{"id":28529,"date":"2021-11-27T10:37:03","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T10:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/temi-coker-takes-his-art-from-adobe-creative-residency-to-academy-awards\/"},"modified":"2021-11-27T10:37:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T10:37:03","slug":"temi-coker-takes-his-art-from-adobe-creative-residency-to-academy-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/blog\/adobe\/temi-coker-takes-his-art-from-adobe-creative-residency-to-academy-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Temi Coker takes his art from Adobe Creative Residency to Academy Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Temi Coker, an artist whose wide-ranging work and visual style are rapidly becoming iconic, is reimaging a worldwide icon \u2014 the Academy Awards Oscar statuette.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

2018 Adobe Creative Resident and multidisciplinary artist. Book jacket designer for a New York Times bestseller. Creator of portraits of LeBron James, H.E.R., and other Black Future Makers for a nationwide AT&T campaign. Temi Coker is an artist whose wide-ranging work and visual style are rapidly becoming iconic, so it\u2019s only fitting that he was recently asked to reimagine a worldwide icon \u2014 the Academy Awards Oscar statuette.<\/p>\n

Adobe is proud to have played a part in Temi\u2019s artistic journey, and we are excited that he has found such tremendous success bringing his visions to life. Read on to learn about his path from the Adobe Creative Residency to his current achievements, and check out examples of his incredible work.<\/p>\n

Exploring and experimenting as an Adobe Creative Resident<\/h3>\n

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and later a resident of Dallas, Texas, Temi joined the Adobe Creative Residency in 2018. The program gives talented creators access to the best creative tools and resources, guidance from advisors, and a compensation package for a whole year. In return, Residents share their processes and inspirations with the community as they proactively pursue their own creative projects.<\/p>\n

Temi spent his Residency year exploring the possibilities when merging his two favorite media \u2014 photography and graphic design \u2014 and he honed a signature style that evokes emotion through vibrant color, patterns, textures, and storytelling. Temi also got comfortable using his unique voice to influence thousands of us, as he took on big projects. He designed the 2018 Adobe MAX hoodie in partnership with Adidas, and was highlighted in the MAX event keynote by Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO. Temi collaborated with Adobe\u2019s brand marketing team on a Golden State Warriors (NBA basketball team) campaign, he advocated on behalf of Adobe \u2014 talking about his creative journey in press interviews, and he hosted the creative activation for Adobe at the 2018 Cannes Lions Festival in France.<\/p>\n

Helping brands deliver important social messages<\/h3>\n

Since completing his Residency, Temi has found himself in high demand by a variety of major brands. He\u2019s gravitated toward doing commercial work that aligns with his Christian values, his passion for social justice, and his love of the Black community.<\/p>\n

Temi designed inspiring art featuring young coders for Black Girls Code ads and posters. He created art exploring character dynamics in Season 4 of the Issa Rae HBO series, Insecure. And for HarperCollins, he designed the book jacket for Punching the Air, a young adult novel from bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five. The story, about a wrongfully incarcerated teenage boy who finds refuge in words and art, spoke to Temi.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI wanted to make the main character look heroic,\u201d he says. \u201cI added a butterfly to symbolize growth, evolving, and the character being a beautiful piece of art despite the cocoon he was in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temi also lent his talents to help Adobe honor heroes in 2020. As part of a campaign paying tribute to essential workers, he created a portrait of his friend, a preschool teacher named Shalyn. \u201cShe was taking care of kids in daycare because their parents were essential workers as well,\u201d he says. \u201cThe only people who were getting noticed were doctors and nurses, and I liked that Adobe was open to finding someone different, so I took a picture of her and turned it into art.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He says that when Shalyn saw the ad campaign on TV, she was overwhelmed. \u201cShe\u2019s Black,\u201d he says, \u201cand again it felt great bringing the community together and making that person feel even more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

When AT&T wanted to pay homage to Black leaders for this year\u2019s Black History Month, the company reached out to Temi. He describes the project, called Dream in Black, as a dream come true. \u201cThe idea for the campaign was to give these people flowers for the amazing things they\u2019re doing in the community. And they inducted me into it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had wanted to do something like this before COVID-19, where I was going to turn people into a poster and print it right then and there for them to take home,\u201d he says. \u201cWith the AT&T campaign, now people are able to do it in their houses\u2014we created a tool on the website where you upload your picture to create a custom portrait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temi says that projects like these have given him confidence \u2014 and not just in his artistic abilities. \u201cI\u2019ve realized that I have a voice,\u201d he says. \u201cI have an opportunity right now to lift the Black community, and I want to create artwork that\u2019s timeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reimagining a coveted award to speak to representation<\/h3>\n

Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited seven international artists to answer the question \u201cWhat do movies mean to you?\u201d This year\u2019s campaign tagline, \u201cBring Your Movie Love,\u201d is about our personal connections to movies. The campaign features an expanded color palette, and the artists were asked to reimagine the Oscars statuette in new, colorful, and bold ways \u2014 bringing their personal inspirations and interpretations to the work.<\/p>\n

Temi Coker was one of those artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they sent me the picture I was almost scared to say, \u2018Can I make this Black?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWe had a meeting where they asked me what movies mean to me, and I said, \u2018Movies mean representation.\u2019 I like when stories are told from our perspective. Not Black films by white people, but Black films made by Black men and Black women.\u201d<\/p>\n

He felt inspired by Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award. \u201cShe paved the way,\u201d Temi says. \u201cA lot of Black artists were awarded later because of what she did, her bravery. Because she did, we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Academy reps loved his idea. \u201cSo I made it Black,\u201d he says. \u201cI literally wrote \u2018Black\u2019 on the statuette. I added color, vibrancy\u2014things that would just call attention to Black voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Using Adobe apps to create his vision<\/h3>\n

To design the statuette art, Temi says, \u201cI used Adobe Photoshop and my new best friend, Adobe Fresco. I cut out the parts I needed in Photoshop using the Pen and Lasso tools, saved them in the cloud, then brought them into Fresco and started drawing on top of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s enthusiastic about the possibilities of drawing and painting anywhere in Adobe Fresco. \u201cI love it,\u201d he says. \u201cThe idea of vector and raster brushes in the same app, saving to the cloud, and being able to access the art on my desktop to tweak and change colors \u2014 that was a game changer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Designing a promising future<\/h3>\n

Temi continues to be an advocate for Adobe by showcasing our products in unique ways. In fact, he just\u00a0designed his first NFT piece as an Adobe Aero file that sold for $7,000.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a phenomenal talent, a socially conscious artist, and a great example of how programs like the Adobe Creative Residency can support and showcase a broader range of voices in a way that benefits everyone.<\/p>\n

So what would Temi Coker like to accomplish next? \u201cI\u2019d like to create something called Coker University,\u201d he says, \u201cwhere we teach kids design and then hire them or help them find jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that this goal aligns with one of the artist\u2019s favorite sayings, \u201cLift as you climb.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source : Adobe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Temi Coker, an artist whose wide-ranging work and visual style are rapidly becoming iconic, is reimaging a worldwide icon \u2014 the Academy Awards Oscar statuette. 2018 Adobe Creative Resident and multidisciplinary artist. Book jacket designer for a New York Times bestseller. Creator of portraits of LeBron James, H.E.R., and other Black Future Makers for a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28536,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28529\/revisions\/28536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepicpedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}