Kamal Adisa is not your regular visual creative. The Nigerian-born storyteller is among the league of contemporary creatives putting African culture on the global map.

The Brooklyn-based storyteller graduated from Parsons School of Design with a major in Communication Design and a minor in Filmmaking. His exploits have piloted him into the arms of global popularity.

The Kwara indigene is notable for his design input on music albums by superstars including Wizkid, Doja Cat, Odunsi the Engine, Steve Lacey, among others. The multi-hyphenate sits down with Guardian Arts, tracing his evolution into the world of design, and his experiences navigating a global terrain.

Nice to meet you too. How’s it going?
It’s going great.

Where are you currently?
I am in Brooklyn right now.

When last were you in Nigeria, if I may ask?
It has been since 2019. December. So it’s been a minute that’s the longest I’ve been away from home, to be honest. Yeah, 2019 December.

Tell us about your trajectory in the design world. I wanted to know how Nigeria fits in with how you developed your interest in design.
I have always been into this art in general But then I was like I took it more seriously when I was In high school. so I went to high school in Jordan and then actually, like, from grade nine to 12. So I graduated, like in Jordan. And there was like, an AP art class that I took. That was basically you had to create a portfolio. And our portfolio was essentially what I used to apply to all the colleges. So, I will say that’s when I started taking it more seriously. When I saw that I could actually study it, and maybe get a career out of it. Yeah.

You had some exploits in the music scene. Give us the backstory into how the creative roll out the visuals of what we see?
Yeah, I mean, so it kind of varies depending on the artist, but my understanding of it is some artists have their creative teams that they like to work with, like someone like Tyler the Creator, for example. He knows exactly what he wants. And he knows like the people he works with. So usually they wouldn’t go to the in-house team or to directly go to go like, get those things done. Maybe get some additional help, but I would say other artists who tend to come to us. We have a creative team that specializes in. Maybe it’s the creative direction for the music videos for the photoshoots. Or it could be like building a website. Or it could be like, you know, animating, whatever we get from those shoots or you know And the art that we eventually end up working with and that’s where I work I work with The internal team like just the in house team for the record label to basically just work with whatever materials like the creative director are able to To get from the shoots Yeah You work with a marketing team To get that into a successful rollout.

Let’s go into the conundrum of being self-taught versus having to go to college for design.
It depends on your situation, but you can definitely make it as either. I think there are a lot of pros to learning, you know, like an educational space. But there’s also so much you have to learn even when, like I went to art school, to Parsons School of Design, and is one of the best schools for learning, like, you know, just design in general, one of the top schools for fashion and also other forms of design. And I would say, like, they don’t teach, they don’t make you, they teach you the technique, but it depends on you to like, take the technique as far as you want, you know, like they would let you know, you could do this thing, but you’re gonna have to put in the extra work to really learn how, you know, learn to get really good at it like any piece of like any like formal art, you’re going to learn how to like put in the work to get good at what you do. So I think the only big difference between being self-taught and learning it in like a school is just like the connections you have, like the access to the professors, you know, like they know things that you wouldn’t know they can easily just like something that would have taken an hour to do they could know how to do it in like half the time or less. So I think you can definitely make it as a self-taught person but you’re just going to have to put in the extra work to figure that out. And it usually pays off.

What’s your typical creative process?
I’d like to say like it’s depends on the project I’m working on but the process I follow a couple of things but It’s the process definitely like changes it depends on the work itself One of the first things that I like to do is Just focus on What topic it is that I’m trying to address. It could be like, maybe something as simple as I just want to look into retro Nigerian brands, for example, like maybe the ideas, I want to look back on, like, some childhood brands that I grew up with maybe like, goody- goody, tom-tom, you know, I see like what connection I have with that and like, what was happening back then because I’m also really into history. So I like to do research into like, what, what I’m exploring and eventually, I come up with a story as I do my research, which eventually just like, naturally does becomes its own thing. I think oftentimes, like when artists make art they are not fully in control what what the end points would be, you know, like you you might have something you might have like a strong idea beforehand, but that idea you know, changes over time, the more you play with it, so I would say I usually try to like stick to a story that I come up with, but that story definitely changes and all the ideas that I started with just kind of transform all that time the concepts transform over time turns into something beautiful now that people might you know, take and do something different with.

What’s next for you?
I currently don’t have an exhibition plan back home. But I would definitely want to do exhibitions back like I currently just follow a lot of really cool artists back home that want to go home but I want to go meet in person and hopefully collaborate with them. There’s like so many talents back home going from music obviously, to like actual, you know, fine art to like directing that I would like to eventually just work with back home in Nigeria. So I definitely want to go and I also want to but I don’t. I don’t have a project right now that is going to be taking place back home. But I am working on an animated show here in New York with a friend of mine and other collaborators and the plan is to just like interview other creatives here which can be eventually, extended to interviewing creatives in Nigeria that’s the hope like we just want to like talk to different people While doing some really cool work and had interviews with them.

Finally, if other creatives were to try to contact you. How would you be contacted or how do people contact you?
You could follow my instagram @Kamal Adisa and dm me from there and we could make something work.