“I try to avoid doing any work that I feel ambivalent about”: Jerome Harris on his socially engaged design practice

Jerome Harris likes to open with all the places he’s ever lived because it provides an important backdrop to his multi-disciplinary design practice. In an extensive career to date, Jerome has been a dancer, DJ, elementary school teacher, researcher, advertising employee and to top it all off, a graphic designer throughout it all. All these roles have fed into his community-based practice with time and importantly, as he told us during August’s Nicer Tuesdays, “I try to avoid doing any work that I feel ambivalent about.”

Talking us through his vast output (with many a dance video thrown in the mix), the American designer discussed his socially impactful work including the design of the recently released Wild Wild Wild West & Haunting Of The Seahorse by Johnathan Lyndon Chase, and To The Front: Black Women and The Vote, designed in collaboration with Rush Jackson, chronicling Black suffragettes and Black women’s impact on voting in the US.