In Bustle’s Quick Question, we ask women leaders all about advice — from the best guidance they’ve ever gotten to what they’re still figuring out.
As the site’s art director, McKinley has helped execute several hundred Doodles since joining the team in 2019, from an illustration of LGBTQ+ rights activist Marsha P.
When emancipation for some and Juneteenth for many others happened, this was the first time that Black Americans wore clothing or materials that they liked.
Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s how I see Doodles.
Often, when we see images of protests, there’s tension, but we wanted to give softness and serenity to her face with these very strong eyes, because she was doing what women didn’t necessarily do at that time.
Music is part of that; I love listening to Jill Scott’s “Golden” while going into a meeting and feeling like no matter what, it’s golden that I’m here, it’s golden that I get to do this as a job and express these ideas.
While working on last year’s Juneteenth Doodle, I felt the weight of it all.
Sometimes people cannot see your vision — and it’s not necessarily because they’re opposed to it, but it can be hard for people to see what they haven’t seen before when they’re used to doing things a certain way.
People are well-meaning and sometimes they’ll say, “You don’t have to learn this” or, “Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time on this area,” but it’s important to not take the shortcut sometimes.
It’s knowing that putting 20 more hours into this project without taking a break is not going to make this better.