This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
What inspires you? For designers, the answer to this question spans across a litany of people, places, and things. For Ziarekenya Smith, the aspirations are to be great. He started drawing as a kid, then fell in love with digital art the moment his mother introduced him to a computer. His drive to be the best and love for art gave life to one of the dopest pieces we have seen. Upon first view of the XXIII Dynasty Collection, we had to find out who the man behind the typeface design was. Take a look at what motivated Ziare to create such a timeless piece.
Be sure to Like Ziare on Facebook and follow him on Twitter and instagram. You can check out his entire “God Inspred Designs” portfolio on his Behance page.
XXIII Dynasty Collection – RetroNice Kicks: Who is Ziare Smith?
Ziare Smith: I?m from Detroit, but I?ve live in Orlando, Florida attending Full Sail University. I?m trying to get my bachelor?s degree in Digital Art Design. Basically, I?m a determined designer always trying to get better. I’ve been designing over 5 years, and I?m only 21.
Original 2010 Image vs. XXIII Dynasty Collection RetroNice Kicks: The XXIII Dynasty Collection has received a lot of attention. How did you come up with that design?
Ziare Smith: I created a similar piece two years ago, and it went viral. I tried to recreate it again as a t-shirt design for a class. I remember always being asked to turn the image into a t-shirt design. I always waved it off and said it looked better as a poster, but this class presented the perfect opportunity for me to turn this imagery into a t-shirt design. ?My initial idea was to take the original one, and just make a t-shirt from that. The reason I didn?t is because I showed my teacher the design in my portfolio a while ago, and she said, ?Ziare you did this already.? I think for this t-shirt design contest, it won?t be as strong?. After she got done saying what she had to say, I?m thinking everybody likes MJ so what is she talking about? I didn?t know how, but I knew it would work. Once I got home, something told me to recreate that same design. So that?s what I did. The next morning I started from scratch. I improved on all the minor details and all the mistakes. After seven days of recreating, I didn?t even like the original one anymore. If you did a side by side of the original and this new one, you would see there is a huge difference. There is so much improvement. The new one is way more accurate, and way more realistic.
