Illustration of Nile Livingston, Creative Repute Founder and CEO

Nilé Livingston

Visionary
Inclusive
Artist
Leader
Humble
Tenacious

Nile Livingston (she/her/they) is a Philly-born award-winning Visual Artist. Institutions have recognized their work far and wide, including the Philadelphia Business Journal, Rad Girls Awards, and Mural Arts Philadelphia. In 2017, Livingston founded Creative Repute, where they work with a team of specialists in graphic design, website & app development, strategic marketing, and brand identity. In 2020, Livingston ranked amongst Philly Magazine’s 76 “Most Influential People” in the city. In 2022, Livingston’s street artworks were listed in Australia’s Thrill List as attractions to Philadelphia.

As a fourth-generation Philadelphian, Nile’s precocious spirit was nurtured within a village that instilled the importance of community. Growing up in 1990’s West Philly (and, no, the Fresh Prince was not around) with family and neighbors who honored Black progress and its promise, Nile inherited cultivation from social strides of African American trailblazers. In the in-between time offounder and ceo nile livingston of creative repute smiles and gives peace sign for headshotabsorbing the fruit of rigorous labor and protests from earlier Black culture workers invested in Philadelphia, Nile spent countless hours constructing worlds using discarded blueprints, kneaded erasers, and paper clips from their dad and pop-pop’s architectural work. Their immediate community’s ubiquitous encouragement of their inventiveness led to Nile’s entry into Philly’s talent-laden Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA), where they began charting their formidable art career via enrollment in an after-school art program at Mural Arts Philadelphia (MAP). Nile would go on to study large-scale metal fabrication at Kutztown University.

Energized with the enduring tenacity of someone whose entire life has been tilled in art, Nile Livingston returned home to Philly, post-graduation, with their refined talents, communal love in tow, and a creative, resolution-based headspace ripe for business. They quickly began organizing and completing volunteer mural projects and various forms of street art with childhood friends. This practice garnered Nile’s attention from interested people and organizations like MAP (again), who contracted them for projects. Over time, Nile’s public art demands grew to a size simply unmanageable for one person. Nile harnessed their social and organizational skills acquired as a third-generation Civil-Rights kid alongside their aesthetic instincts to establish Creative Repute in 2017.

Creative Repute, Inc. Design & Development Agency is the result of her solution-oriented personality. With a background in public art, Nile quickly realized how imagery could orient people’s attention toward new realities. While tending to an overwhelming influx of requests during their solo practice, they asked for help from other specialists in their early efforts of what is now a mature, streamlined, and developed business regimen. Nile’s solution-turned-business uses crafted imagery and informed audience comprehension to curate distinctive visual encounters and stories attuned to our world.

Creative Repute is a design, website development, app development, and marketing company that boasts an impact-driven vision informing its work and hiring practices. As a Black-queer person, Nile was intimately aware of the disproportionate representation of multiple marginalized people in their industry: as of 2022, “70.2% of all US graphic designers are white, and only 13% identify as founder and ceo nile livingston of creative repute smiles and gives peace sign for headshotLGBT+.” This glaring lack of diverse perspectives is one central issue Creative Repute actively challenges. By hiring an expansive range of creatives and strategists, the company occupies a unique lane, which fosters culturally competent work in a business world growing increasingly dependent upon visuals and seeking to keep pace with a necessarily progressive culture. Creative Repute has spearheaded captivating and relevant visuals and invigorating platforms for organizations whose heft ranges from using 100% of its funds for mission-aligned change, like the Nathan Cummings Foundation, to highlighting scholarship from marginalized persons with Colored Convos Media.

With the hard work of Nile and her team, Creative Repute has helped redefine a design agency and what it can accomplish. Creative Repute brings a deep bench of expertise in public art, brand strategy, and data to deliver well-designed solutions. Having earned a host of recognition, such as the Global Indigo Award and a ranking in the Philadelphia Business Journal, Creative Repute continues to do more with even greater impact each coming year.

In 2020, Livingston ranked amongst Philly Magazine’s 76 “Most Influential People’’ in the city. In 2022, Livingston’s street artworks were listed in Australia’s Thrill List as attractions to Philadelphia and were voted Best Artist/ Painter by Metro Philly’s Best for mulitble years.

Outside of work for Creative Repute and her public art practice, Nile enjoys eating plant-based meals, meditating, lounging with her three cats, gardening, listening to good music, traveling, and reading anything her curiosity leads her to.