Ebony Magazine

Agency: Clockwork Post
Role: Designer/Creative Director

2025

The Challenge

For Ebony Magazine’s 80th anniversary, the Power 100 Awards took on even greater cultural weight. More than a gala, the event was positioned as a homecoming — a symbolic gathering that celebrated Black brilliance, honored legacy, and highlighted the passing of the torch to a new generation. The creative needed to reflect this “Coming Home” theme with a design system that felt both timeless and contemporary: bold, editorial, and deeply rooted in cultural pride. My challenge was to lead the creative direction and execution across motion, social, web, and event assets, while navigating an approval landscape involving multiple internal teams, brand partners, and celebrity publicity representatives.

The Inspiration

These inspiration boards set the visual foundation for the Power 100 creative direction, pulling from rich cultural, historical, and material references. Each theme represents a facet of Black excellence and legacy. Gold textures signal prestige and timeless achievement, while modern elegance and botanical flourishes bring a sense of refinement and honor. Collaged archival imagery connects Ebony’s past to its present, celebrating its cultural impact through an editorial lens. Finally, layered and tactile materials give the design system depth and luxury, evoking the immersive atmosphere of the gala itself.

The Design System

The design system we built drew from rich, earthy tones, and a typeface that exuded class and prestige. To honor the eighty years of Ebony and the wealth of media in Ebony’s photo archive, we chose a fine grain, sepia tone as our photo treatment across all nominee graphics, with a unique archival treatment given to the special honorees. The gold tears and rough edges brought back the print feel of the magazine into the digital space, and were used as accents and section separators in the graphics.

The Global Show Graphics

The Nominee Social Cards and In-Show Hypercuts

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The Special Honorees

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The Show Close

The Outcome

The creative direction set the tone for Ebony’s 80th anniversary celebration and was met with enthusiastic praise from leadership and partners. The CEO of Ebony personally commended the creative vision, and it was fully adopted by both the in-house design and experiential teams to guide the broader event experience. Ebony’s Creative Director remarked, “Last year’s graphics were good, but this year is even better.” Over the course of the campaign, we delivered nearly one thousand static and motion assets — spanning social, press, and in-show content — establishing a cohesive, elevated visual language that carried through every touchpoint of the Power 100 Awards.