We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kishara Buford a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kishara , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I definitely wished I started my career sooner. As an artist and a designer, getting my work in front of people is the best way to get name recognition, sales, and more opportunities. That’s something that takes time. Even now, I would still describe myself as an emerging artist. I like to take every chance that I can, but building traction in the hyper digital, post pandemic world has proven difficult. There is also a lot of lessons you don’t learn until your out there, lessons that I wish I would have known years ago to have taken advantage of opportunities and waves before they came and went.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hello, my name is Kishara Buford and I am an artist, designer, and the founder of KuDaichi Design LLC. Art has always been an act of expression and communication, so I wanted to have control over what I created and who I created it for. To have that kind of control over my career, I decided to create that place myself. There are two sides to KuDaichi Designs; the brand of original designs that I create and the graphic design consulting. The KuDaichi designs are my main focus. Printed on demand and shipped right to you, I pride my work on its originality. I design street wear for everyone; colorful graphics and designs, from shirts and sweaters, to bags, has and even shoes. I try to keep everything affordable, but sometimes quality just doesn’t come cheap. Like my Handcrafted BunnyMan Slip-Ons. But I don’t just stop at my own brand. I have helped several up and coming brand get the ball rolling by creating eye popping brands; including logos, brand colors, and fonts. With a BFA in Visual Communication, I take ever step to express your brand the best way possible. I create boards and keep on constant communication throughout the process so that I know I am expressing your feelings properly and create dozens to protentional designs and color pallets until I know we are getting it right.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

When it comes to what I think society could do, I think I good way is to value art more. Not in just a financial sense; though I do think help pursing art would be a great way to support them; but as a way to enhance the beauty of the world. I see beautiful works of graffiti art spiraled around the hidden corners of LA. But what if these pieces weren’t acts of vandalism, but planned as a part of environmental and civil design? Not only would cities not seem so dull, but the people who created these works would have ample opportunity not just in galleries’ but in front of everyday people to display their creativity.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Originally I enjoyed the concept of NFTs. I work in both in traditional medias as well as digital and it was clear that the traditional works were values more because they cannot be so easily reproduces as digital pieces could be printed. The devaluing of digital works made them only useful when mass produces. Initially, I thought NFT’s would be a way to fix that issue. A way of making digital works as unique and thus as valuable as traditional art pieces. But the idea fell apart. Tied to crypto currency and AI generated art programs, the market for NTF’s became saturated and bloated with hundreds of slightly altered copies of the same designs being sold as original pieces. As of right now, the market has completely dried up for NFT’s, Most of them have no value and some people lost a lot of money in that market. I still think the unbalanced value between digital and traditional media should be addressed, but it looks like NFT’s won’t be the way to do it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kudaichikish.design/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kudaichi_kish/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kishara-buford/
• Other: www.kisharabuford.design