We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nabi Bilal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nabi below.

Nabi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

It’s not easy being running a business, especially a creative business, but you find that risk is something inherent that we all deal with on different levels.

One of my big risks was choosing to resign from my job as senior web developer in February 2017 so that I could focus full time on my business, CreativeJunkFood. It was a decision that I went over, time and time again, in mind leading up to the day I finally submitted my resignation.

My business and friend, Candice Taylor, had resigned from her job a few months before me, so it was only right for me to take that leap as well, but it was still nerve wracking to know that I was saying goodbye to a consistent paycheck, 6 weeks of paid vacation, and healthy salary.

After more than five years if working for myself and on my business, I’m very happy that I took the risk because it allowed my company grow in a way that it would not have otherwise.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got exposed to traditional visual arts and foundational design principles while attending high school at Duke Ellington School of Arts. Actually, both my business partner, Candice Taylor, and I attended Ellington with a concentration in visual arts.

I attended Temple University for graphic and interactive design, but it wasn’t until my junior year that I got exposed to animation and coding, but I took to it like a fish out of water because I’m a person who thinks rather narratively when it comes to art those mediums allowed me to take my art to another level.

When we started CreativeJunkFood (CJF), the goal was to make each project we did feel like a work of art. The services we provide include animation/video, branding, public art, and creative direction. We work with nonprofits, private businesses, government organizations, community organization, and more. We enjoy teaming up with film directors, communications directors, marketing directors, founders, and other senior-level personnel to make their lives easier and to be that additional creative brain.

It’s hard to pick one thing that I’m most proud of, but I take pride in the relationships we’ve developed on this journey while doing some standout work. In that same breath, it was really cool that the film we animated, “Angola Do you Hear Us”, was shortlisted for a 2023 Oscar nomination in the best short film category

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had a bad habit of pulling all-nighters in my younger years. I sacrificed so much sleep between college and my mid-20s. Seeing as I was splitting my time between a day job and CreativeJunkFood in my younger years, I used to think that I just had to push through in order to meet deadlines. It ultimately led me to burnout.

I learned that getting good sleep is arguably the most important thing you can do for yourself when it comes to being a creative professional, let alone a business owner. It’s better to rest when your tired and wake up early than to pull a ton of all-nighters and be exhausted and worn out all of the time.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The very first project that we did as a company was a music video for Raheem DeVaughn’s song “Hopeless Romantic”. We imagined that we going to shoot the video on green screen and simply add effects to footage we captured of Raheem. Unfortunately, we encountered a lot of technical issues on the set that day and by the time we went to review the footage, we realized that really couldn’t use any of it, so we made the executive decision to rotoscope the video which was a lot more time intensive and painstaking. It felt like the video took thousands of hours to complete, but we got it done in the end.

So many lessons came from the post-production on that project, but in pushing through on that project, we learned a lot of different techniques and tricks, but mostly we proved to ourselves that we were capable of working as a team to figure out tough problems when they arise.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.creativejunkfood.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativejunkfood/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creativejunkfood-llc-73140a15b/

Image Credits
The other person in my Photo is Candice Taylor (CreativeJunkFood Co-founder)