After college, Charles “Ceej Vega” Johnson landed a dream job in tech as a software engineer. Yet, he felt boxed in. His efforts to strive for greater inspired the launch of Vega Studio, a full-service Web3 design agency.
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“I was a software engineer fresh out of college, and I felt like it was creatively capping me at the moment,” Johnson told AfroTech in an exclusive interview. “I was always into fashion, music, culture, you name it. I felt like, even though software engineer was a crazy vehicle, it powers where we are today. At that time, I felt like I couldn’t really express myself fully with it, and I was boxed into a corporate environment that didn’t really push me to maximize my full potential. So, I started looking into other mediums.”
He leaned into his interest in motion graphic design, which he claims to be self-taught through YouTube and different courses. Johnson recognized an excellent opportunity to ramp up his efforts once social media shifted more toward being a media platform rather than strictly a sharing platform.
“I realized the landscape of where social media was heading as far as content creation, as far as the influencer model, and Instagram updating its metrics including video metrics, views, and different things. I saw the shift,” Johnson detailed. “So, once I had that moment, I started looking first initially at changing careers and pivoting to maybe even being a freelance designer. But, I started thinking, ‘How can I scale this thing and make a bigger impact and create a bigger vehicle that can take me through industries so I can work with multiple mediums and different genres of brands?'”
Vega Studio
His answer would be found in his design agency model, Vega Studio, created in 2015. Here, partners are assisted with services that help them “connect, innovate, and craft curated experiences designed for mobile.” Such services are empowered by art, storytelling, Web3, motion graphics, 3D, and Augmented Reality (AR), according to the company website.
“So, the software aspect, that’s pretty much the back end of AR when it comes to scripting and implementing,” Johnson explained. “On the front end, 3D and motion graphics are the visual elements. So, when you combine the 3D and motion graphics with the scripting and the software development, that’s what breeds AR.”
He added, “It was a natural progression into AR. For me personally as an artist, I loved how AR opened up the ability to give consumers the interactive element and the ability to immerse themselves in the media versus just consuming and viewing. Consumers were able to actually see themselves within it. They were able to interact with it. So, I then fell in love with the additional layer of expression that augmented reality brought to the table.”
Already, Vega Studio has collaborated with brands including Google, Netflix, Footaction, John Geiger, Diet Starts Monday, and DC Shoes, according to information shared with AfroTech.
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Being a Black-owned creative agency has been important for increasing representation, because he says it allows for more stories to be told that may be overlooked.
“One of the major things about having a Black-owned agency is that we kind of can control our narrative,” Johnson said. “We have such a unique perspective where we’re so used to people leveraging our ideas, leveraging our vision, leveraging our sound, and our taste level. And we pretty much have the ability to be in the driver’s seat. We can profit off of our taste level, and we can also have that perspective out in the world and kind of control different narratives that these other agencies that aren’t Black-owned can’t really speak to. So, we are in a super unique position when it comes to culture and taste level that helps us propel the culture forward.”
Transparency.XYZ
What’s more, Johnson sees firsthand the merit of Black innovators taking root in the current and future waves of technology. He is also making a conscious effort to make Web3 more accessible. He birthed Transparency.XYZ to steward change and help underrepresented groups break into the predominantly “white Web3 space.”
According to information provided to AfroTech, the creative program offers in-person and hands-on experiences to bridge the knowledge gap preventing their entry into Web3.
“We have the educational aspect where we’re kind of teaching the one-on-one and the entry into the space, and then we also want to actually tell them the tools where they can actually start careers and immediately start building,” Johnson shared. “So, we built an AR course that they came in as beginners and left with the ability to create a fully functioning AR experience. We want to just continue to keep building and continue to scale so we can impact as many people as possible. That’s our mission and how we plan to give back to people of color to bridge that knowledge gap.”
