An Interview with Brnesh Berhe
Aimee Resnick (she/her) - January 17, 2023
Brnesh Berhe is an Eritrean-Canadian graphic designer and illustrator from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who, where possible, loves infusing humor and bold color into her work– the latter a remnant of the cartoons and ridiculous things that inspired her creativity in her youth. Her work has been commissioned by CBC, the Polaris Music Prize and New Trail, and she was featured in Elle Canada as one of "Canada's Artists and Illustrators to Know". Bberhe.com
NAR: Often, your art focuses on political frustration. What are you angry about right now?
Berhe: It’s hard not to get upset following the news, be it what’s being reported or what’s being left out. Everything feels heavy in the world.
I don't like not staying informed, it’s sort of wired in me with the way I was raised. But at times taking a break from the news can be an emotional necessity, albeit an incredibly privileged one. After having a rough couple of months this summer due to some personal stuff, I found myself tuning out what was going on in my province at the time because it felt too heavy to add any more stress into my life.
For context, I live in Alberta, which is a beautiful province that’s sort of known amongst Canadians as the “Texas of Canada”–that is, it’s the most conservative province in the country. We have a premier in power who really loves folks like Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz and is pretty far-right, so it can be infuriating to endure that kind of rhetoric day in and day out.
But it's interesting that you feel like my work mainly focuses on my political frustrations. I definitely didn’t intend that to be the case. I started making little graphics and illustrations to accompany some thoughts I was feeling over the pandemic and they seemed to resonate with people. Sometimes they were political or had a social justice angle to them, but it’s funny for me to associate a goofy 10 minute illustration I made as an extension of my “art.”
NAR: Can you elaborate on Canada’s conservative movement?
Berhe: Alberta's been conservative for several decades. We had one little blip of hope a few years ago when the New Democratic Party won an election, but that was only because the conservative Premier at the time said something that offended his voter base, and suddenly (and kind of surprisingly) some conservatives shifted the other way. So, for a short moment, we had a little leftism in an otherwise very historically conservative place.
It's actually not uncommon to see the odd Confederate flag here, which makes absolutely no sense. During the Trump days I once saw a truck with a bumper sticker of a confederate flag with a maple leaf in the middle of it, which makes even less sense [laughs]. And they obviously can’t give the excuse that it has something to do with their culture when Canada played absolutely no part in the Civil War.
But I also don’t want to paint the picture that things are all bad here, which is very easy for me to do sometimes when things feel bleak. There’s actually a really vibrant arts scene here as well that’s full of a lot of talented people, and folks engaged in standing up against this rise in far-right politics and ideologies. I don’t think that’s an image that people in other parts of the country would immediately associate with us, but it’s there.
NAR: What are your favorite self-care activities to cope with your (totally valid) anger?
Berhe: Stewing at home and binge watching a show [laughs]. Or–more healthily–chatting with family and friends either about what’s on my mind or about literally anything else. Just, you know, stepping away a little bit. I’m pretty introverted so it’s easy for me to keep to myself a lot, especially working from home, but it’s so much healthier to not be in a little bubble with those thoughts for too long.
I’ve realized recently that I need to get a hobby that’s unrelated to what I do for a living. It used to be drawing and art but since becoming a creative professional that hasn’t been the case.
NAR: Let’s talk more about being a commercial artist. How does being a graphic designer change your relationship with art?
Berhe: When I'm at my computer all day, I want to do literally anything else after work. You know, I'd rather go watch a movie or just chill out and shut my brain off. I haven’t felt drawn to creating for the sake of it in a long time, which is a shame.
My whole career has been in the design space and since graduating from University I haven’t really made art for fun like I did growing up. Prior to design school I drew or painted all the time–either to pass the time or because I simply felt compelled to do so. It was a regular, enjoyable thing for me. Part of my application for the program was my sketchbook. And since graduating over a decade ago I didn’t even notice that, with the exception of rough thumbnail sketches for projects, I stopped drawing for about six years. Which is crazy to think back on–the fact that I didn’t even notice. I only realized it when I got a day job which required me to make illustrations sometimes. I’ve done more of it for work over the last few years, and especially over the last year, but have rarely done it for fun without overthinking what I was making–I lost the looseness that I once had. So, going back to the previous question, even when I think about picking up my camera again and getting into photography as a hobby, I think about how I could possibly integrate this skill into my work. Which defeats the purpose of what I need in a hobby.
I love the problem solving aspect of design and bringing ideas to life visually, but since that’s become the priority, first in design school then with my career, it hasn’t felt natural to call myself an artist in that traditional sense–like the other people that are profiled on this site. I've been so focused on work and becoming adaptable to clients and employers that I don’t really know who I am anymore as an artist, but I’ve been slowly trying to figure that out more recently.
NAR: Recognizing the way graphic design has modified your artistic practice, what is your advice for burgeoning designers?
Berhe: When I was younger, I put so much pressure on myself to rush through my career and learn everything and say yes to every project and just...do the most. I wish I relaxed more and been more present in enjoying how fun it actually is to get to make stuff. I could have slowed down and just enjoyed making things without an agenda or timeline. I think that would have helped me maintain the joy of creating. Art is what got me interested in design and eventually accepted into the program at University which subsequently started me on the journey of learning about and appreciating design. I shouldn’t have lost that.
NAR: Often, brands invite you to collaborate on identity-based projects: for example, Covenant Health recently commissioned a beautiful Black History Month illustration from you. How do you reconcile with the commercialization of your identity? That is, how do you decide which projects to deny?
Berhe: I ask myself: am I saying yes to this project for the right reasons? I definitely don't say yes for a paycheck if I feel really icky about it, but luckily the folks I worked with on that particular one were really lovely from beginning to end, which is always a joy. But I have no problem denying a project if it doesn’t feel right or if I straight up don’t have the time. Lessons learned from my 20s.
If I'm being completely honest, I've been thinking about how many more of these kinds of projects I want to take on in the near future. Something I've noticed since I started freelancing full time is that most new clients tend to commission pieces from me that are almost exclusively about Blackness or race. There was even someone who saw my Polaris Music Prize poster, which is primarily floral, and still wanted to commission me for a race-based project.
It's not that I dislike doing that kind of work. Far from it actually. They’re still important and I’ve been wanting to do a personal project about my culture for quite some time now. It can just sometimes feel like people are hiring me only when they feel it would be better to hire a Black designer or illustrator for those kinds of projects (which is fair) but then it makes me think “well, if they’re as happy with the work as much as they say they are, why isn’t it translating to more gigs outside of these topics?” I don’t know if any of my non-Black counterparts have this same issue.
One of my friends who’s also a designer pointed out that a good amount of the work that people have a big reaction to online have a sense of humour to them, but I somehow don’t get as many people associating me with that lighthearted side of my work when it comes to either paid gigs or defining me as a creative person. I get to be identified by my “angry take on politics” and my race, but not my humour, for example.
It just adds to my imposter syndrome if I’m being honest. I don't personally see anything limiting about the title of “Black designer” or “Black artist”, but I do get the sense that there are some people that do.
NAR: Let’s switch gears. You’ve recently written on Instagram about your fear that AI generation will devalue artists. You ended your post by stating that you “have so much more [you] could ramble on about.” Ramble.
Berhe: I’ve definitely calmed down a bit since I wrote that post [laughs].
I started out 2023 feeling so confident about what the next five years could look like for me as a freelancer, which is rare for me. Ya know, optimism. But in a few short months that changed when I saw the teaser for Adobe Firefly. In the software you can upload a rough sketch of a logo and it'll draft up a few variations. It can also do photo editing. If you have a landscape and want to add a river, you can just click a button. I just remember seeing that and thinking “are you fucking kidding me?”
After playing around with it a little and some other AI programs like Midjourney, I’m a lot less worried for the time being, but I do wonder where the technology is going and how long it would take for it to become much more sophisticated. I know it’s not going to go anywhere and we’ll have to learn to adapt and all that, but as a self-employed person the uncertainty of what this could look like and how long it would take for it to potentially get to a point where it starts to adversely affect what I do for a living is a bit unsettling.
It’s one thing to learn new skills like photography or motion design to make me more well-rounded, but having to learn new skills in order to just straight up survive in this industry, especially after all these years, just straight up sucks.
NAR: Beyond the practical, how do you feel morally artificial intelligence in art?
Berhe: A few years ago, I watched a documentary about how AI is helping create prosthetic limbs for amputees with tech that lets them move their fingers in a more natural way. It was beautiful honestly. And I saw something else about an artist that used AI in his installation and it was genuinely very cool. Part of his exhibition was a series of walls made of all these small lights and it would move and change as people walked by and interacted with them. It was interesting to see how AI was being used to elevate this person’s work, not take away from it. It all complemented each other and I know there are uses for it that do a lot of good. Also, AI has been a part of design software, like Photoshop, for some time now, and using aspects of it to streamline some of our processes isn’t an inherently bad thing.
But when it comes to more “traditional” art, the software was trained using work made by folks who didn’t give their consent to these tech companies. And since that’s how a lot of these apps were able to get to the point where they could even get to Beta testing, there will always be a weird moral ambiguity attached to all of it. And unfortunately, none of this is currently protected under plagiarism laws, so these companies will continue to benefit greatly from the labor of artists. I mean, there will always be people who will exploit and undervalue the work of artists and creative professionals, and AI will help them continue to do so. I just don’t know how bad it could potentially get, be it within our industry or outside of it.
I saw something online that summed it up perfectly: “Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted.”
NAR: You mentioned that Adobe Firefly can create logos. Tell me about logo design. What’s your process for condensing vast brand experiences into instantly recognizable icons?
Berhe: It's funny, right? People see the final product and think: oh, that looks quite simple. That’s easy. But they don’t see all the countless iterations and meetings and late nights that can precede it.
For me after a client meeting and some research I like to do a word dump. I’ve always defaulted to that without really thinking about it. I'll get the creative brief and write down a bunch of words that oftentimes don’t initially seem to relate. Eventually from there a few ideas start to pop out and I’ll start to sketch images related to those words. I’m just dumping whatever's in my brain onto paper or my iPad.
Then I’ll work on merging some of those ideas, usually a couple of concepts. For example, the logo I created for an initiative called Be Book Smart started with two ideas that came out of a word dump: owls and books, both representing academia, and in the final design, the owl’s wings are made of books. Nothing groundbreaking but the client and I were happy with it [laughs]. There was another icon I did for an editorial piece about policing and the BLM protests that happened at the start of the pandemic: I created an icon from a megaphone and police siren. I love logos and icons that appear to look quite simple but can convey an idea, even a complex one, in a clever way.
Eventually I’ll send the client 2-3 concepts and once they narrow down what they want, I'll finish out the piece and the other brand elements.
NAR: I have one last question for you. My brother went to the University of Toronto for Graduate school. As soon as he returned to the United States, people started asking him about Drake. As a Canadian, what's your Drake story?
Berhe: Ugh [laughs]. I’m very indifferent to that man. Sorry Canada…and America I guess. Am I gonna lose my citizenship over this?
Please note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
