Kabolobari Benakole
I'm Kabolobari Benakole, a Design Theorist.
I help organizations and teams apply good design principles to build compelling products. I'm the author of the book, course, and life's work in design - Good Design Is.
I chose to publish Good Design Is because the industry needed a handy resource (more or less a sniff-test sheet, a rubric) to produce compelling designs.
For all of my adult years, I've written concise pieces of poetry and aphorisms about my observations and philosophies (on life, politics, human relations, cooking, etc) and design.
A lot of these works remains unpublished.
Good Design Is is my second attempt to publish. I shall ride on the tension and delight of releasing something of such magnanimity and do similarly with my other works.
Profession
Although my knowledge spans a wide range of subjects, more like a typical prophet or philosopher of old, I quite modestly only regard myself as Design Theorist. I do so, not out of coyness to embrace my person, but of how much of myself I believe I know.
Design drives everything I explore, as if I only grasp a subject because I could model it neatly to fit design standards. From that angle, let me explain each of my professions.
User Experience Designer, UXD
For every product, but more especially and vastly professionally, for digital products, I conceptualize, model, and direct how it should be designed (and rather fabricated) to please its desired audience or user and help these ones meet their goals for using the product. UXD remains my main profession, which explains its position on the list.
Web Designer & Developer
Or, more specifically, Interface Engineer. I conceive, design, architect, and compose visually pleasing and usable software application interfaces for the web and mobile environments. As a web designer and developer, my skills and experience include:
Brand Designer
In close collaboration with their owners, I have crafted a number of leading brands. No, not have, as if I stopped. I love brand identity design! Designing visual identities, I work with visual designers who help bring my draftsmanship to life.
Poet
I was first of all a poet before anything else, using pithy words and dramatic aphorisms to express ideas of life, politics, design, science, business, sex, food & nutrition, cooking, and really any direction of thought my consititution may go at any moment I'm driven to write. I did publish a collection of poetry Unfortunate Oyibo in 2015. This was my first book, which I'm thinking re-releasing in all formats in 2022.
Copywriter & Editor
A rather uncanny flair for how words sound and look on a page, caring deeply for the shape of words, is how I forayed into the practice of copywriting. My taglines, headlines, brand names, and copies adorn most products, organizations, projects, and programs.
Culinary Artist
I came to cooking from a love of food. It's how I apply design to food preparation and presentation. I'm the co-founder of Queen of the Smooth where we make "delicious, nutritionally balanced homemade supermeals for beauty, wellness, and longevity."
I'm also host of Precast by Queen of the Smooth, a podcast that takes customers behind the scenes of how the recipes are constructed while nerding out on nutrition science.
Business Designer
As a business designer, I apply principles of design to define and construct a business. Through clear messaging, persuasive storytelling, and human-centered (operating) methodologies, the way to go about each of which I document in a Business Charter, I have been instrumental to the survival and thriving of a few businesses.
Business design is an area of work where my main goal is to prove to the business' stakeholders the value of design - the business is loved and profitable because its customers perceive being heard and cared for as evident in the product/service.
Portfolio
Eyowo
Conceived, proposed, drafted, and orchestrated production of the brand (logo, color scheme, typefaces, etc), making it an icon in the digital payment industry in Africa.
Eyowo enables anyone with a phone number render or receive financial services.
ADX Credits
For both their customer-facing dashboard, website, and brand, I crafted a rather stunning design and great user experience.
ADX Credits eases access to credit and powers personal and business success.
Do take a look at the ADX's customer dashboard, too.*
Never An Afterthought
A former Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President (of Nigeria) on Job Creation needed a fresher, more brand-consistent, modern and resilient, engaging and immersive experience for the website to promote and sell his new book - Never An Afterthought.
From the client's brief, I produced a suitable information architecture (IA) and content schema (CS) for the site. I then directed the graphic and visual designers on the team on mocking up specific sections of the site including fine-tuning the needed images and book mockups and assembling them into a well-storied site.
I finally engineered the experience using the Nuxt Framework for Vuejs, integrating Paystack for collecting payments for book purchases happening on the website.
Never An Afterthought: Never an Afterthought by Afolabi Sokpehi Imoukhuede: Private Sector Pragmatism to Government Idealism & the N-Power Success Story.
Komponents
Komponents needed a brand refresh to reposition its renewable energy firm as the #1 go-to for innovative power-harnessing and energy management in Africa. Rediscovering the company, I proposed and designed a bold, "energetic", and striking brand identity as well as a fluid website that helped them meet their goals for these upgrades.
Komponents & Solutions Rack is an energy management and utilization firm, helping people use power efficiently and cost-effectively at their business, home, sport, and apartment complexes.
Brand Brochure for Komponents.
DevX.Blog
Helped develop the original business design of the program, wrote the original charter, conceived, sketched, and managed the brand design; designed and developed the website on a responsive, mobile-first grid, which scales beautifully from screen to screen.
DevX.Blog is a Softcom engineers' sandbox for sharing deep practice insights including fun demos and banters.
K16E, Inc.
As the business based on the book and life's work Good Design Is, K16E is a coalition of global good design consultants where our big hairy goal is to design anything - software, automobility, living, space, fun, you name it. Do see more of this work at the website.
K16E, Inc. are global good design consultants. We make everything compelling.
ASB Technologies
Crafted a winning identity for the brand, designed and developed its website, and manage user experience design for some of its software projects.
ASB are savvy technical, analytical, and creative experts using technology and design to bring amazing ideas to life.
DataBeaver
DataBeaver simplifies the process of data collection and analysis for businesses.