BIOGRAPHY

For more than 3 decades, Cey Adams has brought his unique creative vision and spirit to a wide variety of mediums and messages. From film, to painting, graphic and merchandise design, branding, and photography, this New York City native and former graf writer has infused every project that he’s undertaken with style, intelligences, artistry and an undeniable and unwavering allegiance to the possibilities of culture.

After establishing himself in the groundbreaking East Village/underground art scene of the early 80s, he worked and exhibited alongside such influential artists as the late Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Cey then took his already palpable talent to the next level by studying painting at the School of Visual Arts.
Soon afterwards, Cey began a long standing professional relationship with hip hop mogul Russell Simmons and joined the creative team at Rush artist management. While there he created logos, tour merchandising, billboards and advertising campaigns for some of the most influential artist in rap music, including Beastie Boys, Run DMC, De La Soul and LL Cool J.
In 1984 Cey began his tenure at the seminal Def Jam Recordings, and five years later, with partner Steve Carr, founded the Drawing Board — the label’s in house visual design firm which was instrumental in setting the aesthetic tone and direction of not only Def Jam’s impressive roster (i.e. Public Enemy, Redman, Jay-Z, DMX) but other artists signed to MCA, Universal, Warner Brothers, Bad Boy and BMG as well (such as Mary J Bilge, Notorious B.I.G, Faith Evans, Ice Cube, R Kelly). In addition, Cey and the Drawing Board created corporate identities for Sean “P. Diddy” Comb’s chain of Justin’s Restaurants, the Sean John clothing line and designed key artwork and soundtrack album packaging for the popular films Belly, Rush Hour and Next Friday.
After the Drawing Board closed its doors in 1999, Cey kicked off a string of endeavors in Los Angeles and NYC. Some of those projects included ad campaigns for Nike, Coca-Cola, HBO, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, top rated NYC’s radio stations Hot 97 and WBLS, and Paul Allen’s Seattle-based Experience Music Project — where Cey co-designed the hip hop wing of the Rock and Roll museum.

In 2003 Cey was hired by Dave Chapelle to create the eye catching and prominently featured logo for the hugely successful Chapelle’s Show and over the course of the next two years Cey continued to bring his work to new audiences via album design (i.e. Maroon 5’s 2005 Grammy winning Songs About Jane), tour photography, stage wardrobe and tour merchandising design for multi platinum artists Beastie Boys, Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Enimem and Foo Fighters.

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