This project is a collaboration with KQED’s Product and Arts & Culture teams to design an identity and campaign for a news series celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. The campaign chronicles hip-hop culture through a year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history via it’s own distinct web presence and interactive timeline, events, and social & newsletter campaigns.

Target Audience
People of multicultural background in their 30s, 40s and 50s who participate in social justice, community activism and social work; people who want to look back on the history of hip-hop in the Bay; educational and cultural organizations that are interested in showcasing hip-hop history

Tone + Keywords
• celebratory + fun
• nuanced + rich
• community-oriented
• informative
• surprising

I collaborated with KQED’s Product and Arts & Culture teams to moodboard, iterate, design, and implement the That’s My Word logo lockup.

The goal was to create a distinct brand that drew on and aligned with visual motifs found in hip-hop culture. I selected the bold color palette to align with the KQED Arts & Culture brand, yet be distinct and contrasting enough to stand out in the visual journalism landscape.

I applied the branding across a wide variety of assets (print and digital) and advised and gave feedback to the Product team implementing the branding on the website.

Brand
Logos and bug, fonts, color palette

Print
Swag (stickers, t-shirts, etc.)

Digital
On-screen presentation graphics, web + social ads, email graphics

Interactive
Landing page graphics, interactive timeline typography, social posts

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Canva
Figma
Google Slides

The That’s My Word project reached it’s goal of gaining significant web traffic to the website and interactive timeline, and had very wide reach, even among well known Bay Area hip-hop artists and figures. The campaign lead to many collaborations, including a collaboration event, NightLife: Hella, with the California Academy of Sciences. The project also led to a podcast series under Rightnowish called Hyphy Kids Got Trauma and a video podcast called What’s Pimpin’, both of which I designed, expanding on the That’s My Word brand system.