Be Black. Be Bold. Be Innovative. Show the World Equitable Geo. We're coming together as a collective to celebrate people of African descent, the diaspora, and talking about geospatial equity and justice. You're listening to The North Star Gaze, a podcast with intimate stories from geoluminaries. One of the things that we wanted to do with the inaugural season of the North Star podcast was to not only share intimate profiles of the speakers from the 2023 Homecoming event, we also wanted to tell a little bit about the North Star origin story, because We know that if we don't tell our own stories, others will tell our stories for us, they'll mistreat our stories, and they'll miss all of the nuance and the culture and the humor. And so we want to, from the gate, set the record straight, and then we're off and running. So earlier in the season, we had the episode where we outlined what led Clinton to picking up the phone To informally establish North Star and then how we were able to help birth this baby . And the timing of Clinton picking up the phone was actually at the time where I was literally getting ready to birth a baby. As I was leaving for maternity leave. So now both of my loves are growing up. They're growing strong. They have momentum. They have love. We built it through sweat equity. And today's story is just really important to the fabric of Northstar. And it's about how we arrived at our logo. But let me first introduce our guests today. I'm Aisha, the host of the 2024 North Star Gaze podcast. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I'm going to ask my guests, Skye and Clinton to introduce themselves. Hey everybody. I'm Clinton Johnson. I use he, him pronouns and I'm one of the co founders of the North Star RFGIS and I serve in a volunteer capacity as the executive director. Hey folks, I'm Skyee. I use they, them pronouns and I'm really happy to be here. So thank you so much for having me. Okay. So before we dive in, I'm going to ask Clinton to go back in his mind to where he was in early spring of 2019, when you were ideating about the word. North Stars Principles and our logo. And I say this with a smile because both were in one state when I went out on maternity leave. And then when I came back, it was all polished and sleek. The story of the transformation of that logo, the making the principles more concrete I've been trying to record or document that story for years. And now's the time. So I will hush. And Clinton, the floor is now yours to tell that story. When I was creating that first logo, I was thinking two things. One, let me try to get some of these concepts out. I had been a manager of a web team and had great designers on my team. And these great designers had given me some great ideas. I myself, not a designer, but they shared some things like colors matter, shapes matter. And I was trying to think about what would matter for us in terms of shape and color. So a star made sense. We always wanted to be. inclusive of the full diaspora. So when thinking about colors, the first go to was just like, Hmm, can we use a range of browns from something very light to something as dark as black? And that this was about people. And then the other thing I was thinking was, so that's one set of things like, what should we be thinking about and how should that be reflected in terms of color, form, shape. And the other thing I was thinking was, If I create something awkward enough, maybe somebody will want to do something for us. And for a long time, nobody wanted to do anything with this crazy looking logo that was constructed out of figures that were supposed to look like people who are coming together and creating a star. And it sounds much better than it looked. And somebody who was just coming on to the team, they were getting their first GIS job and just getting involved in our work. Fallon had no shame, was not shy at all about saying that the logo was trash and we needed to do something about it. And I believe it was Fallon who got us in touch with Skye Someone who was an actual graphic designer and could try to take this sense of color being our connected to all the people and the shape of a star and do something with it. And Skye still stand true to this, to the notion of a star North star being the. The name of our organization at the time stuck with the star, but found other ways of connecting us to the people across the diaspora that honestly were much more meaningful than color and much more about our culture and not just our appearance. Thank you for that, Clinton, because when I got back, I was just like, I'm never going to be one to say your art is trash, because I know people are sensitive about their stuff. But it was a little bit trash. But when I came back, I was like, Oh, and okay, so to get us back to the framing. Now, Skye, I want you to tell your part of the story. I love it each time you tell it. I love the amount of thought and consideration you put into refining the logo. I learn so much each time you tell this story. It makes me go to the interwebs looking up and trying to follow up on just this wealth of knowledge that went into this one very meaningful logo. It's a gem and it's a lesson in being intentional. And understanding the culture of the people from the eyes of a designer. So could you tell us about your process and picking up the breadcrumbs of Clinton's story? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, Clinton, to your credit, logos are hard. Logos are really hard. Like maybe one of the hardest feats of design. So every time I approach one, I know that it takes a lot of time and thought and reiteration and lots of. different phases, so yours was a foundational first phase that I was able to build off of. Second of all, I know it was a while ago, but I just have to keep thanking y'all for approaching me and to do this logo, cause I'm just deeply inspired by and proud of the work that y'all do. And I'm just super, super honored to have been able to collaborate on this project. So the logo approach, I wanted to basically understand and honor the history of the North Star motif. That's where I started. Specifically its relationship to Black peoples globally, Africans and Black Americans. To GIS mapping and wayfinding as well. So I dove into research. My research immediately led me to the innovation of Black people, specifically enslaved African American women, through the technology of fiber art. I didn't know that was, that's where that was going to lead me. But to tell the story about the North Star logo, I want to share about the Underground Railroad quilting codes. I'm absolutely no expert on the subject, so I definitely want to put that out there. I've been honored to Learn as much as I could about this subject, but I'm really glad that I learned what I did and I learned what I learned from families and individuals who preserved this knowledge. So I want to thank them specifically for preserving this knowledge. This really important history. The history of these quilts, like many other culture preserving mechanisms, is absolutely a testimony that the people of African descent have always been the drivers of their own abolition. And this is one example of many. So quilts and textiles. At their core, they're a mix of this historical, social, and creative cues in the form of fabrics, shapes, symbols, motifs, textures, and colors. There's a lot going on. But the Underground Railroad quilts, included a combination of 10 major quilt patterns that were used to create the quilts themselves. by enslaved people and their networks to guide themselves to freedom. the North Star was one of those major patterns for this And many of these codes had dual meanings. They could signal an action to consider at the time the was viewed They could provide clues, indicate literal navigational directions. help people prepare for their journey. essentially, once you knew these building block codes embedded One or more of the directional patterns or identifying landmarks could turn a quilt into a map. one of the first most informative pieces of research I found was an interview with Rose Mitchell, the librarian of the African American Resource Center at LA County Library. And she mentions, I'll just offer her quote, coupled with a knowledge of textile production. An African art form, which embodies African symbolic systems and science. They discovered they were able to communicate complex messages in the stitches, patterns, design, colors, and fabrics of the American quilt. These were often hung from clotheslines or windowsills, even on plantations. And because hanging a fabric out to dry was inconspicuously common, right? These quilts could go. Unnoticed. They would serve as billboard messages to those who needed it and to those who knew what they meant, but to a plantation owner, it just looked like laundry. Pretty ingenious. So back to the 10 major quilt patterns that were used to guide people to freedom. I'll go through the very brief way that is remembered. There's many more ways to remember these patterns, many more longer versions, and there were actually also secondary patterns in 10 primary. But the primary are the monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel towards Canada on a bear's paw. Rail to the crossroads. Once they got to the crossroads, they dug a log cabin on the ground. The shoe fly told them to dress up in a cotton and satin bow ties. Go to the cathedral church, get married and exchange double wedding rings. The flying geese stay on the drunkard's path. and lastly, the North Star pattern. Follow the North Star towards the North, specifically to Canada. For a more extended version of what information these communicated, you can listen to Georgia Payne's presentation, which I'll provide so that it can be linked in the show notes. And another incredible layer of all this was how these quotes, one form of resistance actually interacted with other forms of creative resistance organizing during this time. So just as maps were braided into people's hair and seeds were saved inside braids, maps were stitched into quilted fabric on the inside and important documents were sewn between the layers and more maps with landmarks were shown. And sewn into the insides of these quilts so that people can open them and see like literal maps stitched into this into like fiber. So tangible maps that you can touch and that go unnoticed. And the singing and humming of certain spirituals, of course, was often done while displaying these codes because singing was yet another way messages were shared between plantations. And These things actually, built up a very complex, powerful language. And I'm actually, I'm just really heartened and invigorated by the creativity in each abolitionist movement, because we come from this history, this fierce and like brilliant innovation. Today, I hear organizers in our current liberation movements, we talk about how we can continue the legacy of creativity in our approaches, and we look around and we say, what do we have? What can we use? And this is an example. A beautiful example of that. And we can't forget these things and the remnants that make it through history. And as an artist, I have to say that the historical roles of these graphic forms and of song and hair braiding in the fight for liberation is so meaningful to me because it feels like, Oh, my skills are useful, right? Not only were these skills used in the movement, but they were invaluable to the movement. And I know that stands true today still. Our movements must include mappers and coders and hairstylists and dancers and poets. So I am so glad that I dug into this history before jumping into the logo making, because wow, what rich. Information was waiting for me there, right? Yeah. Skye, before you go on, I don't know about you, Clinton, but I just need to take a moment to just digest everything that you just said because I want to say that I happen to be on campus and Fallon says, Oh, we can meet with Skye and go over the logo. Skye comes, we sit around a little table. Some other people come over who we've just given a North Star spiel to. And Skye whips out this little book, opens it up, and starts showing me things, including these little sketches, and is recounting this history. Now, while Skye has been doing this research around the logo, I've been doing research around movements that have taken Black folks from oppression to prosperity, from hardship to thriving, and have done so in ways that are overt and covert, and I'm learning about The value and importance of messaging and of meaningful collaboration with people across the diaspora and people from other groups. I'm starting to think about North Star as this overground railroad to prosperity. At that time, just thinking about GIS professionals, already thinking about how Cordedness was already this notion that maps are these powerful. And folks have not been using those maps to advance equity and that harms everyone. And in the U. S. in many spaces, it harms black people acutely. And all of these notions are coming together for me. And then suddenly Skye lays all that out. And I don't remember what my face looked like, but I have this problem where the more excited I get, the more dead my face goes and I'm just like, Taking this all in, so I don't know if I was reacting the right way. So when my face goes dead, that means now I have to tell you how I feel because my face isn't telling you. And hopefully I conveyed how intensely impacted I was by the journey that you went on, the effort that you put into creating the logo. And then what you share, because suddenly there were some things that I heard before, but there were many things that I had. So I'm also getting this history lesson as a part of this journey towards getting a symbol to represent us in our community. And one of the sketches that I did. That the Skye shows is at the right angle. And I recognize the symbology from quilts that my grandmother had in her house when we were kids growing up. I don't know where those quilts have gone, I sat there and I was just talking about how as a kid, when I first moved to Philadelphia, we stayed in my uncle's old bedroom and my grandmother's home and we slept under these quilts. that had these symbols that I always thought were like really interesting, really, intricate. And suddenly I'm seeing what I believe to be one of those symbols in a sketch and it now is being incorporated into the logo for our organization. And so for me, like all of those things were just powerful. And. Weighing, somehow weighing down on me in a way that was uplifting. So I don't even know how to describe that. It was weighty, but it was this, the weight of it was underneath me lifting me up, if that makes sense. And at some point later on, I think it was last year, I found myself On a Underground Railroad tour and bumped into the inspiration for our logo on the U. S. side monument to the Underground Railroad in Detroit. So then it came full circle one more time. Yeah, I think it comes full circle for me. So I am in the training world as a professional, every time when I listen to podcasts or I hear stories. I almost have a mental notebook. In fact, I carry around a tiny little notebook in my purse with a pen, just because I'm just jotting down and I participate in micro learning since I've become a parent, that's how I continue my growth and learning. And I don't have time to sit down and go through 17 page documents. So I do a lot of micro learning whenever I hear these stories, like I've got. A bunch of notes here for things to just look up and research as I get time to just listen and let my mind wander. I will be going through these annals of history, but it's funny that once you know about the North Star and you understand. its significance to the Black community and not just to the Underground Railroad, but to the Black community at large, you start to see it everywhere, right? And so we went to the African American Cultural Museum in D. C. and there's the North Star newspaper. And I'm like, I got to take a picture next to the North Star newspaper. That, that's our thing. That's our jam. And so it's just, you can't unlearn, right? And so it's such deep, rich history, and I appreciate you taking the time, Skye, to share that with our listeners. All right, so you have this idea, you've done your research, now you're ready to put pen to paper. Exactly. I wanted to honor that historical motif of the North Star, the actual shape of the that we find in the quilt and keep it recognized. And I wanted to also embody what Clinton did capture in his first logo. So what he did capture is illustrating this idea of connection and these directions. I really did like the four directions part of his logo and just the idea of a compass and making sure that it communicated connectedness. I wanted to draw directly from a both historical North Star compass and a, Recognizable kind of modern compass. So we see that at the center of the North star logo and integrate these as seamlessly as possible together. And lastly, Clinton put together a really meaningful color palette for me. I loved it. So I wanted to be able to use this logo in any one of those colors and make it extendable. The logo actually lends itself really well to creating patterns because it was invented as a pattern and used as such throughout history. So that's really meaningful and useful for branding. And because it's so geometric it's really easy to apply in any sort of implementation for branding The North Star org. And I wanted to add one more thing about Aisha. You said you start to see the North Star in unexpected places and you just recognize it more because you know that history and I absolutely had the same experience and one additional experience I had that made me so thankful that I dug into this history and that I discovered this was The fact that the way that the North Star symbol came to the American quilt had an even deeper history that originated in Bethlehem. And Right now, indigenous Palestinians are reminding the world that is a sacred symbol, that those four corners of this star in that same configuration, this logo also nods to that. It invokes that star as well, and I just loved seeing that connection that history was connected to a history of abolition in America and is now connected to North Star. Yeah, I remember in addition to that Khaled telling us about how, and you were alluding to this, Aisha, that this North Star has been a symbol for peoples who we now think of as Black through the process that has united us and at the same time distributed us across the globe. This North Star is a meaningful symbol across many African communities as well as communities across the board And. therefore being a unifying symbol as at the same time that it was a symbol that was exemplary and like somehow simultaneously unique. to Black communities across the diaspora and unifying to other communities, whether those communities be about geography, or people generally across the globe, but particularly people of color. Struggling to find the direction to prosperity in some way or thriving in some way. Being able to be acknowledged and be able to operate as equal contributors and beneficiaries in a society. So yeah, I hadn't seen some of the current stuff connecting to what's going on in the world today. And now it makes me think about the multiple places across the globe where injustices are happening. And how the North Star in general, and specifically as you're describing it, our chosen form of the North Star has been a unifying and Empowering symbol. Yeah, I agree. I couldn't say it better than the way Clinton said it. The North Star means something and it should symbolize, freedom globally, and we can't pick and choose which communities, which ethnic groups that, that freedom should be allowed for. So yeah. And if I could offer one more quote that reminded me of this history, it was words from a writer that I follow. Their name is Prentiss Hempfilp, and if I'm quite honest, these words brought me to tears when I read it. They said, Our safety is quilted like a tapestry. Never erected like a wall. On that note, thank you, Skye and Clinton, for coming to share the origin story of the North Star logo. there are so many layers to what you just said. And so to close us out, the North Star is iconic. The fact that we as a group, an organization, call ourselves the North Star GIS, that matters. It's significant. Geospatial Gatekeepers. The builders of walls stand wringing their hands, trying to figure out the ways to diversify the field, the discipline, the profession of GEO, because Make no mistake, it is in trouble and it will die from its lack of diversity. They're wringing their hands like they can't figure out how to solve the lack of diversity problem. Many of us who have been pushed to the margins, we innately know that if you want a solution to a problem, ask the people who are negatively impacted by that problem. We are the Northstar GIS and we have the will, the desire, the innovation and the drive. To make GIS more inclusive. Won't you join our movement? Join our Melanated and Mapping community. Be on the lookout for the different North Star events that are coming up in years to come. And please share, and let's talk about it. Talk about the podcast, but in the meantime, thank you, Skye and Clinton. And there you have it. The second installation of the North Star Origin Story is the creation of the North Star logo. Thanks for listening to the North Star Gaze, intimate stories from geoluminaries. If you're inspired to advance racial justice in geofields, please share this podcast with other listeners in your community. The intro and outro are produced by Organized Sound Productions with original music created by Kid Bodega. The North Star Gaze is produced in large part by donations and sponsorship. To learn more about North Star Gaze, Check us out at north star of gis.org and on Facebook or Instagram at GIS North Star. If you'd like to support this podcast and North Star of gis, consider donating at North star of gis.org/donate or to sponsor this podcast, email podcast at north star of gis.org. You've been listening to the North Star Gaze.