BakerRipley

Memory fades unless someone writes it down. BakerRipley has kept Houston a place of opportunity for more than a century, serving over 500,000 neighbors a year through community-based programs for youth, families, and seniors across the Texas Gulf Coast. For its Generations event, the organization set out to honor stories from many generations of Black Houstonians, and it needed both event materials and a publication capable of carrying those stories beyond a single night. BakerRipley asked WWC to design the Generations creative and to design and produce Black Lives Houston, a limited edition book.

WWC created the design and creative for BakerRipley's Generations event, producing the event program, signage, video, and handouts, and designed Black Lives Houston in full, from layout and cover to print production. The limited edition book, gathering remarkable stories from many generations of Houston's Black community, anchored the project. WWC approached it as a keepsake, a volume meant to be read, shared, and passed down rather than filed away, with the event materials built around it so the evening kept its focus on the storytellers. The engagement reflects a continuing creative relationship between WWC and BakerRipley that also includes the nonprofit's HUMAN annual report.

Black Lives Houston launched as a finished, limited edition book, carrying stories from many generations of Houston's Black community into permanent form, and the work was warmly received across the community. The Generations event gave BakerRipley a platform to honor those voices, and the publication now lives well beyond the night it debuted. More importantly, the work turned one evening of celebration into something the community can hold onto for good.