Tahir Hemphill

Tahir Hemphill is an award-winning advertising creative and multimedia artist working in the areas of interdisciplinary collaboration, thought and research. Hemphill has planned strategy for businesses in the entertainment, advertising, and nonprofit industries. He has conceived and implemented design-based solutions for brands including Mercedes Benz, L’Oreal, Verizon, and Microsoft. Hemphill has been a consultant for Y&R, Publicis, Grey, Saatchi & Saatchi and Burrell Communications. Hemphill’s artwork is featured in the Talk to Me exhibit at MoMA which explores design and the communication between people and objects. Hemphill’s work has been exhibited at Siggraph (Siggraph 2002); Queens Museum of Art (Queens International Biennial, 2002) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Black New York Photographers of the Twentieth Century, 1999). Hemphill holds a B.A. in Spanish Language from Morehouse College, a Strategic Planning Certificate from Miami Ad School and a M.S. in Communications Design from Pratt Institute — where he authored and designed a treatise on the methodologies of creatives who use traditional advertising techniques to promote subversive and prosocial campaigns. Hemphill manages the media arts education program for the Rap Research Lab — a place for teaching art, design, data analysis and data visualisation to students from the Bronx using his project based curriculum which visualizes Hip Hop as a cultural indicator. Hemphill is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee, a 2012-2013 Hip Hop Archive Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and a 2013 Fellow at The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, Tahir is managing the satellite projects (research, education, art, technology & marketing) associated with his searchable rap almanac the Hip Hop Word Count.