 Good evening, everyone. My name is Sarah Freeman. I am the public education manager at Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Welcome to Cooper Hewitt Design Center. We're glad to have you here tonight. We opened the space in May 2012 to house all of our education activities while the museum on 91st Street is closed to the public for renovation. We're going to be opening in 2014 with 60% more gallery space, better circulation of public and back-of-house space, and a whole new visitor experience. And we'd like to thank Target for making this space possible, the Cooper Hewitt Design Center, and all of our programs here a reality. You can check our website for more info about the Harlem Focus series, which continues in November with a talk about artistic intervention at the mother Clara Hale Bustipo. Tonight's event with graphic designer Arabah Simpson is being webcast live and filmed and will be available on our website cooperhewitt.org. John Reddick is a long-time resident of Harlem who's active in architectural preservation. He has written extensively on its architectural and cultural history and has recently been awarded a position as one of Harlem's community scholars by Columbia University. Please join me in welcoming John Reddick. Thank you for coming. This has been a really wonderful series. I've lived in Harlem since the 1980s. I've really seen the change, but one of the great things that brought me here is like Harlem is mythic in terms of its energy and the sense of where it plays a role in sort of global thinking about the African-American culture, but also New York culture and American culture across the board. And so it's been fun in this series to really look at talent that's come to Harlem and also that kind of dialogue between living in Harlem and working around the Harlem institution. So when I saw Avera Simpson's work, her work for the Apollo, I knew that before I knew her. I was teasing her today. I looked at some things I remember from the New York Times that caught my eye and to realize she was one of those players. And so it was really exciting to sit down and talk to her and see if she would participate with us today. And so Avera has a great educational background in terms of graphic design and the arts. But also I felt like we were sort of soul mates and our love of like Harlem and what that history and that culture can kind of bring to us an opportunity it has to offer. So I'm really pleased tonight to have Avera Simpson join us. Now we're gonna get a couple now, you're not a New Yorker. The great New York is, I don't know, I won't say it too loud, but great New Yorkers are the New Yorkers that come from somewhere else. We don't take anything in New York for granted. So where we, give us a little bit of your background where you're born. So I'm from Ghana, West Africa, and travel around a lot as a kid and wound up in New York and fell in love with New York, lived in Queens mostly and the Upper East Side. And now I'm here in Harlem. I've been here for about five and a half years and I absolutely love Harlem. Well, the African influence has been really great. It's one of those things that, you know, time goes by and we're African Americans, you know, for X number of generations and the African influence, I feel like it's really re-energized. So the entrepreneurial sense of our history as entrepreneurs, our history in terms of fashion, the kind of beautiful quality of the fabrics and designs, really starting to impact, I think, the broader culture, which every wave kind of brings to the city. Yeah, I agree. I think so. So with that in mind, the African wave and some of what it's brought to the city, let's start to explore a little bit about what you've been doing. What I've been doing. Okay. I'll dig right into it. Can you all hear me? Okay. So, as I just mentioned, I'm from Ghana and my parents, due to my dad's job, we moved around a bunch of places and we wound up landing here in New York. And so we got to New York City when I was about 10. My parents bought my Siddlings and I an Apple 2C and there I fell in love with this machine and Max. I didn't know how this would play into my life, but later on it did. Did you? The only Mac idea was the Jimmy Mac in the song when I was So, fast-forwarding, I went on to college, Binghamton University, one of my Binghamton friends is here this evening. And I studied biology and English, mostly because these were two subjects that I loved and people thought I was odd studying bio and English. Who does that? But I did and I had a blast and I was really planning to, you know, go forward with my life in bio research down the line. But anyway, as any college student, I needed a little cash on the side while I was in school. So there was this place on campus. It was kind of on campus, King Coast, called Cold Copy and they needed a designer, quote-unquote, to help them do flyers and booklets and that sort of thing. And so I managed to talk myself into this job where I taught myself photoshop, freehand, which is now Illustrator and Quark. And I was just having a blast doing this side job, making these fun things for my friends. But still, it wasn't something I took very seriously. So, senior year, it's time for figuring out what you're gonna do with your life. And I went to a graduate fair where I was looking at universities that had bio research programs. And I stumbled across the Drexel University table. So Drexel University, the woman at that table, the recruitment lady, kept prodding me with these annoying questions about what I did with my life and what I like to do. And somehow she sussed out of me that I loved Max and I, you know, did this fun stuff with computers and making flyers and booklets. And she suggested I look up graphic design. And for me, that was odd because the only thing I knew about design at the time was fashion and architecture. And those weren't things that I was particularly interested in pursuing. But thank goodness I listened to her and I decided to do a little research and found out that there was this actual magical field of graphic design. But then I had a problem. I had to figure out how I was gonna get myself into this field. So fortunately, one of my friends from Binghamton had a job at this place called the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. And they were this, the Thomas registers this go-to place before the internet or Google where if you're looking for anything, whether it's nuts and bolts or a trampoline, you would go to these books either in the library or your company would own them and you'd flip through almost like an encyclopedia and find the thing you needed. So I got this job that I thought was this fabulous design job. Turned out it was design, production design, but it was great because I was learning hands-on how to sort of produce things, quote-unquote graphic things. And primarily it was a project management position as well. I was dealing with sales reps and you know, they were all these sales reps calling and trying to get their things into the book and it was just, it was a good experience and at the time I really thought I was the queen of design. Well now, would you have to, because you're infilling other people's, you know, brochures and stuff into the system, so was there a kind of organizing system graphically that they had there? Yeah, so the sales reps would send their art and I would process them in either Photoshop or Illustrator and this is where I thought I was the designer. I was literally just opening the file and saving it, but I thought it was design. So yeah, there was that sort of process and making sure that the files were getting into the booklets on time and coming in at the right time. I remember this, I'm looking at this picture. It seems so antique. It's like at the Gutenberg Bibles to me. But that was very common in most offices. That was the kind of like the, like you're saying the encyclopedia, the backbone. If you were looking up something, I wanted to reference how to get the material or anything that went to these catalogs. Yeah, and they've been in a lot of like old movies from the 80s. You'll see like Thomas Register in the background. So after the Thomas Register, I, the internet was becoming this whole new fangled thing and I decided that this was the thing I wanted to try to get into. So I went to a couple of interactive startups, iTraffic, which was one of the places that started Banner ads and Ogilvy and Mather. Ogilvy and Mather, again, I was project managing there. And then of course, just my luck, the dot-com bubble imploded. So here I was, oddly, the day before I got my dot-com pink slip, I had gone to Parsons to see if I could sign up for their Associates Design program. But all the classes started at six and my day ended at six. So I knew I wouldn't get to class till about 6.45. So that meant that I was pretty much going to be throwing my money out the window. So that was Monday. Tuesday I got a pink slip and Wednesday I went back and I registered for classes. I was like, this is perfect. So I went to Parsons and there I started to really get my hands into design. I was learning fundamentals like typography and color theory and learning the sketch strange things in art class. But it was just, it was a really good experience and really kind of made me sure that this was what I wanted to pursue. So just as I was finishing at Parsons, and I did a fast-track one-year program there, just as I was finishing, I was offered an internship at this little place, the New York Times. And I was flabbergasted because here I am, this girl from Africa who doesn't know how to design, who's now working at the New York Times. So I was there for a total of about three and a half years as a freelance art director and I got to work on a plethora of different sections. For me, one of my most exciting experiences was when I'd get on the train and I'd see someone reading the times and I'd have to refrain from saying, I did that. I remember the bird one in the middle, the migration. Yeah, the bird flew. That was a fun piece. I got to collaborate with the illustrator and usually collaborate with the photographer and the illustrator and kind of, for the most part, it would be this thing, dropping in a photo and filling in the space. But I liked to see how I could integrate art into the piece. So the middle one was fun because I got to take pieces out of the illustration and kind of pepper them into. And your generation probably used to the times having color images and all that, but I started getting the paper. It was a big deal when they started to switch over and show color and we kind of format how they were going to do all of that. Yeah, I remember growing up with the times having black and white images as well. And I, sort of, I'm a purist, so I was sort of resistant. I was kind of angry before I got there. I was kind of like, oh, it shouldn't be in color. But by the time I started working there, it was color. And it was good, I think. So the New York Times, I'm trying to remember where I went after the New York Times, but it's on the next slide. But the internship there, a little bit about how that kind of came about because that seems like a very unique opportunity. Okay, so I was at Parsons and in class with these fabulous people and the New York Times at the time was doing, I think it was called a Minority Internship Program. So they would have writers from different schools, illustrators from different schools, photographers from different schools and graphic designers all over the country and they would apply and see if they could get in. And Pam Klein, who was the head of the Associates Program at the time, came into class one day and I went to Catholic school. The majority of my primary education, she comes in and she says, I need to talk to you, so of course I know I'm in trouble. And she suggests that I apply for this internship and I'm like, why me? This is not something I would get, but I figured I would try it and I got it. And it was an amazing experience. I was mentored by a gentleman named Ken McFarland, who is the art director for House and Home Magazine. And he just was really patient, showed me the ropes. And there I met a bunch of other really amazing designers, Steven Grenaccia, a whole bunch of other people. I can't remember the name right at this moment. And so my plan after my internship was to go back to Parsons and get a master's in design. My mom always wanted me to get a master's, so I was like, okay, I'll just do it at Parsons. They were offering me a half scholarship. It was the sensible thing to do. So I get to the Times and I meet this gentleman, Steven Heller. I don't know who this person is, but he apparently was running the SVA MFA Design Program. He was the co-chair. And I kept hearing great stuff about this program. Every single person I was running into was telling me, talk to Steven about the program. Talk to Steven about the program. So I went to talk to Steven about the program. And then of course I wanted to get in. But unfortunately the 2005 class, 2004 class was already closed. And not to be daunted, I just hounded Steven and I said, okay, this is... 90% of life, not being daunted. If you're in New York, just get in the subway stairs. Exactly. So I was like, there's got to be a way. I'm only one person. I'm little. Nobody will notice. So he said that they actually had a three-year version of the program. And if I was interested, I could do that. And it was an intense foundation class, a year of intense foundation. And then you would start the master's full-on. So I said, all right, I would do it. And he said, you know, it's going to be expensive. It's three years of graduate school versus two. And I said, well, if I start working, I'm never going to stop. So it's either now or never. So he encouraged me to take a class with Paula Cher, who I was scared of because I kept hearing that she was this tough lady. And I was like, must I take this class? But I wound up doing it and it was great. So I went to SVA. After the first year immersion program, I had instructors like Milton Glaser, Stefan Tagmeister, Steven Doyle, and Paula Cher. And Milton and Paula continued to mentor me to this day whenever I need to talk to them about something. They are happy to have me come over. Steven Doyle, same thing. And he actually, I interned with him for a little while. And he got me a job, helped get me a job later on that I'll point out. And Stefan Tagmeister, his class was about touching people's hearts through graphic design. And so for me, for the most part, when I get a new project, I try to A, figure out how to approach the project, what the client wants, and how I can touch someone's heart through that project. So after SVA, I had to get back to the real world. Now I have to pay bills, pay off the student loan. I've got to find a job. One of the great things about SVA is the connections that students, students there make with each other. So one of the first people I met was this guy, Bobby Martin, and he's now a co-founder of OCD Agency. So when I finished SVA, I decided to give Bobby a call and see if he knew or had any work or freelance sort of connections available. And fortunately for me, he was looking for a freelance designer. So I went over to where he was working, which was Jazz at Lincoln Center. And it was supposed to be a two-month gig, but as usual I managed to finagle it and make it last for about nine months. And I got to work on this kind of stuff. We did a whole bunch of really fun posters. And the great thing about Bobby is he's good at pushing stuff, pulling out stuff from designers that you wouldn't really expect you would be able to do. So I was there for about nine months, I believe, and eventually they ran out of this two-month freelance budget that they had been stretching out. So of course I would need a new gig. So I called up Paula and she had just finished doing the identity for the Metropolitan Opera. And I asked her, I heard that there was a position open and I asked her if she thought it would be a good idea. She not only thought it would be a good idea, she called the design director and told him that he should probably hire me to come in. So I did that and it was fun again. Here I was working on a pentagram identity. And I should mention Paula had done the Jazz at Lincoln Center identity prior. Let's go back to that one, just the Jazz ones. I'm particularly partial to the middle one. Can you recognize the Liberty Bell that cracked it? That's actually my favorite piece and it was my last piece. Yeah, but they cracked the Liberty Bell. So Paula did this Jazz identity and then I went over to the Metropolitan Opera and she had just designed their new identity system. So one of my jobs there was to take this identity system and blow it out across various media flyers, posters, the usual, the whole kick and caboodle. So again, fun job, got to work on a bunch of stuff. When you talk about identity, we think about the Met, what would be something like the touch points in terms of considering identity change or capturing what an identity is for something like the Met? Let's see if I can answer this correctly. So Paula had come in and refreshed their logo and how they would apply the logo to their materials and made a very basic system. And then the job of someone like me and the design director would then take those things and really make them work. This is one thing to have a style guide and when you start making the things and this will come up when I start talking about the Apollo is really like now that you have the real content and the real life, real world things that you need to develop, how to make those things work and then of course your style guide can't cover every single thing. They're not going to cover a coupon or maybe a flag that somebody decides to do later. So I don't know if that answers your question. So the Met Opera, I'm skipping ahead. So I was at the Met Opera and I did a whole bunch of these things and I got an email one day from the creative director of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Product, I'm forgetting the acronyms but I got an email from this guy at Johnson & Johnson and he asked if I would be interested in coming to talk to him about some work there. And of course I was like Johnson & Johnson and I have no interest in doing toothpaste or whatever it was that they were... Yeah, I was just like, yeah. And so I kind of didn't respond and then he sent another email and he'd mentioned that Steven Doyle who's one of my previous instructors and he said, well Steven Doyle suggested I contact you so I was like okay well let me go see what this is about. So I got there and had an interview with him and then he pulled out all this work that they were doing particularly the Rembrandt packaging which at the time was just this beautiful white box with boss silver type and coincidentally the weekend before I was living on Long Island at the time at my cousin's place and he and I had gone shopping and I'd seen this box in the stop and shop or whatever it was and I was just flipping out at how beautiful this thing was. So here I am in the interview thinking you know here's a practice interview and this guy brings out the Rembrandt box and I'm like I lost all my negotiating leverage because I was just gushing over this box and I was... I got the job and so I got there and got to work on stuff like this where they were at the time they were thinking of redesigning the illustrator illustrator, the Listerine bottle completely blowing the structure out of the water unfortunately it didn't happen but these were the kind of explorations we did and then Nier Sporen was creating a secondary line for skin and lip health so I got to work on that and some of this stuff is on shelf now and so one of the last things I worked on at Johnson & Johnson was the Visine redesign which is one of my proudest pieces and that stuff is still on shelf but here I got to collaborate with an illustrator and really work with type and make sure that things just looked beautiful at least I think it looks beautiful so again it was three years at Johnson & Johnson and I felt as though I kind of needed to do something different and one of the things that Milton Glaser had told me before I went to Johnson & Johnson was if you're going to go into corporate just stay there for a year or no more than a year and a half and that was three years later and I was like okay I see what he was talking about because it was getting too heavy for me I wasn't really pushing myself and so I needed to figure out what I was going to do next and coincidentally I got an email from Jennifer Kainan who was at Pennegram at the time and she'd mentioned that her team Michael Beirut's team had just finished doing an identity refresh or retouch of the Apollo's identity and would I be interested in coming in and talking to them and potentially working on this stuff so of course I said yes so I went in and looked at the things that they were interested in doing came up to Harlem, I live in Harlem but it came up with Rick Thompson had a great talk with him and I started working with the Apollo so the Apollo is really my first real client as my own person and so one of the first projects I got to work on was the... but still allow these iconic artists to quote-unquote sing so my solution was to literally the thing be its own thing Now the Apollo logo that we're looking at that's the marquee Yes, so these were the older iconic images They have a great feel of performance I mean there's like energy in there and again I got to work with some beautiful iconic imagery and again my struggle was how do I get this message across without you know through and pick the ones they want to use and sometimes you know I will have a back and forth discussion about which ones work best or position for this piece of copy I thought it was just singing, excuse my singing metaphor and then there was the Stevie Wonder spring gala so the Stevie Wonder spring gala was interesting because we used his iconic imagery to promote the event and then after the show we wanted to still promote his stuff and so for me it was interesting to go from old... Well I remember little Stevie Wonder, 13 or something Exactly and then there was this version and you have the little Stevie Wonder in the background So from here we're starting to move into more contemporary pieces for the Apollo and then there were situations where you'd have an artist who was performing on the Apollo stage but wasn't going to be using the Apollo brand and so figuring out a system to let them not kind of overpower the brand but still have a strong enough voice He launched a tour, he had like a press conference at the Apollo and well he looks fabulous without any work or whatever I mean he really looked great and that really kind of captures his contemporary look Thanks So it was this sort of system that we developed and then of course there's Amateur Night and there's a ton of Amateur Night stuff that happens and the photography is usually really really great so again I'm able to just set the type quietly in the corner and let the image speak for itself I got to do a poster for Amateur Night this is I think at 1.25 in St. Nicholas, I'm not sure Who came up with the tag? I love the type B Have you ever been to Amateur Night? That's totally true You either be good or you're going to be gone in terms of the audience I thought that tagline really captures the spirit of what the performance is like That was all Rick Thompson, genius of Rick Thompson Yeah, so we got to I got to do these kind of things there's a ton of Amateur Night stuff and then there are different variations on Amateur Night including gospel and auditions all kinds of stuff and luckily the panogram system is really flexible so it made my job really easy, I think fans and then there was Apollo Music Cafe so Apollo Music Cafe it sort of allows it's a showcase for up-and-coming artists new contemporary artists to show their work on the soundstage and they could be close to finishing their work or work in progress but here they get to have a small space at the Apollo It seats about 150 or so 150 people but it's great because it allows them to bring in this new bring in a different brand to the Apollo because initially maybe these people wouldn't fill a whole theater of the Apollo but it starts to create these kind of young talents to kind of segue a history connection to the Apollo it's a very intimate environment to see music Yeah, exactly So I think this was one of the first flyers I did which was still building on the main system that we had developed for the Apollo but as we talked about it we felt that Music Cafe while it still needed to fit within the Apollo system it kind of also needed its own voice so one of the things we wound up doing was this adding more color to the color palette and just for Music Cafe so the main color palette for the Apollo is red, white, and black but for Music Cafe we would do things like add punches of yellow and ink they had their own identity at least logo lock up so that was easy enough I really wanted the artists, these new edgy artists to kind of have this like snap shot This guy is from Ghana so I had to showcase him this was a website carousel but again for each of these pieces I wanted to have this weird sort of funky graphic in the background just to bring some kind of fun and play and there are tons and tons and tons of artists that have come through for Music Cafe these are just about 16 of them and Music Cafe continues on but this is some of the fun stuff I got to do in terms of organizing I see you vary the that kind of exploded graphic behind each image you kind of pivot the picture so nothing is really square except really the kind of logo I just felt that that would add more fun and make it feel a little bit more a little bit different from the stuff that goes on on the main stage and so of course with these pieces they would become flyers and postcards whatever else, the whole kit and caboodle and so this is some of the merchandise stuff I've gotten to work on at the Apollo and I did a little modeling so I continue to work with the Apollo but I've also had the opportunity to start working with other companies and organizations some in Harlem and some throughout the city or the country and and and as I explained my client base this is my little slide for that but to the clients I have been working with most closely recently have been Harlem Needle Arts which is a non-profit here in Harlem and they really sorely needed an identity they needed to do some promotional stuff but I couldn't work with the logo they had because I think it was Papyrus and I was like okay this needs to I suppose one of the issues in Harlem is people talk about gentrification and change a lot of people there will be a small organization like this and someone will say well you have to get it online or you have to do this and they sort of feel this compunction to do certain things but they don't have this other level of graphic thinking in terms of like well how would this match up with the cards we give out and coming to the website and so it's been a great I mean that whole the whole kind of stitch and all that I mean it seems like miraculously you would think people would think about this but it really has benefited organizations like that to have that kind of talent come to bear in terms of their thinking. I think so I think it's it's I think it's helpful to them sometimes they don't know what they need but I mean Michelle who is the president of Harlem Needle Arts is great because she just lets me do what I want to do so clients like that are amazing and I also do some work with Experience Harlem so I just designed their 2013 sort of Zagat's version of Harlem if you don't have one you should go grab one but she's another organization I'm trying to think of her name Angie Hanghouse yes yes so and she's another great person to work with so you really just there's a contemporary language one of the things you know for minority communities I think that's been a real difficulty is that things start to be read at a certain level there's like you talk about pentagram or you know they do the public theater they do this and so there's a certain kind of status that you know here's the Apollo I think has a superior status to the public theater to me but then how do you figure out to make it read on the same par these other institutions I feel like same thing for the Angie piece and all that it's like putting them up swimming with the big fish sort of as a kind of graphic language I think the ordinary person doesn't know and they don't value it till they really see it yeah so I think you really have brought that to a lot of these projects thank you I try but thank you see and that's my like when I work with some of these smaller clients it's trying to get them to understand especially mom and pop shops the value of design and what design can actually do for the thing that they are trying to promote whether it's their business or an event or whatever because sometimes they're just so used to doing what they've done before and are resistant to something that's so simple and clean well it's boring well it's actually it's not boring it's getting the information you need out clearly to whomever and then you're in line with all these other people it's like flipping pages you go from one company to the next and just using standard practices it really does diminish the values um so it all comes full circle so as I mentioned in the beginning I'm from Ghana just that little country there and I realized from Parsons to SVA and sort of along the way projects I work on I wind up pulling back to my heritage not consciously but I've realized that my heritage keeps coming back into play and so when I was back at SVA one of my thesis projects involved taking adinkra symbols which are from Ghana and if you've seen African women's prints adinkra symbols are those sort of visual language that's on those fabrics so I decided I was getting frustrated with the idea that a lot of people think African artists just can't take lots masks and drums it's more? I know surprisingly so I was getting really really irritated with that and so that wound up becoming my thesis project because I felt that I have this sort of clean sensibility and there are a lot of African artists who have a completely different sensibility from what most people know and not that there's anything wrong with the things that people know that can't take off the masks and the drums but I mean most can take off what you see in Harlem it's like it's printed and real can take off is woven and there's a whole rigor in terms of the width of what the woven band would be and all that just starts to get lost in the re-purpose, yeah exactly and so I took adinkra symbols and instead of just plonking them down I decided to start making my own patterns and creating my own sort of voice with that and actually my jewelry right now I designed and they're based on adinkra symbols as well and so I blew that out to note cards and lambshades and fabrics so I designed my own fabrics and when I'm able to go out to Ghana I have, I design the patterns and I go to Ghana and I have them hand self-screened by artisans so literally there's a human being that I speak to who is printed in fabric the talk just before yours was following Manketia so a lot of you too have to do an introduction yeah I'll have to read them yeah so that's me in a nutshell thank you all for coming we also entertain questions from the audience, we have a microphone does anybody have a couple questions anybody in the audience there's one in the back great job Ereba, looks good so how do you see the work that you've been doing with affecting some of the other work that you've been doing in the more corporate or performing arts world so Apollo in some of the other places so I think for me right now I've been keeping Asenya sort of separate from my day to day job, it's still my passion and it's still something that I am trying to make happen but actually a couple of weeks ago my hairdresser asked me if I could design some she asked me to design something for her which involved fabrics and taking African symbols, specifically adinkra symbols and blowing it across so I was happy to do that but I told her if I do this we're going to have to co-brand and she didn't want to co-brand so that sort of thing becomes tricky is the thing that I do and so figuring out how to get someone to commission that work and still give credit to it has been a tricky thing to figure out but I know I'll figure it out at some point Also you mentioned about how your culture kind of in an ongoing way kind of serves you could you talk a little bit about that in terms of the essence of that is the spiritual sense is it a sort of graphic sense that you draw from that I think it's more of a graphic sense it was interesting because again, weirdly before I got to SVA I sort of resisted doing anything that was African related because I didn't want to be seen as the African designer but I realized that that kept coming to play whatever projects I would do not every single project but I would at some place wound up doing something that had some sort of a Dinkra symbols in it and I think when it comes to creating patterns like if I'm doing no cards or I'm blanking on the word wrapping paper or any sort of things I wind up at least on a first pass if I'm doing something for clients I notice that those things wind up being very closely related to a Dinkra symbols and if it's not something that they are supposed to I'm supposed to be doing for them I kind of get that out of my system and then focus on what they're asking me to do I don't know if that answers your question but would you want to pull that in more like if you were as your practice grows do you see that as the sort of undercurrent in terms of your graphic style and stuff definitely I think an alphabet to work from in a way yeah definitely I think if the job and the client calls for it but so I do some work for uncommon schools every so often but I think it would be odd for me to suddenly do something and throw in some Dinkra symbols but it's like but yeah I think as I move forward working for myself finding that opportunity to become more known for that sort of work is what I need what I'm trying to do as well as not just from a graphics design standpoint but also from a production product design standpoint because one of the things I discovered about myself too is that I actually really like to make stuff with my hands which is something I had no idea but something I sort of feel like with the new technology that the hand the sense of the hand is going to be more important in the sense that there was a craft and it wasn't this kind of reproductive aspect to it yeah and it's very satisfying the only problem I have is when I make something by hand then I don't want to let it go so I have all these things and I have all these pillows in my apartment that I should put on a website and sell but I'm in love with every single one of them they have they feature different artists different times in their gift shop like the holidays are rolling around so I take your pillows over they'll be an appreciation I mean they do they've had different designers and people that'd be great yeah it'd be a good opportunity thank you it's a question I was actually thinking about that same point you brought up that it has to be challenging how to advertise yourself advertise your product besides just online do you hold functions how do you get yourself out there that's something else I'm working on I have been working on for two years now revamping my website and I'm my own worst client every time I redesigned my website it's not good enough but I think from the graphic design side I've been really fortunate I have people like Bobby Martin who's in the back from OCD agency Roger's Eckersley's design Pennegram is always really great Rick Thompson has been really great about getting me connected to people so that sort of the business has been good and that I've been lucky that people are you know sort of I'm blanking again on words the people are kind of connecting me or recommending me for other projects when it comes to the Asenya stuff one I have to get over falling in love with these pieces and being able to let my babies go and then I think from there I'll be able to let it speak for itself because even with connections like Harlem Needle Arts they would be happy to you know feature my stuff I had a second part to that do you also promote it in Ghana the root of it all I'm curious I haven't yet promoted in Ghana because I'm not there enough to manage it so I feel like I need boots on the ground or I need a family member who's really going to be able to manage it because even when I go home and make fabrics you know I'll tell them I need to pick it up in three weeks and I'll go check on it three days before I leave and it's like like oh yeah we'll have it ready for you in a week but I needed it in three days so I really to be able to promote in Ghana I need somebody either I need to be there I need somebody who's going to be dedicated to doing that so how would they print the shades do you have somebody who fabricates the pieces after so the lampshades that particular lampshade I did myself I printed myself off in Epson I've been hesitant in producing more of the lampshades only because I think that it could be a liability what I would like to do is find a lampshade manufacturer and have them like produce it so I know that if it's I'm not going to set someone's house on fire with my lampshade but I mean it's possible to do it the lampshade shop is where I learned how to make those I literally made that lampshade aside from the print but I built the lampshade myself and so so you're going to get somebody to help you exactly I need to focus on figuring out who those people are and the same thing with the cards are you promoting the cards how are you doing this actually I'm promoting I was selling them at Swing which I think is on 118 yeah so Swing exactly and I may be able to get them into Bebe Noir but they I sell the note cards on Etsy and people who know that I have the note cards will usually send me a note around this time and order some so do we have another question do we see somebody there oh there's a young lady in there wait for the mic they want to pick it up and this yeah so I was just curious you talked about biology and English being kind of like the root of what your interest was in and just kind of how like the African culture kind of got brought back in I'm wondering if you see how that interest also may have helped get you where you are right now the bio and English part I mean just the Johnson & Johnson job in and of itself my mom was thrilled when I was in college she wanted me to work at Pfizer for some reason and when I got to Johnson & Johnson the brands I was working on had just been purchased from Pfizer by J&J so I called her and I said mom your wish has come true so for me and I think as a designer when I approach certain projects in different places I've worked sometimes designers are very hey let's just have fun but my training has always been really I don't know if the word is strict or I'm going to use the word strict but there's my very scientific way of approaching a project and so I think that for me that's how I approach design sometimes it's like really trying to figure out what the problem is and then starting to work on the design which can be tricky because sometimes you just need to play and so I struggle with that sometimes like sometimes you really as Balashare would say just play and figuring out when to just jump in and play versus what's the problem, what's the solution and what all those steps in the middle are so what do you think about a clinic in Estee Lauder? They're probably made in the same vat but the fact that the packaging totally says one is scientific and non-allergenic and all that and the packaging kind of speaks to that compared to kind of the more frilly and sort of this perfume and cologne kind of side of the business where Hal Dwayne Reed has revamped their stores in this hospital like clinic Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, I mean I think I don't know if that was a question but I think There's a kind of style in the graphic that kind of sends you in a certain way Yeah, and for me I think maybe my science background leads to my sort of minimalist or clinical approach to the things I design with the exception of Asenya stuff but even my Asenya stuff I don't really look at other African artists I think it's pretty much It's pretty minimal Yeah, so I think that's what influences it The light green is very healthy The colors are really bright and more health-like Yeah, I think, yeah I think Uh-oh This is being simulcast so if they don't have the mic they're handpicking Just thinking about kind of your future client or collaboration What types of groups would you like to work with? That's a good question I think definitely down the line as I said down the line I definitely want to start transitioning more into making my stuff but I love collaborating with any new sort of project One of the things I'm working on now with the client I'm consulting on is sort of project managing this medical center out in the Midwest and for me that's fascinating because it's something I've never done in my life before I love any opportunity to learn something new so I think from that standpoint any opportunity to learn something new is great for me but for the future of my business is trying to figure out the right sort of partner whether it's a design partner or a new business kind of partner I definitely think I need that because I'm still a one woman shop and being a one woman shop I'm doing everything from the billing to the designing to production to whatever it is and that I think takes a little bit away from my being able to design organizing of all of that the billing, all that separate stuff get the work done is enough Exactly and the billing stuff is like the non-fun stuff especially when it's like you still owe me a payment when the checks are coming in that's fun but I don't know if that answered your question When you see fashion would you think about being on the fashion side because you talked about that really early in terms of we said design it's architecture and fashion do you think you could be drawn back into that in a way Well it's interesting because for me I was never sort of interested in doing fashion but when people see my fabrics and those three were the only ones I've shown but I've gotten a lot of questions about hey you know what would we be able to fire fabrics and use them for clothes and dresses and so it's something I'm flirting with I can barely sew I can sew four corners and a zip so if I were going to get into fashion I would definitely need to partner with a seamstress or someone who could actually sew but I have been over the past year or so collecting pieces online, patterns online that I think would be interesting even if it's just a strip of my Asenia fabric and having you know a solid piece that accommodated like a border Yeah so yeah I'm not taking fashion off the table I think we take one more, do we have anybody else take one more alright thank you very much, you have another question a week little huh there we are so I was curious if you could think back to your Apollo days how do you think the development of the different material that you did help create say about the space and then say about the neighborhood and kind of say about the people that I guess it's like reaching out to yeah hmm how do I answer that I mean I think for me it was more of coming from a promotional design standpoint and I think most of the Apollo imagery photographs spoke for itself so it was just about making sure that the the things I was the supplemental the supplemental information I was designing was clean and helped balance the image and I think at the time it was probably new and fresh in Harlem it was I think something that wasn't really being done aside from the studio museum it wasn't really being done that well and of course it wasn't all me on the ground system that I was sort of applying but I think it helped people have a clear understanding of what show they were going to when it was happening if it was happening on the sound stage if it was happening on the main stage and I really think for the music cafe I mean I still feel like if we look at the other ones and the black and white images and so this is history and this is the Apollo I really feel like the brand for the cafe really used to kind of stand alone contemporary and kind of speaking to anyone who picked up the flyer in the neighborhood this is kind of different and that's what we were going for it was kind of new and different and fresh I think the tagline is Harlem's new night spot or something like that it really wanted to have its own sort of voice within the brand does that answer your question well if you haven't been to the Apollo you have to go some great graphic t-shirts and things that could be buying bags and you still feel like there's certain places we lost the Lenox lounge that was in the pantheon of places that still felt had the old feel but the Apollo is still for me has that historic vibe and I think if Harlem is anything it's about the energy of the generations that come to it, we're all coming with this kind of myth and I think you're helping to promote that myth and keeping Harlem alive in that kind of graphic sense so we thank you for coming thank you for having me