So get inspired, and support these incredible LGBTQ+ designers making waves in the creative industry. 

7 LGBTQ Designers You Should Know About

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4 Visual Accessibility Resources for Designers

Designs are only as successful as your user makes them out to be.

Jinkx Monsoon "The Ginger Snapped" // Tour Intro Animation

Daniel Quasar - transmit (Official Music Video)

7 Non-Binary Designers You Should Know About

7 Nonbinary Designers You Should Know About

Brands have gone to court over color trademark battles for years - check out some of the biggest color wins.

Can you own a color?

Two chocolate companies walk into a courtroom to battle over... the color purple. 

7 Female Designers You Should Know About

Houston Landing is a local nonprofit newsroom with no paywalls to provide essential journalism that empowers our communities.

Meet Houston Landing: designing the next frontier of local news

A new, nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet for local voices.

Seven Black Designers You Should Know About

When we look at design history books, we see Eurocentric covered pages with names, photos, and pieces of work. These books ultimately set the standard in student’s minds on what “good design” looks like. The books that influence our outlook on the design world lack representation and voices from influential designers of color who played crucial parts in shaping that said design world.  It’s no secret that black designers are overlooked and under-applauded. It’s time to change that reality by learning their names, recognizing their work and teaching the new generation of designers that ‘good design’ is more expansive than what a design history textbook can hold.

7 Black Designers You Should Know

7 Native American Designers You Should Know About

Support Indigenous designers in the creative industry.

7 Asian + Asian-American Designers You Should Know About

This AAPI Heritage Month we wanted to highlight these Asian + Asian American designers. Maybe you'll find a new favorite designer.

Expand your design horizons this AAPI Heritage Month.

Movistar: Love Story

H&M Conscious: Bring it on

Propaganda Bandwagon - Old Navy Commercial

Always #LikeAGirl

Things Go Better With Coke

Full Pepsi Commercial Starring Kendal Jenner

Beats By Dre | Powerbeats Pro | Unleashed

Febreze Commercial-Josh's room

Samsung Note 9 Dongle (DEX) Commercial

He Said Cigarettes To Women Are "Torches Of Freedom"

FLEX  TAPE® Commercial

The word propaganda carries a lot of negative weight compared to the word advertising. Propaganda is associated with evil, manipulation and a dystopian society. Whereas advertising is associated with an annoying, unavoidable but scrollable, part of our day-to-day life.
One feels harmful, the other feels harmless. 

Propaganda is limited to a specific agenda or mission. Advertising builds upon that by adding in goods, services, and ideas. Many, if not all of the day-to-day ads we scroll past or walk by incorporate some level of propaganda to pursued you into buying that said good, service, or switching up how you view something.

Propaganda in Advertising

Red means stop and green means go, but what happens when you are red-green color blind?

The Traffic Light Flaw

A deep and semi-unscientific look into how designers simplify in order to create.

Why Do Designers Wear Black?

Color runs through our veins as designers but we don’t wear it on our sleeves. 

A deep-dive into the history, complexities and clarity that comes with logos.

Why Are Logos A Thing?

Let's throw it back to the very beginning of logo design.

Bill and Jo discuss inclusivity, diversity and the importance of civic action while taking a look at the League of Women Voters of Houston brand.

Offset Path: The League of Women Voters of Houston

“Offset path” is a function in design program Adobe Illustrator. It’s also the name of our design discussion series that looks at how Black Sheep rebellious brands and campaigns for social impact that are different from, well, the usual “path.” To know when Offset Path episodes are announced or to watch us live on Instagram, follow @shearcreativity. Hosts are Black Sheep’s Creative Director Jo Skillman and Senior Designer/Illustrator Bill Ferenc.

Bill and Jo talk through the process of building Houston and Harris County’s “YES! to the Census” campaign to prevent an undercount for Census 2020.

YES! to the Census

Transforming healthcare for children and their families: Doug Dietz at TEDxSanJoseCA 2012

A greater understanding of empathy in design.

The Power of Empathy in Design

Why your brand needs a purpose, a personality and a point of view to live in the real world

Branding Like You Mean It

We believe in the power of great design to build creative concepts that push nonprofit communities to the brink of action.

How to use design to activate people for good

For years I’ve been designing logos, brands, and engagement campaigns for a brand strategy and creative agency called Black Sheep. We’re called Black Sheep for all the reasons you might guess: We do things differently. We’re ahead of the curve. We break the rules. Blah, blah, blah, insert predictable design agency phrase here. 

Donating Your Work: Don’t Get Taken for a Ride

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been hit up for free (or deeply discounted) work.

Keep your hand up if you said yes to doing the free (or deeply discounted) work because it was “for a good cause.”

Drop that hand onto your face if you ended up hating everything about the experience of the free (or deeply discounted) work you ended up doing. That’s a facepalm, and it’s the correct response to a whole lot of the donated work designers and marketers end up doing.

Condensed

Did you let Valentine’s creep up on you? Were you bummed with the lack of creativity in this year’s crop of cards?

Valentine’s Printables

Most branding advice assumes one organization with one leader making the final call. Coalitions, networks with local chapters and groups of partners chasing a shared goal don't work that way. They decide together, priorities compete and the smallest partners often have the fewest people to carry the brand once it exists.

We've been working through these dynamics with the Houston Cultural Districts and the institutions and artists around them, building a shared brand for the city's arts scene. Recently, our team walked through that process at the Houston Media Conference in a luncheon keynote called "Undefinable On Purpose." 

Here's what we've learned that applies to any organization whose brand depends on partners it doesn't control.


Who needs to be heard before a shared brand can take shape?

A shared brand needs input from everyone who will be asked to use it, champion it or be represented by it. Those groups overlap less than most leaders expect. Funders and civic partners tend to focus on visibility and economic impact. Practitioners care about credibility and fair representation. Community members want to know whether the story sounds like them.

We layer our research so each group is heard where they'll be most candid:

1:1 interviews draw out honest perspectives from decision-makers.

Focus groups show how people negotiate their differences in real time.

Sitting in on partner board meetings, when we're invited, adds context no interview can.

This phase doubles as early community building. People are far more likely to adopt a brand they helped shape.

Try this: Before any creative work starts, list every group that will use, fund or be represented by the brand. Then decide how you'll hear from each one.


How should research tensions inform brand strategy?

A tension is a place where two things people care about pull in different directions, and both sides are usually true. Tensions show where people are most invested, which makes them some of the most useful findings research can turn up.

On our work with the Houston Cultural District, nearly every strength came with a risk. Greater visibility for neighborhood arts could accelerate displacement in communities already under pressure. Recognition tends to concentrate around large institutions, leaving midsize organizations and mid-career artists out of the story. And many of the stakeholders who want a stronger collective story are the same ones who resist being summarized.

Most complex nonprofits carry their own versions: headquarters versus chapters, legacy programs versus emerging ones, a national message versus local identity. Naming them explicitly gives the creative team something real to design around. It also moves the hard conversations to the start of the process, where they cost the least.

Try this: Write your biggest tensions into the research findings as plain either/or statements. Then decide together how the brand will handle each one before design begins.


How can a brand reflect real complexity without losing clarity?

A brand can hold complexity only when it commits to a clear point of view. When research keeps concluding that a community is everything at once, creative teams stall and strategy drifts toward language that feels safe and says very little. Jo Skillman, our creative director on this work, named this risk directly in the creative brief:

"We've all heard it said: Houston is a little bit of a lot of things. Diverse, a tapestry rich with culture. However, trying to be everything to everyone will water down our visual and written creative. The brand directions we propose must contain a strong point of view on who we are and why. It's difficult but necessary."

The shared brands that hold up best work as a frame. They hold many stories at once while making a clear claim about what connects them. That gives participants room to see themselves in the brand without diluting the whole.

Try this: Test every brand direction with one question: could another city or coalition say this about itself? If the answer is yes, it isn't specific enough yet.


How do you keep a coalition aligned through creative decisions?

Alignment depends on agreeing to the goal in writing before anyone sees creative. We view the creative brief as the document that nails everything to the wall. Keep it short and candid, and use it to surface likely friction before hours go into design.

The brief earns its keep later, when feedback drifts toward personal preference. The group doesn't need to agree on the shade of blue. It needs to agree the work is reaching the larger goal. With many decision-makers, holding that line keeps reviews productive and protects the timeline.

When stakeholders are creatives themselves, start with a session reviewing a wide range of visual references. The value is in the reasoning behind each reaction, which gives the group a shared vocabulary for every review that follows.

Try this: Open every creative review by rereading the brief's goal out loud. Ask reviewers to tie each piece of feedback back to it.


How does a shared brand stay recognizable across very different organizations?

Consistency in a distributed brand comes from a small set of elements that never change. A system that has to work on a neighborhood mural and a museum banner needs a recognizable thread, whether a color, a mark, a pattern or a phrase. Protect those elements and let everything around them flex to fit the partner and the setting. 

Adoption also depends on capacity. Many coalition partners have no designer or communications staff, so participation has to be easy. Toolkits, templates, co-branding guidance and ready-to-post assets lower the barrier and help smaller organizations stay visible within the brand.

Try this: Choose the few elements partners can never change. Then build a starter kit that a partner with no designer could use in an afternoon.


When should rollout planning begin for a multi-stakeholder brand?

Rollout planning should begin while the brand is still in development. A shared brand gains value only through use, so partner onboarding, distribution and digital activation need to be designed alongside the identity. Each partner should see a role that matches its capacity, from a large institution running a full campaign to a small organization sharing a single post. Planning early also surfaces practical questions, especially around funding, while there's still time to solve them.

Try this: Ask each partner now what they could realistically do in the first month after launch, and build the plan and budget around those answers.


What makes a shared brand worth the effort?

A brand built across many organizations takes more listening and more deliberate facilitation than one built for a single institution. The return is a story more people feel ownership of and will carry into their own work.

If you're leading a coalition, network or multi-partner effort and the brand keeps stalling, we can help. 

Coalitions and multi-partner networks need a brand everyone can carry. Lessons from building a shared Houston arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts, with steps to try.

How to Build One Brand for Many Organizations | Black Sheep

What building a shared Houston arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts taught us about building one brand for many organizations

Coalitions don’t get one decision-maker or one story. Here’s what we learned building a shared arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.

How Can a Coalition Share One Brand?

7 LGBTQ+ Designers You Should Know About