Connecting to Futures: Kyra Wells is … how an early re-purposer found her purpose in graphic design

“Hi, I’m Kyra!” reads the top of the homepage of the website of Kyra Wells. “I am a Graphic Designer.” And then a vertical line, like the cursor of a text, swipes left and erases that job title, replacing it with Motion Designer. Then Brand Strategist takes its place. Next is Design Educator, followed by Community Advocate, and finally Champion of Ideas. Kyra Wells, marketing designer and video art director at American Greetings, community college faculty member, and president of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), contains multitudes. Or, as she says, she’s multi-passionate, using each of those aspects to help inform and improve her efforts in the others.

Though still young, Wells has had plenty of time to become all of those things. After all, her career in design began quite early, when she was still in the single digits. The mid-to-late single digits, but still.

“I remember my dad worked as a union official, and he was running for reelection. And I was, like, ‘Dad, can I design your flyer for your election?’ And he was. like, ‘Yeah.’” She recalls she was seven or eight at the time.

“And so I made it and I think I just made it on Microsoft Word and I remember like it, you know we went up to his office, me and my parents, and taking it to his secretary and like she was so impressed with it, and that was like the first time that I feel like I had gotten any sort of validation, I guess you could say for a creative thing that I made. Our parents always say, oh, like that’s nice, you know. and they encouraged me to draw or do little things. But someone outside of me, that was sort of interesting to hear them react to something that I created.

“And then it was just interesting to realize that my creative work could have a purpose. I think that was the first moment where I wasn’t just creating something that I liked, but I was making this thing that could help my dad in a way. Now my art became kind of transformative beyond just my personal expression.”

Even before her family brought a computer into their house, Wells was a maker.

“I remember very early being a kid and always using whatever I could find around the house to create things. Being an early re-purposer, I would never let my mom throw anything away. She still like jokes with me today: ‘Kyra, no, we’re not keeping that box, you don’t need that box.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s a box, we can do something with it.’”

“I was always looking at a way to do something creatively and it was always more [about] physical materials,” she says. “But I’m aware of the generation that I was born in, where I feel like my career as a designer is really informed by the fact that I grew up very early on computers.

“I remember very early [in my] childhood being able to do those things on the computer, and so then it just was always like this little bit of balance between physical materials” and the computer.

Wells spent time in private and charter schools, but was home schooled, along with two sisters, for high school. Her mother recognized in her a creative itch and set about finding programs to scratch it, such as craft classes at Cudell Fine Art Center, programs taught by Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), and college-credit-earning courses open to qualified high schoolers at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C)—something Wells highly recommends to high school students today. In addition to expanding her art education, she says the program was vital in building her self-confidence.

During one of those Tri-C drawing classes, a member of the design faculty came into Wells’ classroom to talk to her professor and look at the students’ work.

“He walks in and walks around and looks at everybody’s drawings and things like that. And it’s super intimidating because he’s staring over our shoulders. And then he asked me, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about taking a graphic designing course?’” She hadn’t. She hadn’t even used the digital art apps Photoshop or Illustrator.

“I signed up for his class and I absolutely fell in love with it. It was like, ‘Where has this been all my life?’ I learned so much. It was like everything was coming together from the things that I learned in the traditional drawing classes, which really informed what we were doing on the computer, and now it was this introduction of typography, which was something new that I really like was aware of, but just didn’t know some of the theory around it. It was like the class that really like sparked me and I decided to say, ‘No, this is what my major is going to be.’ And it was like the perfect timing because I was just in that last semester of high school, and then I went on after high school to go to get my associate degree in graphic design, which was awesome.”

Last year, that faculty member, George Kopec, assistant professor in the visual communication & design program at Tri-C, contacted Wells online.

“He’s amazing and ended up being one of my favorite teachers and he reached out to me and he said, ‘Hey, we have a teaching position. I know you’re at American Greetings, but are you interested in teaching a class?’ I was, like, ‘I’d absolutely love to.’ When he told me what class it was—design foundations—that was like even more amazing for me,” she says.
“Realizing that that was the class that sparked me and got me so excited about design and knowing that I could possibly do that with other students was amazing.” She’s already had conversations with students who have decided to make design their careers.

Wells also says she feels lucky that she benefited from the guidance and mentorship of others as she entered into her professional career. After earning the associate degree, she enrolled at Cleveland State University to pursue a bachelor’s degree, and picked up a job at Act 3 Creative.

“This was my first time getting my actual design job, and so I was doing web design and print design and doing the little video innovation, being able to go all around the city, with my bosses. It was three older men and they were in their 50s and 60s and they were so seasoned in their careers, but they really taught me the ropes.”

But she knew there wasn’t room for her in the long term there.

“I was still looking for that growth and I knew that there was a certain capacity that I was going to be at at that role because my bosses were the owners of the company. They weren’t just going to give me the company.” Just as she was graduating from Cleveland State in March, 2020, she left to take an internship, which wasn’t the right fit for her. She decided to start her own business, Seven Pillars Design, but by August of that year, one of her former professors forwarded to her the American Greetings job posting with a note saying she ought to apply for it. With the world still living in Pandemic Mean Time, she didn’t hear anything on the job for months. In January 2021, though, she got the job. Now she’s the seasoned professional, looking out for the younger ones.

“I think I learned so much from senior creatives who have been doing this for so long, the ones at American Greetings that have been there for like twenty, thirty years and they’re so, so smart and so talented. And I’m like, man, you guys are amazing. And then when I get to work with younger creatives who are just starting out their careers and really seeing that spark in them, it’s amazing.”

She also looks out for younger ones outside of her day job.

“It would have been really easy once I got my job at American Greetings to say, ‘’hey, I’m here and I’m good now. I’m done,’” she says. “But there was always like, No, there’s another Kyra out there. There’s another girl like me that wasn’t sure what their future was, they’re not sure what their future may look like. The creative arts are super interesting because a lot of times, especially for people of color, you may not have—it’s not just people of color—but,” she says, slightly shifting, “I’m just aware that I don’t, I don’t have a blueprint in my family of another person in the creative arts and making a career out of it.”

On Wells’ Instagram, she reposted a phrase she’s taken to heart: “What am I doing with my skills to help others?”
For one thing, Wells has been working since the pandemic with the Cleveland chapter of AIGA, serving first as a community meeting co-chair, then outreach director, and eventually president, her current role. She protested each promotion, but was encouraged by the seasoned professionals who came before her. And now she gives talks intended to encourage and inform young creatives, build self-confidence, and combat the kind of imposter syndrome she herself once felt.

“It was a big thing for me because I realized, especially post-pandemic, I was looking around at a lot of my friends and colleagues that were recently graduating and at how there was such a heaviness, I guess you could say, because so many jobs were being pulled away. And I remember that as well within myself where I was just like, I’m getting more rejections than I’m getting calls back.

“You begin to question yourself of whether you can do this or whether you’re qualified for this. Design and any arts career is really challenging because a lot of us begin to connect our output, our creative output, with our identity. So, there’s the need to somewhat separate those in order to actually not let it destroy your self-esteem. If you’re constantly thinking that they’re rejecting me, it’s like when they reject it, they’re not just rejecting your work. They’re rejecting you as a person.
“I thought that if you could really help increase a person’s confidence, you can do almost anything. I mean, obviously grounded in reality.

“That for me was even just a pivotal thing because I had to work through a lot of emotions that I was doing it because I was, like, well, what qualifies me? I literally just got out of college a couple of years ago; how am I qualified to talk to anybody about your mindset and all that?” But she decided to give it a shot and see who would show up and what it might become. Fifteen people showed up for the event.

“It was great and it was in some ways creative therapy for many of us.”

Wells is also branching out, curating an art space called Cleveland Art Wall in the recording studio of her partner, and she still operates Seven Pillars.

Of course, if she keeps adding things, she’s probably going to need to update that feature on her homepage. Maybe it should just say, “Kyra Wells is…extremely busy.”