Today we’d like to introduce you to King Cooley.
King, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My name is King Cooley (also known as Cooley Savant). I am a hip-hop artist and art director for design. For me, design and music have always felt like two creative paths that I needed to separate, but I have just recently started embracing my identity as a multi-hyphenate creative.
I was very young when I found my talent in the arts. I was around six or seven-years-old when I began storytelling. I loved writing poetry and illustrating pictures to go along with what I’d written. As I got older, writing poetry evolved into rapping and illustrating stories in a more lyrical sense while I was still drawing and creating as a side hustle (mostly designing t-shirts and album covers for friends and family).
Drawing eventually led me to the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) where I majored in Graphic Design and minored in business. During my time at SCAD, I continued to make music outside of class and learned how to record and mix my own songs. I released a few mixtapes throughout college but despite my desire to embrace the two art forms as part of my identity, I felt compelled to separate and compartmentalize them. I felt like sharing that I was a hip-hop artist would make me less employable. So I hid that part of my life. For a number of years after college, I worked corporate 9-to-5 jobs as “Katrina Lenzly, designer,” and from 6-to-12 I was “Cooley, the rapper”.
That all changed last year when I realized that in order to make my most authentic work, I needed to present my most authentic self at work and outside of work. That meant not shying away from calling myself a rapper at my corporate jobs or embracing the fact that I work in marketing and advertisement without feeling like a corporate sell-out. I stopped compartmentalizing my experiences to fit my environment and I noticed that when I gave myself permission to be my complex self, it took a lot of the pressure off my back to hide and shrink.
From my experience, I’ve created a lecture titled “The Rise of Creative Diversity” which I’ve had the opportunity to share with companies like Coca-Cola and WarnerMedia. The presentation outlines the growing phenomenon of multi-hyphenate creatives, encourages employers to nurture multi-faceted talent and inspires other artists to embrace and apply all of their skills in the workplace.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like many creatives, some of the biggest struggles I’ve had were those seasons of self-doubt, depression, the financial instabilities of freelancing… even in working corporate jobs, there have been struggles. I’ve had to navigate poor leadership. I’ve been overlooked, overworked, and underpaid. I’ve had challenges with what I now call “pseudo-inclusivity,” where myself and other designers of color are “brought to the table” to make the table look diverse but not necessarily brought to have our experiences recognized. There have been a lot of hurdles in my professional career that college didn’t prepare me for, but thankfully I’ve been surrounded by some of the most supportive, positive friends that pray for me and with me. They encourage me to always be solution-driven and never let tough times deflate me.
That said, my advice for young female creatives starting out in their career would be to start surrounding themselves with driven, positive people that are going to stand with them during those tough times (because they will come, no doubt). My second piece of advice is this: if you’re not being appreciated where you are, move on. Take your talents elsewhere or carve out your own path because any struggle that you’re not working to change is something you’re allowing. That’s the only way that artists (specifically, artists of color) can start taking back control of the future of our industries. It’s by building our own tables to sit at.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
Over the last few years, I’ve worked for a number of design agencies here in Atlanta as well as large companies like Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, and WarnerMedia designing and art directing. As far as my design work, you may have seen my work for the Chick-fil-A One Mobile App launch in 2017. I designed a few of the packaging materials for that campaign.
I’ve had three projects I art directed displayed on Coca-Cola’s 3D Billboard in Times Square, New York. I have some work on display inside the Mercedes Benz stadium for Coke’s 80-foot column installation as well. This past summer, I designed and art directed the look for the A3C Conference here in Atlanta. And more recently, you may have seen my design work inside Chicago’s House of Blues for the 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend Roast on TNT.
Outside of my commercial design work, I own a creative house called ELEV8ED USC. We are a creative agency that works with small and large businesses to help develop their brand through graphic design, web design, marketing, and brand management. Owning ELEV8ED gives me the most pride and I’m proud of the work my team and I do.
As a whole, my experience in marketing has given me an edge as a hip-hop artist allowing me to see the ins-and-outs of advertising, talent selection, and overall corporate interest. Because I release my music independently, it’s been a huge advantage to use what I learn to develop the business side of my career. I would say that that is what sets me apart from other musicians. Not only am I able to fund my music career through design, but I also have the insight to successfully market my own work.
I’m really excited to display my marketing talents for my next few music projects – one of which is being released at the end of February titled “Curating Dopeness”. It’s a collaborative album featuring myself and three other music artists that we’ve put together to showcase our musical talents and inspire other musicians to embrace their unique creative qualities to make great art. Check it out!
So much of the media coverage is focused on the challenges facing women today, but what about the opportunities? Do you feel there are any opportunities that women are particularly well positioned for?
That’s a really great question. I think there is a huge empathy gap right now within the American workforce. It’s been created by these antiquated ideas about business culture that are driven by apathy and intolerance. When it comes to my generation — the millennials — we’ve been seeking out more fulfilling, meaningful relationships within the workplace. We want to be appreciated, recognized, and compensated fairly. And unfortunately, I don’t believe corporate leadership as a whole has been able (or even willing) to keep up with the pace of that demand.
That said, I think it would be AMAZING to see women replacing that cold, dominant, unforgiving culture we’re used to with what we as women naturally provide — warmth, understanding, emotional support. I’ve seen firsthand how supportive, nurturing feminine energy transforms teams and it’s beautiful. So, I would love to see more mothers in management. More project managers and admins (who, in my field, are typically women) using their organizational skills to build teams.
My hope for the next few years is to see the design industry evolving with more female leadership and not only that, seeing women embracing the strength of our femininity. I believe that if we could start exploring more authentic, natural methods of leading teams we’d create a completely different work culture that not only empowers other young leaders but also protects them against some of the emotional trauma that some of these young creatives are experiencing.
Pricing:
- King Cooley Music Features – starting at $120
- ELEV8ED Brand Development – starting at $1,800
- ELEV8ED Web Design – starting at $3,500
- ELEV8ED Product Photography – starting at $1,800
- ELEV8ED UX/UI – starting at 5,000
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seecooleyplay.com
- Phone: 4049692542
- Email: cooley@elev8edusc.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kingcooleyofficial/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/kingcooleyxiii/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/kingcooleyxiii
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/56dtkwoWMTKQQoOV4H0X7F
Image Credit:
Keenan Hadley
Christian Ossohou
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