S8E5: Kelly Walters

Kelly Walters is the founder of the multidisciplinary studio Bright Polka Dot and an assistant professor of communications design at Parsons School of Design.

In her work, Walters explores Black visual culture such as reaction GIFs and posters promoting films with Black performers. Her studio course in Black visual culture encourages similar explorations, and students approach the material with from wide range of perspectives:

There is a spectrum of understanding what blackness is — and that it’s not a monolith. There were students in my class who were of African descent, but did not grow up in the U.S., to students who did grow up in the U.S. but were anywhere from in the city, outside the city, in the suburbs.…In terms of the delivery of this material, both in terms of historical documents or archival documents that I might share, or trying to have a lecture about any of this, there’s trying to figure out where people are with their comfortability and their understanding of some of this. Some people need a significant amount of context.

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By Jessica Helfand & Ellen McGirt

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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Ellen McGirt is an author, podcaster, speaker, community builder, and award-winning business journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media company that has maintained the same clear vision for more than two decades: to expand the definition of design in service of a better world. Ellen established the inclusive leadership beat at Fortune in 2016 with raceAhead, an award-winning newsletter on race, culture, and business. The Fortune, Time, Money, and Fast Company alumna has published over twenty magazine cover stories throughout her twenty-year career, exploring the people and ideas changing business for good. Ask her about fly fishing if you get the chance.