Squid Alley
2018 birthed 2 killer trends on social media that brought some of Africa’s finest visual creatives into the limelight all of them inspired by the Drawing While Black trend from 2017. These were We Are Nigerian Creatives and United African Creatives. One of these trends, United African Creatives was widely adopted by Malagasy comic artist,
Scrolling through Julia Naa Shika Odamtten’s Instagram page is a bottomless pool of pure joy you can’t ever get enough of. Rich textures, emotive and colourful gradients, edgy characters, avant-garde fashion and an overwhelming sense of cool draw you into her majestically insane world – a world where your only sin, is to not be true
I first came across Emmanuel Dankyi’s (ed. for short) work during the promotion of the first Artmosphere Design Experience (dEX for short) event sometime in March of 2018. His fun, out-the-box ideas, colour choices, geometric patterns, refreshing animations, expressive photos and subject matter got me hooked. Several months after encountering his work, ed. has become
LOUIS LUBEGA (Master Rui) is a Ugandan writer, illustrator and painter best known for his on-going dark fantasy webcomic, OLWATUUKA (Once Upon A Time). His webcomic OLWATUUKA which explores death, demons and glorious rebirth sets the tone for most of his work. Louis’ illustrations, just like his webcomic are mostly dark, haunting, imaginative, mysterious but very
In July 2017, we started Squid Alley, an initiative that shed light on some of the creatives ( illustrators mostly) whose work we were in love with. The goal was and still is to get right into it by asking direct and easy questions. We took a pretty long hiatus but we’re back now! And to swing
SONWABO VALASHIYA, aka Sonik describes himself as an “emerging creative with BIG dreams and awesome ideas for this industry” in a feature on him for Conté Magazine. (Check them out, pretty awesome stuff). Sonwabo is an illustrator and graphic designer from Pretoria, South Africa. He has an uncanny talent for fusing calm hues, grit and pop
This week’s Squido (Squid Hero) is none other than Alfred Achiampong. Alfred is an impressive and constantly evolving illustrator who has taken the rule of 10,000 hours to heart. He posts as many new illustrations as there are days on his social media accounts. He’s been at this awesomeness for almost two years, posting something new
We’re starting something new and exciting at Squid Mag that you’ll totally love. We’re granting you- with 9 questions – an all-access pass into the backyards of some of the best illustrators, graphic designers and comic writers across the continent. We’re calling it the Squid Alley -à la artist alley – and it is intended
