visual design • illustration • branding
narrative
Black Genius Festival 2026 is an ongoing project with Village of Wisdom, a local Durham organization centered around building culturally competent programming in both Black families and schools in the area. They chose me to be lead designer. I used the elements of their programs, and put it in sync with my own Puerto Rican religious practice of Ifa, to tell a communal and unique narrative of the exhibitors and Durham’s Black Wall Street and neighborhoods.
Upon visiting Village of Wisdom (VOW)’s residency program, I was able to interview many families within VOW’s network and their goals in the program. Their building of Cultrally Affirming Learning Environments (CALE) inspired me to reach into visual design from Afro-diasporic religions.
This led to explorations of adinkras, and particular visuals of the veve sitting on top of the Hayti Center. From there, I combined and researched design practices from theme parks for incentives and crowd control.
research
visuals
I created a typeface inspired by adinkras with the intention of families to decrypt the typeface at every “world” entrance of the festival. As a centerpiece treatment, along with extensive “altar” treatments for the “worlds” of the festival, in reference to Orishas.
Every orisha is associated with a particular color scheme and set of objects and symbols they oversee. These would form the base elements of each world and where aligned exhibitors would be placed.
Between the worlds, a wayfinding system inspired by the orisha Oshun is being crafted. Oshun overseees rivers, so silk fabric “river” structures will guide attendees through the festival.