Along with the exclusive events and releases at HYPEFEST, one of the major draws was an opportunity to join roundtable conversations between some of the industry’s major players. For this session of HYPETALKS, illustrator Sophia Chang and THE BRILLIANCE! founders Benjamin Edgar and Chuck Anderson sat down with moderator jeffstaple for a discussion centering around entrepreneurship & independent content creation.  The creatives touch on topics that include the development of street culture from ‘05 to now, storytelling and the crossroads of travel and creativity. While tracing the growth of their own companies, the panelists explore the choices they made (both Edgar and Anderson reveal that they didn’t attend college) and their sources of inspiration — Chang notes that a friend of hers watches videos on mute while listening to a different film score. Later, the group fields questions from the audience; when asked to give advice to emerging designers, Chang offers a single nugget of wisdom: “Stop looking at Instagram.”

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