Today we’d like to introduce you to Jo Skillman.
Jo, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When I graduated with a communications design degree in 2009, finding a job was hard, so I did a lot of hunting around and simply meeting with people who weren’t hired to get the experience showing my portfolio. There was one piece in the portfolio, this funky, weird music packaging experiment with slimy things drawn on it and no type whatsoever that EVERYONE hated. One hundred percent of the feedback on my work was “It’s all really good, but this thing should just go.” I never took it out, though, because I thought that if I found a person or business who appreciated that experiment, that I would probably be a good fit there. Fast forward a year and a half and I met Aimee, founder of Black Sheep, and she loved it more than anything else in the portfolio. I’ve been here ever since. I’m now our creative director.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The struggle with being any kind of creative is just that your whole livelihood is based on building things that have never existed before and solved problems for which there is no obvious solution. It’s challenging, and it’s easy to forget how much practice it takes! In the case of Black Sheep, we work with impact-driven clients making the world better, so my failure to build creative that rallies their audiences could mean that they fail, too, and that’s pretty unacceptable.
Even the more day-to-day struggles are nice when they convert to victories, but things like “DESIGN THIS INTERACTIVE BUILDING IN TIMES SQUARE IN LESS THAN A DAY” definitely happen and are not fun in the moment.
The Black Sheep Agency – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m The Black Sheep Agency’s creative director. We’re a brand strategy agency that’s also a B-corp, and we work solely with cause-driven driven clients—nonprofits, civic entities (like the White House, in 2015!) and for-profits with a social good focus. As far as our creative goes, we’re known for building memorable and distinct design systems chock full of details that inspire audiences to actively engage with our clients. Brands, logos and campaigns that are narrative in nature are so much more fun to work with, and they draw people in and inspire curiosity. We do a lot of building things by hand, like lettering with a brush and ink, or using vegetable stamps or physically collaging things together so they have a very unexpected and human quality.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a designer/artist, even as a very young child. Success for me now was what I envisioned success to be then: Making something that lives in the world, that delights people, that wasn’t there before I created it. There are not much criteria otherwise—I guess that it works for the client the way it’s supposed to!
On a very human level, I think success is just being a happy, interesting person, so I try to be intentional around decisions that impact those areas.
Contact Info:
- Website: theblacksheepagency.com
- Instagram: @jolayne0414
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