Kieron Lewis on The New Brownies’ Book, D&AD New Blood and Adobe Live
Officially published late last year by San Francisco-based publisher Chronicle Books, The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families (2023) by scholar Dr. Karida L. Brown and artist Charly Palmer. Inspired by the original The Brownies’ Books (1919-1921) by W.E.B. Du Bois, The New Brownies’ Book combines parts of the original magazine with essays, poems, stories, photographs, and artworks of Black contemporary writers and artists. To package this impressive anthology, the Atlanta based couple joined forces with London-based graphic designer Kieron Lewis.
Kieron is a freelance graphic designer with over a decade-long career in the industry, working on numerous projects for clients including Harper Collins, Huawei, Laurence King Publishing, and the UK’s National Health Service. He has done numerous publication work prior to The New Brownies’ Book including designs for Body: Simple Techniques and Strategies to Heal, Reset and Restore (2022) by James Davies, Still Breathing: 100 Black Voices on Racism, 100 Ways To Change The Narrative (2021)edited by Suzette Llewellyn and Suzanne Packer,and more. Reaching out to him via email, Chronicle Books entrusted Kieron with The New Brownies’ Book project as the sole designer. “I had an editor who I was working alongside from Chronicle based in San Francisco and we had, I don’t know, maybe fifteen, sixteen zoom calls. Because obviously it’s a year long project and they’re in San Francisco, I’m in London. Time difference is always a thing. So I’m having to do a full day of work, shower, dinner, and then back online to have a call. But the team was awesome,” Kieron explained. He also mentioned how Chronicle Books gave him quite a lot of freedom in terms of how he wanted to execute the design of the book with the team at Chronicle having seen his previous publication work and was bestowed a level of trust by the publisher considering he had been the sole designer on other publication projects.
The New Brownies’ Book carries a hefty legacy. The original Brownies’ Book magazines were the first magazines ever to be aimed at Black children. Originally created by sociologist, historian, and founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The Brownies’ Book magazines allowed black children to see themselves reflected in these stories. Now, over a century later, The New Brownies’ Book is carrying on that mission. “Obviously, 1920s to 2024, massive gap right?” Kieron chuckled, “And I think two things were taken into consideration. One; we want to still pay homage to what they’ve done in the 1920s and the impact they would have had on the community, especially the Black community, in particular, young Black children. So fast-forward to this year, I had to try keep in mind the audience that would be viewing this publication. So that allowed me to kind of be a little bit more playful with typography. It allowed me to be experimental with the materials of the actual books. So, I tried very hard to keep that essence, and look, and feel of the original publication back then but bring it back in to this day and age, which allows the audience and the reader to feel engaged and actually part of something, part of history, and still understand the history that was there previously.”
Kieron felt that the design came down to keeping things quite visual as opposed to the original 1920s publications which, while beautifully designed, were very much text heavy. “I don’t know if it’s because obviously we’re in the day and age of social media,” he began to explain, “but my brain tends to work very well with visuals and color. So, I tried to streamline the content, and obviously the text is very much in there but I tried to make it quite visually engaging. So in the book, when you go through it, you’ll see full bleed spreads of some of the graphics because, one; the graphics are really beautiful, and two; it kind of makes sense to feel quite immersed within it rather than it feel like a thumbnail in like let’s say a four page grid. It sets itself up for a nice full bleed imagery.”
Meanwhile, in terms of color, Kieron decided to go for a more limited palette of four colors. “That was because I didn’t want it to feel like we just threw everything at it just for it to be engaging for the sake of it. I feel like maybe three or four [colors] was probably where we wanted to keep the color palette,” he explained. In an effort to also retain an essence of the original Brownies’ Book magazine, Kieron also employed the use of a grainy texture on the paper. “So obviously, through the material of the print you can do that but, because of the materials they would have used back in the 1920s, that kind of off white color, from almost like oatmeal paper stock, I tried to apply that with texture in terms of graphics on our spreads as well. So you’ve got some nice clean thumbnail imagery on the clean white crisp paper but you’ve also got some pages where you’ve got that oatmeal texture and grainy-like effect on top of text, which kind of paid homage to back then. So I tried to merge the two together.”
Rather being challenging from a design perspective, Kieron found The New Brownies’ Book challenging more so from a logistical point considering he was working with the Chronicle Books team across the pond while working on other ongoing projects as well as being a first time father. “It was the juggling act of being a freelance designer slash dad, slash husband, slash trying to be a human being,” he said wryly. It’s not difficult to see just how much Kieron had on his plate. On top of being a freelance designer and father, Kieron is also heavily involved with D&AD, having the host of the annual awards this past May as well as acting as part of the jury panel on this year’s D&AD New Blood Awards, which focuses on students, graduates, and aspiring creatives. While this is not his first year judging on the New Blood panel, he is continually impressed by the work submitted into the awards. “I’m 33 years old, I’m not that old, but when I see creatives, especially young creatives and how they understand the brief, and most importantly, how they create based on what they think would work, it’s almost like you see the mechanics of their brains, which I think is incredible,” he said.
Now also a regular host of Adobe Live, Kieron’s involvement with Adobe Live began, incidentally, the day he handed in his notice from his full-time job. That very evening, Adobe just so happened to have emailed him to reach out regarding taking part in Adobe Live. It involved designing a brief live on a livestream hosted by Adobe over the course of three days. “Three days for two hours which is intense. It’s very intense,” Kieron chuckled. Two months following that first stream, Adobe reached out again to see if Kieron was interested in hosting the livestream this time around. “So rather than being the designer on the hot seat, I am now the host. So I thought maybe that could be easier! And that was three years ago now,” Kieron reminisced. He now regularly flies back and forth between London and the Adobe headquarters in Munich, Germany for these livestreams.
It’s clear to see that Kieron’s experience and keen eye in editorial design was the right fit for The New Brownies’ Book anthology. Considering the immense historical and cultural significance of this anthology, Kieron certainly delivered. The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families (2023) went on to win ‘Outstanding Literary Work—Non-fiction’ at the 55th NAACP Image Awards, making it the first book that Kieron has worked on to be bestowed an award. The book is a beautifully brainchild of the two authors Dr. Karida L. Brown and artist Charly Palmer as well as Kieron himself and successfully honors the incredible of the original Brownies’ Book magazines.
Images courtesy of Chronicle Books