Symbol for Island Record Co.

"Alex Walker opened his own design studio last year, after leaving a position with a studio which he had help for 13 years. This long stay with one firm is not unusual; when a black designer gets a job in the design field, he tends to keep it, knowing there is not an over-abundance of positions available to him. Looking back on his own experience, Walker states, 'Unusually long periods of employment at one job tend to hamper one’s creative process. Most white designers who eventually become award-winning art directors or make lots of money spent short periods of time in various studios and agencies. With each move, their knowledge, contacts, and usually their income increased. This is one modus operandi that has left the black designer in the dust.' One reason black designers don’t move around more is that they lack the all-important contacts in the field through whom job openings are referred. In his anxiety simply to get any work in the field, a black designer may get tied down to a department store or supermarket advertising department. Stuck in this backwater, he never gets to meet people in the mainstream and thus is unable to find out what is expected of a designer in a large-agency art department."— https://www.printmag.com/post/the-black-experience-1968?