a timeline of intent
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Black Fish Gold Studios is incorporated in St. Paul, MN.
And our mission, vision, and purpose haven't changed.
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Lucky 7 promotion brings in first 7 web design projects.
This was an opportunity for Kyra to define her client process and begin a portfolio of solo work.
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Coronavirus causes US shutdowns and work from home orders.
People begin to move their work into the online space.
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George Floyd is unjustifiably murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.
And an uprising ensured in our home cities. As a racial and financial equity visionary, Kyra decided to accept donations via Black Fish Gold Studios and redistrubute them back to black Twin Citians.
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Black Fish Gold Studios raises over $25k in mutual aid.
In an effort to funnel a small percentage of the millions of dollars entering the Twin Cities in response to George Floyd's death away from organizations and directly into the hands of black folx, Black Fish Gold Studios raised and directly distributed over $25,000. Because we are not a nonprofit organization, we happily paid taxes on these donations.
Read our original call to action here. -
Black Fish Gold Studios hires a creative project manager.
With an incredible track record for word of mouth growth, it was necessary to bring someone in to manage the client and project load.
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Black Fish Gold Studios maintains an aligned client-base.
Our beloved clients are 45% black, 60% people of color, 30% queer, and 89% women. We are working diligently to ensure that at least 50% of our clientele identifies as African American or black.
About Us
Black Fish Gold Studios is themed with elements that symbolize the depths of earth and sea because we are not surface-level partners. Whatever the project, we get to know you and become fully vested in your best outcomes. We are intuitive, innovative, and intentional for a deeply human touch in a vastly technical world.
access to technical equity
It is our mission to produce quality + production-ready brands, technology, and media on a realistic budget. One level beyond this, we want to ensure our services are conspicuously targeted toward those of us who are consistently left out of market consideration as valuable consumers with big ideas and the strategic methodology to afford implementation.
A few sea levels deeper, we do not believe we need to engage traditional business practices prior to offering targeted services to historically robbed people and organizations. We have started there. We don’t treat the most inherently creative people on earth as afterthoughts in our growth modals. We see them in parallel to mission and financial success.
At Black Fish Gold Studios, we are made up of the same people we hope to serve. We choose not to glance over how critical this feature is to a truly changing world.
how we work
We are design minimalists who take technology to the maximum. Our strategy is to convert impact into connection. We do not create smoke and mirrors. Every aspect and decision accompanying our work — from start to launch — is intentional and that’s our magic.
We believe in an iterative process. We ask ourselves, what are the minimum requirements to get started now and see a maximum return? We ask the same of our clients who feel held by our process. Held but not limited.
As growth occurs, the minimum requirements inevitably change and Black Fish Gold Studios projects are future-proofed and ready for additions!
We work with our clients to hone their messaging, brand, and web presence. We not only think about our clients, we also think about their clients. This extended responsibility of satisfaction challenges us to create artful, intuitive, accessible, and technologically seamless experiences.
Behind the Screens
meet kyra
Kyra Crawford Calvert is software engineer, art historian, multi-mediums artist, award-winning poet and published writer who blends disciplines in service of racial equity, intentional use of technology, artful living, good business and better whimsy — both on as well as off line.
Before her helm at Black Fish Gold Studios, Kyra was a software engineer and team lead at Cloudburst, SBC in NE Minneapolis. She has worked with non-profits to procure, distribute, and manage foundational as well as governmental grants in excess of 2M. She has also worked with non-profit and small business entities to implement new web presences, update operations and operational technologies, and scale digital campaigning efforts. As such, she has designed graphics for major digital and print releases as well as written copy for editorials, App Store deployments, blog posts, and social adverts. Kyra regularly manages projects, budgets, and teams to goal completion and has a passion for helping artists and entrepreneurs scale their endeavors in a digital market.
Growing up in a historically black neighborhood and seeing thriving businesses owned by the people who lived there inspires Kyra to provide an unprecedented level of service and innovation to businesses owned by, in service of, and/or not committing operational harm against these very people. It is her highest aim to meet good business with excellent quality with the hope that, by doing so, more will thrive in a world where capital is driven by our ability to successfully integrate with technology.
