Designing for a Better Future | Erwin Hines

Erwin Hines is an artist, designer, and creative director.

 

Throughout his career, he has focused on doing work that fosters empathy and inclusivity across all disciplines. He uses design to examine and reflect tensions within the current cultural landscape with the end goal of creating space for conversation and empathy. Currently, he is the Founder and Creative Director of Future is Color, Creative Director & Co-Founder of OpenGym, and Creative Director & Co-Head of DE&I at BASIC.

I was fortunate enough to come across his work on Instagram and Twitter through other creatives that I follow. This was early summer of 2020, three months into the pandemic and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests across the world. He created a series of shirts to raise proceeds for organizations supporting the ground work and policy change. In July, the shirts raised $60,0000 and 100% of the proceeds went to:

  • Color of Change

  • ACLU

  • Know Your Rights Camp

  • NAACP SD Swag

  • The San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art

  • BLM LA

And currently, he continues to raise money and keep the conversation going.

We will be the generation that pushes for and sees a major shift. We will collectively dismantle White Supremacy and create a world that embraces the beauty in all.

When you look at his work, every project serves the people and the culture. Prior to this, he collaborated to create shirts for San Diego’s pizza joint, The Friendly and Craft Meals Catering for their program in helping feed families who are in need.


He grew up in Cleveland, OH where he watched his parents build affordable housing within the inner city. Watching the positive impact of designed space on people and community inspired him to pursue Architecture in his first year with the goal of becoming a city planner. During his first year in university, he fell in love with fine art and its ability to create a shift in the larger cultural fabric and decided to take some time off of school to really explore that side of his creativity. Over that year he started to discover the power of BRANDING and became enamored with the idea of a BRAND being a mental space that could help foster empathy and connection between people. Ultimately he started to see the theory of BRANDS as platforms for positive social and cultural change. He now works with organizations to help shape how they show up for their customers in a more authentic way that supports, uplifts, and amplifies the voices of the people.

“I can not separate being black from my work. My Blackness afforded me a set of experiences that have shaped a particular perception of society and people. I, as a black man, held space for other cultures my whole life which instilled a certain level of empathy that is now articulated in all of my work.”

Erwin Hines


Who/what are your biggest influences?
Pharrell, Kanye West, Virgil Abloh, Samuel Ross 

What’s been your favorite thing to create / work on in the past year? My favorite this to create is anything that serves as a vehicle for empathy. Over this past year that was the shirts.

What does community and culture mean to you? Community simply means love, empathy, and shared experiences between a group of people.Culture with a small C is the current zeitgeist and feeling while Culture with a big C is tied to the outward expression and influence of a specific community. 

Tell us about Future is Color and why mentorship for the youth is important?
Future Is Color is a platform for stories. It’s an ever evolving collection of artifacts that examine tensions within the cultural landscape from the Black lens. The goal of these artifacts are to reveal the nuanced and universally impactful stories of Black & Brown People. Underneath the future is color Erwin has also collaborated with a local school district from his home state, Ohio, to form Elevate Our Voices. Future Is Color – Elevate Our Voices is a mentorship program formed in partnership with Sandusky City Schools, the NAACP of Sandusky, and the Boys and Girls Club of Erie County. The mission is to help Black and POC youth from underrepresented communities see the power that their stories have to help define a better and more equitable future. 


Black and POC children often grow up seeing one-dimensional portraits of people who look like us within the media. On top of that, the education system has limited resources and is guided by state curriculum which has limited to no standards about Black and POC culture within america. Therefore, we tend to lack self knowledge and are left to define ourselves based on the perspectives of witness and eurocentric values. Those perspectives create mental frameworks that often limit us by diminishing the Black and POC experience. Our program will seek to root students in the nuanced beauty of their stories and experience, ultimately giving them the tools to stand on their story in all of its authenticity to shape their own future.  

When you are constantly told your story is not important you start to internalize that. Even if you move into spaces like the C suite you might be afraid to speak up because your whole life you have been told your story does not matter

MORE ON ERWIN

@Erwin_Hines

@future_is_color

@opengymsd

@experiencecrafted


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