47 Years of Bakersfield Design, and a Fellowship to Preserve It

Mike Willis, founder of Willis & Williams Design Studios, has been named a 2026 KDA Individual Artists Fellow, receiving a California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship as an Established Artist in Design & Applied Arts.

The fellowship is funded by the California Arts Council and administered by KDA (Kern Dance Alliance), one of only eight organizations in the state chosen to run the program. This year KDA received 265 applications from artists across the Central Valley and Eastern Sierra. Thirty-four were selected, about 8 percent, representing 13 counties. Awards were decided by a panel of regional artists, culture bearers and arts professionals, who looked at artistic excellence, sustained practice and community impact.

It is a meaningful recognition for a career in graphic design. Design is often treated as the work behind the work: the logo on the truck, the poster in the window, the program in your hand at the event. It is rarely thought of as part of a community’s art and history. But it is.

Mike opened the studio in 1979 as Rainbow Graphics. Since then it has produced logos, posters, publications, signs, murals and websites for businesses, schools, nonprofits and events all over Kern County. Much of that work was made by hand, with pens, film and paste-up boards, long before a computer sat on every desk. Put together, it tells a visual history of Bakersfield across the analog and digital eras.

The fellowship gives Mike the chance to preserve it. Over the coming year, he and partner Jennifer Williams will be archiving that body of work in the studio, photographing, scanning and cataloging nearly five decades of design. The goal is to turn it into something lasting: an educational and inspirational resource that honors the craft of graphic design and the people and places it was made for.

Willis & Williams thanks KDA and the California Arts Council for investing in artists in the region, and congratulates the other 33 fellows. The studio is also grateful to every client who has trusted it with their story since 1979. This archive belongs to them, too.

Pieces from the archive will be shared here as they are uncovered. Stay tuned.

Learn more about the fellowship at kda-ca.org/IAF.