10 Years of Revision Path

Since 2013, Revision Path has interviewed Black designers, developers, artists and digital creatives from all over the world. Now, for the first time ever to the DesignThinkers audience, Maurice, the host of the show, pulls back the curtain and tells the story of Revision Path from the very beginning. Join Maurice to understand what it takes to build and sustain a project of this scale, as he shares what he's learned over the years, the ups and the downs and the unknown history. He'll also preview what he has in store for the podcast's milestone 10th year.

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Wow.

Hello everyone. Wow, this is

What's surreal? I have not been on the stage since February of

So.

Thank you design thinkers for having me

speak at Canada's largest design conference for a second time and

thanks to all of you who are attending thanks to all

of you that are tuning in online. I'm gonna try to

stay closer to the mic. This might

be a little Crunchy just chalk it up to that. But let's go

ahead and get started with this presentation.

So, that's me. She just talked about me. That's me. I'm from

Atlanta. Yes. It is like the show. I went to

Morehouse College, which is a well-known HBCU all

male College in Atlanta. I majored

in math, which is probably weird for designer

to be like, why is a person that has a degree at math talking

to me about design stuff but it worked out.

Oh, these are some of the companies that I worked for after

I graduated from college and in

I felt like you know what I've got

enough design knowledge under my belt to start my own studio.

So let me go ahead and start my own studio and call it

lunch like breakfast lunch dinner. These are some of

the places where I have taught at like on digital marketing

podcasting design. These are

some of my projects. Of course, we will mainly be talking about. Oh,

it doesn't work, but we'll mainly talk about revision path. Of

course, these are some of the places where my advocacy

and my design work have been talked about

and celebrated.

And this is years of revision path.

So to really talk about years

of revision path. I have to go back because the seeds for

this really start with another project that I did way back

in called the black weblog

Awards.

So yeah, it's I'm a

work Niner at the time and I knew other black designers, you

know that were just friends of mine and things of that nature and I

was a blogger I was a very active blogger. I knew other

bloggers and I felt like there needed to be something which really recognized, you

know, the work that we were doing. There were

Awards events like the bloggies and things

of that nature, but they just never seem to have any black

people for some reason and so

I wanted to do something to change that.

So I started the black weblog Awards.

It's design. It's terrible. I know there's

like embossed font. I think that's like Cooper script or

something. I it is

what it is. But this is sort

of the first iteration certainly not perfect. It did get better over

the years. Thank God, but this was sort of my first prototype of

wanting to do some kind of project that would celebrate what other

black people were doing online.

And so we did it the first year it was gangbusters. I

mean, I was surprised and Blown Away by how much

people really liked it loved it really and so in

we really expanded it. And one thing

I wanted to do again for my design peeps that I knew was have

a category that would speak to them. So I had something that

was just called best blog design and with best

blog design. I wanted to really highlight some of the people that were making these

great movable tight blogs and WordPress blogs

and things of that nature. You'll see a person

that's listed out here Zillow says he comes up a little bit later in the

presentation before I talk about revision path.

So yeah, I was doing this on the side while I was also a working

designer. And while I was going to grad school full time don't recommend

that I was juggling all of that and then

in I really felt like you know what?

Things in this country will not this country in the

United States things in the United States are changing. There's this

really Dynamic politician named Barack Obama

that's running for president and a lot of people are getting behind them

and

You know, I sort of got swept up in a lot of that fervor and

yes we can and so in I felt

like I had enough design knowledge and talking to

people where I was just gonna start my own thing. And so that's how lunch

came about.

That was lunch. I did a lot of different design work. I did in marketing.

I did Consulting things of that nature and I

was also still doing the black web blog Awards.

Fast forward a couple of years. I'm about to turn in

I decided I'm going to sell the

awards and just focus completely on my

on my studio.

Which went well had great clients, but I still felt

like I needed some kind of creative project to do and it

I thought back to what I did with the

black web blog Awards and I said I'm gonna do something for

black designers because by this point I'm a

working designer period I have my own Studio. I've got

clients. I've got some employees but

yet when I look at sort of design media, I

don't see myself reflected in it at

all. I don't think anyone talking to us. Unless maybe it's

Black History Month.

You might see one or two people and I

felt like you know what I can I can do something around this, you know

online magazines were a big thing at the time and so

in

I partnered up with Zilla the person who

you saw a couple of slides ago, and we were going to create an online

magazine for black designers.

Wasn't quite sure what I was going to call it yet. We went through a lot

of different names. We wanted something that spoke to both

designers and developers. And so that's kind

of how revision path came along like paths and

illustrator stuff like that.

But right before I was about to launch it.

He kind of dropped out.

Stop responding to emails and I'm like, well, I bought

the domain I bought the WordPress theme I'm

ready to go. So in I launched the first version

of revision bath.

Which was not great. I still stand

by the logo. I love it. But I mean it was just

A request theme I didn't really have a perfect design ready

to go. But I wanted to launch it.

I wanted to do something that really spoke to Black designers at the

time. Now when I created this I really was doing

it in the style of like off-screen or

the great discontent where I would do these long word

in-depth interviews with people. Of course,

I had to find these people which is kind of the first issue

that I really ran into. I asked

a lot of my friends. Like I said, I had friends that were black designers and every

single one of my friends back there who I asked initially to

be a part of this to like, let me interview them. They all

said no,

So I was really starting from scratch. I didn't

have that friend base to lean on

and say Hey, you know, I'm doing this great project. Do you want to be a part

of it? They all said no, they didn't want to be a part of it. They

didn't want I guess to be quote unquote exposed by

being interviewed about their work don't really

understand that but

To that end. I just started reaching out to people and doing Blind interviews.

Just like, you know cold calls. Hey, my name

is Maurice.

Who I am. I'm doing this would you

be interest?

And also a lot of people said though, but some people also

said yes, you see here the one Hall

listed and this is kind of just another kind of look

about how the design was again. I really wanted to do these.

In-depth interviews that went in on the work that

they did the passion behind it what sort

of motivates them to do this sort of work.

And initially, you know what I did revision path. It was not meant

to be a podcast it was, you know gonna be this online interview like

on my magazine and what happened was someone who

was a reader.

Her name is Raquel Rodriguez. It's a queer afro-latina

woman in Chicago had written me and said

hey, I really like what you're doing with her vision path. I would like to be on

the platform. I said, okay great. She's like

cool. I'm gonna be in Atlanta. We can record a podcast.

I don't have any podcast equipments. I don't

have a mic. I don't have anything. So we recorded the

very first episode on my phone. We had

a

a Google GI think at the time

from T-Mobile like I put the phone on the table. We went to this restaurant in

Inman Park in Atlanta called one

year at Stag and we recorded the interview audio quality

is absolute trash, but I still keep

the episode up to show people that you don't

have to start perfect. You just have to start from somewhere.

And with doing that interview with her that really put the idea in

my mind like oh, you know what this could actually be a

podcast like this could be something that I could offer up

to people, but I just needed more folks to do it.

So again, I'm doing cold Outreach to folks this person

that you see here is Emory Douglas. He's

an aiga medalist also the former minister of culture

of the Black Panther Party and the way

that I was able to interview him was I was

searching for designers looking for work and I

saw this skate shop in Oakland, California that was

using his designs on like skate decks.

And so I reached out to the shop and I was like, hey, you know,

I'm a big fan of Emory Douglas's work.

How were you able to get his designs on your skates? I would love to interview him

for this project that I'm doing and the guys like oh, yeah, that's my grandpa.

It's like oh bet would your grandpa be

up to speak to me on the phone for an hour on Sunday afternoon, and he

made it happen. And so that's how I ended up having Emery Douglas.

As one of my very first interviews that I did

for the show again. A lot of these were just cold out Reese's people

didn't know me from a can of paint and they

just saw the work that I was doing and I was lucky and

fortunate that many of them actually sort of saw the vision

that I was trying to do with revision path.

So I started recording interviews with guests and

I always give them the option I would say. Okay. Do you want to record

or do you want to do like a text-based email

interview?

So I'd say in There's like a mix of

both, but I quickly saw that doing the podcast

was just much quicker than trying to do,

you know these long form interviews. And again, this was

like a magazine that I was trying to do initially. So I wanted to

do magazine type stuff and one

of them was to make a holiday gift guide. So every like

November December, I would put together a bunch of you know

lists of goods from black designers and

say here you can check these out you can purchase these books Etc.

I also did a number of different graphics for Kwanzaa

for those are not familiar with Kwanzaa. It's a holiday

that takes place between December th and January st.

I'd say it's kind

of a conglomeration of a bunch of different principles and

axioms and meanings. But there's seven

days seven different principles. And what I did was I would

make these Graphics that were correlate with each day of Kwanzaa.

So for ujama, you've got Cooperative economics,

that's Oprah for colomba. It's

creativity. It's styled after Beyonce self-titled

album and you have Nia which means purpose and

this is dedicated to Nelson Mandela who passed away

that year

So I wanted to kind of do these things to add more

to revision path than just interviews. I wanted

to have something that would keep people coming back kind of turn into

more of a lifestyle sort of thing.

So in you know revision path was

really starting to get attention and that came with some pretty

interesting interactions and

projects and things. So one of the first projects that I did attached to

revision path was called days of the web.

And I started days of the web because again, I was

starting revision path based off the fact that I did not see black

designers featured in design media, except maybe for

black history month. So I was like what if we

did something

special for black history month so days

of the web takes place in February and I celebrate a

different black designer developer for each day

in conjunction with Anna celebration of Black History Month

men women

Equal gender parity and that sort of how that started out.

This is a kind of a screenshot of what the website looks

like. And the way that I sort of

did this was because I wanted to have something that would just

supplement the regular interviews and things that were going out something kind

of extra that also would put eyes on what I

was doing with provision bath.

This is kind of an idea but one of the pages looked like and all of this information

that I got for this was publicly available. The photo

website Twitter bio is all

pulled from the person's own socials. And so when the

list would come out every year it's always a surprise like, oh, I'm

an honoree. I'm on the list for days of the web.

Another thing I did in was do a much

needed redesign for the website. And I

also started to actually Branch out and get some International interviews.

I'd say within the first year. I think mostly everyone

was in the US.

And then I actually started to get more people that were outside

of the US this guy right here, Kevin. Karanja is

a designer in Nairobi Kenya.

Also that year we got our first big big

sponsor, which was MailChimp. Now if you think back to and

you think about MailChimp, you'll probably think of cereal

the podcast, you know, they had that male Kim

they had that ad that was going on. I have been

working with MailChimp through my studio since I started

the studio back in And so I knew

them they were in Atlanta. They knew me it ended

up being a really easy kind of pitch to say this is

what I'm working on. Would you be interested in supporting

and they're like, yeah, we'll do it. We'll throw some money behind it.

Also, this is the year that I got my editor RJ. So

for most of the episodes of revision path

that you hear he is like the genius

behind it. I record the

raw audio and then he manages to polish

it up into something. That's wonderful. So RJ's a

indispensable member of the team.

Also, what happened in was I started to attract other

designers that we're doing kind of similar things

than I was. So this person that you see here is sayana Mitchum.

She's a designer in Upstate New York. She had

a website that was called inspiring black designers. And

so she saw the work that I was doing with her vision

path. Thought we should team up.

And eventually she's like, you know, what? Why don't you just acquire it?

And so we took her interviews and kind of put them into

our archive and decided to join the team for a

few years helping out with content as well.

I also managed to expand with some interns here.

You see here from left to right Eric Rashida and

Stephanie. They helped me out with the marketing with some

editorial work as well as some just PR in general

marketing work Stephanie. I actually have been working with prior because

she came on to

work with me with the black web blog Awards. So it was kind of like bringing

the band back together a little bit.

was interesting because I tried to do things to

get revision path out there in the design Community by

this point. I had decided you know what it's going

to be a podcast. It's just much easier to record these episodes

then do these text interviews in

this way. And so I tried to join podcast networks like five

by five and others.

Completely got shut down or ignored altogether.

I try to pitch myself to be on other

design podcasts like hey, I'm doing this great project. I'd love

to come on your show and talk about it.

Completely shut down. Some of them would actually respond and say

well, you know, we don't really we don't talk about race. So we're

not really going to get into what you're doing with this

little race show or that kind of thing.

I also try to recommend guests that I had on my

show two other podcasts because the people that I was talking to were

doing really great and amazing work and no one had ever

talked to them about their work. And so

I figured well if you've been on my show, maybe there's a way that I can extend an

invitation to possibly have you come on another show

people were not trying to hear it at all.

Um, I would get tweets like this about how revision

path was a racist project which

it always was interesting to

me how people thought it was racist because everything about revision path

was about celebration and recognition of what

black people are doing.

Why do you find that racist unless you somehow

find having pride in your race as a negative

in some way.

So I got a lot of this in sort of the early days of revision

path, which honestly really made me

want to quit, you know, I started this all about celebration. I'm not

trying to court controversy. Like I'm just

a kid from the south. Like I'm not trying to step on

any Toes or anything like that. I would get threats and calls

to my own business to get me fired, which I think

was always funny because I'm like if you went to the website and saw

the about page my picture is there so why

would you write

business to get me fired from my own business

just that

so

the wild year

and would be one of the first kind of Stepping Stones

to push revision path further into the design

community.

One of the first things that happened in was that

I joined aiga's diversity and inclusion task

force. Now, this was something that aiga had

for several years at different iterations. And I

joined right around the time of Antonette Carroll

was the co-chair and then we had another person Aiden O'Connor

was the co-chair and they really tried to bring

in a lot of designers from all walks of life to really help with

one talking about diversity inclusion in the

design Community, but also to talk about it within aiga's

own member ranks.

So that was something that happened right in through that

I was able to present at South

by Southwest which is this.

like

two or three week conference that takes place in March.

There's a film portion interactive Etc.

And it was through here that I had put together a talk based on

questions that I was getting from. A lot

of people in the main question. I was getting was where

are the black designers?

people were asking me that left and right companies

were asking me people wanted to know how are you able to find black

designers and I can't

I mean My Melody doesn't give me any special search Powers, but I

figured I would make this presentation as a way to answer

that question and to give people the knowledge

and Empower them to kind of reach out to Black

designers as well.

I gave that presentation.

that's about

crowd at all

But of the people that were there there was someone from

Facebook there was someone from Dell from Pinterest and so

after that presentation and especially once

aiga started to talk about it.

big things started to happen for revision path

first off. We got more sponsors. We got big corporate sponsors,

including hover who's still a sponsored to this day.

We started a community on patreon and

this is I mean, this was So people I don't

think really knew that much about the patreon model,

but we started it in order to really get in touch with our community

and offer additional content and things like that.

We hit episodes that year this person

that you see here. Her name is Sarah hunting young.

She's a good friend of mine as well as someone who is a constant design

inspiration to me.

We received over $in donations

from something called fund Club fund Club

is this group of individuals where every

month they get together and donate $each member

donates a hundred dollars to a particular cause or

events that forward social justice. And so

one month, they pick provision path and

donations just start rolling in and I'm like, we've got

we got money.

Things now because of this initially I was just running this out of

a corner of my bedroom.

No, kind of big budget or anything like that. But now

I'm like I'm able to possibly do some things. So

now that we've got some money, let's see what we can try to make happen.

One thing that I try to do was I have two

episodes a week.

Not a good idea. I think

podcasts are great. Weekly. I think two times a week

is really taxing on The Listener and I quickly found that out. I think we

only did it for about

two or three months and I was like, yeah, we're not we're gonna

do that anymore. One of the big things that happened that

you're in was there's a website

some of you might be familiar with they call Creative Market. They had

an awards event in and

they were doing all these different categories and one of

the categories they had was most inspiring design podcasts and

they had revision path up there with design matters

with Debbie Millman.

% invisible adventures in

design and I'm like, there's no way we're gonna

win that award. Like these are Titans in

the game. There's no way that we're going to win that award. We want that award.

And so that metal that you see there is actually

like D printed in a way but this

really put revision path out there to

the design community in a way that was sort of different from

aiga because I think aiga focus more on

Visual and graphic design. Whereas I

think creative Market was more geared towards like ux designers

products makers Etc a different

segment of the design community.

But ending out the year with that really kind of put us on

the map and let people see that okay revision path

is really doing something that I need to pay attention to.

So we start I've got the capital. I've

got the recognition.

Let's start making some s*** happen.

So the first thing that I wanted to do was really expand the editorial.

Well the blog I would say part of

revision path because at this point it's a podcast it airs

every Monday everyone knew about

the show, but between those episodes I was seeing things

sort of drop off and so I wanted to have actual

articles and things so people could kind of

stay engaged from week to week and they would feel

like this was more than just, you know a podcast. It was like a destination

kind of going back to the origins of how

I want it revision path to be a magazine.

So we brought on five writers from left

to right. This is Thelma VV AJ, Charlie

and Tammy.

These are some of the like hero images from some of the content that they

created that green imagery. You

see with Rihanna and Solange that was about celebrities becoming

creative directors of companies. We asked

tough questions, like our hbcus preparing the next

generation of black designers. We did this whole series called

student perspectives where we talk to black design

students at design schools about their experience. We did

this double Consciousness in design piece based off

of W E B Du Bois,

This also kind of took place around the time of you

know, advocacy with Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown.

And so we talked about how people use design to

help promote activism and action.

We did a three-part series on countries in

Africa doing Tech. So we did one

with Sudan Algeria and the Democratic Republic

of Congo. We asked the question about why

you don't see black glamor stars in

merchandising like makeup and things like that and we

ask questions. I can black designers afford to be weird. Like is there

a certain respectability politics that black designers

have to do or perform in order to

like get business and get paid? I mean,

these are questions that no other design media

was asking and we were asking those questions through our content.

I presented at how design live in

in Atlanta. And this was

kind of a full circle moment for me. I presented

where the black designers again the one that I did Itself by

Southwest.

This was a full circle moment because I was presenting at the

place where my design career started

by very first design job was at this venue and

so then to go back.

Roughly about years later and be like, I'm presenting here,

you know, these people that used to be my employees. Now, you

have to go review my coworkers. I should say now you

have to go get me water because I'm about to go on stage. That was

fun.

We expanded into a job

board as well. We had a lot of companies that were contacting

revision path again, just a podcast and a

Blog but they were contacting us saying, oh we're looking

for product designers here ux designers here

Etc. Can you help us and I'm like, well, there's got to be a way

to turn this into money. So we made

a job board in order for companies to directly add

their listings and then we would shout them out on the show. We've done

that again since We had

a slack community that we opened up to kind

of interface more with our community different from patreon, but

we had that together and through our slack Community. We

did a lot of events such as just ask me anything event

that you see here with Brandon Butler who's

episode on the podcast.

We hit episodes this

person that you see here is Ashley accio.

She's the creative director at the Obama White

House was really glad to get a chance to talk with

her.

Right as Obama's term was ending to got to kind

of get a sense of like what she helped contribute to his campaign

to his term really really good stuff.

and we got our biggest sponsor today, which was Facebook Facebook

design now, this is pretty

Cambridge analytica messing with

Democracy in America kind of thing, but to have Facebook

design as a sponsor was a huge deal because Facebook didn't

sponsor anything. They certainly didn't sponsor podcasts.

They certainly didn't sponsor podcasts like revision

path.

But they saw the work that I was doing again. They had saw me

speak at South by Southwest in and they were so

impressed that they wanted to throw.

A lot of money behind revision path. I'll just

say that and to further their support.

They actually flew me out to Menlo Park. I got to do some

interviews while I was out there and they let me present

at their Facebook design lecture series.

I closed out the year in That's a closer.

Look at the poster. I wish I could say I designed that I didn't design that

but I do have like

copies of that poster

in my room like actually if any of you have seen me talk virtually

over the past year. It's the poster that I have on my

wall. That's like right behind my shoulder.

We got a lot of love on social media about revision path

as you can see here. Ediel Parr who's a partner at pentagram Jonathan

Jackson partnering creative director at we

should do it all Studio.

We took our merch which essentially was just for patrons

and expanded out into a full-fledged merch

store. So people were buying revision path t-shirts revision

path mugs, things like that.

And of course we kept the quantigraphics going to

because we have to keep it pretty black. These are some of

the ones that we did again emoja means Unity with Simone

biles. That was Rio Olympics Kumba

for creativity. This is a the year

that Prince passed away. Could you jacquelia

which means self-determination we kind of did this red blue

Trump Clinton thing and then Imani

which is probably one of my favorite Graphics that I designed as

part of the series was after Trump was elected and

you know, it's kind of this Obama still kicking.

This is based off a polar or one of the last

Polaroids from John Michelle Bosque up.

So once we had our big sponsors on

Deck revision path really started to get more and

more traction.

In Apple podcasts included us as part

of their campaign for the black experience. That's us

right there in that first row.

We hit episodes. Once again, I

have my friend honey. Come on the show and we talked about the work that she

was doing.

And we branched out into events.

So we did our very first event in It was

with our sponsoring partner Facebook design.

They brought the swag, which was great.

This is a shot of the panel that we have from left to right. That's Carla

Cole Jill Nussbaum Ian spaulter.

Who's the head of Instagram Japan and Tori Hargrove?

This is some of the crowd people still ask me to this day

if we're going to have another event in Atlanta. We almost did.

Talk about that later. Um, but this was sort

of the kind of thing that I always wanted to do with revision path, which was

not only celebrate what designers were doing but also to kind

of have Community around it because one thing that

I really discovered through the show was that black designers were

out there, but it was just very fragmented. There was no way that

we were talking with each other fellowshiping with

each other and so I had this platform and

able to really to one tell their stories but to

also allow them to come together in that way.

We got two really big sponsors with siteground and

Google and then there was this little startup based

out of New York called glitch that became

a sponsor and that later became my

employer.

This is where the dramatic part of the presentation starts.

So

I'm working for glitch. I'm still doing the

show. They love the work that I'm doing and it was

a really interesting kind of growth year for revision path.

First off we expanded onto more platforms. So we

expanded onto Spotify and to iHeartRadio.

Apple podcasts included us again as part of

their Black History Month campaign

I got to speak in Switzerland about revision path

at this event here Beyond change

questioning the role of design in times of global Transformations,

really really great time there.

And this is more of a personal honor but it does apply to

revision path and that I got the award for the

work that I was doing. So in aiga awarded

me the Stephen Heller prize for cultural commentary first

black person to get it.

And as you can see as it reads here, it says for being a

Renaissance Talent who works seamlessly across cultural domains

editorial lines and multiple forms of

media for being the definitive leader in bringing

black designers to the public earning you a permanent place in

the history of design design equity and social justice.

Thank you. Thank you.

Shortly, after that we had episodes.

This is Julian Alexander who is

a Grammy award-winning designer. We worked with

Adobe for World interactions design day.

And we brought on three more writers from left to right here. We have Dwight

Katie and Cela.

This is some of the work that they did. These are just some hero images

from their work simple things like how to hire a designer

really in-depth pieces like an oral history

of the organization of black designers as well

as a tribute to the late Dr. Samela Lewis

who was the first black woman to receive her PhD in Fine

Art and art history.

And we joined the podcast Network again. I was working for glitch my

employer at the time you see those little two fish there.

This was sort of the beginning of some rough times

or revision path. And this is kind of the history that

you all are hearing for the first time because it's the first time I'm sharing it publicly,

but let's talk about the tumultuous year.

That was So

It brought some of our biggest honors today and also for me

some of my kind of biggest professional.

I don't know what the right word is. We'll get to it.

We hit episodes which was an amazing

feat. We managed to get Hannah Beaker who's

the production designer for black panther as well

as black panther will come to Forever November th.

I got my tickets manage to get her on

the show and talk about the work that she had done.

She's also done production work for Beyonce for Ryan

coogler really great stuff.

and we threw our

th spaces a well-known space in the kind of public radio atmosphere. We

had three of our biggest guests on

the show. Idiopara Gail Anderson and Kat

small.

This was the flyer that we did for it. You see glitch there

in the corner.

And the interesting thing actually, let me go

back to this.

Because the interesting thing about this event was it was very

well received but this is where the problem started happening

with glitch. I licensed my show

to them.

Because I was working for the company they liked what

I was doing. They wanted to make immediate Network. And so they're like how can

we have revision path be a part of this and I said, well, you can't

have it though. You can certainly license it from

me and we can sort of work out like, you know.

So when we started to do this event, we're really surprised me was how

much people internally pushed back against it

like publicly being like well, why are

we doing this? We're a tech company. We're a software company. Why are

we why are we doing something like this? And you know, how does

this contribute to our bottom line and things like that, which was

interesting because that was never in any of the provisions regarding

this licensing agreement. Like you literally are just airing

the show if you want to

The event that's great. I appreciate that. I

didn't ask you to do it you wanted to do it you

spent money from the company to do that. So it was an interesting

thing to kind of get this pushed back about. Well, how many customers

is this going to get us?

Hell if I know it's not really not really something I need to

worry about. So this was sort of the start of

the pushback that I was getting from glitch because they definitely wanted to

be a part of the revision path success story.

But yet when it came down to actually I guess performing it.

that way

like I said, we started to Branch out to more platforms.

We were part of Pandora with their podcast offerings.

And one thing I wanted to do and this was

based off of the Stephen Heller prize was I wanted to start a

literary Anthology called recognize and

what recognizes is is I have

notes here about what I call it. It's a design Anthology that

features voices from indigenous and Indigenous people

and men and women of color, which I was calling the

next generation of like emerging design voices. I

wanted to be some type of a platform that they

could really talk about anything with design because

let's say they have something they wanted to pitch it to aiga

design or communication Arts.

Would they run it?

Maybe maybe not. This was

something that I wanted to do as I could annual type of thing.

We did the first volume of this with money

from Envision and vision donated $to

do the first kind of iteration of

this and they published it on inside design which reaches

like millions of designers online as well

as through email.

and glitch hated that

they hated that I was doing something that was getting a lot

of attention and notoriety

and press and they had nothing to

do with it.

And it all sort of came to a head when this happens in

revision path

was the first podcast to be included

in the smithsonian's permanent collection for the national museum

of African American history and culture.

Really great time when it happened, it had been something that I had

personally been working on for four years in terms of asking them

about it asking them to listen to the

show. Like I met one of the curators at a conference back in

at Harvard. That was like, please listen to

my little show and tell me what you think about it and the

apparently they liked it enough to include it.

The very next day after this happened

the COO of glitch gave me

the worst dressing down I've ever had

in my professional career. I mean call me everything but

a child of God.

And at one point he was like, you know, you're just doing all

this for yourself and you just want to take your

ball and go home and blah blah blah. This has nothing

to do with glitches is all about you and all about your ego and I'm

just like

where is this coming from?

I had no idea what was coming from it was clear. They wanted

to be a part of the success it actually.

if you look it up on the smithsonian's website you

Will see that glitch is attributed to the donation

because one episode was recorded

that was in The Collection that

they acquired while I was working at glitch. So

like it's a co-ownership thing which I f******

hate. Oh

But it was so surprising that like this company that said they wanted to support me

and do all these things all of a sudden.

You know, what's kind of like trying to throw me under the bus?

So came and I realized I need to separate myself from

this company whether that's I need to leave as an employee

or I need to pull out from our licensing agreement. And there

was just a lot of oh heinous legal

s*** that I had to go through keep in

mind. No one who listened to the show new any of this was happening. I really

tried to make sure this all happened behind the scenes. It wasn't

a big deal, but I had to kind of fight to pull it back because

they really wanted to take credit for

my success and I really was like you had nothing to

do with us getting to this point.

One of the biggest things that I did was just do a Rebrand like I

redesigned the logo.

I refreshed the website to kind of get rid of any sort of glitchy remainders

for the most part.

And I decided it's time to take this thing on tour. So we

did a seven what we had plans. I

should say to do a seven City Tour starting in with LA

Seattle, Houston, Kansas City,

Chicago, DC and New York.

That's the first show that we did which was out

in Leimert Park in Los Angeles standing room.

Only really great time really great

time.

At that back to February and again had plans to

go to all these cities and then boom Coronavirus.

Coronavirus

and the whole tour basically just

went up and smoke.

Several months after the tour went up

in smoke. So did my job because glitches like, oh wait a

minute.

You're not you're not popular anymore. So

you don't work here anymore and they got rid of my entire

team laid us all off.

assume in a very odd way, but

was a rough year because of

these things happening, but I know I still have to keep the show going. So we

hit episodes that year. We also

hit episodes that year to go

back. This is kojo batang who was a creative director at

PBS.

And this person here is Benny F Johnson who is at

the time was the executive director of aiga the

first black person to hold that role in the organization's Hundred

Year history. He just resigned recently.

So that's why I'm like former, but you know,

And I kept going with recognize recognized. We did

second volume that year we published through a list

of parts which was from Jeffrey zeldman. So I

was really really glad that like I was still able to keep some things

going but like many people during the pandemic. It was just

a rough time. I also did not

have a job.

So came and I mean

left me. So shell shocked that

I really was trying to just get my sea legs back with

the show for Unfortunately, one

of the casualties of that year was recognized we

wanted to do a third volume, but I

think the pandemic just like suck people's

creativity out. They just

Didn't we didn't get the right amount of

submissions? We didn't get the quality that we wanted. And so

I just kind of put it into it.

We did hit episodes that year.

This is Brent Rollins who was a very famous

designer in the hip hop community.

and I mean

that was pretty much it for the year. Like I just said.

Good.

Is that as all this was happening? We were losing sponsors left

and right because companies were scaling

back companies were like, oh, we're not sure what's gonna happen

with the rest, you know with pandemic blah blah. So we

really were like,

Down to Brass tax which brings us to this year?

Where revision path is really kind of in this space of building and

rebuilding.

One thing was we got our first major sponsor

in years, which is American Express really glad

to have their support to keep things going. We hit

episodes this year. This is

Anthony D Mays who was a Tech coach out in, California.

I partnered with another initiative called the state of

black design and created something called the th Collective

which is like a combination Talent Collective for

black designers and companies that are looking to

hire black designers as well. As our old job board that

I mentioned.

It's kind of a win-win. So when companies like place a

listing they also get access to the collective and so

they can see all these members that are looking for work.

One thing we're going to do hopefully in a

couple of months is record our wakanda forever episode. We did

do an episode around black panther back in

It's one of the episodes that is in the Smithsonian. So

I'm really excited to record this episode

which is coming up in a few weeks.

And we're going to do our holiday gift guide again, you

know, one of the things what's going with glitch was that we have to get rid of

a lot of things that we were doing like our quantigraphics and

you know some sponsors and things like that. So I'm happy

to kind of start bringing some of this stuff back. It's going

to be our biggest gift guy to date for this year really excited about

it.

So is going to be a pivotal

year for revision path because it's going to be our tenth year

not only is our th year. It's gonna

be the th installment of days of the web. That's

gonna take place in February.

That's kind of just a placeholder graphic that I pulled from Google Images.

So that's not final not final. Um,

but our th anniversary episodes got to air

on February Also this

year we're going to hit episodes already

got the the guest unlock. It is

the veritable Dr. Sheryl Miller really excited

to have her back on the show to talk about her work if you

want to listen to her previous episode. I think it's

yes episode but that's going to take place episode

on April th.

I'm also partnering again. Like I said with the

th Collective and we are going to do a survey the survey

is going to be a report to get real data around the

lived and work experiences of black designers. It's something

to have wanted to do for a long time. We're finally going

to be able to put it into motion. So I'm really excited about that.

And I'm working on some book projects first book

I'm doing is here with Gail Anderson who's on the left and Michelle

Washington on the right. We are working on a

book together. What's the title? I didn't know they

were black. It's with Princeton architectural press really excited

about it. We were working on it for a few years now.

And secondly, I'm working on my own book.

Kind of been mulling some things over on a

proposal but I feel like after years. It's time to put all of

this into a book that people can sort of learn about

revision path and sort of see what I

have picked up over the years I suppose and as

far as what's after that.

Who knows? I don't know.

I know we have seconds left. So I'm gonna go a little bit over. Sorry. Um,

here's what I learned.

For black people merely celebrating ourselves as an act

of defiance. One thing that I quickly saw is that

a lot of people will want to take credit for

your successes, but they don't want to take responsibility for your

scars glitch, of course is the biggest example of that that

I mentioned that this presentation but there were several other people organizations over

the years that really just didn't get

why celebrating black designers was

something that needed to be done.

Also, I learned that it's important to be a part of

the solution and not just an observer of the problem. I think our

current social media culture allows a lot of people to criticize and

Rubberneck and give commentary

on things that don't necessarily need commentary without

actually offering Solutions. And

so for me it was seeing this Gap with design

media not recognizing black people and saying, you know

what I'm just gonna put my own thing out here that's gonna be the solution.

If you wait to start all that happens is that you get older.

I had the first idea to do something like this before it was

called revision path back when I was

I didn't put it into the actions until seven years

after that. I was now. It's

coming up on years and be next year and it's

great that I've done it. But like what if I started earlier,

you know, all that weight is that I'm

gonna get older and I'm gonna probably have less want to try to make it

happen.

Also, I think it's important to systemize Outsource

and time shift as much stuff as

you can that's really the only way I've been able to keep revision

path and running like clockwork week after week me and

my team we have a airtight system on how

things work and that's how we get it done.

and I think it's also important to just have undeniable faith

in your mission, you know, some of the things that I mentioned

in this presentation, you know, if I didn't have faith

that this was something that I really felt people needed to

see and also if I didn't get the emails the

letters the voice notes Etc

from people telling me how much they love the show

what it means to them how they're teaching it to

their college students how they're including it in this book

Etc how they want to write about me for their Black History

Month project Etc if I didn't have faith in

the mission,

The none of this would happen. None of this would have happened. So I think it's

important when you're doing a project like this or even

any sort of project that you're doing. It's just always believe in

exactly what it is that you're doing.

So I don't two minutes over but that's years

of revision paths. I'm happy

to answer any questions that you might

have in the audience or the internet and thank

you design thinkers for for having me

once again.

He actually don't have time for questions, but if the

audience has questions for you, how can they get

at you?

I think someone need that. I'm well

if you have if you have questions for me, you can certainly hit me up on

social media. My personal Twitter is at Maurice

Cherry. Just first name last day more at

revision path all one word on Twitter and Instagram.

Sweet. So if you have questions memories find them on

social or like wandering around here in the next or walking around. Yeah, absolutely. Stop

me.

Please so so much more round of applause.