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This Florida A&M University student bet on herself and landed in national stores. Kah’Milah Ledgester submitted her designs for Target’s 2021 HBCU design contest and JCPenney’s Young, Gifted and Black design challenge. And, putting her hands in various baskets paid off. Ledgester was informed she won both competitions during the spring of 2021 and to expect them displayed on a national scale for Black History Month of 2022. FAMU senior graphic design student Kah'Milah Ledgester recently appeared in a @Target commercial showcasing her work for their 2022 Black History Collection! Way to strike from the top, Kah'Milah! Check out the commercial below! #famu #rattlers #blackbeyondmeasure pic.twitter.com/q2k7HukC3F — FAMU School of Journalism & Graphic Communication (@FAMUSJGC82) November 26, 2021 “I always get a little excited because of the fact that I did the Target challenge, and I also did JCPenney and won both of them. It made me feel very good because I took a chance,” said...
World-renowned tennis star Serena Williams has long since used her platform as an athlete to advocate for Black communities when it comes to diversity and inclusion. So much so that she cemented a partnership with her longtime sponsor Nike back in 2019 to create the Serena Williams Design Crew (SWDC) — a six-month plus apprenticeship program for aspiring diverse designers. Now two years later, the inaugural cohort from the design collective is unveiling the very first collection created by several up-and-coming movers, makers, and doers that celebrates every part of Williams that is an athlete, style icon, and voice for change. The program not only shares Williams’ story through woven details, but it also marks a milestone for the tennis champion and Nike in their joint mission to build up a talent pipeline made up of the next generation of culturally diverse designers. “For me, I just really wanted to see more people that look like me in the Nike design world and Nike loved that...
Are you struggling to get your graphic design business off the ground? It’s all in the strategy. No matter how great your graphic design skills are, you’ll need a solid plan if you want to see success. Here are some valuable tips to help you start a rewarding graphic design business that wows your clients. 1. CHOOSE YOUR TARGET MARKET Before you do anything, know who you’ll be selling your graphic design services to. For example, will you be targeting small businesses, corporations, or nonprofit organizations? Will you target clients based on industry (i.e. healthcare brands, tech companies, or pet businesses., etc.) There are so many possibilities when it comes to niching down your graphic design company to target specific clients. 2. DETERMINE YOUR OFFERING(S) The graphic design industry is very broad. So if you go into the industry with no clear vision of what you want to offer, you won’t be able to narrow down your target client. Don’t be afraid to specialize in a certain skill,...
Dantley Davis –– Vice President of Design and Research at Twitter –– was one of our speakers at AfroTech 2019. We sat down to talk to him about his life and what drives his work. Davis was born in Seoul, Korea, to an American Air Force member and a Korean woman. His father’s career as a crew chief for a fighter squadron would take him on frequent overseas assignments. On return from these trips, his father would bring back gifts like radios and other electronics from the countries he visited. At a young age, Davis started pulling the electronics apart and (mostly) successfully putting them back together. Seeking to nurture his son’s talents, his father bought him a computer at eight-years-old. On that computer, Davis taught himself how to program in Visual Basic and played PC video games. Over the next few years, the computer became his primary hobby. He would often crack the copy protection of PC video games to share with his friends, and he learned Photoshop so he could modify the...