Many graphic designers in Nairobi go straight from art school into the world of advertising, and the transition from art student to commercial crusader is not always easy. Omondi Abudho is an experienced art director and has worked in many of the major advertising agencies (Creative Edge, Ogilvy, the Brand Wagon) in Nairobi. UP met with him for a talk about the art in advertising—and the future of Nairobi’s graphic designers. Omondi has come a long way since his first brush strokes in design school.

Educated at the Buru Buru Institute of Fine Arts of Design, he did not touch any computer-based graphic design tools before he ventured into his first internship at the Nation Media Group. “I had to learn the trade from scratch when I came out of school. In Buru Buru, they don’t really teach you on computers. If you do a poster, you draw it by hand, and then you paint it. It teaches you to think in a minimalistic way. You think the concept through before you execute it. But you are very much behind when you get your first job,” he says. Omonidi values his education, but sees a clear disconnect between the classic skills he was taught in school and the practical skills it requires to work at an advertising agency. But it is not only the skillset that needs to be developed when a young art student enters the hallways of an agency. They are immediately faced with an even bigger challenge—the client.

“One of the hardest things can be to take direction from the client. Sometimes they want to dictate the output in a big way,” Omondi admits. “They want a font that looks like something from the 19th century, they want the logo to be bigger, or they want to cram as much text into the page as possible. They don’t believe in white space. They think the more, the better.” A firm believer in minimalism, this art director sometimes finds it hard to compromise in order to meet clients’ wishes. But Omondi also admits that finding the balance between artistic expression and what the client really wants is where the true art lies in his trade. “What defines creativity is taking the brief from the client and still delivering something artistic. Then you have it. You should be able to give them what they want and still maintain the creative edge. In a holistic way that is how creativity is defined,” he elaborates.

Frustrated over his own education, Omondi has decided to pave the way for a new generation of graphic designers by bridging the gap between art school and the agency mentality. “We want to identify people from college, place them in an internship, and give them a mentor. The transition between doing things manually and on computer is very hard,” he explains. An initiative, created from sessions held by the Art Directors and Copywriters Group (ADCG), gives constructive criticism on members’ portfolios in order to raise the overall bar within the industry. An industry, Omondi believes, that is still hung up on creating ads which are driven by the use of a big image and some text. In other words, advertising that doesn’t prioritize creative expression. For Omondi, the meetings with the ADCG are about driving the development of graphic design and innovation in Niarobi, and, in the process giving a helping hand to some of the new up-and-coming designers. “Things are going to change. The future of graphic design lies in traineeships. We want to promote that.”