In the luminous intersection of art, technology, and cultural celebration, Lauren Harris stands as a beacon of creative innovation. As a multidisciplinary artist and creative director whose work has graced everything from Target aisles to United Nations campaigns, Harris recently achieved a remarkable milestone: creating a Google Doodle celebrating Chicago house music that reached millions worldwide. With her distinctive style that champions authenticity and empowerment, Harris has become a transformative voice in the digital art space, using her platform to illuminate Black joy and foster community connection.
For young designers thinking about their voice, what have you learned about staying true to yourself?
I have found that when I leverage my creative talent, when I am rooting it in a community, and that community can be many different communities. It doesn’t just have to be the black community which I’m proudly a part of, but it could also be certain design communities, certain organizations, certain schools that you went to. There are so many opportunities for community. When you invite your community to be a part of your art, your art kind of becomes a community project, and then it kind of helps me align, at least with what do I stand for? What am I doing? And even when I enter those commercial spaces, I’m entering those spaces with a stronger sense of who I am and what I have to offer, because I know that there’s a community behind me that reinforces that and that contributed to building that image.
What book has influenced you as a sister in the design space?
I actually have this book, and it’s on my desk, this book is called Black Women Writers at Work, and it is essentially a series of interviews that were compiled together talking to the great black women writers around the eighties. I think this was published in ’82 or ’83. In it, I believe they interview Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, they interview all of these great writers. First of all, I recommend it for any black artist, black woman artist especially, I don’t care what your medium is, because there’s a lot of rich wisdom in this book, and it is such a pleasure to read. I’ve literally underlined and written inside of the book. That is how activated this piece of literature makes me.
I will have to say I love a Toni Morrison moment, I love her fearlessness in how she approaches her work. I think that she was very unafraid of saying what she had to say, and of building an entire world around that messaging, and I think her daringness and her fearlessness really stuck out to me.
Why is having an inspirational library important for a designer?
Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, at least for me. I think that I noticed that in my art practice I draw more, or I’m more likely to draw new work when I am just hanging out with friends, and people are just talking around me, existing around me, living their best lives, and I’m still engaged, of course I’m still a part of it, but it’s like I’m able to create within that space and not within like the vacuum, or like the corporate vacuum of, I’m in an office, this office that I’m sitting in, I do not make art everywhere else, this office is for administrative purposes only, and I think that the people, the people, is really important for me. So, having access to other people’s work, having access to how other people think.
What does it feel like knowing the world saw your art through the Google Doodle?
When I look at Google, it is probably one of the most valuable pieces of virtual real estate ever in this day and age, maybe the Netflix homepage was competing with it, but, google.com is the most valuable URL ever, and like 175 billion people, I read, go to this search engine every month, so millions within a day, and to be able to be a part of a group of artists, many of whom were black artists who came together to create an animation that honors Chicago, which is where my folks are from, it just, it’s a big deal, and it makes me feel like the world is small when you have a message worth spreading.
What message do you want people to take away from your Google Doodle design?
The Google Doodle for this year was celebrating 1980s Chicago house music. My auntie, when she saw that it was about house music, she called me, and she said, “That’s my song”, she was amped up, and so that’s actually exactly what I want people to pull from my aesthetic choices, this feeling of like, “that’s my people,” “my auntie did this,” “oh, I used to do this when I was a kid,” I feel seen.
How important is it as a designer to take up space in your work?
I have been thinking about space all year, for a little bit of context, in my journey, I seem like I take up a lot of space right now, but I have not always taken up a lot of space, and, in fact, I’ve worked very, very hard previously to gather myself up and fit myself into this neat little kind of condensed thing that people can palatably put into their pocket and take it to all these spaces, and that was exhausting. It was absolutely exhausting, and so now I’m learning how to play bigger, and I’m learning how to let my gut loose, and I’m learning how to put my elbows out.
What is your superpower?
I see people, and I let them know. I feel like I can see people, and I can see light inside of people. There are people who may be shy, or they may be reserved, or they may kind of keep to themselves, and I might notice something like, wow, this person is really excellent and detail oriented at XYZ. Oh, this person is really wonderful, and at like, reminding people keeping people on track, but this person is always stepping up in their community to be an executor and a doer, a community organizer, and that could be like the ladies at church, who always volunteer to make sure people at the church are fed, everybody has a light.
And when you see that light in someone, it is important that you let them know. Never be too shy to let someone know what wonderful things you see in them, because that could change their lives. We live in a society where people like to withhold, and sometimes they think they’re bothering people by telling them what they appreciate about them. When you tell someone what you appreciate about them, that changes the space that changes the environment that changes a person, and you never know that one compliment might be the thing that activates that person into stepping into a larger purpose than they were aware of.
Why should people understand they are light in this world?
People think about light in such a binary way, they think about it as like the lightness and the darkness, the good and the bad, and so I think that we need to stop disassociating light necessarily with good, light is energy, and light is existence. It’s not about what’s good, what’s bad, get off of the binary of it, you are light because you exist. Every person walking down the street on a busy city street is like a different light that is contributing to the energy of that space, even if they’re not the loudest person in the room, even if they’re not like the person on the street running around in the Spider-Man suit in Times Square, you are a light, too.
