Ep. 170: Deem Journal’s Nu Goteh on Facilitating All Things Awesome
Co-Founder of Deem Journal, designer Nu Goteh was born in Liberia and came to the US with his family as a refugee at the age of 3. His first career ambition, as a model son of African parents, was to become a doctor / lawyer. But as a sneakerhead, skater, and early-adopter of the internet, he kept making opportunities for himself in marketing, promoting, and graphic design. He even landed a job at Puma while he was only a Sophomore in college. After successful roles at Red Bull and Sonos, he was comfortable in his talent for adding value and creating desirability for brands, but uncomfortable with being fast-tracked to the top of “cool black guy stuff,” a pigeon-hole that felt too small for his aspirations and skills. So he went back to school for a Master’s in Strategic Design and Management. Now, as a founding principal of Room For Magic, Nu is using his unique talents to address complex creative challenges and facilitate equitable exchange between brands and communities. As if that weren’t enough, Nu along with Marquise Stillwell and Alice Grandoit (his partner at Room for Magic), have founded Deem Journal, a deeply thought-provoking publication centered on design as a social practice. Now, with issue 3 Envisioning Equity, recently released, Deem is leading the way in presenting meaningful narratives around the process of design, and helping us all grow, heal, and imagine new possibilities in the process.
Learn more about Nu Goteh at Deem Journal.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Nu Goteh. Nu is a design & brand strategist and creative director with a lifelong passion for creating platforms for communities to engage in a shared experience. He holds a master’s degree in Strategic Design and Management from Parsons, and has logged 12+ years of brand experience across multiple industries with clients such as Puma, Sonos, Headspace, Everlane, and Levis’. In 2016, along with Alice Grandoit, he founded Room for Magic - an independent strategy + design studio that works at the intersection of culture, community and commerce. In addition to Room For Magic, Nu & Alice teamed up with Marquise Stillwell of Openbox (you may remember him from Clever Ep. 121) to create Deem Journal - a biannual print journal and online platform focused on design as a social practice.Now, with 3 issues out and a 4th on the way - I have to say, in my opinion Deem Journal is one of the most important platforms of our time. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you have my strongest encouragement to do so at deemjournal.com Aside from all of his contributions to society, Nu is a genuinely engaging storyteller with a fascinating life, and a particular gift for creating his own opportunities… so, if you listen carefully, maybe some of that magic will rub off on you. Here’s Nu…
Nu Goteh: Hello, my name is Nu Goteh. I currently live in Los Angeles, California and I am a researcher, designer, strategist and facilitator of all things awesome. And the reason why I do that is because I want to be able to help open up better conditions for everybody to be able to achieve self-actualization in whatever capacity that means for them.
Amy: I’d love to hear about your childhood, your family dynamics, some of the experiences that shaped you?
Nu: I was actually born in Liberia and came to the United States at the age of three as a refugee. I don’t think I really considered what that meant for me growing up in the United States, it didn’t really come into effect or something that was in the forefront of my mind until I was probably around the age of 16, the age where everybody started working. And I’m like, oh, of course, I need to get a job, I want to get a job. And then realizing that my social security card said I wasn’t eligible to work.
And I was like, huh, I wonder why it says that? That doesn’t make any sense, of course I should be able to work. And then me realizing then, oh wait a minute, I guess I don’t have employment status, what does that actually mean? And having to find ways around that and that showed up, like getting a job that you knew somebody who worked there wasn’t going to ask you for your paperwork or even getting a job and then them being like, okay, cool, you’re hired, make sure you bring in your social security card and your birth certificate next week.
And being like, oh yeah, I’ll bring it and then hoping that they don’t follow-up. And then people just don’t follow-up because they’re like, of course you have it. I’m busy, you’re busy, everybody is busy, let’s just do the work. In that, having a family that was navigating that, but then also then being in a community of different immigrants who either had similar issues or were dealing with many other different issues. My nuclear family, my mom, my dad, my older brother, my two younger sisters were really good at creating this affirming bubble around ourselves that extended out to different friends and family who were in similar positions.
Amy: You didn’t feel displaced growing up? Did you feel connected to your culture?
Nu: I was living in Massachusetts, but I grew up in a Liberian household, so there was never a moment where I felt like my culture or even my homeland was distant from me, because my mom and dad, that was definitely something that was prevalent, that they made sure to instill in us. And a lot of their friends were also Liberians and then also I had cousins and other people around me. So it was like being in an ecosystem within an ecosystem within an ecosystem that allowed for me to be here physically, but still have connections to my Liberian culture and heritage.
Amy: Being a refugee sounds like the transition to the United States wasn’t a choice necessarily. It was more like; I need to get out of here and go somewhere. Did you feel any kind of residual, I don’t know, separation anxiety from your parents?
Nu: Not necessarily because the State of Liberia in the 90s was, there was a civil war, so there was a civil war, there was a lot of death, there was a lot of friends and family that were passed away due to the war. My parents were able to say okay, how can we find an opportunity to provide a better life for us? To provide a better life for our kids. There really wasn’t an opportunity to have separation anxiety.
I think as years went by and as my parents got us a green card, as the green card then turned into permanent residents and then that turning into citizenship, there were definitely conversations of like, oh, man, how come we haven’t been back to Liberia. And part of the answer for that was, our legal status here is that we couldn’t go back because it was unsafe for us to go back.
Amy: You mentioned that you grew up in a nice affirming bubble and it didn’t really have an impact on you until you started to realize that you didn’t have the proper paperwork at 16 years old to get a job. How else were you expressing yourself and your creativity in your teenage years?
Nu: I’ve always been into music. I got into skateboarding and as well as, art and design, which music has always been something that has been in my household and something that I shared, a love I shared with both of my parents. But then especially having a really close friend who got into skateboarding and then because he was one of my best friends, I also got into skateboarding. Which opened up a world of different type of music, but then also opened up the world of design and me seeing skate decks and me watching different skate videos and being like, oh, what’s an 8mm camera.
And so in that, that exposure also then started to evolve. I also was somebody who was into fashion, I liked sneakers. I was really into sneakers (laughs) and I was really into the computer. And so there was a moment where a friend of mine, there used to be this website called Cpixel that was a pre-Tinder Tinder. It was a ‘hot or not’ website, super simple. You made a profile, people thought you were hot, they clicked on it. If they didn’t think you were hot, they wouldn’t click on your picture.
And I remember my friend Gil had this image of him standing in front of a waterfall with a lens flare. And I remember being like, whoa, how did you do that? And he’s like, hey, there’s this app called Photoshop Elements. He’s like, you should get it, so you also can stand in front of a waterfall with a lens flare. (Laughs) And this is during the time of LimeWire. So he’s like, Photoshop Element, you should get it and I’m like, okay, cool, I’m going to get this thing.
And so I download a version of it and started teaching myself how to use Photoshop, how to use layers. And another friend of mine who was a DJ was like, hey, I need a flyer. I heard you can make flyers. And I am like, yeah, I can put people in front of waterfalls or lens flares (laughter). And so from there he asked me to make him a flyer for a party and I made him a flyer for a party and then people were like, oh, you’re really good at this. Make us more stuff.
And so my world of design started merging in… it started just coming out of this self-sense of being able to identify myself online. And then eventually as I continued on with that, I started layering on, had this just intense love for sneakers. Part of it was my parents sent me to a Catholic school, as the most affordable way to be able to get some sort of private school education. And we had to wear uniforms and me and my three friends would make sure that even though we’re wearing a uniform, we had cool sneakers.
And then we just started bonding around that. So then that led me to just doing research and joining a sneaker forum, that I think it still exists, it’s called Nike Talk. In which anybody who is into sneakers at the time, was on that forum. And this is before there was such a thing called Sneakerheads and this was before companies would make limited edition sneakers. It was pretty much people who would travel to different places and try to find old, obscure sneakers.
If you were just a [0.10.00] normal person who cared about sneakers, you would buy the newer sneaker, so everybody saw that you had that shoe, and then you would wear it until it got pretty beaten up and then it would transition into your basketball shoe. And then you would play basketball with it. So the shoe was meant to have high value at the beginning, because you wanted to be seen with it immediately, so people identify, oh yeah, this person has the newest shoe.
And then as new shoes come out, you transition out of the old one, at which the community that I found myself in, had an opposite approach. It’s like no, actually you want to be the only person wearing that shoe, so you’re not going to wear it immediately when everybody else is wearing it. You’re going to wait a year or so, and then you’re going to wear it when nobody else has it and nobody has access to it. And then that’s what brings you value.
Amy: Oh, fascinating.
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: Yeah, so you were really kind of working the system, or at least aware of how you could participate in the system in your own way, with your own creative agency, from a very young age.
Nu: Yeah, being on Nike Talk with having experience and teaching myself how to use Photoshop, I started just finding out about blogs. So there was BlogSpot and I created my own BlogSpot and I would email people who I was inspired by and ask them if they would want to do an interview for my blog. And people would be like, yeah, sure. (Laughs) And purely because I was able to have a BlogSpot and have an image of myself that I doctored up in Photoshop, people were like, oh, this must be legit. (Laughter)
So I started interviewing people, I started reaching out to people who I was inspired by, find their email and then shoot them questions and then I would create graphics out of it and post it on my BlogSpot.
Amy: I love this initiative. What kind of people were you emailing and what kind of questions were you asking?
Nu: I was emailing a mix of people who were either in fashion, so I guess what you would consider streetwear now, or people who were in skate or in music. One of the people that I shot an email to is a skater named Jason Dill. Jason Dill, one of the… I was hesitant getting into skate, especially being a black person in skate, there weren’t many black people in skate at that point. And skate was very, like harsh, it was very punk rock and aggressive and that didn’t resonate with me. But I saw this one video from a company called Alien Workshop and they made a video, a skate video in the Workshop and Habitat. So those are two different skate brands that came together and made a video.
But their video was based in the East Coast, so it was a lot of New York and Philly, and it was my first time seeing skate presented in this more artistic way. So they were using 8mm cameras, they were using B-Roll, they were using hip-hop music, a lot of the people and a lot of the associations that people have Supreme now. Alien Workshop and Habitat were in that ecosystem. So that was the first time me seeing skate presented in a way that was accessible and that represented me.
And so the last, the person who had the closing scene in that video was Jason Dill and I remember, that was my first time hearing Radiohead. I think he was skating to Karma Police and I was like, whoa, what is this? This is crazy, this makes no sense. And I’m like, oh, I have to interview Jason Dill because Jason Dill is the coolest person ever. And I think around that time he actually made a cameo on… when Ozzy Osbourne had his show he was Jack Osbourne’s friend, who was crashing with them for a couple of months.
And I remember watching it and being like, yeah, that’s Jason Dill who is wearing the Japan Only dunks in this color way that nobody can get. I remember thinking, wow, so cool that he’s on MTV. So I emailed him just like a bunch of questions and he responded with the most short, one word answers. Probably not the best interview ever (laughter), but I was able to cut my teeth at journalism. So that was one of the interviews that I was super excited about because he didn’t have to respond to me, but he did.
Amy: What compelled you to do that? Were you mostly focused on making connections with these people or were you really focused on sharing their story with the rest of your community or a little bit of both? What was your main impetus?
Nu: I like to create things. And back then I didn’t have a strategy or a rhyme or reason, I just knew I had access to and I was like, oh, I have an idea, okay, I want to see if I bring this idea to life. And that was pretty much it.
Amy: Yeah, that’s the creative energy at the center of everything. (Laughs)
Nu: Yeah, there really wasn’t a bigger picture to it, there wasn’t anything that was laddering up. Even though as we continue talking, you’ll see that it definitely ladders up and I haven’t changed a bit. But it was just me having access and then imagining and then bringing my imagination to fruition.
Amy: And those cultures that you were interested in and involved in, music, skating, even fashion and sneakers, it has a kind of DIY ethos too, it’s very much about finding resources around you and then using those to make stuff and to communicate and to build community.
Nu: Yeah, yeah.
Amy: I understand you started off your academic undergraduate career getting a bachelor’s of business administration from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, is that correct?
Nu: Yeah, and that was interesting. I guess from an academic, scholastic standpoint, I’ve always been pretty good at school. School, me being able to memorize things was something that came to me easily. But my report cards would always say, ‘Nu is a great student and with a little bit more effort he could be (laughter)…’ He’s a B+ student, but with more effort he could be an A student and that would just be it across the board. I knew why I was a B+ student and it was because I was spending time learning how to teach myself Photoshop. I was spending a lot of time doing other things outside of school and exploring my interests. So I would do enough to be able to get the B, just shy of the A, it would take that extra capacity to teach myself something else.
And so by the time I was going into college, my parents, and especially coming from an African household, they’re like yeah, of course you’re going to be a doctor. And I’m like, yeah, duh, because (laughs) I’m a good child, so I’m here to be a doctor. And then what upped the ante was that we had a lawyer who was helping us with our immigration paperwork and he was a lawyer and a doctor.
Amy: Oh my god!
Nu: And I was like, oh, wow, that’s possible? I’m going to be a lawyer/doctor, I have to be a lawyer/doctor (laughter). Like what? Wow, lawyer/doctor here I come. And so by the time I was going into my freshman year, my dad was like awesome, you’re going to be a lawyer/doctor, let’s get you in medical first and then you can get your law degree afterwards. And so with that, the UMass system has, UMass, Worcester, and UMass Worcester has their medical program. But around that time was a time where my parents got divorced and so I grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts.
And so I was like, okay cool. I’ll go to UMass Lowell for at least my freshman year and then transfer to UMass Worcester to enter into their pre-med program. And so going into school, I started taking the prerequisite for the pre-med program and one of the first classes, anatomy and physiology and UMass Lowell is known for their nursing program and their nursing program is very competitive, aka, it’s meant to weed people out.
So then you have me in this program that if you get a D-, that’s passing and people were like striving to get a D-. And I’m like, not understanding, I’ve never faced a class that was hard and when I tell you I was bombing, when I tell you I was failing, I was like, I came out of that class with like a very, very low GPA. Super low. I was like academic probation low. I was around 2.5 for a GPA. Yeah, and part of it was, was that the classes that are taking, were meant to weed people out.
Amy: Yeah, but what did that do to your sense of, I don’t know, self-esteem or your drive to be a doctor/lawyer?
Nu: I was afraid. I was afraid because I was like, I’m becoming stupid. Because I was studying, I was studying all the body parts you can think of, I was there, we were dissecting cats, I was engaged. But I just was not getting it. I’m like why is this not clicking to me, why is this not coming to me as easy and then there was something that saved my life. That saved my life. Actually going through that semester and coming out with a really low GPA saved my life because then what happened was, I started creating more of a community and a network on campus of people who were like-minded and as I was going into my second semester of freshman year, somebody pulled me aside and they’re like hey, I understand your GPA is low, it’s really low, but you should take some classes to boost your GPA.
You should take Drawing 1, and I’m like huh, Drawing 1. They’re like yeah, you should take it and I was like, I don’t know if I want to take that class. They’re like, well, it’s an elective and you’re guaranteed to get an A, everybody gets an A in that class and it will help boost your GPA. And I’m like, okay, cool. So I signed up for it and the way how the campus is setup, there’s the engineering and business side, which is on North Campus and then there’s like the humanities and arts side, which is on South Campus. South Campus is grassy and it’s open and people are playing Hacky Sack. Whereas North Campus was brutalist architecture (laughter)…
Amy: I totally get it man!
Nu: It was the opposite. Everybody is busy on North Campus, they’re rushing to and from class, South Campus people are like hey…
Amy: They’re all uptight, they’re all dejected from working so hard in these hard classes.
Nu: Yeah, so now there’s this class I have to take Drawing 1, that’s on South Campus and it’s a studio class, it’s three hours. I’m like whoa, what is this, a three hour class that starts late? I think it was an evening class, I think it was from 6:00 to 9:00. It was a complete mind bend of a class. But it saved my life because I learned so much from it. It was me sitting and A, following instructions, I learned that I can follow instructions very well. I’m not the best drawer in the world, but when we would have critiques, I would be able to understand that oh, the dot technique that we learned earlier was meant for us to then draw this basketball still life using the dot technique.
It’s not necessarily me showing how great I am as an artist, but it’s me showing that I can follow through and I can make that connection between practice and what we need to output. So that was a key thing. But also sitting and drawing for three hours in solitude and being in my head allowed me to really start to think. And start for me to examine how I process information and that was the key thing where I realized that it was no longer me just being able to recite and memorize information.
Which is what anatomy and physiology was, me memorizing things. I realized that I was much better at solving problems. I was much better at teach me the dot technique at the beginning of class and put the still life in front of me and I will figure out, cool, I need to go from A to B to C in order to equal D and not just memorize ABCD, ABCD. And that moment was really a shift for me and was comforting that I was able to tell myself, oh, it’s not that you’re getting stupid, it’s the way how you’re processing information has changed. And…
Amy: What a glorious moment of awareness for you.
Nu: Yeah, yeah, now that I think back on it, I wonder what other influences brought me there. But that allowed me to then say, okay, you know what, the doctor/lawyer thing. It may not be where I’m going to hang my hate (laughter). And so another thing that saved me at the time was I have an uncle who lives in Liberia and who at the time, he used to be a chemist and shifted careers to be a career coach, a marriage coach. He moved away from chemistry and him and I… he just happened to be staying with us because I think he was giving a talk somewhere.
He was on some panel and him and I were just talking about my interests. And I think he understood and he resonated with me saying I didn’t want to be a doctor/lawyer anymore. This was after I figured out, it just wasn’t going to be feasible in the way how my mind was currently working. And I think he spoke to my dad, I think he had a conversation with my dad that yeah, the doctor/lawyer thing is probably not going to happen. And my dad should be cool with that. And I think because he had already gone through chemistry and had been a chemist and got burned out, he was able to speak out of first hand experience. Then, at that point, I didn’t tell my parents I was changing, but I knew, I was like man, I can’t go from a doctor/lawyer to a graphic designer. I was like, my parents don’t even know what that is.
They’re going to think I just want to be an artist; they’ll kill me. So I was like, you know what, business, business seems like it’s in the middle. (Laughter) There’s nothing wrong with being a businessman (laughs), that I can sell in. So then I ended up shifting to marketing.
Amy: Okay, yeah, marketing and management and I can see the creative thread there. So business is a nice compromise and tell me now, you went through, you got your bachelors and did the business education actually really resonate with you and are there still things that you pull from?
Nu: Yeah, also during that time, the same person who tapped me and said, hey, you should do Drawing 1, was this woman Annie, who was the president of the ASAO, Students of African Origin, so the black student union. And she also, for some reason, tapped me and said, hey, you’re going to be the social chair for us. And I was like, I don’t know what that is. And she’s like, well, we’re going to sell parties and do activations and you’re going to be our marketing person. And I was just like, okay, cool, I know how to make flyers, I guess I’m the marketing person. That also was like super early in me being put in the position where I’m like, okay, how do I start to engage community? How…
Amy: Yeah, yeah.
Nu: How do I start to rally community. And so around that time as well, I was still very interested in sneakers. I was on the forums and then found an opportunity to start blogging for a sneaker blog. And back then there were only two sneaker blogs. There was a blog that you know now as HYPEBEAST, and then there’s another one called Freshness Mag. And I was blogging for Freshness and one day… oh, I became an RA, it was very short lived because I didn’t write up enough residents, so I ended up getting fired from being an RA.
Amy: Because you weren’t a narc.
Nu: Because I wasn’t a narc (laughs), because I wasn’t coming through writing people up. And my RD just found it fascinating that how could I be the only person who did not write anyone up. I should have probably wrote some people up, just at least have some numbers on the board. But I was just kind of like, yoh, if you’re having a party, I’ll be back in 30 minutes and when I come back, nobody should be here. And that usually would work. People would be like, okay, cool, we’re going to disperse.
But with that I had some residents who were freshmen. They went to a career fair and came back… not a career fair, but like a freshmen fair where it’s just like they stuffed these freshmen’s bag with a bunch of swag and a bunch of just tchotchke cheap stuff. I remember somebody was looking through their bag and I saw a flyer for an event. The event was about music, art and fashion and I was like, oh, this looks so cool, this must be in New York because only cool things like this happen in New York.
And then I’m like, no, if the flyer is here, it must be local. So then I asked, hey, can I have this flyer? They were like sure. I went back to my room and I Google searched, yeah, I guess I Google searched whoever was putting it on and I found that there is an agency that was putting it on. And I emailed every single person that was on their contact list. I’m sure if I dug through my Gmail, that email exists somewhere, of me asking them… introducing myself, saying that I do marketing, but I also have a background in graphic design and I would love an internship.
And the following morning they gave me a call and they were like hey, we don’t have an internship, but we’d love for you to come in. And I’m like, okay, cool. So I ended up going for an interview, which my brother was like, you have to wear a suit. He’s like, make sure you wear a suit. And I was like, you think so? I was like, I don’t know. He’s like yeah, wear a suit man, you’re going on an interview. I didn’t really have a suit. I got a suit. I wore this suit and I just remember they laughed at me. (Laughs).
Amy: It wasn’t a suit type place, was it?
Nu: It wasn’t, it was not (laughs), they laughed at me and they were like, what? And afterwards, not even afterwards, they were just kind of like, don’t ever wear a suit here ever again, don’t ever do that. And I was just like, okay, um…. (Laughter) They ended up offering me an internship. They were like, we’ll make you an internship.
Amy: They created a position for you?
Nu: They created a position for me and the irony was that my parents hated that I spent a lot of time researching sneakers and they hated that I spent any time graphic designing. They hated it. And so African parents have a way of simplifying everything into just one insult. (Laughter) And the insult was: All you do is spend time drawing sneakers, that’s all you want to do is draw sneakers all day. Mind you, I was never drawing sneakers, that wasn’t something I was doing, I liked sneakers and I did research about it and I did graphic design and they just flattened it to: All you do is draw sneakers all day.
And so after getting that internship, that’s in Boston, so now it’s in the big city, it’s in Boston and they’re going to pay me $15 an hour. My mom is like, oh my god, that’s so amazing, what are you going to be doing? I’m like, drawing sneakers! (Laughter) She’s like, what? Somebody is willing to pay you to draw sneakers? I said yeah, people are willing to pay for people to draw sneakers ma. And so yeah, then I started at that internship as a graphic designer and also doing marketing.
And so I was designing a bunch of flyers, a bunch of different collateral, as well as kind of like being their defunct street team for events that they were putting on. And I met a lot of people who I still work with to this day. But one of the people that I met was a friend of mine we ended up bonding over sneakers and we would just share back and forth about different sneakers that we were both excited about. And one day he was like, hey, I am opening up a shop.
And some of the things that we spoke about really inspired me, like I want you to come check out the shop. And I’m like, okay, cool. So I go to check it out and this friend of mine is super handy. He can build anything. And I’m like [0.35.00] looking at it and he’s like, yeah, the concept is going to be pretty cool, it’s going to be like hidden away.
Amy: Bodega
Nu: Yeah, and so… yeah, and so he’s like, yeah man, a lot of the conversations that we had really helped, inspired some things. We don’t have any money but if you want to help us. I’m like, sure. So I would help my friends do odds and ends things. Just like yeah, y’all are trying to order a zillion laces, yeah, I could find… see where we could order a zillion laces. Or being like, hey, I know a shop in Lowell that has dead stock sneakers from the 90s that they just sit on, that you can probably go and buy the whole allotment from them. And so then I found myself transitioning to hanging out at the shop and helping out and doing odd and things for them.
Which one day, while I was still blogging for the sneaker blog, this was when I was like peak sneaker addict and I was in it 150%. And one day the VP of marketing for Puma came in to Bodega and one of my friends was like, oh, you should meet him because I know you want content. You should go talk to him. So I got introduced to him. We had a conversation. He gave me his card and then a lightbulb went off and I was like, oh, I should ask him to be my mentor.
I was like, forget the content, I need a mentor. And it was a simple idea that I had that oh, if I want to have all the sneakers in the world, instead of me buying them, if I worked for a sneaker company, I can get all the free sneakers I want. And so I was like, that’s a job that I need, I need to work at a sneaker company. So I asked him to be my mentor. He said yes, he was down with that. And then I started going to Puma, maybe like once a month and talking about me.
And then eventually they realized that I had so much knowledge in terms of sneaker culture as well as just the internet, because I was on the internet religiously. And so they were like, hey, we would love to be able to make you an internship, if you’re available for it. And I’m like, yeah, I would love to have an internship at Puma. And so the interesting part was, was that I was only a sophomore at the time.
Amy: This is brilliant!
Nu: Yeah, and so I go back to my school and I say hey, I got an internship opportunity and they said no, you can’t, because you either have to be a junior or a senior to have an internship, so you can’t have an internship. So then I went back to Puma and I said, my school said I can’t have an internship. And they were like, fine, we’ll make it a part time job and we’ll just pay you, don’t worry about the credits. And I’m like, awesome. So then I started as an intern at Puma.
Amy: Damn! So they created this position for you and they were willing to make it whatever it needed to be so that you could actually do it. This must have been incredibly validating and it was also kind of because you had the initiative to ask someone to be your mentor, which is you exercising your creative agency in the world.
Nu: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and then it was like the perfect storm of me being somebody who understood sneakers and understood the internet and I would be… and this was during the time where print was king, everything was about print. And I would say, hey, there were these blogs called HYPEBEAST, Nice Kicks, I was like, all these blogs that are awesome, that we should work with. And everybody would be like, blogs? What’s that? (Laughter)
And I would be like, well, if you gave me budget, or if you gave me an opportunity, I think I can get other sneakers to sell out and not just the sneakers that are Limited Edition. And so they gave me the opportunity and I would pull my friends and I’d have… I’ve always had really talented friends that are great at creating things. And I would… one of my best friends, Eastman Garcia, I’d be like hey, East, let’s shoot this campaign for these shoes, even though a campaign was really us just doing lifestyle photography.
Because back then there wasn’t really lifestyle photography. Back then people would just find a catalog and you would just take a screen grab of the catalog and that’s what people would use to represent the shoe. And I would say, if we shot it ourselves and made it look cool, I can send it to the blogs and then that evolved to me saying to the blogger, let me actually send you the product and then you can shoot it yourself and you can editorialize it. And some of the bloggers were being like, that doesn’t make any sense, why would we ever want to do that? [0.40.00]
And me being like, no, no, trust me. There’s an opportunity here. And so I spent a really good time at Puma cutting my teeth, learning about marketing and they gave me enough agency to just do a bunch of cool things. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. One of the most pinnacle moments was I almost got fired because I was too laxed. I was too lax and kind of felt like I earned my way. It kind of felt like I was on cruise control there.
There was a big huge sales meeting that was happening and they wanted me to DJ in this specific moment where I was supposed to cue up a specific song. But it was during the time where Serato, which is a DJ software that now everybody sees whenever you have a DJ with a laptop, they’re using Serato to control the music. Back then Serato was brand new. I wasn’t as comfortable with it, but I said I was and I completely dropped the ball. Completely dropped the ball. Luckily the person who spoke to me, who is a really great friend of mine to this day, Theo Keetell pulled me aside and said some things that have resonated with me forever.
He was pretty much like, hey, you’re too laxed, you’re not hungry anymore and he said the difference between the job that you want is the job that you have and you’re never going to get the job that you want if you don’t execute the job that you have. That set a fire under me. That was my first time being in this position where I’m like, oh, I’m failing, I’m dropping the ball and I need to do something about it.
And then I just kicked into overdrive and really got my shit together to be able to not only do what’s being asked of me, but go above and beyond. And so I fully invested myself in being at Puma, if I had a spring break or a winter break or whatever, I would ask, can I work 40 hours? And they’d be like, sure. So then it got to the point where by the time I graduated, I already had a job there. I had already been working there, because of just how much time and energy I had put into there.
Amy: Whoa, you know what else strikes me about this, in addition to your initiative, is your willingness to hear what you need to hear when it’s being shared with you. It doesn’t sound like you had a defensive ego that would push away this important advice.
Nu: No, no, no.
Amy: I think especially at that age, when you’re kind of like crushing it as a young sneaker executive (laughter), you could possibly kind of, I don’t know, maybe not think that other people knew what was best for you.
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: But apparently you have the ability to take that in when you need to.
Nu: Yeah and also lean into it. I’ve had to have conversations with people, like Theo had with me, but one of the key differences, like you were saying is that I did not make that… I didn’t take it as a personal attack.
Amy: Yeah.
Nu: I took it as oh, this person is giving me the answers to the test. This person is giving me exactly what I need in order to succeed and I’m not going to let shame keep me and make me shrink. I’m going to rise to the occasion and exceed expectations.
Amy: Yeah, what a beautiful characteristic you have.
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: So, I know you at some point went back to school and got a master’s in strategic design and management from Parsons. Can you fill in the gaps for us?
Nu: Yeah, so I guess a super quick speed warp, fast forward (laughs) was, after Puma I worked at Red Bull. After Red Bull I worked at Sonos and the common thread was, I really became good at adding value in terms of creating brands and creating desirability for inanimate objects. That really was, a trajectory that I carved out for myself. But then I also was victim to my own success because then it became very easy for my managers to only perceive me as the cool, black guy who only wants to do cool black guy things.
Amy: Oh, I’m so glad you pointed that out, that would be a pigeon-hole.
Nu: Yeah. And so that became kind of…
Amy: Damn it! So even though you proved yourself, you still got to prove yourself (laughs).
Nu: Yeah, yeah and so I just remember having a review of a manager, a new manager who barely even knew me or understood me and was like, hey, one day you’re going to be the global head of culture marketing. He thought I would be excited about that and I said, no, I was like, I don’t want to be the global head of culture marketing, I want to be the CMO. I was like, I don’t want to be those people’s boss, I want to be everybody’s boss, because I’m capable of being everybody’s boss. And I don’t want to limit myself.
I think part of it was me starting to think and see like, huh, there is a more analytical, strategic side that I don’t ever get a chance to express, that I was interested in tapping back into. The lawyer/doctor kicked back in. I was like, you know what, I was like y’all don’t know about lawyer/doctor Nu, you’re going to learn (laughter) today. And so that was also around the time of the… I was living in LA, working for Sonos, had the coolest job in the world on paper, that I just didn’t really care for too much because I had done it a zillion times over at that point.
Amy: Yeah.
Nu: And so I was looking for a new opportunity and really where my mind started to shift away from was I was good at selling people things and then I was like, well I’m more interested in solving problems. How can I move into a space of solving problems? And in that I started just asking around, because there were other job opportunities, whether I was talking to other big brands that people love, I knew it was just going to bring me further up the cool black guy ladder. And so I had a conversation with this gentleman named Aramique who is like this ambiguous creative director who just works on the coolest shit.
And I was like, Aramique, what did you do, what did you go to school for? He’s like, oh, I went to school for engineering. And I was like, oh, you went to school for engineering, but you’re not an engineer. He’s like, no, but, he’s like I still think an engineer. Then that set off a lightbulb. I was like, huh, what if I got an engineering degree? I was like, what if I did that? And then that, I can use the framework and the rigor from engineering to be able then to solve problems. And I can get to the point that I’m this ambiguous problem solver.
And so I went to my dad and I said, ‘Yo, engineering.’ He’s like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve always wanted an engineer as a son, amazing!’ (Laughter) He’s like, amazing. Yeah but I was like, like, yeah, but I don’t think I’m gonna become an engineer. And he’s like, then why would you go get an engineering degree if you’re not going to become an engineer? And I was like, I want to use the skillsets to solve problems. And he’s like, that sounds ridiculous, that doesn’t make any sense. And I’m like no, I think it does. So then I started looking into engineering programs. I started looking into architecture, civil planning, urban design and I happened to find a degree at Parsons called Strategic Design and Management, which was human centered design, social entrepreneurship and just the right amount of vagueness. But was still a precision and a perspective that I was like, oh, you know what, this may make sense for me to adopt.
And so I ended up enrolling in the program. The program was probably two years old at the time, still fresh, still kind of ambiguous, still was forming itself. And that’s how I was able to then shift into the world of Design with a capital D. And when I got there, and after being there for a bit, I was like, oh, this isn’t much different from the work that I’ve been doing. Now I just have a vocabulary to be able to frame it up in a different way. [0.50.00]
Amy: Yeah, and you also now have this line on your resume that says you’re a strategist, which it seems like a bridge for not just being doing the cool black guy stuff.
Nu: Yes, yes, because then going into design thinking, coming out of it, I was like okay, what does this mean? After two years of being in a very theoretical program, I started asking myself, okay, how does this translate into something tangible. And people were like, oh, you should consider strategy. And I was like, oh, I don’t really know what strategy is. And people were like, oh yeah, you’ll be a great strategist. Then I started asking around. I started asking people what is strategy and one of my best friends was working for an ad agency in San Francisco.
And I asked him if he knew any strategists and he said, yeah, he connected me with some people there. Then that ended up turning into an interview even though I didn’t go into it, for it to be an interview. And I still had a whole semester left of school. But in typical, my trajectory, they were like, hey, we want to offer you a position as a strategist and I’m like…
Amy: Everywhere you go people are creating jobs for you and you’re not even out of school yet Nu. (Laughs)
Nu: I mean it’s a gift and a curse…so then I ended up having to postpone graduating for a year and finishing that semester. And I moved to San Francisco and became a strategist. And part of it was they were excited about service design and design thinking and having that as an offering. And I quickly realized before they realized that it just didn’t work in their business model, and especially if that agency was known for big, huge, Cannes Lion winning creative ideas in which human centered design isn’t that theatrical, it’s not going to win you a Cannes Lion.
And so the work that I was put on wasn’t the work that I was hired to do, but rather than running from it, I leaned into it and I learned how to become the best strategist ever. And really what that meant, when my mom would ask me, because when I graduated from Parsons, or even when I went into the program, she’s like okay, so what are you? What do you do? And I would tell her, I’m a plumber. And she’s like, what do you mean?
And I was like yeah, I was like, if you have a clogged drain, you call a plumber and they bring their tool kit and they fix it. I was like, I do that for conceptual things. I do that for non-tangible things. That’s how I frame up design, is plumbing. And so by the time I took that strategist job she’s like, oh, so now are you still a plumber? And I was like, no, I’m a used cars salesman. She’s like, what do you mean? I was like, well, I use research and data to be able to sell ideas and the ideas I was selling weren’t that great ideas, so I thought of them as used cars.
Amy: All right, so, you founded Room for Magic, which is an independent strategy and design studio that works at the intersection of culture, community and commerce, can you describe the work that you do? The values of the organization and your own personal experience of creative agency as the founder of your own studio?
Nu: Yeah, so Room for Magic really came at a pivotal time for me. After grad school, working at an ad agency, I learned a lot. I had another tough learning lesson moment in which one of my first projects as a strategist, I completely bombed. Nobody told me what a strategist is and what a strategist does. I saw a job description, it looked very similar to things I had done before. They were impressed with me and awesome, we’re off to the races. I had a very talented director of strategy that most people did not like working with. And he kind of didn’t like working with most people either. But for some reason he took a liking to me. And started working on a project with him and another junior strategist. By the end of it, I had a lunch scheduled with him, my manager. He managed my manager and then the other strategist. And the lunch was pretty much for him to insult us and say that you do not know how to do your job.
Amy: Oh my god!
Nu: Yeah, I can’t remember what we ate for lunch, but the conversation itself (laughs) was very insightful because I learned at that moment what the core of my job was. And he said, it says: You don’t know what an insight is. Then at that moment I’m like, oh, my job as a strategist is to produce insights. And at that moment I did not… I leaned in, I leaned into the conversation and I asked him what’s an insight. And he couldn’t tell me, he couldn’t really tell me what an insight was. I think it’s something he had been living with all his life and of course you know an insight when you see it, but he couldn’t really tell me what an insight was.
Mind you, for context, he is a very difficult person to work with and I could see why everybody hated working with him. But that lit a fire under me because I like challenges and I like figuring out things. So I went back, I did a lot of Googling, a lot of Googling to start to understand what an insight is. And I ended up creating myself, this like cheat sheet, to get a better understanding, to get a better grasp of an insight.
And what I came up with, it’s a human truth that is shared with everyone, but it’s not until you put it in the right perspective that people see it. [1.00.00]
Amy: Oh, and that’s your job as a strategist is to produce those insights?
Nu: Yes, because remember, I was a used car salesman - I was selling ideas and the main tool for selling an idea is an insight. And so what that means is, when you go to a client, you want to be able to have them go, oh, why didn’t I think of that? And here’s a cheat sheet for everyone, is comedians. Comedians are strategists. Comedians write insights all the time. Whenever Jerry Seinfeld goes, you know what’s interesting about doughnut holes (laughs). Anything that follows that, you’re like, it’s funny because it’s true.
Amy: Right, yeah.
Nu: So with insights, what I would do is I would write it like a stand-up comedy bit and take out anything that’s funny and then it’s just the stuff that’s true. And so at that point, a client will say, oh, you know what, we didn’t think about XYZ problem that way. And you’re like, yeah, that’s why you’re paying us. Once I understood what the assignment was and understood, okay now how do I start to think in this insight driven way, I became really good at being a strategist. I became their star strategist that they would pick on many different projects. And even to the point where that document that I created for myself became something that I would use to onboard junior strategists who had just joined and people who had transitioned into strategy.
Amy: A lot of people when they have an insight, it’s an unpredictable epiphany, how do you have insights on demand?
Nu: That’s the hard part. The way how I compare it is, when somebody says, hey, make me laugh. You’re like, hmm, there’s so much context that goes into understanding somebody’s humor and there’s so much context that goes into understanding what somebody will find insightful. What would somebody find to be a nuanced truth that they agree with and they’ve experienced, but never really looked at it in that perspective. So I became just good at understanding at least getting a good gauge of context. Okay, what’s this persons lived experience? How could I start to get a good understanding of what the client’s expectations are? What are their cultural references? What are the things that excite them? What are the things that bother them? How do I shape an idea around that? It’s usually much more of a discourse and even in stakeholder interviews, spending a lot of time getting a good understanding of the context around the company, their culture, helps you to be able to write phenomenal insights.
Amy: When you have stakeholder interviews, aren’t they sometimes trying to use this insight to sell their product to somebody else and so don’t you need an insight about their audience or their consumer?
Nu: Yes, yeah, so yeah, but I guess the starting point, let’s say if we’re pitching in an idea before we can even talk to the consumer, we have to win over the stakeholder. Yeah and so once I realized what it meant to be a strategist, how to manufacture insights, I had this epiphany where I started asking myself… because then I realized I was selling things again. I wasn’t solving problems; I was back to selling things. And I was more interested in, okay, what does this mean for me as a plumber turned used car salesman who has these skills, how can I start to actually combine that with my passion for community, culture and solving problems.
And so I set off to try to find a way to have more control and more, value over how I asserted my skillset and how I produced value, aka I was no longer interested in working for other people and selling ideas that they held close to them. I wanted to sell ideas that I cared about and those ideas were at the intersection of community and the hypothesis that I had was, how can I make doing socially engaged work cool and enticing?
Amy: Hmm, you’re the guy to do that!
Nu: Thank you! Combining my design thinking to actually understand what are community problems, and then now my ability to sell in those ideas, to use insights to be able to get people excited about those ideas that was the foundation that created my studio, Room for Magic.
Amy: On some level, you’ve got the skills, you’ve got the passion, you know where you want to aim all of your energy, do you also have confidence or do you have naiveté when it comes to starting your own studio?
Nu: I think you need both. I think naiveté is a huge, huge component of success because if you ask most successful people about what they’re doing, they’re like, yeah, if I would have known it was this much work…
Amy: I never would have done it (laughs).
Nu: I probably wouldn’t have done it and that’s kind of how it is. I heard a quote the other day, we don’t need permission to do the things that we want to do. And so I really carry that with me because similar to my past lives, I entered into a space, when I started off as a strategist, I sucked at it. I was told by the person who hired me, you suck at your job. And that took me some time and some learning, but then I figured it out. And so I am still on the journey of figuring out the studio, but it’s an iterative thing that gets better and gets better over time. And so there is an illusion of grandeur, confidence, where we’re like, yeah, we can do everything. And then on the flipside of that, then there’s imposter syndrome, wait, do we even know what we’re doing?
Amy: (Laughs) Yeah, how do you manage all of those feelings within yourself? How does it manifest in your body and how do you work with it?
Nu: I mean it manifests in bad sleeping habits. I tend to wake up at night. My mind loves to solve problems. My mind is like, oh, there’s a problem, let’s solve that problem. And especially at night when it’s like, hey, we didn’t solve all the problems of the world today, let’s talk about that. So my mind would just start going through to-do things, agenda things, you’ve got to talk to this person and then there’s this and then I’ll find myself up in the way how I manage that. Actually it’s by listening to podcasts. Here’s the thing, I have a list of podcasts that I find engaging enough that I can put on, but I’m not too involved in and that I can fall asleep to. This is not one of them by the way (laughs).
Amy: I’m glad you said that, because I was like, oh my god, am I one of the ones that put you to sleep?
Nu: No, no, this is not one of them. But yeah, podcasts and then also I carry a lot of stress in my gut, I have gut issues at times. And so for me it’s important to have a system that I can rely on, whether it is my wife, I have a leadership coach, I have talented people that I work with so that I don’t feel like I have to take on everything myself.
Amy: Yeah, that’s so important. I think it takes a village adage, it really applies to so much and I find myself in this day and age, particularly in this Covid moment where we spent a lot of time really figuring out how to do things digitally and in an isolated situation and bubbles that are much smaller than we were used to. It is so valuable to me to be able to not only just share the load with people, but to be in it together.
Nu: Yeah [1.10.00]. And I think for me, luckily the people who I have around me also remind me to relax.
Amy: Oh nice.
Nu: Yeah and I mean Room for Magic, as a name, is an inside joke that means relax, take it easy, not everything needs to be figured out. Not every problem needs to be solved. Sometimes the solution is leaving room for magic.
Amy: I like that!
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: I was just having this visual of the creative process and there are some things you can do to organize it or at least channel it and conjure it, but at the very center of it, it’s a soupy mess and you have to honor that in some way. You have to let things gestate and become sometimes before you know what they are. Anyway, so how is Room for Magic going and as the founder and it sounds like you have a pretty great team, talk to me about what kinds of work you do and what kinds of projects you take on?
Nu: Room for Magic is going well. It is a baby that I still feel like it’s in its infancy. We started in 2016 and our goal was to instigate equitable exchange and that comes from working at brands, cultural institutions and seeing that they always want to engage with different communities. But usually do not bring in communities until probably the last phase. And our job is a Robin Hood model, being paid by the external entity, but we’re in service of the community and how we try to approach that is community, not necessarily from a geographical or a demographic standpoint solely
but looking at wants, needs, desires and pain points and how do we start to use those feelings to be able to triangulate a group of people that have shared problems to be able to solve. And so initially we started off only doing research and strategy. We wanted to be very elitist and snobby about the work that we did. And we were like, we do not do creative or execution, we only do research and strategy. And that worked out for us for probably like 15 minutes (laughter).
Because what would end up happening was people do not really… people want things that are immediately actionable and that are tangible and when you’re saying this bigger issue that you have is not going to be solved purely by output, it’s more of a process that you need to shift. They’re like hmm, I don’t know how I’m going to justify that to the board. Or I don’t know how that’s going to be justified to whoever they need to justify it to. So a lot of times what we started to see was that actually the best way to be able to sell in the strategy that would be the most impactful is by attaching it to the creative.
But not necessarily letting the creative drive it, but letting the research and strategy drive it. Some of the clients that we have include HeadSpace, we worked along with HeadSpace to help them start to identify blind spots when it comes to bringing mindfulness to the world in which they realized, oh, wait a minute, the world actually includes way more people than the demographic that uses our platform. And so it was exciting to be able to have a client that trusted us, to allow us to point out where they suck at things. And it led to some very interesting conversations that then led to us helping them develop and launch a strategy for hiring new meditation teachers into their app, in which when we started the process, I didn’t really think anything of it. It wasn’t until at the end of it that they were like, no, Andy is the co-founder, Andy has been the only voice in the app for like 13 years. Then Eve joined him three years ago and we’ve never hired any other meditation teacher. So they’re like actually, you just helped us do something monumental. We’re like, awesome.
Then I was like, can we do it again? Can we start to create a process or framework that will allow for us to move beyond just four meditation teachers, what does it look like for six meditation teachers? And so the teachers that we actually helped them to hire, is this awesome woman Dora, and this gentleman Kessonga, which are both black. And that also came out of the research that we did, that we’re like, oh, if you’re looking to engage more with specific community, representation matters.
Not only from an identity standpoint, but also a lived experience and content standpoint. And that is something that you need somebody who is part of that community to be able to be the steward for, and they were open to that.
Amy: That was such a great example and I totally see how you’re serving community at the expense of the person who actually wants to reach the community, so it’s a very win-win exchange, or equitable, as you set out.
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: That’s great. Are you finding that you’re attracting the right kind of clients who are willing to work with you in this way?
Nu: Yes, more and more. When we started in 2016, we were like, we’re a community centric design studio. But because of developments of Covid, the murder of George Floyd, trans visibility, people were like, oh, hey, are you all still doing that thing with community? We’re like yeah, we’re still doing the thing with community. Like yeah, we think we need that. We’re like, yeah, at the end of the day, the way how we see it is, every problem is a community problem. Nothing happens in isolation and things usually don’t happen from the top down. So even if you have influencers only influence if they have people to influence.
Amy: Right.
Nu: Even from that standpoint, community is always the lens and always the way in. And finding opportunities to be able to explore that with different clients, with different set of issues is what tends to excite us. And it shows up in different ways. And so whereas previously we were very much strategy and research and that’s it. And then as of recent, we’ve actually started taking on more creative work and part of that is because we have our publication Deem journal in which people started seeing Deem and they were like, hey, who does your branding, who does your [soul show?]. And I’m like, we do. And they’re like, do you offer that? I’m like no, and then capitalism will come knock on the door and I’m like, yeah, we kinda got to keep these lights on, so sure.
All our creative endeavors also have a community focus. We did an awesome rebrand from the Michigan Justice Fund, really helping them to start to, just really imagine what a brand could be that’s meant to serve communities at the intersection of the carceral system. We just finished launching a site for Herman Miller for their diversity and design initiative, in trying to create a platform that will help to really democratize the world of design and bring in many different types of designers into that world.
And then we also got an opportunity to do branding for a development in Detroit, a for profit and non-profit coalition called Develop Detroit. We bought a plot in the Sugar Hill district of Detroit and turned it into a mixed-use building that includes housing, veteran housing as well as artist studios and retail spaces. And we got a chance to do the actual branding for the entire building. So right now the projects range, but at the core of it, it’s still community. And at the core of that there still is just this, I guess, hunger to use creative and strategy to instigate equitable exchange between communities and external entities.
Amy: I love it. So You had mentioned, as if you didn’t have enough on your plate already, you mentioned Deem Journal and I really, really want to get into that. I am a huge fan of this project, this… it’s a bi-annual print journal, an online platform that’s focused on design as a social practice. Can you share the ethos behind this platform and the impetus that compelled you and your collaborators to embark on this project?
Nu: So Alice is a partner in Room for Magic. So when Alice and I decided to start Room for Magic and take on projects, not all the projects we were getting were awesome, social justice projects. I mean both of our backgrounds comes from brand and so in that a lot of the work that we were getting were brand things. It would be like, hey, Puma and Sesame Street want to do this product launch and we’d be like, okay cool, we’ll do it for them, we just won’t put it on our site.
I mean we don’t have anything on our site right now, which is going to change soon. But with a lot of the work that we were doing and the things we’re interested in, we weren’t always finding the opportunities to do the research that we cared about. And so there was this like push for us to try to figure out, okay, how do we start to publish things that we care about? How do we start to research the things that we care about if other people aren’t going to pay us for it? Well, we will just do it ourselves.
And then it just so happened that at that time, Marquise Stillwell, who you’ve interviewed, and a partner of ours, I was a fellow at his studio, Openbox when I was in grad school and he’d always keep in touch with me. And one day came to me, it was like hey, I would love to partner with you to create something. What would you think about creating a publication? And it just happened to align around the time Alice and I were thinking about, okay well how do we start to do more of the research that really excites us. And so we joined forces, Room for Magic and Openbox, to be able to create Deem.
And initially the idea for Deem was more centering around looking at, I guess looking at people who operate and fill multiple spaces in terms of design. And how to be able to facilitate that. What’s a transdisciplinary design approach. Really what that ended up evolving into though is, design as social practice. And what that really starts to mean to us is being able to use design as a tool of adding value. But then adding in the social practice layer, socially engaged art.
Whereas you have social impact work that’s meant to create new conditions and open up opportunity, the X Factor that we really look at is art. Because art actually is very similar to strategy, to writing insights. The goal of art is to be able to shift the perspective, or provide an additional perspective on a topic in which for us, once we started looking at social issues that impact different communities, what often tends to happen is that you have practitioners that are trained in a specific process and methodology and approach the problem in a very straightforward way.
And we’re like, well, what starts to happen if you actually reframe that and you start to look at it in a new perspective and that’s where art actually comes in. And so with the, I guess the triangulation of design as social practice, what we really are trying to do at the end of the day is democratize design and start to look at design from a new perspective in which that relates back to my time at grad school. That relates to my time of rediscovering design, but then understanding, oh wait a minute, this isn’t new to me, these are just new terms.
And one of the things that I always evangelize is that design has what I call the ‘fidelity trap.’ In which the ‘fidelity trap’ is if I tell someone I’m a designer, they immediately ask, oh, what do you design? Are you a graphic designer, are you an industrial designer? It starts to become about outputs of design. And those outputs of design are usually judged based on fidelity, how beautifully finished, polished, bold or minimal is said design.
But what’s left out of that conversation usually are the resources needed to achieve that level of design. To achieve that level of polish and spoiler alert, resources aren’t evenly distributed. So not everyone gets the resources to be able to achieve a level of fruition that they envision. And so with that, what we started to see, okay, well the reason why design looks so homogenous is because you need resources to be a designer or design only shows up when something is well funded.
And so we started to say, what happens if you don’t look at design based on output, because design isn’t solely output. But you look at design based on a process, which is a process of adding value. In which in that process we found that it’s not exclusive to just designers. So many other people participate and facilitate in the process of adding value every single day. And so at that point we started asking, what would it look like for us to have design based conversations with people who may not necessarily identify as designers, but participate in the act of adding value.
Amy: Yes! This is where it gets really good because I totally am aligned with this idea also that design is a process, not a product. And that process is something that is in everything, every decision is a design decision. And if we don’t recognize it, then we don’t harness it or don’t design with intention, or bad actors design with evil intentions and we don’t catch it. So one of the things that Deem does so beautifully is tell these rich stories and elevate the work of amazing people who are doing things that are very much about adding value. But are non-traditional in terms of what we might consider practicing designers. And so in doing so, you’re blowing open the definition of design as our culture understands it to be. I think it’s so misunderstood in our general culture that the value of it is also not being… it’s not being shared as it could be. And it’s also not being celebrated as an opportunity or an option for people who see it as only for those who are extra-resourced.
Nu: Yeah. Issue one is a great example. Issue one features Adrienne Maree Brown, known as a writer, a doula, activist, two times New York Times bestseller. When we initially approached Adrienne, there was some hesitancy. We were like, hey, we want to put you on the cover of our first design publication and it was like, hmm, you sure? Me? Why me? And there was some convincing and when we actually went to her house in Detroit, had an awesome photoshoot with her, in the interview she was like, you know what, the work I do is design. And we were like, yeah, we were like yeah, that’s it. Like that’s what we want to get across. And so for me, the sleight of hand that we pull off is that at its core, Deem is a pretty theoretical academic journal.
Amy: Yeah.
Nu: It is because when I was writing my syllabus, I needed to buy reference books, I was like oh, Deem is more akin to these than any other publication that I’ve come across. But like I said, the sleight of hand that we do, is how do we ground it in community? How do we ground it in people? How do we make it into something that’s enticing and engaging so it doesn’t necessarily read as an academic journal that only people in this specific practice can engage with?
Amy: What you do so well obviously, is the curatorial storytelling is amazing, but it’s also just a very luscious publication, it’s something that feels good in your hand, the paper weight, the photography, the layout, the type. It makes you want to dive into it. And then your mind is so edified by the experience. I mean so many publications are just kind of like shiny and they’re just trying to get your attention for a little while. But this is a kind of experience that makes me feel like I’m growing as I’m participating with it. And I wish for more of that in the world.
Amy: Can we talk about your creative process as it’s related to Deem and also everything else that you do? You had mentioned the first issue which the title of it was Designing for Dignity. Issue two was Pedagogy for a New World, and you’ve just released issue three, which is Envisioning Equity.
Nu: Yeah.
Amy: I’m wondering what you can tell me about your process with… like I said, it’s a very luxurious experience, but it also feels really edifying and what’s the social process like to get really meta? What’s the social practice at the center of it all for you all that are creating it?
Nu: It really starts with curiosity. So all the titles you just read, they read as titles, but they’re really question marks. They really start with question marks. We’re like huh, how would you design for dignity? What is dignity? Who gets the quantifier/qualifier, okay, well pedagogy for a new world, we’re in a very tumultuous time, how are people participating and facilitating in knowledge exchange? How do we start to examine that? And especially for envisioning equity, the question was okay, people often confuse equity for equality. Okay, well what is equity and what are the different perspectives?
And so for us it’s less about being an authority of telling you what to believe, but more of us being able to put out this beacon. We ask a question and then there’s a curation of different perspectives that come together in order to allow us to at least move towards a direction that we feel drawn to. And so in that there is a lot of back and forth of, what are the things that we’re currently questioning or we’re interested in, or in the current social zeitgeist that maybe are under-theorized. Maybe over-theorized, that we could bring another perspective to.
And part of that is being comfortable without having to be necessarily an expert or an authority in any of those spaces, but more of just a curator..
Amy: What’s the response like when you reach out to people to talk about including or featuring their work or asking these questions and inviting their perspectives? What’s the array of responses that you get?
Nu: I mean some responses are, holy shit, I love Deem and I would love to talk to you about my work. Or you get people who are a bit hesitant because at times the people that we reach out to aren’t published that much. And I think that, once again, is a nod to the editorial team that they go very deep and not only look for the voices and the perspectives that are currently on the circuit, but even people who, for example, we had Silvia Federici in issue three in which her work, wages for housework is so pivotal, especially when you’re talking about wage work, gender studies.
But to be able to put her in conversation, in an intergenerational conversation with a younger designer.. At first it’s like, does this work, does this make sense? This isn’t as straightforward as possible. But I think now as we continue with issues and we’re working on issue four, now we’re starting to see that there is much more of a warm response because we have more of a track record, which initially there was some coercing that we had to do of people. Kind of feel like trust us, we have a vision. And then they’re like okay, then it comes out, they’re like oh, wow, that’s awesome.
Amy:I it does seem like there has to be a lot of trust at the center of all of this because you’re essentially asking for narrative trust, so that you can tell their story and you can reflect their perspective back out in a way that has integrity and is true to their DNA (laughs).
But now that you have a few issues behind you, you clearly have something that you can point to that can speak for you, that can give people a sense of how you intend to steward their story. And I’m sure that’s helpful. Does it also… does it do some of the labor for you in terms of opening up the trust for those who might be suspicious and/or uncomfortable with being spotlighted?
Nu: Yeah, there is somebody for issue four who is going to be featured on the cover who was somebody we were like, oh, we want to be in conversation with this person, but we probably need a couple of issues in, because this person’s time is super, super limited. But now that we have the proof of work, now that we have a pretty strong network of people who we featured that we collaborate with, we’re starting to see that the world that we want to reach is getting smaller and smaller.
And then being able to have those proof of concepts. But not only print, I mean we’ve expanded into a forum series that’s really taking the collaborators that we have and giving them another vehicle to be able to speak on, on key issues and as well as we launched a platform called the Reference Room that is - Imagine an art gallery that really is a library that is focused on reading materials and especially the content that we publish tends to be pretty deep. And we have to cut out a lot of things. So then the question was, okay, what would it look like for us to be able to create an experience that’s purely around engaging with the things that we’re engaging with.
Where our collaborators are engaging with to inform their perspective. And so the more we continue to not only develop print, but then also other elements and other touch points. I think the more proof of concept we’ll have out there and even just the more Deem will continue to grow and allow us to engage with people and build trust.
Amy: What’s been the response to the Reference Room?
Nu: I mean people loved it. I was kind of caught off guard because it was a pretty nerdy idea and I love nerdy things (laughs). I love nerdy things, so to see people come and actually sit down, grab a book, flip through it, sit down, take pictures of it, write down, okay cool, I want this book and then go back to the shelf over and over again. And then come back with friends and family later on, was inspiring to me. And got me excited around just this idea of sharing knowledge, which I thought would be much more of an individual act between one person and you go by yourself.
By starting to see people talking to other people while they’re standing at the shelves, like hey, have you checked out that book, you should check out this book. So it was a pop-up that happened in December and I’m excited to be able to bring it back as a pop-up, but then also trying to work on making it a permanent fixture somewhere.
Amy: I like it, I hope that happens. There’s something that’s really important to me that I want to hear you explain, which is that Deem with centering design as a social practice and thinking of design as a process of adding value, but also looking at the world and everything in the world as essentially a complex design challenge, including equity, including the nuanced nature of dismantling the systems that continue inequity. I’ve read that you view Deem as an agent of change and healing and I’m really, really interested in this healing component. Can you talk about that?
Nu: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting because I don’t think healing comes into design based conversations too often. But really what we’re looking at is how do we start to create means for people to be able to harness their own power, right? People, especially people who sit in different intersections of oppression, how do you actually start to think about harnessing your own power to create moments of affirmation? Or to create systems of affirmation, so even the act of dismantling oppressive systems is an act of healing. An act of opening up space that will then allow for what you need to fulfill you, to rush in.
And so a lot of times the content that we do feature is from a perspective of people who are doing that work. People who are creating those spaces and those opportunities for themselves and others to be able to heal, in whatever form that looks like. One of my favorite examples is we did a piece with Activation Residency, which is a retreat for BIPOC trans activists. And the question that they ask, what if rest is the work? People who are putting so much out there to heal others are asking the question, what’s happening to us? How are we taking care of ourselves and what if we start to look at resting not as slacking off or taking a break, but it’s part of the work, it’s part of the healing.
And so we wanted to be able to put that out there as a design challenge. What does it start to mean to think about having restorative practices
Amy: ho and what are the supporting factors and cast in your life that help you stay vibrant, engaged, hopeful and committed?
Nu: The number one… not even supporting, leading (laughter) is my wife.
Amy: Yay!
Nu: Yeah, my wife Christina, just one of my favorite creative partners to just bounce things off of. But then also calls me out on my bullshit. And we need somebody who can spot that and call that out. But then also I just have a lot of talented friends and family that I keep around me, whether it’s my older brother, or it’s even my younger sisters who are super creative and just always interested in new things.
And then my partners, both Alice and Marquise on the Deem side of things, always just keeping me sharp, especially Marquise, pushing for us to think about things in a more expansive way and Alice is really the one who when you think about healing, that’s part of her ethos and what she brings to the table. And so I think I have a good combination of all these great inputs. And my other two best friends, Stan and East, just being able to call them up after a client call and talk shit for a moment before I hop into another one.
Amy: Nice! That does sound like a really vibrant ecosystem, with lots of checks and balances.
Nu: (Laughter) Yeah.
Amy: You’re a DJ, an enthusiast of vintage home décor and an educator, you teach in industrial design at Parsons. These are three really important things, when you talk about home, music and education, these are really cut to the core of human empowerment, I think, in terms of restoration, like we were just talking about at home. Music is art, emotional resonance, and community storytelling. Education is the knowledge and skills. So does it feel this way to you? Are these just hobbies or can you feel what they’re empowering within you or how they’re fostering your own personal growth?
Nu: I mean everything is a hobby for me until… (Laughs)
Amy: Until you have to charge for it?
Nu: Yeah, until I have to charge for it! I don’t think that there’s anything that I’m doing now that I didn’t already do for free. I’m still the same person who is drawing sneakers every day, according to my mom. So I see them occupying different spaces but they all inform each other. And so even my class that I teach at Parsons called Design Dichotomy, a major part of it is I’m trying to help my students start to think through, how do they better articulate their perspective when it comes to design? And one of the ways that we do that is we have a design mix tape.
And what I told them, I was like oh yeah, being a designer is very similar to being a music producer because you are sitting and you are creating something that you put out into the world. And by the time it gets put out into the world, no matter what your intentions are, it takes on new meaning. And it takes on a new perspective. Music does that, design does that and so I interweave music into my design classes and even going, talking about the vintage home décor, that is something that my wife and I started when we were in Oakland and has turned now more into her personal interior styling practice.
But that is still something that her and I both enjoy and her and I both interweave just into our lives in general. So I would say they all overlap. They all operate on different levels and some of them are more stressful than others and some of them are like a reprieve. So I try to mix them all together as much as possible.
Amy: (Laughs) Okay, I love it!
Nu: Thank you for having me.
Amy: Well, it has been amazing talking to you, thank you so much for the work that you do in the world, I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening! To see images of Nu’s work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you would please do us a favor and rate and review - it really does help a lot! We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - you can find us @cleverpodcast. You can find me, @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to.
Photographed by GL Askew II, Arts District DTLA. Courtesy of Nu Goteh
A DIY screen printing kit was tested out by my best friend Eastman Garcia and me on 15th January 2011. We printed "A Need to Create" centered on the chest of a Kirkland t-shirt. Courtesy of Nu Goteh
Alice Grandoit-Sutka took this photo during our first strategy and planning session to create Room For Magic. Courtesy of Nu Goteh
Issues One, Two and Three of Deem Journal . Courtesy of Nu Goteh
Here I am approving the final proofs for Issue One of Deem Journal at Hemlock Printer in Vancouver. Courtesy of Nu Goteh
This is my Liberian passport photo that I used when I came to the United States at the age of three. Courtesy of Nu Goteh
Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.
Keep Listening
Ep. 171: Beat Baudenbacher on the Social Impact of Branding
Ep. 169: Eames Institute’s Chief Curator Llisa Demetrios on the Power of Infinite Curiosity
