Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melanie Walby. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Melanie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been doing a design exhibit called Clear Water that was really cathartic to create and share. In 2019, there was a racist incident at UW Eau Claire—the college in the town where I grew up. A group of students posted a photo of the kkk to their snapchat to mock a Black Men Empowerment group on campus. From Minneapolis, I followed the story as I had not lived there since 2006 however I visit my family and friends often and still feel very close to that community. Seeing the focus be on individuals and not the culture that allows people to make it all the way into adults thinking jokes like that are okay struck a nerve because it was in that same community that I was harmed throughout my childhood. Like any space that hasn’t examined its structural racism, it felt a little like we were being told it was handled and solved when the root of the issue was never acknowledged. I dealt with a lot of pushback that I was making claims specific to Eau Claire that could happen anywhere, but I didn’t grow up anywhere else. I grew up there. So I did my work there.

I had already been writing what I thought was an article called, “Too Sensitive” intended to debunk the common myth that people are overreacting. I also attend a church that teaches racial justice as spiritual formation and had been turning my notes from sermons into poster ideas. I contacted a close friend who worked on campus and asked to get in touch with the gallery. I wanted to turn my article into art. Those things combined led to Clear Water, a design exhibit I worked on throughout 2019, 2020 and 2021. The work was written as though it was a letter to another Black woman navigating anti-racist work within communities that respond harshly to criticism. It became a letter to my sister rooted in scripture, historical context and inspirational quotes/themes from over 40 citations.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit right after my proposal with UW Eau Claire was accepted and we made the hard decision to move the show to March of 2021. Little did we know at the time, in March 2021 we would still be in lockdown as the pandemic would stay for years and years. Because people weren’t able to attend in person, I had to reimagine the in-person events into a video that UWEC aired for a Livestream event premiere. I walked through the pieces in order and split up the artist talk with worship music and hymns to ease tension and control the mood and tone. I wanted people to learn how to see anti-racism work as a spiritual path to healing all from trauma. When led from a place of freedom and love we get to a much better place with our rightful anger and exhaustion. What I could never explain with conversations I was able to do with graphic design.

Since then, I have done another exhibition in Minneapolis with a live event telling the full story of how the work came together; what I was reading, what was going on in the news, and what sermons were happening at my church.. 

This body of work is for sale on my shop page and all the videos and interviews can be viewed at melaniewalby.com/clear-water.

Melanie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an illustrator, designer, public speaker and Creative Director living in Minneapolis, MN. In my full-time role as Creative Director at Pollen Midwest, a media arts nonprofit that harnesses the power of narrative change to build towards a society that is free, just, and loving, I lead our design department including three Art Directors and a pool of over 100 freelancers.

Growing up, I always loved to draw, paint and take photos. I was into design before I knew what it was—somewhere there is a high school newspaper interview of me talking about how I wanted to “be the person who laid out magazines” when I grew up. I recall getting a list of possible colleges from an art teacher my senior year which is how I found the Art Institutes International Minnesota. After doing my first year of generals at CVTC, I transferred to Ai and moved from Eau Claire, WI to Minneapolis, MN in 2006. In college, I did two internships. One at Vision Van Gogh where we primarily made merchandise for Christian bands (CD covers and apparel) and later, SpinIT which was a web design agency downtown Minneapolis that has since moved. I paid for bills during school by selling Estee Lauder at Macy’s and to this day, I still see a little influence from the type and photography I was surrounded by at that job and can hear myself using tricks they taught me to sell cosmetics to sell design to clients.

My first job out of school was at an agency called Vetta-Zelo where I mainly worked on Cat Paving. My first boss, JT, met me at my graduation and interviewed me shortly after the portfolio show. Next I worked as an Art Director at an agency called FLM. They work primarily in agriculture but have a range of clients from attornies that specialize in ag, big seed companies, soybean exec councils and a lot of experiential design for tradeshows, state fairs and sporting events. That work was a lot of illustrations and infographics which helped me get more work like that in the future. After FLM, I was a designer at Media Loft in Minneapolis. Their work is in corporate events, video production, motion graphics and speaker support. My role was to come up with the overall branding and concept in collaboration with my Art Director and Creative Director. From there, the art assets I made would go to motion graphic designers and video editors, speaker support artists who would design the presentations for the conferences, and various print and digital assets needed for each event. After two years at Media Loft, I worked as a designer at Ideas That Kick. They specialize in design and branding for pet packaging but also have a variety of clients in other fields. The work was a lot of really fun design, branding and illustration. We also did a lot of our own product photography so I learned a ton about staging work for clients and agency case studies.

The whole time I worked at all of those agencies, I was also involved with the Sustainable Design Committee for AIGA Minnesota. Our committee was about getting different people from different fields in space together to learn how sustainable design can get us all as close to zero waste as possible. Throughout the seven years I was volunteering with that group I served as a member, a committee chair and later the Associate Director with voting privileges on the board of directors for AIGA Minnesota. While it was volunteer, that work was what I enjoyed the most. I love event design and all the experiences you get to create for attendees that comes with it, I love curating speakers, vendors and sponsors and I love building community around a shared topic. It was about midway through 2016 that I started to wonder if I could make what I was doing for AIGA as a volunteer into a full-time job.

Around that same time I had connected with Juxtaposition Arts and Pollen Midwest to be part of one of my AIGA initiatives, Design Impact Series. Through that introduction, I discovered both orgs were already doing what I wanted to try. So I left AIGA and advertising to pursue a design career in the social sector. For a year, I split my time between the two org working as a designer at Pollen and the communication manager at JXTA. I went to Pollen full-time mid-2018 and have worked there as a designer, Art Director and now Creative Director.

People often ask if I prefer print, digital, advertising, typography or illustration. I struggle with that question because the nature of being a designer is creating different types of work. I don’t have a preference for what “the thing” is that I’m making. What I love to do is take very complex ideas, themes, ideologies, narratives and so on—learn as much as I can about them— then create something as simple as possible for folks to understand why and how to do the call to action. My favorite thing to design is change.

Designers are in the business of changing people’s minds and behavior. We studied how to do it in school. We practice it every time we write out a creative brief; target audience, current attitude, desired attitude, call to action. And we see that it works—we collect the stories and metrics to prove the results. With today’s 24 hour news cycle, infinite “doom scrolling” at our fingertips, a decline in upholding facts and a global rise of fascism it is harder and harder to be apathetic to the realities that harm so many communities. While it can be tempting to fall into hopelessness, marginalized communities who never get to turn it off can lead us in taking that knowledge as inspiration to get involved in the changes that are making things better. Alongside the awareness of the terrible, there’s an awareness of how to do something about it, too. I don’t really believe “Design for Good” or “Sustainable Design” is some field that certain artists do while others don’t. I think it’s all of our roles—no matter where we work—to turn what we already know and already do into something that can help bring healing to this world. To pitch in with whatever we got. I’m inspired by so many others who did this first and I hope to inspire more people to do it next.

You can find me at melaniewalby.com and @LemanieGrace

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are so many great resources on rates and payment structures for designers. When I speak with design students, I most often point to Talent Is Not Enough: Business Secrets For Designers by Shel Perkins, Brutally Honest by Emily Ruth Cohen, and this open call inviting designers to anonymously share their salary. bit.ly/3tpZWgV

It also took me a really long time to find a tax person because I had a few folks in a row that either retired or were too booked to repeat services with me. I finally have a consistent person and this will now be the third time my husband and I will be working with her. Finding someone you like that will memorize your unique situation as a designer with all the miscellaneous income and expenses you have is invaluable. Doing it by yourself will inevitably cost you money so consider budgeting or fundraising if saving up isn’t an option for you. There are experts available to help ease your stress and save you money.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I have this saying, “Why would anyone go to your stuff if you’re not going to their stuff?” When other people have art shows, design talks, art openings and panel discussions I show up. While I’m there, I meet people. Those relationships inevitably lead to work because when artists are in a room together, they find ways to collaborate.

Contact Info:

• Website: melaniewalby.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/lemaniegrace
• Twitter: twitter.com/LemanieGrace
• Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCj4XNCRBLyeWpouFmu7S4pA
• Other: pollenmidwest.org instagram.com/pollenmidwest

Image Credits
Video still by Owen Brafford; Photography by Nick Walby, Jay Larson, Emily Barrera, Adja Gildersleve; Images sourced from links below:
melaniewalby.com/clear-water, melaniewalby.com/portfolio/designimpactmn, melaniewalby.com/portfolio/polli-nation, pollenmidwest.org/collection/reimaginepublicsafety pollenmidwest.org/collection/reimaginepublicsafety
Up-2-Something Pollen Midwest