Meet Sandy Christ: the illustrator behind our Black History Month campaign
- Written byKat Smith
- Published date 19 October 2022
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Braiding hair, holding signs and eating with hands: the UAL Black History Month campaign speaking to the theme of ‘Actions Not Words’ has been underpinned by the illustrations of 2022 graduate Sandy Christ.
Sandy came to London to study MA Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins and finished her studies earlier this year. Now a freelance illustrator and designer, Sandy specifically works digitally and has worked with the likes of Adobe, StickerApp, Girlsareawesome, Illustrator Artists Club, and Belgian football player Kassandra Missipo.
Sandy describes her work as surreal, very colourful and sometimes a bit dreamlike. “It’s mainly like that because the surreal quality can take you out of your daily life or make you change your perspective on things,” she says.
Capturing the campaign
The overall campaign at UAL aims to platform and celebrate Black culture and history especially from our UAL community, while speaking to the theme of ‘Actions not Words’. It was important that this was represented visually as well, with the campaign being the focus on social media, on the UAL website and across all our campuses.
Throughout the illustrations, there are hands actively doing something. Sandy created 3 digital illustrations all speaking to Black culture – hands braiding hair, hands holding signs and a megaphone in protest, and hands holding food.
The theme really resonated with Sandy: “there’s too much talking sometimes and not enough making,” she says. “We should take the words we’ve said and put them into actions and make a change.”
“It honestly means a lot to work on this project, I’ve been really excited. It was a great pleasure to work with the team on this and working for this Black History Month project also brought me closer to my roots. It was nice diving into that and exploring it through my style. I haven’t worked on anything like that before and doing it for UAL and creating something for young creatives for them to have around them for BHM was great.”
Working with Sandy
Bunmi Ekundayo, Communications Manager at UAL, said “It’s been amazing working with Sandy on the illustrations for BHM this year and watching her interpretation of the theme develop from a concept to the amazing visuals she has created. I’ve seen the imagery across our campuses, social media and online and they are so impactful.
“This year’s theme of ‘Action not words’ is such a strong one and creating unique visuals specifically representing Black culture speaks volumes. Black History is something that should be acknowledged all year round, so I’m excited to see how we go forward in echoing this across UAL.”
"From the original concept we knew we wanted to work with an illustrator and we also were looking to collaborate in the truest sense of the work – leaving space for building further on the original concept. Working with our students or alumni is a sure way of that happening! Arts Temps allows us to very easily and seamlessly work with our student and alumni community," says Stephanie Feather, Design Lead at UAL.
"Collaborating with Sandy was a real pleasure. Right from our first meeting, through to the final delivery Sandy brought a great creative energy, a wealth of ideas and worked really well with feedback from our team and stakeholders.
"It was really important for us to be working with someone who had a lived experience of the message we were hoping to convey. We hope we achieved what we set out to do, and we look forward to continue celebrating our Black community not just for October but beyond."
The importance of Black History Month
“As my heritage is half-Nigerian, it’s super important to me to celebrate Black History Month. Also growing up in Germany and not being fully surrounded by my culture and not feeling represented most of the time – it was quite a big experience; it had a huge impact.”
Feeling the absence of representation made her want to fill the gap and it was after her BA that she felt like it was something she could make a difference in. For other young Black creatives, she encourages embracing and celebrating non-Western culture, especially your own.
“It’s important to celebrate Black culture and support BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Colour] people. And for me as a Black creative – I feel like in the creative industry there’s not enough Black representation, so I feel especially for us here in UAL, it’s super important so I really wanted to make an impact with the work I’ve created.”