In­nis Fran­cis

Kervin Solomon is a mod­ern-day ex­am­ple of David, who de­feat­ed Go­liath as de­scribed in bib­li­cal times, and of a young boy who achieved his dreams by de­sign.

Com­ing from the hum­ble com­mu­ni­ty of Belle­vue Long Cir­cu­lar, St James, Solomon re­flects on his years liv­ing in a sin­gle-par­ent home with his moth­er and old­er broth­er, and the pain of falling among the have-nots.

Solomon, 36, nav­i­gat­ed shame, strug­gle, ed­u­ca­tion and con­tent­ment, but he kept his eyes on his artis­tic prize; on­ly he could piece to­geth­er the puz­zle as he grew in­to adult­hood.

With graph­ic de­sign as his pas­sion, and the odds against him as the in­dus­try clam­oured on­ly for the elite, he chal­lenged him­self and built an un­der­stand­ing of what is now a ca­reer path that sus­tains him while liv­ing in Trinidad.

To­day, he leads one of the most es­tab­lished on­line graph­ic, ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing busi­ness­es, Ad Vi­tam Ad­ver­tis­ing, a com­pa­ny he nur­tured from child­hood dreams in­to his own dy­nasty as an adult.

He said, "Grow­ing up with a sin­gle moth­er, the chal­lenges of rais­ing two boys and hav­ing to go to work, and some­how, still find time to look af­ter her kids, is not easy. But what I could re­mem­ber from my ear­ly child­hood is that I would ask her to draw Fi­do Di­do be­fore she leaves to work. So, for me as a child, she leav­ing that lit­tle craft for me to do, and I would be con­stant­ly do­ing that whole day. So, I guess that's where I fell in love with de­sign as I got old­er."

Hum­bled by a kind ges­ture once met­ed out to his moth­er, he re­called, "So, I could re­mem­ber prob­a­bly like the age of ten, she (his moth­er) was a clean­er. And one of the peo­ple she would have done work for would have been Ke­jan (Haynes) and his fa­ther. And he (Mr Haynes) would have do­nat­ed a com­put­er to her, but it was ex­treme­ly old. Like when I look back and think of the pow­er of that com­put­er, it's equiv­a­lent to 70 iPhones...That's how slow it was, right? But, be­cause we were so grate­ful for it, I would have used that and would have de­vel­oped my craft from it, lock­ing my­self in my room, de­sign­ing, prac­tis­ing, and try­ing to build on it. And, do­ing a short course and still de­vel­op­ing, I mean, it takes a lot of pa­tience to work on a com­put­er that slow. So, de­vel­op­ing that strength to want to be bet­ter would have de­vel­oped that pa­tience and that hunger to work on my craft. So, af­ter that, now, start­ing to pull out de­sign and be­ing recog­nised by agen­cies like the most pop­u­lar one lo­cal­ly, Lons­dale, Saatchi & Saatchi, they would have hired me."

Solomon ran­dom­ly drew a por­trait of his men­tor, Amer­i­can hip-hop en­ter­tain­er J. Cole, and pre­sent­ed it to his pub­li­cist at J. Cole's jazz con­cert in To­ba­go. He lat­er de­vel­oped the por­trait in­to a graph­ic im­age.

He said, "The high­est point in my ca­reer of work, I think it's def­i­nite­ly a por­trait I de­signed of J.Cole. I used to lis­ten to him for guid­ance. And not know­ing that it would have tak­en me, based on my craft, to do some­thing that would reach him. And he saw it and put out recog­ni­tion on it. It was over­whelm­ing for me be­cause, as I men­tioned, he's some­body that I would have tak­en guid­ance from through his mu­sic. I am a big fan, a huge fan. I was do­ing it based on a per­son­al project in 2017. I walked with it at the con­cert at To­ba­go Jazz. And I would have giv­en it to one of his reps. And af­ter he post­ed it on so­cial me­dia and point­ed it to my page. And you know, the amount of re­quests that start­ed com­ing in was just ex­treme­ly over­whelm­ing for me to be recog­nised by one of your idols."

Solomon spoke of trekking 122 steps to and from his home, whether it was for school, per­son­al er­rands, or to present graph­ic demon­stra­tions to po­ten­tial cus­tomers. Those steps were his life, and he cred­its them as part of his path to suc­cess.

He speaks of do­ing what he en­joys and the kind of mind­set young peo­ple should em­brace in re­main­ing true to their own call­ing, away from a life of de­pres­sion.

He said that suc­cess is not de­ter­mined by where you come from or the en­vi­ron­ment to which you are as­cribed, but by mak­ing use of what you have in or­der to pur­sue some­thing bet­ter.

Solomon said, "It's some­thing like iden­ti­fy­ing your strengths, iden­ti­fy­ing what you have in you and try­ing to bring it out. So, like a lot of peo­ple from those ar­eas, we are hun­gry for op­por­tu­ni­ties. But be­cause some­times, where we come from, it's just cer­tain chal­lenges you have to over­come that we take for grant­ed, that peo­ple from those ar­eas face. So, deal­ing with that chal­lenge of the stig­ma of where you come from, it's like some­times, be­fore when I go to work for a com­pa­ny, you would feel a cer­tain way to write your ad­dress, be­cause you know that may al­so be­come a chal­lenge in the hir­ing process. They might pick or take some­body if their ad­dress is West­moor­ings, rather than take some­body who is from St Jame. But in a nut­shell, not every­body is com­ing out of that en­vi­ron­ment."

Some of Solomon's sig­na­ture art­work in­cludes de­signs for NA­PA, Caribbean Air­lines, Jet­pack, Na­tion­al En­er­gy, HDC, C3 and Movi­eTowne.

He says be­ing a good graph­ic artist is about build­ing trust. He says it in­volves a great deal of psy­chol­o­gy be­cause, many times, clients might know what they want but not how to ar­tic­u­late it.

He said he now works with a team of sev­en dili­gent peo­ple em­ployed by his com­pa­ny, who de­vel­op eye-catch­ing and mem­o­rable de­signs.