products and figuring out how to craft stories and narratives around them that are compelling, and not only tell the technology story, but then also give that emotional and aspirational lens to the product.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I’m started off in studio and that was a really good experience, and then now all of a sudden it’s like, “Hey, can you go on location? Can you scout places? Can you work with athletes? Can you put them through training regiments?” I got a lot of crazy experiences from that. I got to meet Steph Curry while I was working at Under Armour. I got to work with him on set. That was key for me. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything because that’s where I learned how to really fly in, like really be a leader. They allow me to pitch ideas. No, they didn’t accept all my ideas, but they allowed me to take chances there. I really appreciated that.

Maxwell VanHook:
No matter how many times things may have not gone perfectly, they always gave me another chance to push my ideas. And that also gave me a lot of confidence. I probably wouldn’t do what I do now if I hadn’t worked there and worked around the people that I worked around. There was a lot of black leadership. When I was there, there was a lot of black leadership at Under Armour. Like Adrienne Lofton, she’s a black CMO, Julian Duncan, he now works with the Jacksonville Jaguars as a CMO, but he was a director, Thomas Harden, Ernie Talbert, he works here at Amazon with me, Tai Foster. These were the people giving me the opportunities. These are all black people. Like that, that matters. Looking back on it, that was a blessing for me. That was really, really key because I would say the majority of designers who enter into professional workplace don’t get that level of support.

Maurice Cherry:
No, absolutely not. I’ve had a number of folks here on the show and like… There are some that will go into agencies and agencies may have some kind of apprenticeship type setup or something like that. But it’s rare to go into a real corporate design space, like I’m sure Under Armour was, and still feel not just that supportive, but then also to have that many black creatives around you supporting you as well.

Maxwell VanHook:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and opening up the budget for you to fully realize your idea. It wasn’t until I left Under Armour that I realized how special that environment was, kind of like when we were talking about like, “Yeah, I hold that near and dear to my heart,” because I realized that that’s not the case for everyone. I cherish that moment. I still have relationships with those people now.

Maurice Cherry:
I was going to ask what prompted you to move out to the West Coast because you went to school at the university of arts in Philly and it sounds like this opportunity was it, like this was the reason you moved out there?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. I had always wanted to live on the West Coast. Nothing’s like Baltimore. Baltimore is always… will be my home. I love it like I said earlier. But I feel like when you put yourself in new spaces, that’s when you learn new things about yourself. And so I like being uncomfortable because I firmly believe that it leads to expansion. And so a part of going to the West Coast was about not falling into this sense of like comfort and familiarity with my environment. I just knew I got to a point probably when I was like around 26 where I was like, “This feels amazing. I feel like I know everything. I’m starting to feel like at work. I don’t have to try as hard. I don’t have to exert myself as much.” And that’s when I knew I had to go.

Maxwell VanHook:
I was like, “I made a plan.” I was like, “I have to go. Because if I stay here, there’s the potential that I plateau.” And so I set up a plan for myself. West Coast was the ultimate goal, but I teared it out. It was like, “Getting to California, number one. Number two, we stay at Under Armour and then we go to Amsterdam.” I lined that up. Number three was going to be like even moving to Virginia. Yeah, because I was just like, “I need to have some new experiences.” That’s really what drove it, having new experiences, being in new environments. Living in Philly gave me a little bit of a taste, but also both of my parents are from Pennsylvania. My dad is from North Philly. Then Philly was like a second home to me.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so even though I was away, I wasn’t ever really away. I wanted that experience, I wanted that moment. That’s ultimately like it landed me in the bay with Athleta, which is a part of Gap. But yeah, I didn’t even stay… I loved Athleta. They had a wonderful environment, completely different than Under Armour. They were way more focused on empowering women. And then also it was more so from like a wellness lens, but then I got that opportunity you with Amazon. Once again, it was someone who believed in me so much so that a position that I did not even apply for, they wanted me to come and work with them.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I got a call from… He’s not my hiring manager anymore, but I got a call from a man named Kay Tran, a Vietnamese man. He’s like, “I know that you exist as a designer right now, but I think that you could be way bigger than that.” It was like a costume theme within the experiences and the interactions that I’m having. He was like, “I think you can be an art director.” He was like, “I think you can lead these projects. I know that you have no experience in tech, but I’ll support you and I’ll work with you.”

Maxwell VanHook:
He held true to that. He held true to that. I owe a lot of my success here to the support that he provided me initially at Amazon. And that also set the foundation for me wanting to create the spaces with Bekah that we’ve created so far. But yeah, and he reached out to me, called me, told me to come up here, gave me the lowdown on how it would be. I remember that one of the first calls that we had, he was like, “I used to live in the Bay.” He’s like, “Seattle is not the Bay at all. So be prepared for that.” I think it’s worked out for me, it’s worked out for me, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
It certainly sounds like it has. I can tell. When you look back at your career and you’ve dropped a few names throughout this interview, but who are some of the people that have inspired you? Any mentors or colleagues?

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. First and foremost, one of the people that inspires me the most, I’ll go to my first mentor, that Sean Cunningham, the man that I met at my church, a professional graphic designer over 20 years. He worked in agency life and he really, really took me aside. He would spend time with me on Sundays, on the weekends showing me how you craft a portfolio. Because I think a lot of times, kids can think that they’re putting their work together and they have a bunch of pretty pictures, but they don’t have any story behind it. There may not be any depth. And me having access to him, he started to mold me and shape me and pull back the curtain. He was one of the people that really blocked down field for me, because if he wouldn’t have spent that time with me, who knows if I’m in the same space that I’m in? Sean Cunningham would definitely be a really, really big one for me.

Maxwell VanHook:
In terms of other mentors, definitely I have to give… My parents are really, really keen and influential in my life. And so a lot of the principles that I have… I do think that this relates to the design as well. My parents are extremely empathetic. I don’t believe that you can be a good designer if you do not have empathy. If you’re just out here making decisions and building products and doing work solely because you think it looks good or solely because you think you’re making the right decision and you’re not considering the people that you are doing it for, then it’s all for nothing.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so one of the sayings that exists within my church is, “It’s all about relationship or ain’t about nothing.” My parents are the embodiment of that. And so they pass that empathy along to me and that’s how I like to show up. And not just in how I think about my work, but also how I relate to people. Those would probably be my key mentors. Of course, like all the people that I currently fellowship with now, even though back in [inaudible 01:04:11] like relatively like the same age, I think being in contact with her has been a form of mentorship for me. John as well. John has been huge for me, especially in these past couple of months, just in like owning your agency and owning how you want to show up for people and making sure that you do it with a spirit of service. Those would be my mentors, for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
What are you obsessed with right now?

Maxwell VanHook:
Okay, this is a side thing. I’m absolutely obsessed with how the market is changing currently, like how it’s peered into the social conscious of millennials specifically. I’m seeing this stuff that’s going on with AMC and hedge funds and Citadel. And for whatever reason, that really interests me. It’s like this story of fighting against the man and government agencies and little people banding together. Outside of that, I’m really, really, really into vinyls. I’m copying a different vinyl every other week. I’m searching, going in different spaces. That probably consumes a lot of my time. I’m trying to look to see if I can get a new credenza soon. We were just talking about getting rid of furniture. That’s going to be a big purchase for me. I don’t even know if it’s like 350 anymore. We’re probably approaching over 400.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah, I got more [crosstalk 01:06:01].

Maurice Cherry:
You got storage for it and everything?

Maxwell VanHook:
No, man, I don’t even know. Yeah, I had a credenza and I thought it’d be big enough and then I filled it up. So there’s probably about 150 of the vinyls that are either in the crate or they’re on a shelf. I need to create a storage space specifically for it. But even past that, I have to go home and probably grab like another 500 or 600. My dad called me because I think it was a little bit of a test. They allowed me to go into the storage and grab my uncle’s records because that’s really why it’s important to me. It’s kind of twofold. It serves as this design inspiration. You look at these covers and the sleeves and how they put everything together, is like a master’s class in design.

Maxwell VanHook:
You look at some of the type, the color palettes, the photography, and the composition, it boggles my brain. You don’t know all the people who have done these things. Some of these people are hard to find, they’re dead. You can have someone in present day who can say like, “Oh, that was my great grandfather who did this cover for The Spinners.” That’s really interesting to me because you’re actively discovering things with a sense of duality. Not only from this perspective of looking at it as a creative, but then also musically. Not just like discovering new sounds, but like, “I am learning things about my family and my uncle Candy, specifically, in terms of his tastes.” I’ve never met the man, almost like him and I are having a conversation through the music and I can take that to my dad.

Maxwell VanHook:
For me, it’s been really good, especially in contrast to what you get with streaming services because this is way more passive with streaming services. They serve it up to you, they give it to you and you just consume it. I know that you have to be active. You got to look through it, you have to touch it, you got to look at those songs, you got to look at their artists and then you have to put it on the turntable. And then once that side A is done, you got to flip it over to that side B. There’ve been fascinating things that have shown up in that vinyl collection. I’m like, “I got an original test pressing of a snake fundraiser concert.”

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah, it’s wild. I got to figure out how to… Yeah, I got to figure out how to get that into the right hands because I feel like I personally shouldn’t own it. I feel like it should be in a museum somewhere. But yeah, it’s a part of my family history and I want to keep it intact and establish a library around it where I can give it to my kids, God willing.

Maurice Cherry:
Something like that ends up being really like a family heirloom, but it’s something that you keep continually adding to and diversifying and curating and everything. That sounds amazing.

Maxwell VanHook:
It’s been a good discussion starter, or just catalyst for how I talk to different family members because a lot of them have at some point in time come across this collection or have contributed to it in some way, shape or form, like even the snake record that I have, which has a speech from Jesse Lewis on it, and that original test pressing came by way of my aunt’s old boyfriend because he used to help him disseminate those vinyls and sell them for the fundraiser. I can talk to her and then get the background and the story behind that and then also get her other stories. She used to work for the Schomburg Center. She used to be a part of Freedom Rides citizens. And so that’s what these vinyls have done for me, where it was like, “All right, this is a really, really interesting piece. Where did this come from?” And then all of a sudden I’m getting a story around like how it was made and then all the experiences that are connected to it. And now, I’m learning more about my aunt, Roberta.

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

Maxwell VanHook:
I think in the short-term, I’ve leaned more into the visual side of design. There’s a people focused in that, especially working for Amazon. Data is super key. But I want to get more into the product side. Especially with what I’m seeing in a lot of the technology that’s being created, there are inherent biases that exists. And so when you’re designing, you have to design with those problems in mind. If the room of designers that you have are largely white, the same issues that exist within society and exists within the world, probably going to exist within that product.

Maxwell VanHook:
And so I’m like, “Hey, maybe we need to take a step back from visual design and get more into product and user experience. And with that, get a better understanding of how people are interacting with the products and how these systems are set up, how we can decolonize those, in a sense.” I have a lot of different thoughts about how we think about accessibility. All right. Traditionally, accessibility is like people who may be hard of hearing, people who may not be able body. But I also think that race may be a component of accessibility as well. And so I don’t fully understand why we divorce those things. And so I just want to do more of a foray into that space so I can figure out how to set up structures that will be more encompassing of people who look like me.

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

Maxwell VanHook:
Yeah. You can find me on Instagram @maxwellvanhook, and you can also find me on Instagram as well @designingwhileblack. Either of those, feel free to follow me, feel free to reach out to me also. If you are looking to get into design, if you want to politic, or if you just want to share your passion about design and your experience, I’d love to connect with people.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Maxwell VanHook, I want to thank you so much, one, for coming on the show, but two, I think it’s obvious from anyone that’s listening up to this point that you bring such a deep level of passion and introspection to your work. You’re a very thoughtful designer that really takes a lot of considerations into account when it’s not just about the work that you’re doing, but also the impact that it’s going to have on people and on communities and such. I think this was just such a great interview, such a great introduction of you to the Revision Path audience. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Maxwell VanHook:
No, thank you for having me. It was great actually being able to talk with you and, yeah, meeting you. I feel like I’ve listened to you so much over the years. Finally getting down to talking with you has been somewhat surreal. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to share this space 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.

John B. Johnson

If you were a part of last week’s State of Black Design conference, then you’ve already been introduced to this week’s guest — John B. Johnson. As the principal of A Small Studio in Seattle, he leads a team of creative professionals that specialize in authentic digital design.

We spoke about how his business has changed through the pandemic, as well as his process with new projects (such as DOSE). He also talked about growing up in Cleveland, studying architecture, and how these experiences led him to start his studio and his moves until settling in Seattle. This is a really thoughtful and deep interview, and I hope John’s story resonates with you all!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

John B. Johnson:
Hey, my name is John Johnson. I am a identity architect and principal of A Small Studio, where we use our gifts of design to bring peace to people’s lives.

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

John B. Johnson:
Maurice, the year is going well.

Maurice Cherry:
That sounded like a loaded question. The way you sighed made it sound like that was going to be a heavy answer.

John B. Johnson:
Every time somebody asked me that question, it’s always heavy because you can reflect on yesterday or you can reflect on the last 10 years that have brought you to this moment to even be ready for this year or ready for last year. And I take that deep breath because it’s an opportunity for me to really intentionally answer that question. For me, man, this year has been incredible because we’ve grown as a company, I’ve grown as a man, I’ve grown as a husband. We’ve grown to six people now. This time last year, we had three so we’ve doubled in size in a year. If anybody knows about growing an agency, every person you add, it adds another layer of complexity.

John B. Johnson:
We’ve already exceeded our revenue that we made last year, this year, which is incredible. We’re in three-and-a-half years in terms of our growth. But more specifically, and I’m turning 33 this year, I’ve been approaching this year very intentionally, because 33 is just a really incredible number for a number of reasons. Me and my wife are also planning on moving back to Cleveland, where I was born and raised, and actually building a home there, and really starting to put in some roots after being a nomad for the last nine years.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s your Jesus Year as the old folks would say.

John B. Johnson:
It’s my Jesus Year. That’s it. You’re right.

Maurice Cherry:
So growing from three people to six people, as folks know, for me, that I’ve done this podcast, I had a studio for nine years called Lunch. You’re absolutely right, every person that you bring on, it’s a different layer of complexity, it changes the culture, it just adds more to the business. Of course, you want to bring people on to help out with tasks. But it’s amazing how even just bringing on one more person can really change the dynamic of everything. What inspired you to create your own studio?

John B. Johnson:
Simple answer, I realized that I had a gift for branding and I realized that the people that needed branding the most, organizations that needed branding the most had very little access to it because of how inaccessible it was through the agencies. As you know, the cost goes up really high the more people you add. I actually set out with a friend of mine, Troy Thomas, who’s our creative director, and the co-founder of A Small Studio to create a agency that really made branding accessible to individuals and organizations that really were attempting to make an impact in the world. So you can say that I saw how ridiculous agency costs were to impact organizations and how inaccessible they were. And I decided that I was going to build an agency that made that work as accessible as possible.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, given the name of the business, A Small Studio, is the goal to keep it pretty small?

John B. Johnson:
Yeah. In the typical sense of the word, small, we want to make sure that we stay smaller in size as far as the team, specifically. However, we know that through technology and through our skill set of design, that we can actually reach many people with our work with products, with services, with education, so on and so forth. So we want to stay small in the physical sense of the word. We don’t want that large overhead, we want to get rid of middle people, account managers, project managers, things like that. And we want to only have people in our team that are intentional about the work, and how they can use their gift to bring peace to our clients and to communities that we interact with. I can dive into that more, but we want to stay small physically so that we can make more impact externally with the resources that we will have and the resources that we can gain through that small nature.

Maurice Cherry:
You said earlier that revenues already exceeded what you’ve made from last year. So it sounds like business has really kind of, I guess, changed and improved over the past year or so given the state of the world.

John B. Johnson:
I don’t think it’s any shocker to people that technology is booming, especially when it comes to digital design. So that’s what we specialize in, is authentic digital design, I want to say. With these organizations and these technology companies, startups, money is still flowing through the tech space. A lot of money, if not more money, than before. And these organizations, they need designers, they need people that can not only help them get started but also help them grow to the next level. As we built our reputation over the last three years, we’re getting more and more referrals from people that we’ve served in the past and it’s been spectacular.

Maurice Cherry:
What does your process look like when you start out with a new project?

John B. Johnson:
We always say everything starts with identity. So when I start working with a organization, first off, we want to make sure that they are a good fit to work with us and we’re a good fit for them, and then we dive into who they are. I actually have started to make it a requirement for my clients to go through the Identity Architecture Workshop, which is a individual workshop to help people reflect on who they are as individuals. Say, “What makes you one in 7.8 billion?” I created this workshop to really help people reflect so they can live life on purpose or live more authentically, and align who they are with their passions and their motivations. I found that through agency, and you may be able to relate to this, Maurice, I really have no desire to work with people that are just doing their work for money or doing their work for things that really aren’t eternal or aren’t connected to their experiences as individuals.

John B. Johnson:
I’ve started to create these workshops to really start to filter out the nonsense or I like to say the clutter of the industry of the world and start to get to the core of who someone is. And that happens through the Individual Identity Architecture Workshop. And then we take the whole team through a Corporate Identity Architecture Workshop. And what that does is that gives me and my design team a authentic foundation to build off of and start designing the brand identity and everything that goes into a brand identity. And then now distributing that brand identity into the products and/or experiences that we will be designing for them.

John B. Johnson:
As of right now, one of our clients is ShearShare with Dr. Tye Caldwell and Courtney Caldwell out of Texas. They’re actually in Dallas and they are building a marketplace for the beauty industry. Actually, they call themselves the HAIRbnb. They actually help stylists and barbers to find seats or chairs across the country but also help the salon owners sell their chairs and make sure that they’re getting revenue from them. That is something that’s unique and core to who they are as people. Well, Dr. Tye is a master barber and they want to build a community around that. So we have taken them through that exact process that I shared with you and been able to apply their authentic identity to their mobile application in the marketplace that they’re building.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a really interesting way of … Because I guess, in a way, you’re sort of also onboarding the client by kind of letting them see how you work and what your values are and why they’re important to how you do business. I can see that being a big clarifying step. Because sometimes you’ll get clients and they just want the work. They don’t necessarily care about the why behind it. They just sort of need a set of hands to do the work. And it sounds like those are not the best kinds of clients for you to work with. Which makes sense, because you’re spending the time to really sort of get to know them, have them get to know you and build something together.

John B. Johnson:
Exactly. That’s what makes this so fulfilling for me. I’m not going to burn out by getting to know people. That’s for sure.

Maurice Cherry:
Aside from working with clients, are there sort of projects that you initiate on your own through the studio?

John B. Johnson:
Yeah. Many, actually. There’s been projects that have come to me, most of our business has been built through relationships that I either already had or developed as I was building the business. So we’re very relational in the way that we’ve done business. We’ve actually have had maybe one client that wasn’t a referral from someone. So as I mentioned before, how do we make this work more accessible? There’s been many people that have come to me seeking support, thinking that they need a logo or thinking that they need a website. And I’ve been able to help people get through those early stages of their company or their startup or their idea because I’ve been able to do that myself.

John B. Johnson:
And I’ve gone through that process of building a startup, building a brand from scratch, building a mobile application from scratch. I not only helped them really assess what is their next step, simplify their approach, that MVP or lean startup model. But then I actually am able to spend that time coaching them, supporting them, and then use my team to maybe help them get started. Whether that’s a brand identity, whether that’s a website, whether that’s some mock ups of a mobile application to help them get some investments. And these are typically people that have nothing but a desire to help make the world a better place. Or like I said, bring peace to people’s lives.

John B. Johnson:
I’ve done this in the past when one of my buddies came to me saying, “Hey, I have this idea and I want to do it, I need to do it.” He’s actually building a marketplace to make the world more generous. And he was building a marketplace that would help people like millennials, maybe people our age, give more. And the way he thought that would happen is if he can actually allow millennials who have a lot of their money locked up in stocks, [inaudible 00:14:42] use with their corporations. I know that I’m like that with me and my wife. My wife works at Amazon so we have a lot of our wealth locked up in stocks. What if you can actually give one stock to a nonprofit that you loved, and what if you give one stock, that stock will continue to get gain value but that you don’t have cash. So give that stock.

John B. Johnson:
He was changing the way that people would give. I loved the idea and I believed in him as the leader. So me and my team helped him create a brand identity for his company, and we created some mock ups. He got launched. The next year, he was already doing, I think, $30,000 a month in reoccurring revenue. He had closed his seed round. And then he came back to us for some help to build out his platform further. We did that all completely for free just because we believed in him.

John B. Johnson:
And there’s been other projects that have come and gone. But we just do the work because we believe in the people not because they can pay or not pay. That’s the business but we have a responsibility as designers to help these products come to life and these people launched their products to the world, especially impact driven leaders. That’s something that keeps me on fire every day because what we’re doing is we’re building a creative studio that we can create anything with this team. Why would we ever say no when we know it’s going to make a huge impact in the world?

Maurice Cherry:
One of the projects that I saw that you created was this website called Dose. And I heard that you and your team built that in four days. Can you tell me the story behind that?

John B. Johnson:
Dose is one of those projects, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that moment, Maurice, where you just do something because it feels right. And the next thing you know, you’re like, “Man, that’s what we should be doing forever moving forward.” That was Dose. So Dose happened I want to say beginning of June, it was shortly after George Floyd was murdered, and was publicized all over the interwebs. I actually didn’t hear about George Floyd until a friend of mine called me and told me about it. He was really, really torn up about it. So I was able to be there with him in that moment because I had not seen the video yet. But then after he called me, I had to go and see the video.

John B. Johnson:
I’m sure many of us, I was nauseated. I felt a feeling in me that I don’t think I ever felt before, and I had no idea what to do. So I went back to work in my bedroom, as all of us were, in June. Protests were taking place, Seattle was on fire in many ways because me and my wife live right downtown. There were people that were storming the Patagonia that is literally right across the street from my bedroom. There are people shooting guns off to break into the stores, there are people peacefully protesting, and I had no idea what to do. I wanted to go out and protest, my wife did not feel safe or comfortable so I wanted to support her and make sure she was okay. Then I also have my team to deal with on a regular basis, talking through with them.

John B. Johnson:
But there was a moment when I was on a client call and while I was on it, I lost interest completely. I want to say I’m a pretty present person, and I could not stay present. I was like, “Why am I on this call and all of this is taking place right outside my doors?” I felt so inauthentic to myself. I remember getting off that call, and I laid on my bedroom floor, which is my office, and I curled up in a ball and I started crying. I called my mom. And I’m like, “Ma, I don’t know what to do.” Bless her soul, she sang me a song. That’s all I needed to hear at that moment. Then I went for a run, which running, for me, is my way of not only meditating but also releasing. I went for a run, and while I was on a run, I want to say I heard God tell me that, “John, you are acting inauthentic. I’ve given you this team to do something so use the team and do something. That’s what the team is here for, is to bring peace to people’s lives. Do it.”

John B. Johnson:
Through, I guess my nature, I literally stopped and I called my clients and I told them, “Hey, we got to do something about this. We’re shutting down the business for two weeks. If you have a problem with that, I understand. We’ll do our best to accommodate. And if you don’t have a problem with that, we really appreciate it because I need to do something and move this needle forward.” Every one of my clients was completely understanding about it. I called my partner and told him like, “Hey, this is what we’re doing.” I called the team, told them, and next thing you know, we had, I think, 12 people on a call that night to figure out what we were going to do to move this needle forward. How are we going to use our gifts to bring peace to people’s live. Dose came out of that.

John B. Johnson:
And one of the woman on the call, her name was Dr. Julia Garcia [inaudible 00:19:58] and she is a psychologist, she specializes in mental health. And she had a framework that really, she used with a lot of youth to help them work through how they were feeling. She calls these Doses. When we thought about that, we were like, “How do we create contents that can help people use their voice and share their perspective, share their Black perspective, and also help others listen to that perspective in an intentional way that’s not just absorbing content on social media?” We worked through that whole problem that evening. And then over the next four days, we had a team of, say, 10 people, all of the small studio and then others who were there to support. It was one intern and there was actually one of our employees who was planning to join us that next week or so, and he joined us early to work on this project with us.

John B. Johnson:
Over those four days, we built out this whole platform. We built out the brand identity, just like I told you, in our process. We built out the web application, utilizing Webflow in no-code. In four days, we were launched and shared it with our community. Over that time, we got so many stories of people sharing about a time when they got pulled over by the cops and how they fear for their life. A time when they went running after Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in the street on a jog and how that felt afterwards. We saw this change in this shift of people being able to hear the story in a new way, but also share their story in a new way.

John B. Johnson:
Now this day, Julia Garcia, who we built it for, it’s her product. It’s not ours, it’s hers. We built it with her, we built it for her. She now uses that in all of her presentations that she does the youth, that she does with corporate workshops. She still uses this platform to not only gather information to serve those people better, but also to allow them a space to deal with their emotions, just like I did.

Maurice Cherry:
The project is still up and running today, right?

John B. Johnson:
Yeah, the website’s still live. We built it for Dr. J and she is still crafting her life’s work to figure out how to use it in the best ways. So she’s using it, it’s still on there, giveadose.co. If you want to go on there, you can share your story or even participate in some of the activities that are on there.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s amazing how many things have arose out of last summer, really. You’re in Seattle, off the top of my head, I think about the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, and how much that was in the news in terms of the protests and people sort of creating this sort of, I guess, you could call it a safe space. I’m trying to remember from what it was during the summer, but creating this space of no police intervention and things of that nature. There’s a number of different initiatives and events and things. I mean, that time, I think really woke a lot of people up. Or at the very least, I think it just exposed them to long standing issues and things, which of course, you and I, as Black men know, have always been there. But because there’s no travel, there’s no sports, there’s no entertainment, now so many more people are forced to really confront it at face value at times when probably before they never did.

John B. Johnson:
And on top of that, I mean, I gave you a very vivid response to how I reacted to that moment. But I also did not just go and engaged in the way that everybody was doing it. I had to find and take a moment to figure out what was the way that I was going to get involved uniquely me, with my experience, with my guests, with my resources that I have in my family. And I think that that’s something that everybody I hope took some time to do during that time when we didn’t have all the distractions that we normally would have is say, “How can I show up uniquely in this moment?” Not to just run with the herd, but also like, “Hey, is this what I’m called to do?” If I am to protest peacefully or to go out and talk to a police officer that we know or to build them a website.

John B. Johnson:
Whatever it is, it’s just that space that you talked about, it created space for me to reflect on who I was. And it brought up some really, I want to say, deep-seated things that I never dealt with because I am mixed race. My mom is Italian, my dad is Black. I never met my father. But some of the things that I shared during that time with the team that was helping me build the Dose platform was that I was a product of racial tension. And I never actually thought about that until I started to see the nation and my family and my friends and the city that I was living in start to be torn apart physically right in front of me. Because I, like many other people, may have not had to deal with it in that way.

John B. Johnson:
So I started to reflect on who I was and my story and my unique perspective. And my unique perspective was the fact that I am a product of racial tension. And how do I use that to help others start to bridge the gap between races, whether it’s Black and white or mixed race and Black or whatever it is, I just use that as an opportunity. And I’m so glad that I had that opportunity because I don’t know if I would have ever taken that time to reflect on that moment, not only let alone use it, to start to project me forward in a more authentic and intentional way.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s kind of switch gears here a little bit, because you’ve brought up your family, your mom, your dad. Tell me about where you grew up.

John B. Johnson:
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, actually. Right on Lake Erie.

Maurice Cherry:
What was it like growing up there?

John B. Johnson:
I was born in ’88. So I grew up, most of my childhood was spent during the ’90s, early 2000s. Cleveland, in that time, I want to say was pretty poor. Do you know of Bone Thugs and Harmony? Which I hope you do. That was their heyday, during the ’90s. Cleveland was pretty rough, I would say, especially where we grew up. We grew up on the west side of Cleveland, on West 69th in Detroit. So we were just right outside of the city. To give you some context, I actually grew up in a, I want to say, a pretty much Italian neighborhood. Actually, there was a time people there were Puerto Ricans, there were a lot of different types of cultures in Cleveland, which is why I love the city so much. But they all didn’t really want to be with each other, so another part of that racial tension.

John B. Johnson:
Let alone my mom, being a single white mother. I have two older sisters and an older brother who are all mixed race also. When I was 10 years old, my brother ended up … Was involved in a gang, ended up shooting someone, and die the next day. So my brother ended up turning himself in. And he’s been in prison since then. That was in 1999. He was 17 years old. That, I want to say, was a big part of my childhood. 10 years old, the only guy in my life ended up going to prison in that way. It was one of those experiences that really helped me stay away from those things, the system, the temptations, the opportunities to get into that type of trouble.

John B. Johnson:
I like to say that my brother was somewhat of a sacrifice for me to stay out of becoming a statistic in that way. One in three Black men in America will end up in prison in their lifetime. My brother ended up there and I made sure, my sisters also made sure that I didn’t follow in his footsteps. So that was a big part of my childhood. And that was, I think, a good representation of Cleveland in the ’90s. And I want to say that it was a great place for me to grow up outside of some of those events. I think it’s a really Midwest, kind of small, big city to grow up in Cleveland. A lot of culture, a lot of experiences. But it also was a very poor and hostile environment during the ’90s and early 2000s. And I’m just grateful that I was able to have a supportive family like my sisters to help me end up going to a private high school. And ultimately, one of the reasons why I got into architecture school.

Maurice Cherry:
Did you grow up in Little Italy?

John B. Johnson:
We were the little Little Italy. So we were in Little Italy that typically people know of. We were just outside of there, but they had a strong Italian hold and they would paint the fire hydrants the Italian flag and the flag poles and all of that. They had a strong culture there.

Maurice Cherry:
I know a little about Cleveland. My dad’s side of the family is from Cleveland and Youngstown, in the sort of Cleveland-ish area. I’ve only been … How many times I’ve been to Cleveland? Once or twice. I want to say at least twice. I know I’ve been once as an adult, which was back in 2014, 2015 for an event there. Cleveland’s a great city. Cleveland’s a great city. I really enjoyed my time there. I like how scrappy the city is. There’s a certain grit to Cleveland that … I mean, coming from Atlanta, I sort of see that same type of grit, that same type of hustle. I don’t know.

Maurice Cherry:
Maybe because it’s Midwest, it’s sort of buttressed by the railroad industry, steam industry, coal. All of that, I guess. It’s more industrious, I should say. I had a great time when I visited Cleveland. It’s interesting, you also mentioned that about your brother. I’m curious with your brother, I don’t mean to go too far into this or anything, but you mentioned that he was sort of this influence on you, even though he wasn’t really around. Did you feel like a lot of pressure being the only man in the house?

John B. Johnson:
I want to follow up with a question with you for asking that, because I feel like you would have to understand that to really even ask that question. Yes, 100%. I felt an immense amount of pressure to not only be a man, but also to be a support to my sisters and my mother, who also had struggled with men in their life. They are all single mothers, even to this day. So not only was I watching them go through relationship after relationship, man after man, that I had to observe and watch how they would respond because I was the youngest by seven years below my brother. So that made me nine years younger than my youngest sister, and 11 years younger than my oldest sister. So I felt that a lot of pressure, 100%, to attempt to be a man.

John B. Johnson:
Which actually, ultimately, after leaving Cleveland, which I want to say that pressure was the reason why I left, was I started to find out that that pressure even existed. Because before that, I didn’t know that that pressure existed on me. And I set out to only make them proud, make my sisters proud for taking care of me and being able to send me to school. Make my mom proud because I know she had a son that ended up going to prison. Even though my brother is my best friend, and I talk to him every single day, even today I talk to him every single day, because he’s a big part of my life, back then, I didn’t talk to him at all. I don’t even know him.

John B. Johnson:
I was just the kid, the boy that had all the opportunities and talent. I was smart, I was athletic, so on and so forth. And I want to say that that was a lot of pressure but I used it, thank God, I use it in the right way. Because that’s what got me through architecture school and ending up being the only Black person in my graduating class to get my master’s of architecture, to get my MBA. Also, at the same time to be able to actually move out of Cleveland. Because I’m the only one in my family to ever leave Cleveland.

John B. Johnson:
That pressure is exactly what I needed I think, in that time in order to grow into the man that I am. And now I’ve been able to release that pressure because it was all made on me. I made it up. And now over these last nine years after being away from Cleveland, I’m now returning to Cleveland with my wife and I’m ready to be there, and to be there for that city, and to be in that city and be there for my family because now I know what it means to be a man. I had no idea what that meant back when I was 10 years old, because I had no men in my life.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. I empathize with that largely because my older brother also … It happened when I was 14, I think, he went to prison. I guess the relationship is different from what you’re mentioning with your brother in that you all are still friends. Actually, that time has completely estranged us. We are strangers to each other. He’s out now. He’s four years older than me. He’s out now. But we are complete strangers to each other. And the reason that I asked about that pressure is because I empathize with that not just the pressure of you now being the only man in the house that has to sort of provide, in a way, but then you’re also the baby, which I’m also the baby in my family, you can’t be the breadwinner and the baby. You can’t be both in that respect.

Maurice Cherry:
But then also going to school and being really smart and being really recognized for that … There are very few people I think, that really understand that sort of weird push-pull tension of being in school and achieving and doing really well and being recognized for that. And then you come back to this home life that is not that. You know what I mean? I don’t know if I’m really articulating it properly. I think you get where I’m coming from in a nonverbal way even though we can’t see each other.

Maurice Cherry:
But it’s a weird particular kind of tension, because certainly, you’re achieving and you’re doing well but yet, you also have this societal pressure, this familial pressure to do well. It’s almost in a way, like you’re under a microscope. Every kind of decision that you do is scrutinized and looked over. When you said, “The pressure is why I left,” I felt that I felt 100%. “The pressure is why I left.” Because you want to break out from that crucible. You want to see what’s out there in the world past Cook County. Cleveland’s in Cook County, right?

John B. Johnson:
Cuyahoga.

Maurice Cherry:
Cuyahoga County, sorry about that. You want to break out past the county and sort of see what’s out there in the world, see if the person that that society has sort of formed you to be can exist outside of that. Because I think it’s one thing when you’re like a kid, and you’re being recognized for all your talents and things like that, but you’re like, “Can you cut it outside of this sort of environment where you’re being praised and lifted up? Can you really do well outside of that structure?” If that makes any sense.

John B. Johnson:
I think that you articulated well, Maurice. There’s not only the pressure of the family and being the baby and knowing that you should do better than those that come before you because you should be able to learn from their mistakes. But the fact is, is that as a man, being raised by all women, I felt very alone in the way that I felt, in the way that I operate and the things that I was thinking and doing and so on and so forth. Nobody could relate to me because I was the only man in my life. The only role models that I had were all attempting to court, for lack of a better word, my sisters and my mother, and I couldn’t trust them. I wanted to, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t know my father, I didn’t know anything. So I had to find out who I was almost on my own because I had no other men in my life.

John B. Johnson:
And I think that that’s a common thread in America. Especially Black America, you find our generation, the millennial generation, is one of the most … We don’t have a lot of father figures and male role models that can teach us what it means to be a man. And the generation that come before us also. That’s something I’ve had to realize, I had to get away to realize those things. I was able to use the pressure in a way of helping me accomplish and overcome a lot of barriers, which would be getting my master’s degree and leaving and so on and so forth, which aren’t easy things for anyone to do and I know that.

John B. Johnson:
But the biggest thing is, what do you do after you overcome and release the pressure? What do you do with that? That’s where I think my journey started, was when I left Cleveland and started to actually understand who I was as John B. Johnson, and not who I was as the brother and the son and the uncle and all the other things that came with that responsibility, because I had no idea what all of that was. I didn’t know.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, man, I feel you. I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s funny, I did an interview last year and someone asked me this very, kind of the same thing I’m asking you. They were sort of like, “How did you deal with it?” And it’s sort of like that, I guess, it’s like a parable or a tale about the frog in boiling water. And how the frog is sitting in the water and then you continually crank the heat up, and the water gets to the point where it’s boiling, the frog doesn’t know that the water is boiling, they’re just in the water. That’s what that experience is like.

Maurice Cherry:
You know that there are all of these psychosocial factors that are affecting you at the time but you’re not thinking of it in this sort of outside way, like, “I have to strive to do better and get through this.” You’re just getting through it. You’re just having to go through life. It’s something that you can look back on, I think, with reflection and introspection and hindsight. You look back and you’re like, “Damn, I really went through some shit and I came out on the other side.” But when you’re in it, you don’t really know that you’re in it.

John B. Johnson:
And that’s why I think it’s so important for people to leave their environments, at least for a little bit, to start to see it from a different angle and a different perspective, if possible.

Maurice Cherry:
So you ended up going to Kent State, you study architecture. What was your time like there?

John B. Johnson:
Well, Kent State was the first time I was able to go and be on my own even though I was only 45 minutes away from home. I went to all boys …

Maurice Cherry:
That’s far enough.

John B. Johnson:
That’s far enough, exactly. It’s far enough for my mom to come in and grab my laundry for me. So it was perfect. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, Benedictine High School in Cleveland. After that, I think I wanted to rebel a little bit so when I left high school, I kind of rebranded myself, which actually is a interesting point of … I call these filtering moments throughout my life. High school and college was a filtering moment where I not only filtered the people and friends that I had, but I also filtered who I was and tried on some new John Johnson. One of those ways was just obviously being away from home. Another one was just filtering out the people that I hung out with. This was also a new phase, because I had no idea what architecture was all about when I went into it.

John B. Johnson:
I knew I was good at math, I knew that I wanted to do something in engineering and mechanical. Architecture was that balance of art and science that I found to be fascinating but I had no idea what it was truly. So when I enrolled and got accepted, I took it. I had to filter a lot of my habits because architecture, if you know, is one of the hardest Bachelors of Science degrees that you can get. It was not easy. So I filtered a lot of my habits of hanging out with friends and partying and drinking and all of these other things that attempt to be the good students and to get through the schooling, which was excruciating.

John B. Johnson:
Going from high school, which is pretty easy to me, to college was a huge shift, especially in this focus of architecture. So my first semester, I almost fell out, I got a 1.9 GPA. Thank God, I did not get kicked out but I was able to … that was a wake up call that I needed, “Hey, John, this is an opportunity that you squander,” which I think happens a lot to people, especially kids going into college for the first time. So I took that as a kick in the butt and I got my GPA up to 3.5 by the time I graduated, but it was an uphill climb from there. And my whole time there was all about architecture, because that was the only way I was going to survive.

John B. Johnson:
Studying, I was in a studio, I pulled many all-nighters to do the work there. I don’t think I had a very similar experience as many people might have at Kent State, which is known as being a party school in many ways. But Kent State has an incredible architecture program that is accredited and nationally ranked. So I was blessed with the opportunity to be a part of that program. And it gave me a lot of opportunities like studying abroad in Italy for my junior year. I actually got to study abroad in Florence, Italy, and that changed my whole perspective of the world. One of the reasons why I couldn’t stay in Cleveland after I graduated, I knew there was so much more out there.

John B. Johnson:
I got to go to the UAE, United Arab Emirates, and actually present a project there. I go to Amsterdam. I got to see the world. And that perspective really changed my life, it changed my perspective. And it’s no wonder that I’m the first one in my family to leave Cleveland, still one of the first people in my friends group to leave Cleveland because I got those incredible opportunities that I think are a privilege. I actually gave a talk about this, Maurice, before. I say that design thinking is a privileged way of thinking. And I want to say that, again, that idea of design thinking during architecture school, by going and studying in Italy, by going to UAE and seeing these different cultures and meeting with different designers across the world. And not many people get those opportunities.

John B. Johnson:
So you want to talk about pressure, I’m just thankful that I had those opportunities but I also know in my heart that my family didn’t get those opportunities. My brother didn’t get that opportunity. My mother, my sisters, even my nieces and nephew haven’t gotten those opportunities. But I did so what am I going to do with them? That was the question I kept on asking myself after I graduated when I decided to get my master’s in architecture and my MBA at the same time. Like, “What am I going to do with them?” I have a responsibility to do something special with these gifts. And I think that that’s really what Kent State really set me on the path to do.

Maurice Cherry:
I almost failed out my first semester of college, too.

John B. Johnson:
We got to hang out more, man. We got to hang out more.

Maurice Cherry:
I got to Morehouse and I lost my mind. It was so different from everything that I had known and had grown up around. It was a big city. This was right after the Olympics, and Freaknik was sort of dying out. It was right after the Olympics and Atlanta, I mean, Atlanta still has a reputation of being a party city. But back then, man, I tell you, the clubs would actually send charter buses to the college, they would pick you up, take you out to the club, you’d go to the club, do whatever, and they’d bring you back to the dorm.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I’m surprised I got through my first semester the way I did. I mean, it was wild. So I know exactly where you got it from. But you get to college, you want to try something, try a new identity, kind of see what else is out there. Because now you’re not who you are back home. For me, this is totally different state, totally different city. “I’m going to be somebody different. I’m not going to be the kid that they thought I was back in Selma. No, I’m going to be somebody different.” I know exactly what that’s like.

John B. Johnson:
I don’t know if I would have made it at Morehouse with those stories, man. Kent State, that’s all that was there. It was the university. Ma, way to get through it.

Maurice Cherry:
So you got your master’s degree from Kent State, you graduated. Is the experience of Kent State and studying abroad what caused you to move out of Cleveland?

John B. Johnson:
I want to say it had a big influence on there. Also, my wife now, we went to school together at Kent State. She was a big influence on me, and I’ll admit it. She ended up getting her master’s degree at ASU, Arizona State University, while I was getting my master’s degree at Kent. She, I want to say, was the biggest influence for me to move to Phoenix, even though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time.

Maurice Cherry:
So you get to Phoenix, and you create what is essentially your first startup called Feel Free. What drove you to create your own tech startup after spending so much time working and studying architecture?

John B. Johnson:
While I was working in architecture in Phoenix, I worked there for two years at a firm called Architekton. I had this desire to be an entrepreneur. I don’t know what it was, it was just like this gut feeling of I am not good at being an employee. I had this desire to start to do my own thing. I actually got my real estate license while I was working at the architecture firm and started to use that as a way of allowing me to leave my job. I also realized that I didn’t want to be an architect, in the typical sense of the word. I started to see up close the partners at my firm, and I didn’t see myself as them. So I had to make a big decision to say, “Hey, architecture is not for me.”

John B. Johnson:
When I realized that, I gave them 30 days notice and I left architecture. Right after I did that, my friend of mine talked to me about a project that he wanted me to design a building. And that building, long story short, ended up translating into this mobile app called Feel Free, which was a mobile app that when you walked into any built environments, you were automatically checked into that space and you will see a list of all the other people that were in that space also. And the idea was to create more organic face-to-face connections outside of the typical norm during that time, I think it was 2014, of connecting with people all over the world.

John B. Johnson:
It was taking people out of the space versus making them present to the space. Which the reason why I loved architecture so much was this ability to build the built environment, and to create the human experience within spaces. So when this idea came to life, it was like, “Wow, I could use this as a tool to enhance the experience of any built environment across the world. So it was that aspiration of using technology as a way to enhance, and I want to say multiply the impact that I could have on spaces across the world versus one building at a time. That’s the typical sense of architecture. That’s what inspired me to go down that path of building a tech startup.

Maurice Cherry:
So you started Feel Free, it’s out there, you’re helping people out. What happens?

John B. Johnson:
Well, me and my co-founder gained a lot of traction. I mean, we built a brand that expanded all the way to the UK of people that wanted Feel Free in their space for that specific reason I was just sharing with you. And me and my co-founder, this was our first time ever building a startup. We had no idea what we’re doing. We were learning every day. And after a while, a number of things happened. We didn’t make any money, we did not figure out how to generate cash flow for the app. We were in the process of raising capital for the mobile application. At that time, I was struggling. Remember, I left home.

John B. Johnson:
I was about to go bankrupt. I was back on my car payments, my mortgage. I was back on everything, and I needed cash. My business partner didn’t need cash as much as I needed it, and it caused some friction. It honestly caused a lot of hostility in me, because I was attempting to build this company and make this influence and close the round of capital. Didn’t seem like he was as eager as I was. And honestly, I would say that my ego got in the way, his ego got in the way, and we clashed. Next thing you know, we split up and everything failed. Just literally stopped right there. So that was about a year-and-a-half in. That was my first, I want to say, big failure as an entrepreneur.

Maurice Cherry:
What did that teach you?

John B. Johnson:
I learned a lot both from the failure but also from the successes of that venture. Specifically, with my co-founder, taught me the value of communication with other human being that’s in the business with you, the value of, I want to say, trust. But also the value of not leaving any room for gray area. We get into trouble in business when you leave room, gray area, because it doesn’t make it as black and white as it needs to be. Because the gray area is the fact that we’re human beings, the business is black and white. That’s just something I learned tremendously from that experience. And I will never enter into a business relationship again without a signed operating agreement, without very clear understanding of how things will happen if things happen. Things that we did not have in place when we broke up and when all that friction hit the fan. That was huge for me and it helped me have healthier business relationships moving forward from there.

John B. Johnson:
And on the flip side of that, we built an incredible brand of just a well-known brand across Phoenix. And it started building traction across the world. We built a beautiful mobile application experience. I found my passion for building those communities. Feel Free was when I realized that I had a passion for community building, and I was living that out. Even after we failed, that feedback from people saying that, “Hey, you live that community building piece that Feel Free represented.” That was just a really good piece of encouragement I needed after failing in my first startup but that’s what I used to drive me in all of my other endeavors. Even including A Small Studio now.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, that’s a good thing to still be able to kind of draw something from what could be, for a lot of business owners, a really bad situation. You start your own business and it doesn’t work out. And you have to cash out or you have to sell it or you have to shut it down and you have to move on to what the next thing is. I know a lot of times in entrepreneurial culture, and I feel like this is probably specific or maybe endemic of Black entrepreneurs, this whole thing about having to hustle hard and grind and there’s so much emphasis put on making the business work.

Maurice Cherry:
That when it doesn’t work, it can really sort of cast a shadow over you and make you feel like you failed. But you drew something from that experience of the fact that, one, it showed that you know how to build a brand, which is what you’ve been able to use as the catalyst for A Small Studio. But then two, now you know what not to do next time, and that’s a lesson that you really, unfortunately, you have to learn the hard way of what not to do.

John B. Johnson:
I mean, failure is one of those ways of learning so much. I don’t even think failure is a bad thing. I think it’s a really good thing. We’re all going to fail at something. And I hope we do because that helps us learn just, like you just said. It just helps us learn what not to do, it helps us learn what we should do. Those opportunities to reflect are important. I want to comment on the hustle culture that you just shared, because I think it’s just a culture in general, hustle, grind. And that’s one of the main reasons why I want to say I failed at the beginning was I was constantly trying to get to the yes versus getting to the no.

John B. Johnson:
And that was one of the biggest things that I learned on my journey is that as I understand myself better, and I understand what I’m being called to do and what my mission is and vision and focus is, I don’t have to deal with trying to work with everybody and trying to get money from everybody, to try and get everybody to download my app or whatever it is. Now, it filters a lot of the nonsense and a lot of the distractions the more intentional and the more reflective you become on your identity. And that’s, obviously, a big part of my work now.

John B. Johnson:
But the more I understand myself, the less I hustle. Because I worked harder and now I work smarter, not harder. The more I understand who I am and what I’m being called to do, the less I try to get yeses from everybody. And I think what you were referencing in Black culture, what I’ve seen is that scarcity mindset of, “I’m not good enough so I need to show up in a way that people would think that I’m good enough and will give me the help that I need or the support I need or the money that I need.” Versus, “Hey, I’m good enough. I’m everything that I need to be. Here’s what I’m doing. Do you want to be a part of it with me?”

John B. Johnson:
That’s what I learned, is I was trying to get help from everybody because I needed help. And honestly, I probably, now that we’ve talked about it, it relates back to my lack of a father, lack of a male role model. So I was trying to get help from everybody, when actually, I needed to take time to understand what was I being called to, who am I and then present that to people authentically and to see if they align with that or not. It would have saved me a lot of pain, it will save me a lot of money, would’ve saved me a lot of time.

Maurice Cherry:
After what happened with Feel Free, how long did you stay in Phoenix before you ended up moving to Seattle?

John B. Johnson:
We were there for about a year-and-a-half. Feel Free ended, I want to say, early 2016, and we left at the end of 2017 so about a year-and-a-half.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. And you mentioned your wife works at Amazon. So that’s sort of what prompted the move also?

John B. Johnson:
Yeah. Jeff Bezos came with his checkbook and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She was working at PetSmart and then got the opportunity with Amazon. We actually had just bought a home and settled into our townhome, furnished it, and everything. And six months later, we were in Seattle. So we kind of uprooted everything and moved there.

Maurice Cherry:
How has Seattle been different from Phoenix?

John B. Johnson:
Seattle is much less diverse than Phoenix, even though Phoenix is much less diverse than Cleveland. Downtown Seattle is a very, very unique place. I would say that I’m one of a handful of Black people that live in downtown Seattle because of how expensive it is to live here. The property values and the way Amazon has blown up the city has been uncanny. I mean, for the longest time, Seattle had the most number of cranes out of anywhere in the world. It’s blown up. Phoenix was not like that at all. Phoenix was actually the exact opposite from a density standpoint. Phoenix was much more spread out. We had Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, all these cities, but Phoenix was, I mean, Phoenix is one of the longest, I guess, largest cities per square miles out of any other city. It’s massive so it’s spread out. There’s a lot less of, I want to say, resources in Phoenix, especially from a startup perspective. So much slower pace than Seattle.

John B. Johnson:
Seattle is a big city. I mean, it’s one of the biggest cities in the country. And for me, going from Cleveland to Phoenix to Seattle, I had to change my way of showing up. To the point of like, “Hey, I’m in a much more affluent city. These people really are doing things that are on a larger level than in Phoenix.” Phoenix felt like a early stage city. They want to be big but they’re still trying to figure out who they are. And Seattle was a little later stage. They’re a little more mature. And the dichotomy of the two was Phoenix had that welcoming, warm community feel of like, “We’re all figuring it out together.” Especially in the startup world.

John B. Johnson:
And then Seattle had none of that. It was like you either know people or you don’t. And if you don’t, good luck. There was no warm welcome. There was no place where you can go to get connected into the city, into the communities. None of that existed, which actually prompted me to build a 1 Million Cups Community here in Seattle and get into other things. Because I learned a lot from Phoenix where there they had this grassroots ecosystem of entrepreneurship and the startup experience. Seattle, there was no grassroots. It was all big players. You had Amazon, you had Costco, you have Microsoft, you have all of these huge players.

John B. Johnson:
I like to think about it from a conceptual standpoint, these are big trees. The monkeys hang out in the trees up above the ground. Phoenix was more on the ground level. They didn’t have big trees down there. They didn’t have any big players in Phoenix. So when I got there, I’m like, “Hey, where’s everybody at? What are we doing here on the ground level? What seeds are we planting?” I mean, coming in very optimistic and also naïve, I’m like, “Let’s try to plant some seeds.” And I just decided to start building things. I didn’t wait for people to tell me what to do or how to do it.

John B. Johnson:
I was meeting people. I’ve met 40 people in the first two weeks that I was there from all over the city. I learned a lot of what I learned attempting to find myself and build my career in Phoenix. I used all of that to move the momentum into Seattle and show up in a different way. I want to say that operating in Seattle has definitely matured me as a business leader. It’s also matured me, I want to say, as a man, as a husband living in, in a big city, downtown Seattle like this.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ve heard about the infamous Seattle freeze. Sounds like that’s kind of a little bit of what you experienced when you started out there.

John B. Johnson:
Unfortunately, that is something that’s very relevant here. I think it’s just a lack of belonging, a lack of culture, a lack of community. It’s either you’re in or you’re out. Thank God, he gifted me with a gift of charisma and fearlessness because I broke that Seattle freeze real quick. [crosstalk 01:01:42]

Maurice Cherry:
That’s interesting. I swear, Atlanta is the exact opposite of that. Everyone that comes here is welcomed, almost profusely, in some way. It’s interesting that Seattle still carries that connotation.

John B. Johnson:
You can’t even make eye contact on the streets when you walk down the street.

Maurice Cherry:
Really?

John B. Johnson:
When I go home to Cleveland, I’m like, “Hey.” It’s nice to make eye contact with strangers on the street because Seattle, people don’t do that. It’s wild.

Maurice Cherry:
You wouldn’t get away with that in Atlanta. You try walking by somebody and not speaking and see what happens. Don’t do that. As I’m talking to you, as I’m getting a sense of your body of work, identity is a key factor in pretty much everything that you’ve done, pretty much in who you are. Why is that so important? Why is it such an important facet in your work?

John B. Johnson:
Identity is something that is core to each individual as a person. It’s only something that you can find as a human being. I think we all can agree that each and every one of us is unique in one way. We’re all one in 7.8 billion. Identity is one of those things that I found to be very overlooked and I want to say written off as not that important. Specifically, in my generation, I found people attempting to go after the hustle culture, the money or the success or the fame or the girl or the guy or whatever it is, before they even think about who they are. As you so beautifully walked me through my story, Maurice, you see there’s a lot of dynamic experiences in my life that have made me uniquely equipped to approach this work and help other people reflect on those experiences.

John B. Johnson:
Just like the ones I just shared with you, in order to realize, “Hey, you can use those experiences as motivation, instead of being motivated by money, instead of being motivated by success or climbing the ladder, or whatever it is.” So my brother is one of my biggest motivators because he is somebody that went to prison at 17 and has inspired me in ways that I can’t even comprehend. He’s been in prison for 24 years. What better motivator can I find than that? That’s a unique experience only I have lived through my eyes, along with my mother and my sisters, and my Cleveland experience and Italy and Feel Free and architecture and all of those things. All of those experiences give me a unique ability that no one else has in the world to show up and to impact people’s lives in a powerful way.

John B. Johnson:
And I started to realize how powerful it is for people to find that little bit of light that lives inside of them or what I like to call identity. Because they can use that as a candle that will never go out, as a flame that will never go out, and motivation that’s unlimited. And to use those experiences to help others, I believe that that’s the purpose for our life. Identity is something that I started to realize do my work of branding. That I was helping them brand their company. But what I realized was that that who they were as people was the exact thing that they needed to focus on to stand out in the marketplace, to find the motivation to grow the company from $1 to a million, to lead authentically and powerfully their people or to be innovative.

John B. Johnson:
Whatever it is, all of that came from within them. It didn’t come from outside, it never does. It always comes from within, I started to realize that. So identity architecture was a term that I came up with to utilize my $80,000 degree that I didn’t make $80,000 on, but I had to put it to use somehow. I started to realize how important it was to empower individuals with this. And by empowering individuals to understand who they are, it actually starts to strengthen the communities in which they belong to and ultimately starts to reshape cultural outcomes. So for me as a Black man in America, I’m one of the few that are agency leader. I’m one of the only one in my family to ever get married, I’m the only one in my family ever leave Cleveland.

John B. Johnson:
And as I move back to Cleveland, I know that I’ve overcome and changed cultural outcomes just by understanding who I was better and not attempting to identify or attach myself to cultural stigmas or stereotypes or stats that would actually put me in prison. You know what I mean? Specifically for Black America, our identity has been dismantled and raped and just crumbled for a reason. I feel like identity and helping people understand and check in with themself in ways that only they can to make them one in 7.8 billion would actually be the key to us creating a better society and a better world together.

Maurice Cherry:
I wanted to kind of dive into sort of that title of identity architect. But you did a great job there of kind of just explaining it. Like other Black agency owners, I mean, I don’t know sort of how it looks in Seattle in terms of other just Black businesses that you’ve encountered. But have you met any other Black agency owners, whether it’s through networking or anything like that?

John B. Johnson:
Yeah, I’ve met a few. Gus Granger, he’s actually down in Dallas. He works at VSA Partners now. He’s an incredible guy. I met a couple others that are a little smaller agencies but it’s been very, very few and far between. I didn’t set out to build an agency. When I started A Small Studio, it was just something that I felt like I could do. Next thing you know, I’m building a movement in the way that I’ve just shared with you. So I haven’t really tempted to follow the model of what an agency is, I’ve actually started to press into who I am uniquely as an agency leader and how I can help influence designers and creatives in a powerful way.

John B. Johnson:
It’s been few and far between, honestly, Maurice. And that’s actually a big part of why I found you and how I found you, how I found your work and the work that you’re doing. Also, it’s been a big motivator for me this year to make sure that I’m getting out there to not only find others that are just like me, that have gone through similar things, but also to make sure that others know that I exist, and that it is possible to build a million dollar agency to succeed in Seattle if you’re the only one there, to be the only one in your graduating class. Only this has been a common denominator throughout my life and I want to say it’s for a reason. I know that it’s still being fleshed out.

Maurice Cherry:
Given where you are now in your career with the challenges that you face, with the goals that you’ve accomplished, et cetera, how do you navigate expectations that others might have about you?

John B. Johnson:
The only expectations that I make myself navigate are God’s expectations that I hear as I continue to build my relationship with God, my wife’s expectations, and I want to say my brother’s. Outside of that, I think our expectations of others is something that’s really hard to navigate, period, for anyone. I’ve learned that over the years as I shared my story with you. I’m doing my best not to have expectations of others but to only have expectations of myself and I do my best to share that with other people that perspective. I’d say that as I’ve grown, I’m 33 this year, as I’ve grown as a man, as a leader, as a husband, as a brother, as a son, all of those things, I’ve started to, I want to say, release those expectations from myself, and release not even, I want to say, as Jay Z’s like, “I’m just dusting my shoulders off.” I’m not going to carry those expectations because those expectations create that pressure.

John B. Johnson:
Now, that I’m moving back to Cleveland, we touched on this in this interview, I’m moving back to Cleveland with that lightness that I don’t think I had when I left in the first place because I’ve released myself of those expectations. Not only were on me from my mom, my sisters, my brother, my wife’s family, my friends. And I’m going back there with one intention and that’s for me to have an incredible relationship with God, be a husband to my wife, and to be a citizen that cares for the city. But those expectations have come from something that are not from just people, those expectations have come from within myself as I’ve done a lot of reflection, a lot of growth.

Maurice Cherry:
When are you expecting to move back to Cleveland?

John B. Johnson:
May. Right after my birthday, May 5th.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. So not that far away. Given that and we’re kind of wrapping up the interview here, but where do you see yourself in the next five years? I mean, besides in Cleveland, where do you see yourself? Or what kind of work would you like to be doing?

John B. Johnson:
Identity architecture is something that I feel is my calling, is the way that I live life on purpose. Actually, I see myself sharing this methodology and this philosophy with the world. In the next five years, I hope to actually be building a creative community of impact-driven designers, that specifically use identity architecture, and use this methodology in a way of being more authentic with the way that they design. Just like IDEO really coined the term design thinking, I really want to move identity architecture to the next level to be a tool that people can use to authentically represent themselves out in the world, but also I authentically represent others and serve others. In five years, A Small Studio will be thriving. I feel like we can be a community of 20,000, maybe even 50,000 creatives who focus on impact-driven design and want to use their gifts to bring peace to people’s lives.

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

John B. Johnson:
Our website is asmallstudio.com. I have been very, very intentional on Instagram @johnbcreating. So you can check me out there, listen, follow along with the things that I’m doing, engage with me there. That’s really the best ways of finding me.

Maurice Cherry:
All right, sounds good. Well, John B. Johnson, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, your story, I think, is one that hopefully will inspire a lot of people not just in terms of the adversity that you’ve had to go through, but the lessons that you’ve been able to pull from those situations, and how you’ve been able to turn that into really doing something for the greater community. I mean, even as we were talking, I’m noticing these parallels to myself in a lot of ways. So I know that identity is something that is super important to you, and I really get the sense that like this is a calling for you. It’s not just, “I just stumbled into it and I’m good at it.” This is what you kind of were put here to do. So I’m excited to see what comes next for you in the next few years. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

John B. Johnson:
Thank you, Maurice. It’s a pleasure and an honor, brother.

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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.

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Miles Anderson

When I first chatted with Miles Anderson, he said that he’s “just a normal guy who works hard.” But then I heard his story and the growth in his career and well…Miles is no normal guy — he’s extraordinary!

Miles talked about his recent move to Seattle in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, starting on the Xbox team at Microsoft, and how he’s getting along during this time. He also spoke about his time at IBM and how it helped him grow as a designer, the power of self-education in tech, and what he would do in his career if failure wasn’t an option. Miles is finally getting the recognition he deserves, and I’m glad to have him on the show to share what he’s doing with you all!

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Bekah Marcum

I first heard of Bekah Marcum when I talked with Tim Allen a few weeks ago, and I’m so glad I had the chance to connect with her for this interview! Along with being a product designer for Zillow, Bekah is a community organizer and the founder of Black Designers of Seattle.

We talked about how she’s adjusting to working from home and self-isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic, and she shared the differences and similarities working at Zillow versus her previous role as an art director at Amazon. Bekah also spoke about growing up between the United States and Brazil, attending college in Washington DC and getting into design, and adjusting to life in Seattle and attending graduate school. Bekah is all about building authentic community, and I can’t wait to see how her work makes an impact in the world!

Transcript

Full Transcript

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

Bekah Marcum:
I am Bekah Marcum. I am a product designer at Zillow currently and also the community organizer for the Black Designers of Seattle Network.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Talk to me about working at Zillow. What’s a regular day like for you there?

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. It was a little bit more different than the environment that I’d been in before. It’s hyper, hyper collaborative in a lot of ways, so whether I’m working straight up with another designer or if I’m really collaborating with my content strategist and PM partners, everyone’s in the same space here in the same building, same floor together, so it’s a lot of walking around and chatting with people. But essentially, a day in of a designer at Zillow is, you get in, you have a fantastic view of the water in Seattle and then whether it’s going to a stand-up or any of those other type meetings, you grab a project. You might have some design critiques throughout the day with partners or other leadership. And, honestly, really just start collaborating on some pretty fun projects.

Maurice Cherry:
Now I have to couch this in our current reality of when we’re recording this for people that are listening, we’re recording this on March 19th and you mentioned at Zillow the view and it’s hyper collaborative and you’re working together. Seattle is, or at least you know a couple of weeks ago was one of the big hotspots for COVID-19. I’m pretty sure as other cities have taken suit with this now they’re forcing people to work from home, to socially isolate themselves. What is the vibe like in the city right now?

Bekah Marcum:
It’s been pretty weird. I think especially Zillow because although we do have people who work remotely, it’s not really a remote culture. And so it’s been a complete change from seeing each other and being in the office every day with each other to having to change everything into a online experience. So it’s definitely been crazy that restaurants and bars and other places were closed down. They’re only doing takeout right now. For us, we’ve been, along with a lot of the other tech companies in the area like Facebook and Amazon, we’ve all been working remotely for the last two, two and a half weeks. And so it’s definitely been, I think there’s a level of just stress that is definitely permeating everyone. We’re in such a lucky position to be able to work from home. But you have people who are small business owners here, you have people who can’t work from home and almost like the collective worry for our community has definitely been present.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. How are you feeling with all this going on?

Bekah Marcum:
I feel that I was super lucky. I live a little bit outside the city. So for me, I have a yard I can just go out and escape to without having to worry about social distancing. There’s a bunch of stress again, from the small business owners and community. For me, I am so addicted to coffee and so I’ve made best friends with a lot of the different coffee shops and restaurants in the area and the baristas and so, just worrying about them and worrying about how this is going to affect not only the individuals but then also the small companies economically. For me, I was used to working remotely before in a prior job and so I had a space ready to flip the switch in that way. But it’s definitely taken a lot of, or I’ll just say it’s definitely been a transition into trying to work remote with all the stresses that are added onto it.

Maurice Cherry:
How has the team handling it, coming from this very hyper-collaborative environment and now being distanced in this way? How are they handling it?

Bekah Marcum:
I think a lot of people are handling it pretty well. We have a massive amount of Slack channels over random things. The other day we were sending weird childhood photos to each other just to bring some of that community online. In in other ways, I think it’s been really great to see the team give each other a lot of grace because other folks… I don’t have kids, but a lot of people are at home with their young children. Zillow is a very family-oriented company and we’ve had many a kid come and do a cameo. Sometimes it was someone’s puppy and so it’s been fun to almost see each other in their home environments. But even my husband, who’s over at Amazon, one of their senior leadership sent out an email that just said, “You know what, guys? We’ll be fine. Let’s just make sure that we give each other grace in this time because we know things might take longer because there’s so much other stuff happening, so let’s just be patient with each other and just get through it together.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I definitely think that grace is needed for many of the reasons that you mentioned, going from working in an office to suddenly having to work from home and also not really being able to leave the house. That’s a big, drastic change for a lot of people that shakes up their routine, it affects them mentally, it affects the output of work that they’re able to do. So it’s good that the companies are empathetic enough to say, “We know this is a tough situation.” Not being completely hands off, but certainly exhibiting some grace in what is a very stressful time.

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. Yeah, it’s definitely been very, very nice to feel like we have that type of support and understanding.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What sorts of projects are you working on at Zillow?

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. I work in the growth and acquisition space for a product called Zillow Offers. Zillow Offers is essentially only really available in a few different cities right now, but it’s a new product to Zillow and it’s a program where we’ll actually buy houses from customers and then also sell them. The goal, the overarching goal in Zillow, is to help movers get to where they want to be. However, we can make that process easier for them, let’s do it. The whole premise of our program is that you don’t have to do any home showings, you don’t have to do repairs, you can essentially just pack up and leave. Some of our customers have given a lot of feedback where people who, some of them might have been in the military, some were moving for a job and they just really needed to get to the next place sooner. By not having to go through that whole traditional selling process, it removed all those different barriers for them and they were able to move faster. That’s essentially my product that I work on.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Prior to Zillow, I know you mentioned your husband working at Amazon, but you worked there as well.

Bekah Marcum:
I did. I was at Amazon for four years or right around four years, first as a contractor the first few months and then I went in as a designer, then left as an art director. Funny thing, my husband came in a few years after I did and when he was interviewing I was like, “Hey hon, why does it say that your hiring manager is on the same floor as me?” And he’s like, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be on a different floor.” And we ended up being on two very different teams but being on the same floor for about six months. So we’re also pretty used to working in a similar space together.

Maurice Cherry:
What’s it like working at Zillow and how is it different from Amazon? Zillow is more of a startup, I would imagine. And Amazon is this big corporate behemoth.

Bekah Marcum:
It’s very different. The cultures, if you even look at the leadership principles of the two companies, they’re very, very different. It shows up starkly. For Amazon, it was this huge, huge, huge company and sometimes you may not feel like you have full ownership over a certain product. I guess scope is a big thing for Zillow Offers. I essentially own a whole section of the product and so what I decide, what I really work and help to create just goes up and is the entire thing versus a small piece of it.

Bekah Marcum:
Another thing is Zillow… If you’re talking about workplace things, Zillow is much more of a nine to five and so there is a great work balance there. It’s been listed on different lists as a top place to work for families. I was really weirded out that people left their computers on their desks and went away for the evening. I felt like the first times I did that I was like, “Oh, I’ll hide it in my little desk drawer.” And people were like, “No, you just leave it.” Have that work-life balance versus different times for Amazon it was very dependent on the manager that you had, on the project you were working on. So it definitely had a lot more creeping as far as your off time.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. That work-life balance is… I’ve found certainly as I’ve gotten older it’s more and more important to be able to really have that split and that separation and it feels like now, to go back, unfortunately, to talking about the coronavirus, I feel like everyone’s work-life balance is thrown off now.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
So it’s a weird thing because it’s now all in the same place and you don’t really have a way to separate it. I’ve found a way to try to separate it. I told you before you started recording, I’ve been working from home since 2008 so I kind of have a pretty good way of compartmentalizing it. But then you just have all the added stress about everything that’s happening outside of your home and you’re like, “Oh, how do I focus? How do I try to concentrate on the task at hand?” So it’s, yeah, it’s…

Bekah Marcum:
Totally, I feel like, yes. Right. At home, you have the dirty dishes, you have the laundry that hasn’t been folded in a week. Or at least I do. You have the animals and everything else. For my husband and I, it’s like, “All right, who’s going to use the office for a meeting. If you’re having a meeting out there and I’m having a meeting in here, how are we keeping the animals quiet?” It’s a whole collection of stuff also. I find it super hard because it’ll get to 5:00, 6:00 and I’m like, all right, when am I actually going to close my computer because I’m not at work and I don’t have to leave work on time to be able to hit the commute right and get home. You’re already home. So I definitely have had to, for my own sanity, just shut everything down. Put “do not disturb” on my Slack so that after a certain time in the evening, I’m just not getting those messages.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, that’s the best way to do it. Just shut it all down and physically try to go somewhere else, a different place, a different spot. That really does help out.

Bekah Marcum:
As long as you’re in your home because there’s still social distancing.

Maurice Cherry:
Exactly. So where did you grow up?

Bekah Marcum:
I actually grew up in two very different places. My parents had a nonprofit that really focused on just community good. And so I was born in California and spent the first nine years fully there. But then I ended up going back and forth to Brazil for a month or two out of the year when I was nine. And then when I was 16 I actually moved permanently there for the last two years of high school. So, for me, my childhood was very much made up of two very different places, very different cultures.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. High school in Brazil, what was that like?

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, goodness. It was very interesting. When I first moved down there, I homeschooled for the first year because it’s very like a transitional year. Senior year I went to a high school that my mom taught at. For me, it was really, really interesting because my parents again were in the nonprofit space. And so my whole life there was working with kids in the slums. Some of my best friends were ex-street kids. That was what I was used to. But then when my mom started working at the high school because she’s a teacher, my sister and I went there for free. I think my graduating class was 17 people and those kids were essentially the richest kids of the area because I went to a “international” or American school. And so for me it also felt like I was straddling two very different worlds when I went to school, then when I went to the afterschool program that I would help run with my parents in the evening. So it was definitely a very, very interesting, interesting experience.

Maurice Cherry:
When you graduated high school, did you move back to the States or did you stay in Brazil for a while?

Bekah Marcum:
I pretty much went straight back to the States. I ended up going to DC for school, so I….

Bekah Marcum:
… dates. I ended up going to DC for school, so I was at American university for undergrad where I studied film and anthropology. Essentially I wanted to find a way to tell a story, but then I also wanted to tell it correctly and know how to do the research in order to portray it in the most unbiased way possible. And so I did that double major. So I was in DC for that and then stayed about a year after I graduated, and that’s when I eventually moved to Seattle.

Maurice Cherry:
Now I’m curious about the storytelling. Being someone that was going between two different countries growing up, were you kind of exposed to a lot of art and design that made you want to go into doing film?

Bekah Marcum:
So it actually wasn’t really the art, it was just the stories of the people who I met. I just fell in love with hearing different people’s stories and hearing the way that they saw the world. And so I think straddling those two very different socioeconomic classes made it so that I realized that the other one just had no idea how the other one lived. And I think especially in Brazil, that stratification is so great and also exists not only socioeconomically, but also racially. And so for me, I just wanted to kind of tell a story to demystify and de-other a whole group of the population.

Bekah Marcum:
And so it was actually a project I did it my senior year in high school where in art class we had to do a video project, where we’d film it, we’d edit, it and do all this other stuff. And so it was a group thing, but I asked the teacher if I could just do a solo project. And I ended up going and featuring one of … Essentially he was kind of like a sibling at that point. I’d met him the first year I’d gone to Brazil when I was nine, he was 10 or 11, and we’ve basically been friends since then. And he had been a street kid or lived on the streets from the time he was six to nine, by himself with other kids his age. And then he ended up at this home for ex-street kids.

Bekah Marcum:
And so for me I was like, “You know what, I just really want to tell this story. I just really want to tell where he came from, the amazing trajectory and this amazing change that he’s actually brought to his life.” He started in the slums and living on the streets when he was so young, but now he had been a part of a college prep program. There was so much, and it was just such an amazing story.

Bekah Marcum:
So I took my really, really crappy little point-and-shoot camera and I went and I just interviewed him. We went to the favela where he grew up, and he brought us to his mom’s house, and we met a siblings, he showed us where he had actually lived essentially in front of a shop, where he slept at night for the three years he was on streets.

Bekah Marcum:
He told stories over … He is kind of a hardcore-looking kid. He has this Nike scar, it looks like a Nike symbol on the side of his cheek. It’s huge. So he looked pretty hardcore. And when you actually talk to him you realize that no, he only got that from falling out of a tree when he was playing. And the only thing he actually stole ever was a Hershey’s bar, but he felt so guilty that he actually left money for them later on. So someone looking at him might think and really stereotype him in a certain space. But then the real story was just totally and completely different.

Bekah Marcum:
So that’s one thing I really, really loved. And I actually showed it at a little coffee house presentation thing with parents and stuff when I was in high school. And for me I was terrified because I was really showing this group of the richest people in the city, I was essentially throwing the socioeconomic differences and the racial differences in their face. But then it showed, I was in a cold sweat. But then afterwards people started coming up to me and they were like, “How can we help? How can we do things for him?”

Bekah Marcum:
And so it actually ended up helping him raise money for an English language trip over the summer in the US. And so it definitely made a huge impact even though it was really bad video, the audio was terrible. But the story really came forward and I just saw the impact that this could have.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. That’s quite a story. Do you still keep in contact with that kid?

Bekah Marcum:
I do. I do, yes. He’s definitely one of those folks who just became very much like siblings. And so now he’s living in Brazil again, him and a few others. It’s been really great to see how they kind of grew up and then are helping people who are in a similar situation. And so another person who I knew around the same time, all that he does is really go to the streets and really try to build relationships with other kids who live on the streets, or in the favelas, to essentially try and be a catalyst for some change in their lives.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. So let’s go back to the time when you’re leaving American university and you’re about to head out to Washington. Was that a big change in terms of time? Or did you have a few design gigs between there, before you made the move?

Bekah Marcum:
So in DC, I didn’t get into design until a lot later on. I think it was the last two or three quarters of school. I essentially realized that if I was going to be some starving documentary filmmaker, I’d have to learn how to make my own poster. And so I took a design class, ended up really liking it, and then went from there. So at first I was able to mix it up with some of the storytelling internships I had. I had actually ended up doing a small animation and putting it up for, it was some type of awards thing at my school and actually won Best in New Media. And the prize of that was an internship at a design company.

Bekah Marcum:
So that was my first kind of design gig was me in a small basement making a lot of different illustrations for one of the Smithsonian’s. And so I don’t even think they actually ended up using it, I think they went a totally different direction after I left. But that was, I think for me a great experience. Just learning from the designers there, but then also learning a new program. I basically tried to do as many kind of small contracting stuff or freelance gigs. It was very nice having parents who were in the nonprofit sector because they always needed marketing work. So a lot of the early things I had was just making some marketing materials or teaching materials for them. So that definitely gave me a lot of practice.

Bekah Marcum:
And then for me it was a lot of, because I really didn’t know what a good designer was, especially what a good junior designer was, I really was just looking at different people’s portfolios online. I was going on Design Inspiration and also Pinterest, trying to find designs I really liked. And so I just gave myself projects that I could just try and emulate the style or something of, just to try and build that portfolio out.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a really good idea. I tell people that a lot in terms of how do they find some kind of project or thing to work on that lets them do a lot of different skills. I’ll tell people, “You kind of have to make it yourself. A lot of those opportunities don’t just come to you pre-made. So if there’s something that you’re really passionate about, turn that into a project and work on it. And let that be the thing that you help kind of build your skills up for.”

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, totally. For my parents, they would want, I don’t know, a presentation slide. And I was like, “You know what, it might be better as an animated video.” So I would just work through animation skills and learn animation while making them a video. Or I know there was a big wave of popularity for minimalist movie posters and stuff. And so I was like, “You know what, what are my favorite movie posters? Or what are my favorite movies? Let me just make a few posters for these different TV shows. How would I take this concept and then do it in my style? Or really, anything else.”

Bekah Marcum:
So it definitely helped to build that out. And people actually loved seeing all these little passion projects when I first got started. So at first I was worried that it wasn’t showing professional work, but people really, really tended to enjoy just seeing that I had that excitement for what I was doing and the passion to actually just go off and do it on my own.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, absolutely. Those are skills that employers, and I would say even people that just want to work with you on a collaborative basis, they want to see that passion. Because honestly the skills are, I hate to say transferable, but they kind of are. There’s a lot of people that can work in Photoshop or Sketch or what have you and make something that looks really nice, but is this something they’re passionate about? Or are they kind of just an adequate set of hands that are able to put something together?

Bekah Marcum:
No, totally. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
So we’ve had a couple of people on the show who have moved to Seattle, and they’ve often talked about the “Seattle Freeze”. Which for those that are listening it’s kind of this, I don’t know, I guess you could call it a-

Bekah Marcum:
Constant social distancing?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, constant social distancing. We’ll say that. When you first moved to Washington, did you experience any of that?

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, totally, totally. I’m from California where you just call someone up when you’re on the way to their house. Or like, “Hey, let’s go grab something to eat right now.” And then in Brazil it’s a very kind of warm culture, you’re always hugging people, doing kisses on the cheek, all that stuff. And then in DC there’s still that environment if you’re heading to the Southeast where there are mostly black people. And so people are always talking to each other in the grocery stores and everything else. And then you come here and it’s like crickets.

Bekah Marcum:
It was definitely hard in the beginning just trying to break into a field that I had no idea how to break into while also trying to deal with, what is networking? How is everything not awkward? Also, how do I actually build both connections and friendships in a place that is known for being very cold? So I would say that Seattle has been practicing for the social distancing for awhile, I swear. In some ways we’re a little ahead of the curve on that.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you did a recent interview with another podcast called Designer&Designer, and you were talking about your experiences working as a black designer, working on designing things, but often being the only one. I can only imagine, one, you’re coming to this new city where people may not be super hospitable, and then you’re also working in a place where you’re the only black person there or the only minority there. What did that feel like in those first few, I guess months or so when you were in Seattle? Did you feel like you had a community that you could turn to?

Bekah Marcum:
Honestly, no. For my husband and I, we moved to Seattle without really knowing anyone. And so it was a very, very isolating experience. And also to add insult to injury, I was freelancing when I first came here and still trying to build that portfolio and find a job. Because we were able to move with his job, but I was still looking one.

Bekah Marcum:
And so it was absolutely isolating. I would go to networking events and there would be no one who looked like me there. I would go to like open houses at different design firms or anything else, and I would be the only me in the space. And I would like to say that that changed a lot. But throughout the first job I got as a marketing assistant or a production designer to the time that I spent at Amazon, I had not worked with another black designer in that entire time.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. And this was the impetus behind you starting Black Designers of Seattle?

Bekah Marcum:
Yes, in a lot of ways. So as a designer I kind of had always heard of the other elusive black designer somewhere in the company. There was always another one, you just didn’t know them. “I know that they’re out there somewhere.” But then I ended up getting promoted to art director, and then I started looking around, and I was like, “Wait a second. Where are the other black art directors?” And no one really knew where they were. And so I did some digging and I was like, all right. I was able to find one other black designer in the entire company.

Bekah Marcum:
And so I think I started to realize at that point that the thing that I was experiencing wasn’t just my story, but it was evidence of a larger trend. And so from there, before starting the group, I actually had only known two black designers. One of them was my little brother, and so he barely counts. And so I essentially just started to reach out to other black designers that I knew or could find technically, within the company. I was like, “All right, I think there’s a few of us because I’ve heard about you, but I’m actually going to make the effort and reach out now.” And then I just started doing that on the larger, LinkedIn scale, going through many pages of designers in Seattle being the filter and trying to find other folks in other companies.

Maurice Cherry:
See, I’m so glad you mentioned LinkedIn. Because people will often ask me how I find people for Revision Path, and they’re always surprised when I tell them I look on LinkedIn first.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh yeah, totally.

Maurice Cherry:
I go look at someone’s connections and look at their connections, and try to find who I think might be a good fit or who might be a good guest and reach out to them. People sleep on LinkedIn … I’ve long since the deactivated Facebook, LinkedIn is kind of where I am now these days in terms of social stuff. But how is the group going so far?

Bekah Marcum:
It has been insane. It’s grown so much. Like I mentioned, at first it was just me. I had a Google Sheet of all the different bios of people I was finding who are black designers in the city. So I just called it my “black designers black book”. And so I’ve essentially just been reaching out to people. It’s like, “You know what? We just need to have a happy hour.” So a year and a quarter ago or so, I just reached out to 35 people that I was able to-

Bekah Marcum:
… they just reached out to 35 people that I was able to find. I was lik, “Hey, I’m Bekah, we’re going to meet up. Let’s all meet up at this date, this time, this place.” And I was expecting for it to only be me and one other black designer that I had gotten to know over the course of me finding people. But then 25-ish people showed up and all of us were shocked. All of us were like, “Wait, there is this many black designers in Seattle? Period. What?”

Bekah Marcum:
And so, that was amazing. And then, since then we’re actually, so we have a LinkedIn group and I think we’re around 75 strong at this point.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Congratulations.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, thank you. It’s definitely been a very crazy, exciting thing to actually start to find and build that community.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you heard of the Bay Area Black Designers group?

Bekah Marcum:
I have. I have. I’ve actually been really bad and not reached out too much to them, but it’s definitely on my to do list, maybe with all this extra time.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So I know the woman who started it, Kat Vellos, she’s been here on the show before, and then also Kendall House, who is, I think he now heads up the group, but he’s also been on the show as well. And just recently, I’d say maybe a few weeks ago, we had Fonz Morris, who’s a growth design lead at Coursera, who also spoke really super passionately about the group and how helpful it was and everything.

Maurice Cherry:
But I’ve also spoken to some Seattle designers who honestly spoke super highly of you.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, wait. What?

Maurice Cherry:
Just a few weeks ago we had Tim Allen on the show who’s VP of design at Airbnb, and then Timothy Bard Levins, who’s at Microsoft was like, “Oh, you’ve got to be interviewing and talking to Bekah. Oh, my God.” So the work that you’re doing is definitely being seen by people and being congratulated out there in the community. So that’s great.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, that’s funny. Well, okay, funny story abut Tim. He’s actually now at Facebook, and between that, between Microsoft and Facebook, he was at Zillow. So he actually was the one who pulled me over to Zillow.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh really?

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Look at that. Small world.

Bekah Marcum:
It’s a very small world.

Maurice Cherry:
So, how long has the group been going on now?

Bekah Marcum:
Just about a year and three months, honestly. So it’s been the first year we were really focusing on just getting each other together and having sporadic happy hours. We had one big event the first year, and then this year we’re focusing on how we can actually start to bring some order to the madness and have consistent events. But yeah, we’re definitely still in infancy.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. I know there’s a group in Seattle, you may have heard of it, called HERE Seattle. Have you heard of them?

Bekah Marcum:
I don’t think I have. I do not think I have.

Maurice Cherry:
So HERE Seattle is a, I guess it’s more geared towards tech, I’m not 100% sure, but I know that four guys run it. Seth Stell, Todd, Todd Bennings and two other people who I can’t recall, but I know that they do something not necessarily similar to what you’re doing with Black Designers of Seattle because you’re focusing more on design. I think for them they focus more on DNI and tech in general. And so, design sometimes ends up being a subset of that, but that might be a group worth reaching out to connect with, HERE Seattle.

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. Yeah, it’s been a really amazing, I feel this year I’ve really started to connect with other groups like that. There’s a few other ones who are doing similar things and so, as we are upping our cadence on events, it’s been fun to see who we can partner with, who have similar initiatives, and then also how we can then go back and reach out to the community.

Bekah Marcum:
There’s a few arts-based organizations that work with K through 12 schools in the area, and so it’s, how can we actually come together as a community, as a group, and then start to help out these other organizations as they do stuff?

Maurice Cherry:
I really want to make it back up there to Seattle one of these days.

Bekah Marcum:
You should.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, hey, once this global pandemic thing blows over.

Bekah Marcum:
Don’t come now. I will not come and see you.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I do want to try to make it back up there. I was talking to some people at AIGA Seattle, right before all of this COVID-19 stuff broke out about possibly coming up there and doing a live show. But I feel like now everything is canceled until further notice.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
In the future I definitely do want to make it back up there. I’ve been to Seattle only once. I was in college, and this is actually a funny story. So I was in college studying math and my junior year was when 91-1 happened, and when that happened I had zero prospects lined up for jobs because the scholarship program that I was in, I was interning at NASA.

Maurice Cherry:
And so, I was thinking as soon as I graduate I’m going to go work for a NASA facility and that’s what life is going to be. But then 9-11 happened, they pulled the funding from the program and now all of a sudden it’s my junior year of college. I have no job prospects lined up.

Maurice Cherry:
So I started worming my way into these different interview books, which different departments would have books that you could sign up for, put your resume in and you would interview with certain companies, but it has to apply to whatever your major was. And for math they didn’t have that. They were just lik, “Oh, you should go to graduate school.” And I’m like, “I don’t really want to go to grad school right now. I’ve been going to school for 15 years in a row. I don’t really want to continue to do that.”

Maurice Cherry:
And they’re like, “Oh well, I don’t know what to tell you.” So I snuck my way into the computer science department, got in good with people there and managed to get into an interview book there. And I did an interview at Microsoft, and I remember that being, they talk about these techie interviews always being something that throw you for a loop? Like Google, I think at one point in time there was a rumor about there being this infamous one question, one interview question that they asked you.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh gosh.

Maurice Cherry:
And when I interviewed with Microsoft, they did that. So I remember, Oh God, I don’t know if she’s still there. I remember her name was Chesca. That’s all I remember is that her name was Chesca. And we did the interview and she asked me only one question which was, “How would you design an alarm clock for a blind person?”

Bekah Marcum:
Oh my goodness. Tim asked me the same question.

Maurice Cherry:
Are you serious? Wow, okay. Wow, that’s a big coincidence. But yeah, she asked me that question and I’m like, “Huh.”, and she slides over a piece of paper and a pen. Just talk through it. Talk through how you would do it, and keep it mind, this is, what year was this? This was 2001, maybe 2002 I think. It was 202 because it was right before I graduated.

Maurice Cherry:
So this was 2002 and I’m like, “Oh my God.” This is way before Siri and Alexa, and what have you. So I’m trying to think about voice this and you could do the commands, and all this stuff. And I write it out, sketch it out and she’s recording all this and so she’s like, “Oh, okay, thank you so much for coming in. We’ll be back to you.”

Maurice Cherry:
I’m like, “Wait, is that it? That was the only question?”, but I did get an interview at Microsoft based off that question. So they flew me up to Seattle.

Bekah Marcum:
Wow.

Maurice Cherry:
And I remember the way that they did it was this almost like a game show. You did the first interview and if you passed the first interview, you went to the second one, and then the second to the third, third to the fourth, or whatever. And it was all day.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, totally.

Maurice Cherry:
Maybe nine a.m. to seven p.m., or something. And I was losing steam somewhere in the sixth interview. I remember they were asking me about Notepad and how would you change Notepad if you were someone that wrote in a language that went right to left instead of left to right. And I don’t know what my answer was, but it clearly was not the right answer because I didn’t make it to the next interview.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh no. Oh no. Yes. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Tech interviews are definitely, they’re very legendary as far as being an incredibly long day. So I’ve done interviews at, I went through the process at Facebook, I was at Amazon, Zillow, and it was all pretty much the same in a lot of ways. But with Amazon I was actually, after I contracted, I was thinking that my team who I was contracting with wasn’t going to hire full time.

Bekah Marcum:
So I actually started talking to another team at Amazon, and so they decided to put me through the loop, and then my team found out, I was like, “Hey, just FYI. They’ll reach out to you to see about my performance and stuff.” And so, they actually hurried up their hiring process, then joined my loop. So I was actually interviewing with two different teams on the same day in the same room. And so, that just made my interview process even longer. I think I had seven back-to-back interviews or something crazy.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh wow.

Bekah Marcum:
It was so much information too, the portfolio review at the beginning. It was, in the same way, a very, very long day.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow. I didn’t know that that interview question is something that was still being thrown around in that way. That’s wild.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah. Yeah. Tim actually, when I went over to Zillow, he handled the white boarding and product thinking session, or part of the interview. And he did ask me, he was like, “You need to,” I think he added complexity. He’s like, “All right, you need to design an alarm clock for a blind person that only has one button.” And so, I couldn’t do boys, I couldn’t do, oh there’s a tactile interface. It was supposed to be an analog alarm clock.

Bekah Marcum:
So part of the beginning of that conversation was like, “Wait, what? It’s just an old one that you your grandparents would have with red numbers.” And he’s like, “Yes.” And then, I had to essentially just whiteboard that out. But I find it so hilarious that you also got that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, and I’m trying to remember how I answered the question. I think I was saying something about eye tracking because the person is… No wait, no wait, not eye tracking, because the person is blind. I said something about doing a lot of voice prompts. I remember that.

Maurice Cherry:
Something about voice prompts and being able to talk through how this would go. So you’d have to have some conversation flow chart of how to set the clock and all this stuff, and then maybe it would have some type of a haptic feedback because you would be able to touch it.

Maurice Cherry:
So maybe not necessarily braille but a series of vibrations or something like that to let you know that commands are being done properly, or things like that. And this was so long ago up here. I mean they liked it, but it wasn’t enough for me to actually get a job there.

Maurice Cherry:
But that was years and years ago, 2002. I also interviewed for Real Player that year.

Bekah Marcum:
Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
And no one uses Real Player anymore. So that let’s you know how far back that was.

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, I love that they’re using it 18 years later though. Or at least Tim is using 13 years.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Bekah Marcum:
So much later.

Maurice Cherry:
So now you’re also in grad school, is that right? At the University of Washington?

Bekah Marcum:
Yes I am.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s that going?

Bekah Marcum:
It is going well. I actually took this quarter off just to, there was a lot of changes at work so I decided to really try and focus in on that. And so, it’s been going really well. I essentially went back to grad school because I saw the lack of black designers and I was like, “All right, can I not only build a community but also do some research to actually find out why that’s the case.”

Bekah Marcum:
And so, I also was thinking that people are also a lot more willing to open up to someone as a grad student, if I’m a grad student versus, “Hey, I’m an art director at Amazon asking you these questions.” And so, I was also very aware of my own positioning, actually going to folks in different companies and asking what their experience was.

Bekah Marcum:
Being a student definitely helped me maintain a certain level of, I know. They just weren’t scared of me, and so, but also it gave me that space to do that research, and then to start exploring things, and then also have it not directly associated with my day-to-day job.

Bekah Marcum:
So it’s gone great. For one of the first projects that I did was a quick and dirty research over why there is no black designers, where they are. And then, I was actually like, “Okay, if there’s no black designers, whether it’s because of culture, socioeconomics, just our racial history here in the US, what can we actually do to start to change that and change that story?”

Bekah Marcum:
And so, part of that solution was building a community, because I feel like there’s a lot of people who were super excited about giving back to the community as far as like, “Oh, I went to go volunteer for an arts-based organization.” or, “Oh, I want to go be a mentor for folks.”, but people don’t know where to go for it.

Bekah Marcum:
And so, my thinking was, if I build a community then I’ll bring a lot of passions into a certain space and from there, people can then organize and start to have these larger conversations. And so, really the first event that I ended up doing over at Amazon last August was a direct result of some of the research and solutioning that I did as part of one of those classes.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. That’s interesting that the work that you’re doing with Black Designers of Seattle in a way came out of the research that you’re doing at grad school.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, no, it definitely, definitely did. I mean, that was the whole reason I wanted to go back. I think a lot of times I just wanted the accountability of actually doing the research and the actually having time set aside to really focus on this design, and diversity and inclusion, and so really going to school, having classes. I would essentially pick to really fit a need that I saw in my own journey as I explore diversity in design, and all that stuff.

Bekah Marcum:
And so, as I went I was like, “All right, this will really be good for this, that will be good for that.” And so, I really tried to pair up what I needed in the real world with the classes I was taking so those projects and those outputs from those classes would be immediately applicable.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. Can you talk a little bit about, I guess some of your research? I’m curious to know what you do have found from researching the lack of black designers in the industry.

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. So a big part of what I was doing was just trying to capture and just hear the stories of current black designers, and then how they got to design-

Bekah Marcum:
Stories of current black designers and then how they got to design and all that stuff, and so a lot of designers I found didn’t go to school for design. And that pretty much corresponded with a lot of my research where a huge percentage of African Americans, blacks in the US, when they go to college, right now in our generation, they’re first generation. And so their parents didn’t go to college, and so if you have 40% of those folks were in college, they’re probably not going to go for an arts degree. If their parents, their community are really sacrificing to get them to college, they’re not like, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to go for an arts degree.” It was like I’m going for finance or business or something along those lines because there’s the larger kind of view of design is that a business degree will get you where you want to go economically.

Bekah Marcum:
Whereas, like an arts degree historically, it’s like, “Oh, you’re doing an arts degree, so you’re going to wait tables or something.” When I even went to film school, I got some side eyes from some people be like, oh, really? Are you sure you want to go to film school? Really? You’re not going to make any money. But it’s the perception of design just even within our community can be so different. Whereas now, because I did get an arts degree and then I am also in the position I am now, I’ll go home, and then I’ve aunts, uncles who are like, “Oh, my gosh, you should really talk to your little cousin who draws abstractly because like they could be a designer, too.” So their perception of success has definitely changed just by seeing someone go through it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I always will say on here you can’t be what you don’t see. So being able to kind of see someone else that looks like you in a position like that really makes such a big difference in knowing whether or not this is something that you can actually do for yourself. So yeah, I feel where you’re coming from. Tell me, what lessons did you learn this past year? How do you feel you’ve grown and improved?

Bekah Marcum:
I feel like even though I started a community of black designers, I feel like I didn’t really realize the benefits of it. And right now just seeing how there’s subgroups that have come off of the Black Designers of Seattle community, I think I’ve seen and really just loved and been built up by a huge group of people. Even in this social distancing time, I was just texting a group of folks who I’ve met through the Black Designers of Seattle network because on Monday we’re all going to get together and drink wine over FaceTime. And so, it’s just I think the importance of community is one thing I’ve really realized, and also it doesn’t take much to have an impact. You just got to do something. You just have to give life whatever, just like something to work with.

Bekah Marcum:
When I first started the community, I was like I can’t organize a bunch of stuff but I can tell people to show up at a restaurant or at a bar where I’ll make a reservation. And so that was, honestly, the bare minimum that anyone could really do, and that small thing had a huge impact. And so I think just doing something has really been big. Even when I was first trying to get into design, I was so paralyzed by the amount that had to be done. But just by doing little things like finding a design I really liked then emulating it, I was able to take small steps into the place that I wanted to be.

Bekah Marcum:
I guess other than that I was at Amazon for four years, and I’ve been at Zillow for around, I think, six or seven months now. And I have definitely just enjoyed being in a different space, learning fully different things, kind of being out of my element. I think I’ve kind of forgotten, because I was on the same team for about four years, what that was like. But I definitely see huge benefits because of it. So I think that was more a reminder.

Maurice Cherry:
What do you spend time on when you’re not working?

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, my husband and I, we actually recently bought a Sprinter van that we’re tricking out. It’s kind of like pit my ride for vans, to make it more adventure vanny. So I’m like, not only the only one, sometimes of my being black at work, not so much anymore at Zillow, but I’m also the only black chick in the forest usually. So I do a lot of rock climbing, mountain biking, camping and all that stuff. And so right now, we’ve been using the time that we would normally be commuting just trying to build out our van. So a bed’s going in there, a kitchen’s going in there, well, bathroom’s going in there. And so we’ve just been doing a lot of woodworking and all that stuff to get that together.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. That sounds like a really cool project to work on.

Bekah Marcum:
It’s really fun because being a digital designer, I can build out like a CAD model of what I want the van to be, what I want a small house project to be. But then actually getting wood, getting metal, whatever else and actually just physically building it is a whole other level of fun.

Maurice Cherry:
And also with everything that’s happening now, great timing.

Bekah Marcum:
I know, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Great timing because… I mean it’s one thing to be socially distanced in your own home, but if you have a van now that you can at least kind of go around to other places, get some fresh air and stuff, that’s a benefit.

Bekah Marcum:
Yeah, I know. It definitely is. It’s a little kind of rugged RV is what it essentially will be. And so there’s a lot of places where it’s like, well, we have a full kitchen. We don’t need to go say hi to anyone. I can get my coffee here, my lunch here, everything else. So we’ve definitely been scoping out different state parks, national parks in the area and trying to find what’s open. Because it’s like, oh, yeah we could go to, I don’t know, Yosemite and social distance or something and just be in our own space. We wouldn’t drive that far because that’s 18 hours. But being able to have or feel like that freedom is possible, it’s been nice.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. So one of the kind of ongoing themes that we have here on Revision Path for this year is equitable futures. I got this idea, actually, last year. I went to a conference at Harvard called Black and Design, and one of the sort of things that they were talking about a lot was black people in the future. Where do we see ourselves, et cetera? We’re coming up on 2020 that’s a very kind of big futuristic year as people think about that with pop culture, et cetera. So how are you helping to build a more equitable future through the work that you’re doing?

Bekah Marcum:
I think a big thing facing Black Designers of Seattle, or just in general, is awareness. And so a lot of, in building community, is just increasing that awareness both of each other, but then also have different jobs. It’s been really great to be able to connect someone who is just trying to get into design, or they’re super young just out of college trying to find a mentor, and connect them with someone who is very established in that field. And to build that relationship there, to start kind of helping each other get to the places that we want to be. So I think just providing opportunity is a big part of what I’ve been focusing on.

Bekah Marcum:
But then also a lot of my role with the group has not only been the community organizing, but also the event organizing. And that’s been mostly on kind of the community plus allies or community plus conspirators is what I like to call it, where we not only have the Black Designers of Seattle community, but we also have other folks from the diversity inclusion space and then also the wider community in some ways. And so I think just having discussions around being the only black designer and all that stuff in that space is super, super important. So I think just having that discussion on a larger level and just building awareness of this is a problem. If you only have one black designer, that is an issue. You should be focusing on having a diverse workplace, not just racially but age-wise, socioeconomically, everything. And so I think just creating spaces for those conversations to happen is one of the other ways I’m trying to help contribute to more equitable future.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Well, it’s 2025. Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

Bekah Marcum:
Oh, that’s so hard. There’s a lot. I’m not sure. I feel like so much of my life has… If you asked me five years ago where I would see myself now, it’s so completely different. It’s so very different, and I’ve just been really enjoying that journey. I really hope that five years in the future our community is not just larger, but it also has greater impact. I hope that I’m in a place where I’m able to see the community be a space where people are going to find mentors or mentees, and finding different ways to get involved with schools and stuff, or just having awesome conversation.

Bekah Marcum:
I think for me, personally, I don’t know. I definitely love being a designer. I don’t think I want to be a manager, so that’s definitely not in there. But just having a larger scope on projects and just really being able to have a position where I’m able to strategically really kind of look at the future of a project would be super exciting. And hopefully, by then my van is done and I’m just traveling around in some ways working from the van from a lot of awesome locations.

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

Bekah Marcum:
Totally. So my website is rebeccamarkham.com, and I’m on LinkedIn, Instagram@Bec’s. Yeah. And also there’s a Black Designers of Seattle group, both on Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s just Black Designers of Seattle, so it should be super searchable.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Well, Becca Markham, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. When I first heard about you, it was, actually, I mentioned this during the designer and designer interview, I first heard about you when I heard about the group, and I was like, I got to have her on the show because I feel like there’s more of a story there. And so getting to learn more about how you grew up and the work that you’re doing right now. And even with the work that you’re doing through the group that you started at Black Designers of Seattle, there’s two things that really stick out to me. One is that building authentic community is something that is super important for you, but I think also just super important for all of us. But also really kind of owning your identity is what has made you such a unique person and has made you someone that people are kind of flocking to.

Maurice Cherry:
So I really applaud the work that you’re doing behind BDS. If there’s anything that I can do or anything that Revision Path can do, definitely let us know. This is more of the kind of community stuff that we really need to see. I mean, even in the midst of coronavirus, take us from online to offline, but being able to foster that community is something that’s really important, and I’m glad that you’re really kind of able to shepherd the cause. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Bekah Marcum:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.


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