Maya Ealy is taking us back with her nostalgic designs
Maya Ealey is a graphic designer and Illustrator in Oakland working at Asana by day and taking on freelance clients while also selling nostalgic art and apparel at her business Just Rewind It by night. Talk about busy!
Maya started a series in June of illustrations and graphics educating people about race related topics like Allyship, Black Wall Street, and Colorism, and that’s just the ABC’s. I’m eagerly awaiting what’s to come from this series. You’ll have to read the interview to find out!
Maya’s work has RANGE, okay!? It has the ability to transport you back to the 80s, 90s, and 2000s while also remaining rooted in today. It’s distinct, defined, and damn right fun. We talked about what’s bringing Maya joy these days, her new quarantine hobby, her career journey, and the lack of diversity in the design industry. You should support her business Just Rewind It, she just launched a collection about the early days of the internet. (Please tell me you know what a floppy disc is? An AOL Chatroom?)
It's such a pleasure to chat with you. Can you start off by introducing yourself and telling me about your background?
My name is Maya Ealey. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator in Oakland, California. I've been working within the tech industry and tech space for about six and a half, almost seven years now. During that time, I really got into illustration and I've been doing a lot of illustration work for myself via personal projects as well as freelance. I also started a small side business called Just Rewind It, which is an art lifestyle brand that offers millennial women of color ways to boldly express themselves through 90’s nostalgia themed art and fashion products.
When I was looking you up, I thought "She does so many things!"
Tell me more about Just Rewind It. Did you just grow up loving the 90s? What was the inspiration behind it? Obviously the culture itself, but a lot of people love the culture and don't make a business about it. What was it for you?
Working in-house is great and I am fortunate to be able to do that. It's funny because even if you're in-house or a freelancer, you're working on bringing other people's dreams to fruition. For me, I was kind of frustrated with that. I wanted to be able to create something for myself. As a person of color, as a black woman, generational wealth is something that's really important to me. Having ownership in something is really important to me.
That was the basis for wanting to start a small business. So, I started Just Rewind It in 2017. The name comes from my mom. I have a bunch of sisters and we watched a lot of movies growing up. My mom was always saying "Rewind it, rewind it." Everyone always wanted to rewind a certain part of a scene and watch it over and over again, so that's where the name came from. I'm just really obsessed with the 80s, 90s, early 2000s pop culture. However that spans out, whether it's music or fashion that relates to black culture or whether it’s the geekier side, more gaming culture. The time period is really interesting because it's the turn of the century, the turn of the millennium. Technology changed a lot. I feel like there's a lot of cool things and a clear cultural evolution that has been going on in the past three decades.
Yeah, absolutely. There are so many good TV shows, especially in the 90s. I was born in ‘95, so my memory doesn't go back too far. I've been watching so many shows now that they're on streaming platforms like A Different World, Fresh Prince, and Living Single.
Do you have a favorite TV show from that era?
That's so hard. They're all good.
OK, top three?
Let's go Fresh Prince, Sister, Sister and then if I want to go late 90s/ early 2000s then maybe I'll pick Smart Guy.
Smart Guy is a good one, too. One of my questions was going to be Martin or Fresh Prince but I was like, let me not put you on the spot like that.
Right.
What is bringing you joy these days?
I think the biggest thing is just being around family and friends and trying to connect with folks. I say it feels weird because obviously we're in quarantine and we should maybe not be around family and friends, but I feel like because of this moment, I've been able to reconnect with a lot of people. I feel like I'm on the phone and having conversations with folks way more than I used to. I've done so many movie nights with my family. We all just play the movie at the same time and timestamp it.
I think what's really bringing me joy now, honestly, is just being able to connect with people, because, you know, we can't do this alone.
I think that's beautiful. I've been the opposite, though. If anything, I've been more antisocial in quarantine because I'm very extroverted but I need a break. I'm glad that you've been able to connect right now because I'm sure you have so much on your plate with having a full-time job and having a business and freelancing.
I've got to make time for it because if not, you'll go crazy. That's my lesson that I learned during quarantine.
So how are you balancing all of those things?
I'm balancing better now than previously is what I will say. I definitely am more selective when it comes to what freelance projects I take on. It has to be something that really excites me or for a cause that I'm really passionate about. The way that I juggle all these things is within waves throughout the year. So I may be freelancing for three months on a really cool project. Then after that, I'm like "All right, I need a break. I don't need to do that right now." I might switch over to working on Just Rewind It stuff. One of the things I've definitely been doing more this year is less freelance now that I've been focusing more on Just Rewind It. That's been really nice and felt really good. It just kind of depends. It's on a rolling basis. I set time limits for myself when it comes to when I want to do certain things. Even what part of the year I want to do certain things.
That's so smart. You're still working full time at Asana?
Yes. I really appreciate my team at Asana. They’re a great bunch and super talented.
When you do have a freelance project or you are working on Just Rewind It. How does your day go?
I try to block out my weeks, so if I'm thinking about my work week, maybe I'll do either freelance or Just Rewind It three evenings out of the week, but I’ll try to give myself some space to breathe because you can't just work all day or night. It's not helping and it's not very sustainable.
Things I need to hear.
I've done it before and it's not cute after a while. I try to block out the times I'm going to work, so say the evening on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Then do you leave time for self-care, talking to your family, things like that?
Or doing nothing. I also dance, so that's a moment where I can really release and it's good to be active and be physical and sweat.
You can't check your email when you're dancing.
No, you can't. You definitely can't.
Something that I need to do as well is scheduling my time better. I guess you kind of have to with all those things you're juggling.
You have to be a little disciplined. I feel like discipline is something I'm still working on.
I think we all are, especially right now. I have to remind myself it's good enough that you got through the day and ate some food. Right now it's less about balance and more about "Are you OK? Are you taking time for yourself?"
Are you surviving? Taking care of yourself as best as you can. I'm trying not to be so hard on myself, too.
I also want to know how you developed your style?
I still laugh at this because I feel like I have one and then don't have one.
Not an answer!
Yeah, I know! So what I'll say is there are particular things that I'm definitely influenced by and that influence shows up for sure in my work. Stylistically, though, I feel like I jump around two specific set styles, and then sometimes I'm doing stuff that's bizarre and doesn't really fit into those two buckets.
A lot of my inspiration comes from the Memphis Design Group, which is an architectural firm from the 80s and 90s.
Yeah, it was an architecture firm and they actually did this whole collection around geometry and color blocking. It's kind of crazy because that basically influenced the design style of the 80s and early 90s, which is insane. I wish I could say "Yeah, I did this thing and then look what happened."
"I started a whole trend in the design industry."
Literally. I'm really influenced by color blocking and geometric shapes and forms. Recently in the past two or three years, I've been trying to loosen up my style in the sense of working on more character driven work, more fluidity, more organic shapes. There's still some of that Memphis inspiration because I would usually bring in geometry or in the sense of nostalgia, I still bring in a lot of color with my work, too. So, there's a mix. There's stuff that you'll see that I do that's very angular and isometric and then there's the fluid side.
Looking at your work, you can see the clear nostalgic references. Then there's also work that looks very modern and in line with the type of work that is popular right now. I was drawn to you and your work because it felt like you did have a distinct voice and style. I really did like your color palette and combinations. Overall, I felt that your work was really strong and I like what you're doing with Just Rewind It.
Can you tell me more about the series that you started in June, educating people about different racial terms?
I started this series and I'm still working on it. It's a visual vocabulary guide on the topic of racism. I started in the summer, specifically during the height of the civil unrest and racial justice being thrown into the forefront after the murder of George Floyd. There were a lot of conversations that I was having with individuals. And I realized that people just don't know. It made me realize that, OK, some folks in their race education may be at letter D and then I'm over here at T.
We don't speak the same language.
We're not speaking the same language because you may be at the start of your education and I'm over here. So it was really interesting because I feel like, depending on where folks are at, there was a lot of learning that needed to happen to even get to a place where we could speak about things. That's why I started the series because I was frustrated and folks need some education on some things that I would assume folks might already know. I would definitely say that the audience could be white individuals, but it could also be other people of color who may not know certain things. I like to say if you only learned about Rosa Parks and MLK in K-12 then this is probably for you.
So far, what has the response been like? Who has been responding, what kinds of things have they been saying? What are your plans for the series?
The response has been good. There's a couple of trolls every once in a while. I always battle if I should just delete them, should I just silence them? I go back and forth on freedom of speech and if I should let people be trolls or not. I will continue to think about it but overall the response has been really great. I think it's been something that black people have been resonating with, other POC have been resonating with, which is nice. Folks can share their similar experiences. I think what does come across is sometimes it's hard to understand these topics without a visual associated with it, If you are a visual learner, maybe seeing something that really strikes you, you might think "I didn't necessarily think about it in that way." I think that's pretty beneficial. Overall, it's been received really, really well.
I haven't officially announced this yet and people keep asking me when I'm going to do it and I just haven't yet. Something that's super exciting...you're the first person to know this outside of my inner circle. I'm actually going to be turning this project into a book. I got a book deal actually with Chronicle Books that's based in San Francisco.
Yeah, I've heard of them! That's so amazing, congratulations!
Thank you, it's crazy! I'm still in shock, even though it's been a little bit since its been official.
No, you deserve! I was thinking that it could be a book, it could be a bunch of different things.
I've still been working on it super behind the scenes. I'll be posting more and I'll be continuing it, but I paused because of negotiation and contracts.
Did they see this series and then reach out to you?
One of the editors saw the series and then emailed me about it saying "I really love what you've been doing. Would you be interested in having a chat about turning this into a book?" It was crazy. It was also a time where I was just very overwhelmed and stressed. I called my fiancé and I was like, yo, I'm crying again, but because of something good.
We love happy tears! I'm super excited for you and I can't wait for it to come out and to see it. I'll get a copy.
So you touched a little bit on where your color palettes come from and I know that there are some 90s or some nostalgic references. Overall, how did you develop your color palettes? What kind of inspiration do you have for color?
That's a good question because I love color. I love it. It's really fun to come up with different color schemes and figure out how you play with them and how they work together. Coming up with a system for using color feels like creating my own little universe. It's one of my favorite parts of the process. You kind of called it, there's definitely some nostalgic inspiration there. I also look a lot at things that are culturally from South America and Africa, when it comes to colors and styles. I look at a lot of cultural patterns and colors to get inspiration from because I love how those cultural expressions are so bright, luscious and vibrant. I like to look at other people and areas where that just naturally comes up for them. That's naturally how those cultures express themselves. That makes me feel really good.
What are some of those cultures that you would pull from?
There's a lot of Brazilian artists that I follow that have beautiful colors and palettes. I love looking a pattern work and art from Nigerian and Ghanian artists. Those are some that I specifically think of. There's also art forms I look at outside of design...people who do textiles or even ceramics, I feel like you can find a lot of interesting things in art, that's outside of specifically illustration/design.
I think the way that artists use color is really interesting and it says a lot about them. I can think of illustrators and picture the palettes that they use. Sometimes I'm like, "that's such an interesting color. I would have never thought to put that with this." When I was developing my own palette it took me a while to figure out.
Do you think you've found that palette or is it something that you want to continue to explore?
I think it's something I want to keep exploring. If you look at my work you'll see I use a lot of color and that's pretty clear. I would love to have more of a specific point of view on how I use color. No matter if I'm flexin between a different palette, if I'm using blues or reds or whatever, there's a specific way in which I use it. That's the part that I want to get to.
I think I go back and forth because I see the need for being cohesive and having a body of work, but I also don't want to pigeonhole myself into only using this certain set of colors. Some people do and that's fine. It's just like these six colors and that's it. There are so many colors out there, I wouldn't want to just limit myself to a few.
I saw that you have been getting into nail art. Was that a quarantine activity?
I know you asked me something about what I'm doing to bring joy, that's for sure one. I'll be screaming to myself like "yesss" while I'm painting my nails. But yeah, it is definitely a quarantine hobby. Before I went to this nail artist who's local to Oakland, and her business is called Honey and Cotton Nails. If anyone is interested, she does amazing work. I was going to her for a while, but then I was like, oh, I can't go anymore.
So I thought I'm just going to try to do it myself. I asked her a bunch of questions about what I needed. She really helped me out. I bought a bunch of gel polishes and some teeny paintbrushes and I’ve kind of just been going at it.
It looks good. I can't paint my own nails. You would think just because I'm an illustrator that I would be good at that kind of thing, but it's not true. Where do you get inspiration for your nail art?
It's a mix, I go on Pinterest a lot, Pinterest is the perfect place to find tons of nail art inspiration. I recently got into liquid painting or marble painting. I created a marble painting on canvas a few months ago and then I was like, how do I do that on my nails? I tried it on my nails and it wasn't too bad. Sometimes it's related to nostalgic things like these checkered nails I did recently.
It seems like it's like another way to express yourself and I'm sure you get compliments.
Yeah, everyone's real nice. It's fun. It's just a nice way to chill out and to do something with your hands. If you do a lot of digital work, it's cool to just be quiet, put a podcast on, or just listen to music and then just do something with your hands.
You might be inspiring me to try.
Try it!
I think I'm going to try something simple. You know how they do the little squiggles? Start off easy.
If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self?
That you're doing all right, things are OK. Things will be fine, more than fine. You’ll find where you belong/you’ll create that space that makes you feel good, happy, comfortable. When I was younger, when things were hard, I don't know if you had this experience, but I was so so geeky as a kid and I definitely got bullied a little. I talked to my therapist about this recently. I developed a bit of a pretentious attitude as a kid as a defense mechanism. I was like wow I was a rude kid, but it's because I got bullied. I felt rejected so I rejected others. I wish I could tell myself, you're fine, everything's cool. You don't need to worry about what people are saying. And you can still let people in and have genuine relationships.
I was definitely influenced by other people's opinions about me when I was younger and I feel like I moved around so much that I would get made fun of for things. I definitely was kind of geeky. I cried all the time. Now looking back it's like you're alright, girl. You're good.
Did you always know you wanted to be a designer?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an architect. I went from that to then wanting to be an animator and I told myself I didn't draw well enough to be an animator, even though I was drawing since I was a kid. I got into design in high school. I played volleyball and my volleyball coach was also the yearbook advisor. He scooped everybody on the team to be in yearbook. So I did that and that's how I got introduced to Design and used Adobe InDesign CS, the first one.
So no matter what, you were going to be doing something creative?
Yeah. I remember even I got pushed away from doing that. I did really well in the sciences in high school. I talked to a high school counselor and I was like, "I'm going to go to art school." She was not about it, she tried to tell me to do something else. Something “safer”, probably.
People don't see it for you until it happens. What about your family, were they supportive of your career at first?
Yeah, my mom always was. She's all about self-sufficiency. She always told me and my sisters growing up to do something where we can sustain ourselves and finish our education. It was really important to her because at the time she dropped out of college. She has since graduated, which is really sweet and I’m really proud of her. She's very happy about getting her degree. Anyways, when she was younger, she had dropped out of college and she always regretted it. Also, my parents got a divorce and she became the head of the household. So I feel like for her it was very much, "OK, how can you take care of yourself, get your education and be self-sustaining?" That was our overarching message that she gave me and my sisters growing up.
I can relate to that, too. My Dad is from Pakistan and his main message was just go to college and have good credit. I think it's so amazing to have family members that support you, especially in creative careers, because so often, we're pushed to be doctors, lawyers and engineers. It's also telling of these times that you can be really successful right now as a designer and illustrator on your own and often even more so on your own because of your voice.
I do definitely feel really fortunate and lucky that my parents were supportive because I understand that's definitely not the case for everyone.
Is there anything that you want to say to up and coming creators now, anything that you've learned in your journey or career?
Find what gives you the most joy and what makes you the most happy and just work on that, whatever that may be for you. I love design and I love designing, but find the area that makes you really, really excited and hold on to that. Working a 9 to 5 can make you forget that sometimes. Or being drowned in freelance clients with so much feedback that never ends can be creatively draining. So try to remember what gives you that spark and what you're really passionate about and hold on to that. Creativity and motivation comes in waves.
I totally agree. It's just funny because all my advice nowadays is just like, I don't know, just do what you want. I think people don't realize how hard that really is sometimes.
Yeah. I feel like I give two different veins of advice right now. I always say it's fine, you know, you can relax a little bit, you don't have to work that hard, but maybe that's for me who used to work way too much all the time. It's OK, you can give yourself a break too.
One piece of advice I've been saying a lot is "say no to make way for yes." On the other hand, I’ve also been thinking if you're just starting out I'm not going to tell you to say no. I had a professor in college (shoutout to TJ O’Donnell) that I interviewed and his one piece of advice was to say yes to everything then figure it out later. In college that helped me to figure out what I didn't want to do because I said, yes to all kinds of things like logos, flyers, brochures. I kind of hated all of it. I found that illustration was the thing I actually really wanted to do. I sort of teeter back and forth. Once you find the thing, stick with that and everything else is a distraction. But until then, maybe don't be the person who just graduated saying "I'm only taking X, Y and Z" because you could be turning down a lot of opportunities, right?
Yeah, that's really true. That's why exploration could just be a good piece of advice when you're starting out. Just explore because there's so much you can do in design. Like too much. You could be the person who gets really stoked and wants to work at a type foundry. Maybe that's your thing?
We need more typefaces, especially from black designers.
That part. That's actually literally true. Type equality is a website specifically to find typefaces designed by women. http://typequality.com/find/
I know one black-owned foundry, Vocal Type, but I think that's the only one I know of. I should definitely do research and then with projects, be more intentional about using typefaces from black designers. That's something I never even thought of honestly.
The small ways that you can bring in representation in your work
Especially design, it's such a white industry. Have you found that to be the case in your career thus far? Has it been difficult even just having your own voice?
There is definitely a clear lack of representation of BIPOC in the design industry and even more so in tech. There has been times when that fact has felt a little soul-crushing.
I feel within the tech industry, there's a very typical way in which demographics are broken down that are fairly consistent across the board. It's typically a majority male and then a majority white and then East Asian will usually be the next largest majority.
I've been fortunate to work at some places where it has been really diverse and where it felt real nice and real comfortable. Then there's been other places that definitely haven't been that. As a person of color or any marginalized group really, finding community and support is really crucial.
It's a struggle and it's something where I've done interviews and people ask if it's getting better. I guess? I don't know.
It's really hard to say, to be honest, because there are some companies that are doing it better. And if you're there, you're like, “Oh, this feels kind of nice. I see you.” You can tell companies that make it a priority, they really show up. There is a growing black community at Asana. We show up for each other. That is really nice. But I'm not going to lie, but then there are some companies that are not. So it really just depends on where you are. Doing the research, and having a candid conversation when you’re interviewing about the importance of diversity hopefully will weed out companies who are about and those who are not.
Yeah, I feel like my biggest thing that I tend to harp on is that a lot of companies think hiring freelancers of color and putting them at the forefront is enough. If you don't have people of color as decision-makers and leaders in your company, then that is what’s really important. Yes, hire the freelancers but that can't be the only thing where you're like, oh, for Black History Month here's this person that we paid this one time. It has to be structurally throughout the whole company. And that also goes into the culture. You could have Black people there, but if the culture doesn't support it, it's not going to feel any better than anywhere else.
No one wants to feel like an outsider, right? That's the worst that you can feel. Almost every company has this idea of creating a sense of belonging. What does that mean and what does that mean for you? How does that translate into how you treat your employees and how you treat people? Also, how you keep them there and keep them feeling like this is somewhere that they belong, where they don't feel like they're othered or they don't feel like they're the only ones or they feel like misplaced. I think it's human nature to connect with people who you relate to or who you look like. But when you're running these organizations and these companies, you need to be really mindful about creating an inclusive environment. And you can't say that, you need to think what does that actually look like?
We don't got to get all the way into it because there are so many layers and it’s so deep. So what do you want to do more of, professionally and in life?
In this present moment, I want to dance more. I need to be more active and I need to move. Quarantine has honestly thrown me through a loop because of having my entire schedule disrupted. I missed out a lot on dance, which is something that I did regularly. I just want to move more in this present moment.
In a work and career sense, I definitely want to focus a lot more on Just Rewind It. Another thing that I love about having a side business is that you give yourself the opportunity to do the things that you want to do and you don't have to wait around for permission or wait around for somebody to magically give you this project that you've been wanting to do. There's a lot of cool things for Just Rewind It that I want to do and I'm excited to give it some more attention and explore and create.
I think I find when I do focus on personal work more, I get so much more out of it and it leads to more opportunities, rather than just being hired, like you were saying earlier, to carry out someone else's vision. When you show that you have your own voice and you can actually execute ideas, that goes such a long way.
It does. I've been thinking about this a lot, the idea of self-expression and the idea of being comfortable in who you are to basically live the way that you want to live. How does that translate outwardly? Whether that's in your physical appearance or how you show up for other people or how you show up in your community or what kind of work you create. I've been thinking a lot about this idea of creative expression and how can we as creatives or as black people, as black women, get to this point where we can unabashedly just be who we are? Can I just be me?
To be honest, I feel like you can, especially right now. A lot of my clients have said “We really love your voice. We love that you speak up for things that you care about.” That's always the thing that's gotten me in trouble in life. I don't say everything that I'm thinking, but at the very least I share thoughts or feelings that I'm comfortable sharing. I've found that it's really led to more work. So that's why I say it's a really great time to be yourself, but to be really unapologetic and be like, no, this is me. I'm going to show up how I show up. Brands can't find that authenticity on their own, they don't have it. The creatives that work there a lot of times don't understand the culture. It's up to people like us, who can tell these stories, to be the ones to do it. The more you lean into that, it's only going to be an asset.
Yeah, I like that. So you're inspiring me. I love it. I think it's hard. That journey to authenticity, I feel like I'm still working on that, not that I feel like I'm not being authentic, but there are some ways I know that I am holding my own self back and it's just about breaking down your own barriers, you know, your own personal ones.
That's the thing. Most of the time it's us holding us back. It's like, yeah, I could be better at this thing, but it's always not about that. It's not about the talent, the skills, the software. Most of the time it's like right here in our minds.
Can you tell me about your process and what kind of tools and software you use?
I am usually a big fan of moodboarding to start off a project, whether I'm working on something new for Just Rewind It, a larger project for Asana or I'm working on a presentation for a freelance project. I pull textures, colors, whatever, trying to get the general vibe and feeling. I like to do a lot of sketching. The one thing that could be different from other folks is I actually like to do a lot of writing and I like writing out words for branding projects or illustration projects.
I like to do word association because I know some folks can have a visual idea already in their mind, which I could sometimes have, but a lot of times I like to think of some words that describe the thing that I'm trying create. Words add something tangible to the intangible. It makes it easier for me to have word associations when thinking of a new visual. From there, that's usually when I start sketching.