Temi Coker on Starting Before You're Asked

This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Temi Coker. A Dallas based designer, photographer and the multidisciplinary artist behind Coker Studio. Temi’s client list includes Adobe, Apple, Google, HBO, Peloton and The Oscars. But almost none of it started with a client brief, it started with a self assigned poster a day challenge in 2016 made for no one but himself. And it led Temi to a belief that you should be making creative work just to make it. In this conversation, we trace that thread through his whole career, from a stint studying biomedical engineering to please his parents, to pursuing digital media for himself, from making a pillow because his wife thought his work would look good in people’s homes to a full fledged home collection at Walmart. From teaching photography and design at his former high school, so that students would have a model of what a Black creative professional looks like to finding the nerve to ask the Academy if he could steep his Oscars statuette artwork in Black history.This episode is for anyone with an idea sitting quietly in their mind, something they haven’t started yet. Temi’s whole career is proof that the things you make for yourself are often the things that end up mattering the most.Hear Temi speak at the DesignThinkers conference, Canada's premier design conference, in Toronto and online this October 20–21, 2026. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.