DESCRIPTION:
A successful, but mildly grumpy, costume designer, Okies stumbled on design by taking a night class in illustration at the Art Center College of Design. Two years later, armed with a bulging portfolio and a firm commitment to her new calling, Okies joined Ogilvy & Mather’s Brand Integration Group (BIG) in New York. Currently she works on brand campaigns for Coca-Cola and Dove, focusing mostly on illustration and print and package design.

VOICE:
Okies was drawn to design, she thinks, “because I needed to use my hands again—costume work can sometimes make you a glorified shopper. Now I stay off the computer as long as possible, just for pleasure’s sake.” Her designs are awash in bits of found typography, line art, witty pairings of textures, and mismatched but oddly friendly images. “Good design should just be honest,” she remarks. She carries this sensibility into her personal projects, including the latest: a Situationist activity book she’s making with friends. Okies loves the functional and commercial aspects of design. “A museum is a graveyard,” she notes. “But a billboard is a living space.”

DISTINCTIVE MARKINGS:
A favorite teacher at Art Center dubbed Okies “the egg layer.” She warmly recalls a school assignment in which she had to make 90 versions of the same logo. As Okies says: “If you push yourself past what you think you know, and get things out of your system, you can get to the weird, really good stuff."

HABITAT:
Okies describes her desk at BIG as “pretty intense. I have clean sweeps pretty often.” Her walls are papered with huge white pads, festooned with ongoing conversations with other BIG folk. On tap lately: an East-West Coast Cholo graffiti debate, and a series of swooning love notes.

SPOTTED BY:
Helene Silverman of Helene Silverman Design Inc., New York: “When I first saw Leigh’s work laid out on my kitchen table upon her arrival in New York, I was impressed by the energy, enthusiasm, and love of design she exuded. I’m happy to see she’s landed somewhere in which she’s given space to add her quirky spark to projects for some ‘serious’ clients.”

CONTACT:
212.237.4705 | leigh.okies@ogilvy.com

Written by Jude Stewart