Lineo Kakole
Q What do you do?
“How you look doesn’t only impact how people receive you, it changes how you show up.”
I work across writing and visual identity design to give fashion, beauty, food and culture brands pretty privilege.
Q What steps did you take to get to where you are now?
I’ve always loved to play. No matter how much industrialisation wants creativity to be a standardised predictable outcomes based process, having fun is the most productive step I’ve taken to get where I am today.
After completing a degree in Interaction Design and working as a UI designer, I was baptised into the trenches of community as a youth pastor and art director at a local mega-church.
From producing a weekly TV series, filming community outreach initiatives, designing social media and email marketing campaigns, choreographing plays and stage direction, I was exposed to a lot of creative disciplines that have shaped my approach to branding and identity design.
While my portfolio lies largely in branding food and hospitality brands, I’ve worked with fashion designers, musicians, educators and curators to shape to give their ideas a real-world life.
Q How do you stand out in your field?
I’m interested in the value of visuals beyond visibility. We’re living in a time with more symbols than ever before in human history. More logos, more aesthetics, more content. And yet we’ve never been more starved of differentiation, because what’s seen is only as valuable as what it signifies.
My spice is my deep love of language, typography and world-building. I weave curiosity, sensuality and a radical commitment to beauty to reimagine branding as a tool that conserves imaginative ideas by giving them a distinct recognisable identity.
Q What are you working on right now?
Cinderella said if you tell people your dreams, they wont come true 🤫
Q What’s your style?
Meji Meji meets Dutch singer-songwriter Naomi Sharon?
Meji Meji is an Afrocentric fashion brand redefining Black style through storytelling, nostalgia, and culture. I love how they reject passive representations of African tradition and use vernacular typography, illustration and colour to create a brand world with a present, hot and living African identity.
While Meji Meji captures my collective expression my personal expression is inversely quiet. There is a subdued tone to Naomi Sharon's musical identity that matches my inner world and always comes out in my work. Black/African expression is archetypically bold, bright, loud and beautiful. This tension between vitality and restraint is the ever-lasting dance at play in my creative practice.
I'm still developing my creative finger-print but my work with Kwikish, a West-African pantry brand might be the best example so far.
Q Out of all your slashies, which one do you wish you could do more often?
I wish I had more time to dance and pray. I don't know what industry that fits into but these are unacknowledged personal skills and practices that shape my capacity for creativity.
Q What is frustrating you right now?
Marketing Supremacy. I'm frustrated by the urgency and imperative of self-promotion even at the expense of quality creative work. All activities related to making clients come always find their way to the bottom of my list. I love it when someone just finds me. It's much more romantic.
Q If you could hire someone for $20/hour, what would you have them do to make your day easier?
Marketing and account management, of course.
Q What do you wish you could have told yourself, when, and why?
Baby girl, listen to yourself.
Seems easy enough but hearing and following my intuition is one of the hardest things I have ever practiced.
We are constantly assaulted with frameworks, tools, tutorials, coaches and advice. In Chanel Pearls (Conway The Machine & Jill Scott), Jill Scott sings:
"Even in the Taliban,
A pen in our hands,
lyrical artisan
You'll never know the whole plan"
Not excluding my own contributions, I think the proliferation of advice comes from a collective feeling of insecurity. We want to know the whole plan before taking a step forward. We also know that listening to ourselves means going forward without the whole plan.
It feels safer living in Tutorial Hell but if there was one thing I could tell myself at 12, 16, 21 and 30 it would be: Listen to yourself.
Q If you could talk to an expert to gain more insight on something, what would it be about?
How to play a flute.
Q What kind of opportunities/projects are you looking for?
I want to work with human-experience-first offerings projects that centre creativity and connection over conversion.
Conversion matters practically, but I believe conversion is a natural outcome of pursuing imaginative ideas and facilitating real connection.
I am not a conversion expert. My medium is identity and I am open to any and all opportunities related to surfacing the truth of what a person, place or idea is through visual storytelling, in service of connection, no matter the scale.
Q Describe your ideal job/client/collaboration.
I know its a popular thing to put on your CV, but let it be known that I DO NOT work well under pressure. I need room to breathe and incubate ideas. My ideal client is creative and dedicated to creative outcomes over quick outcomes.
Q: What is your rate?
I have a tiered offer eco-system based on the complexity of the project. My entry level brand identity design offer, Brand Run, starts at $1900.
Q How should someone approach you about working together?
You can download my pricing guide on my services page and send me an email.
Q Who is a creative you admire?
Cruel Santino. A musician that shoots music videos and makes comics. Niche down for who?
Q Oh! and… how do you stay creative?
Breathe In. Breathe Out. Move On.
This member profile was originally published in March 2026.