Here's Teneka King's Secret Sauce For Transitioning From Graphic Designer To Art Director
This Creative Director explains her journey to create culture-defining work.
Teneka King is one of the happiest creative directors that I have ever seen. Not that the others I’ve spoken to aren’t grinning as we talk about their work and the state of the industry, but the hour or so we spend chatting (interview first, shooting the shit together afterward) shows me how content she is — with her career, her journey, her talent.
The sun’s glistening off her face; the coffee shop she’s sitting outside of has people packed like sardines outside of it. The family dog is in her lap, eagerly lashing its tongue out for her attention. She apologizes and rubs its furry head, seamlessly transitioning back to telling me about the skills you need to become a great art director when you have a background in graphic design. She’s smiling and letting them rip, dropping more bars than Drake does on a diss track.
“I love writing and I think that's another huge skill set for designers turned art directors, just to be able to express your ideas fully,” she says. “I know from a design perspective, you're trying a lot of things and you're kind of seeing what sticks, but being able to explain that and write that out is a definite huge help.”
King is Canada-born and raised, to Caribbean immigrant parents who wanted her to become a doctor or lawyer. As a kid, she took a drawing class and won a competition which kindled her interest in doing something creative.
King decided that she wanted to become a fashion designer, so she ended up going to college to study accounting and minor in marketing — with a plan to have something to fall back on if her career path didn’t work out. During her time in school, she realized that she loved the marketing classes. She liked the accounting ones.
King didn’t jump to the creative industry immediately though. When she graduated, she spent a few years at H&M as a visual designer where she worked with a lot of numbers and creative elements. Inspired by the experience, she went to the Fashion Institute of Technology and spent a couple of years in the Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design program.
It’s been one hell of a journey for her. Since starting her career as a graphic design intern at Conde Nast, she has become an in-demand creative for her design and art direction skills — helping companies like Alicia Keys’ nonprofit organization Keep A Child Alive and advertising agency TEN35 create ideas that impact culture.
In the nearly six years that she’s been specifically in the creative industry, she’s worked with clients like the NBA, Afropunk, and Meta — and she’s not slowing down anytime soon. She’s a Creative Director who’s hungry to create genuine work that matters.
“I think one thing that I would love to work on is something specifically for black women that enables them to see themselves,” she says about what she wants to do next. “I want a brand to give me the reins to just go for it. What I’ll create will be genuine, authentic, and powerful.”
Check out our full conversation below.
So, everyone has a unique story about how they discovered advertising. I always love to hear about it. What’s your story?
It happened during my first job out of college. I worked at Keep A Child Alive — a nonprofit organization founded by Alicia Keys. Since she’s an artist, and super creative, working there felt like I was in a small production studio. A lot of different agencies would come to us to pitch pro bono campaigns, so that became my first glimpse of advertising. Like, wow, there's a whole group of people who just go out and pitch ideas and walk away.
We worked with Droga5 at one point, and I was like, oh, that's so cool. At one point, I had a boss who came in from the ad world (specifically Wieden + Kennedy) and she would talk to me about it. That’s how I got really interested.
Now that I know how you discovered it, could you tell me how you got into art direction?
So, learning what advertising was one thing. Getting into the industry was a bit harder. I was already doing art direction at the nonprofit, but after I left the organization after six years, I decided that, after a sabbatical where I traveled around Africa for a few months to figure out what I wanted to do, I would take art direction seriously.
That led me to freelancing for almost a year and a half, just trying out different agencies. I had to work really hard to get people to see me as an art director because I had this design background — which is interesting to me because I believe that the two go together. It took a while to finally get my way in there, and I started off working as a freelancer at an agency as a designer doing a rebrand project. And then once I started doing that, people there were like, oh, okay. She can handle what an agency is like.
Initially, some of the feedback that I was receiving was “Oh, we don’t know if you can handle the pace of an agency.” And my response was like, have you ever worked at a nonprofit? The place is kind of crazy and you don’t have many things so you’re really, really scrappy. Honestly, I think at the time people just weren't really ready to accept non-traditional people that looked different or didn't come from an ad school so that I think was one of the biggest hurdles.
That's so interesting to me, the relationship between graphic design and art directors, because you would think the best art directors would start from a graphic design background. You set the tone of how things look and use a creative mindset to translate your thoughts to the medium you’re working in.
Yeah, I think it's interesting because I, in the world of graphic design, would learn that you start off as a junior designer, then you're senior designer, then you go into art direction. It was a natural progression. But in the advertising world, what I also realized in the design field, a lot of titles are the same — but the actions are different in different places. So coming into advertising, I'm like, I can visualize what something looks like and I can give it meaning, and that is my job as a designer. Art directors also do the same thing. I think what I've noticed a little bit more now is that the conceptual thinking part of it, how to sell an idea, is slightly different for art directors and designers.
I think with designers it's a lot more practical. And then when it comes to art direction, it's kind of more lofty. I think it's unfortunate that it's so hard to transition from one to the next. I've met many designers who want to be art directors and they face the same struggle, but it's like you have it in you, you just sort of need to hone in on specific skills. But in order to do that, you have to be at a place that's willing to work with you and do that — which I've realized isn't very common.
Being someone who’s made that transition from designer to art director, what do you think are some of the skills that you have to master to be successful?
I think thinking about your ideas in bigger ways as it relates to tactical things. As a designer, I can be like, all right, Nike is coming out with a new sneaker that is focused in the desert climate. As a designer I can create, maybe we want to do some tight faces that imitate the motions of sand, or if wind is blowing, what does that look like? And then I can bring that into the art direction. But then as an art director, the concept would be motion in the desert, movement in the desert. I don't know. We're picking up on the natural movements of the desert.
This is a horrible brief, but I think it's sort of thinking about it that way. It's literally the same concepts because the designers like, oh, I love the way the wind blows the sand and that's what I want to show in the typography, in the layouts. And then the art director is more so thinking of, well, what's the idea behind this? How do we hone in on selling the idea of movement and make it more tactical for the client to understand?
And then I think for me, I love writing and I think that's another huge skill set for designers turned art directors — just to be able to express your ideas fully. I know from a design perspective, you're trying a lot of things and you're kind of seeing what sticks, but being able to explain that and write that out is a definite huge help, especially when it comes to art direction. You have to be able to sell the idea and get it out of your mind.
Alright, so my next question for you is, so I saw that you've done a lot of freelance creative direction and held different roles for five years. I wanted to ask you, have there been any particular experiences that you think have played a big part in your evolution as a creative?
I think so. My path's been a little complicated. I was freelancing full-time for about two years and then I was full-time at an agency for almost three years up until now. So I think for me, having a really amazing team has helped tremendously. Working with a group creative director and people who really want to pour into you and mentor you and teach you their ways has been helpful. I prefer to do long-term freelance, so I like to stick with a client or stay in a place for a while. And I think on those kinds of projects, you really get to build relationships with people that help create bonds of trust and connection.
I’ll also say that I've been really fortunate to work on a lot of amazing brands, and I think the biggest gift is having a good client partner who is willing and wants to do something different. Instead saying that they want to be “disruptive,” they mean what they want to say.
Freelancing in general has been a big help, I think that a lot of the time when you're at an agency, you're on specific clients for a really long time. I think freelance allows you to touch more brands and do different types of things. Some agencies are only going to do the ad spots. Some agencies are digital first or print. Being able to move around helps you touch different kinds of work. Some people find their thing and they're like, this is what I want to do forever, but me being very non-traditional, I like to explore. I like to try different things.
What kinds of stories do you strive to tell most?
I strive to tell authentic, meaningful stories that make you think since I come from a nonprofit organization and doing socially good work. I heard a lot of people comment when I was moving into advertising that usually people do it the other way around because it's like after you've sold your soul for so long, you want to do something good. For me, coming at it from the reverse, I feel like it's prime time for us to bring social good messaging initiatives into the work that we're doing. Sure, we may be selling Coke or Pepsi, but can we do something more at the same time and can we think about how to be problem solvers?
I feel like advertising and marketing has so much control over how people think. Beyoncé says the media controls how the mind works and how people think, and I think that is huge, and it's a great opportunity for us to really impact people's lives and change things. For me, being a black person, I'm very much focused on diversity and inclusion, and I want to tell stories of people that look like me, or even just marginalized people who don't necessarily always have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in ads or let alone on TV or not connecting to a story.
If you had to think about anybody in pop culture, who would you compare yourself to as a creative and why?
This is a tough one. I would say Rihanna, and I say this because I connect with her story on many levels. My dad's from Barbados, she's from Barbados. I feel like we could be cousins, but I think I love that she's just being herself — very genuine and authentic no matter where she goes and how she shows up. She ebbs and flows in different spaces and different worlds, consistently reinventing herself and doing different things, whether that be from Savage x Fenty, to music, and more. She does it so seamlessly, and that's something that I strive to do to be able to operate in different spaces.
My last question for you is what do you want to do next creatively?
I feel like I've gotten to do quite a few crazy things that I feel super blessed to have been able to touch. I think one thing that I would love to work on is something specifically for black women that enables them to see themselves. I want a brand to give me the reins to just go for. It would be genuine, authentic, and powerful. I have touched things that speak to black women specifically, but I don't feel that brands have necessarily sent the message home.
And then the second one, right now, I really would love to do stage design for a concert or a performance of some sort. I think that is high on my bucket list.