Lecture recording is now available for the CCA community for educational purposes. 

The Design Division at CCA welcomes Cubby Golden as our seventh speaker in the 2020 Fall Design Lecture Series. These lectures bring leading designers, strategists, curators, and educators to speak with our community. The Fall 2020 series speaks to design as a tool for empowerment. 

Cubby Golden speaks directly to young designers (though anyone will enjoy his talk) in this disarming, generous, and honest description of his path from aspiring professional athlete who had never heard of design, to Senior Designer and founder of his own firm. In this unique and genuinely moving talk Golden uses no slides, maybe even no notes. It feels almost like meeting with a friend for coffee. 

Golden loved to make and build things, but growing up as a young Black man in Oakland, he had no concept or model for life as a designer. It was his mom who urged him to go to CCA. “I loved art school because there really wasn’t a boundary [about] what I looked like, it was just about creativity.” But, “when I got to college, there was no one that looked like me. What am I doing here, what’s the end result?”

For Golden, finding and making this path was about striving, and finding support. While in school he was also doing some basketball coaching, and it was there that he met D’Wayne Edwards from Nike who has been a lifelong mentor. Edwards saw Golden’s talent and work ethic and connected him to a Nike internship after graduation. Moving to Portland for Nike was a welcome change for Golden who resented the all white culture of Silicon Valley startups.

At Nike Golden made relationships, settled into his identity as a designer, and shone through his hard work and interpersonal skills. Athletes requested to work with him. “It’s weird, the validation has to come from the outside, instead of just seeing the work. There’s a lot of faces that look like me that just don’t get the love and shine.” With recognition came opportunities and great work, but not growth. Golden began to see that Nike wasn’t going to offer that. “As a designer you are a tool box. Look in and see what you’re missing. You don’t have everything.” Edwards told him, “Don’t let people pick where you should belong in the world.” 

With gratitude for all the support he’s received (he calls out his parents and teachers) he’s always looked for ways to connect with youth, to be a mentor for others like Edwards has been for him. He taught at Pensole in Portland, and at MassArt when he went to Boston to work at New Balance. After New Balance he was invited to join the team at Super Heroic. There he found himself back in Silicon Valley, but on his own terms, on an all Black team with a Black CEO, and thought “I can’t wait to show everyone what they’ve been missing.”

Now a Senior Designer at Skechers and with his own firm Golden Studio going strong for nearly a decade, Golden reflects on the Black Lives Matter movement. “All the anger, all the frustration” that has come with the awakening to systemic racism, “has been in my brain for years. The world is beginning to see and express the frustration that we’ve been feeling for years.” 

There is much more to come from Golden. He’s branched out into music and graphics and aspires to work on films. His curiosity and energy are infectious. To young designers he offers, “Don’t hold back, don’t be afraid, and don’t be afraid to ask questions, fight for what you believe in.”