Article by:
Naiomi Skelton
“I’ve always loved spotlighting other people and helping to transform their dreams into reality. The job of a graphics designer is much like the job that God does, in that you are able to take a blank canvas and create something that now has life and a purpose,” Alex Cotton of Ginisis Media Graphics – the premier graphics design firm in Las Vegas – explains.
Alex was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada to a loving and present mother and father. They worked hard to provide for him, making sure that he never wanted for anything. Through demonstration, Alex’s parents raised him to be respectful, hard-working, and to show love to any one he met.
Being an only child, he learned at an early age how to play independently and use his creativity when there was a lack of playmates. He used his mind to create scenes and scenarios, friends, and foes, and dream up ways to keep himself occupied. When Cotton would grow frustrated as a child, he also learned how to push and encourage himself to get up and try again.
This predilection towards using his imagination and artistic ideas caused him to choose to attend the magnet public school Southern Nevada Vocational Technical Center (which has since closed in 2008) for his high school education. Out of the thirteen academic majors that were offered there, Alex leaned towards either the Architectural Engineering Drafting & Design path or the Graphic Design & Illustration major. Finding that the Architectural major involved a great deal of arithmetic, Cotton decided on Graphic Design & Illustration, which would better allow him to have the freedom of using his aesthetic flair to make his mark in the industry.
“I loved the thought of creating something out of nothing. As opposed to architecture, the only math I needed to figure out was how many business cards fit on one sheet!” Cotton chuckles.
Life wasn’t always easy for Alex, however. As a child, Alex was already diagnosed with having sickle cell trait, which means that he had inherited a sickle cell gene mutation from only one parent, rather than getting it from both, which would have caused him to have the full sickle cell disease. He also had diabetes. Then, at the age of nineteen, he and his parents received a shock when he suddenly suffered a massive heart attack. On the same day that he was treated for the heart attack, he was also diagnosed with Lupus. Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune disease caused when the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues. The disease can affect a person’s skin, kidneys, blood cells, joints, heart, brain, and lungs. Medical professionals will attest that this disease cannot be cured, although treatment can help lessen the symptoms.
In just a month, Alex lost forty pounds. He suffered extreme night sweats and the pain of arthritis in his joints. The first thirty days of his recovery was painful and filled with uncertainty. However, Alex Cotton and his family are believers in God. In the beginning he was on thirteen pills a day, including his heart medicine and the Lupus medication. Eventually, he began foregoing the medicine that the doctors gave him (which he doesn’t recommend to anyone else). Instead, he chose to drastically change his diet and start eating clean. He started going to the gym to exercise regularly, whether he felt like it or not. Cotton continued to go back to his follow-up appointments, and the doctors were amazed at how well the medication they thought he was taking was doing. He was recovering at an exponential rate. Eventually, they told him to stop taking the medication because the Lupus was undetectable. Aside from a few scars, Alex had conquered a beast that is different for every patient who is diagnosed with it. Walking in faith and doing as God told him to do allowed him to go on to live a prosperous life without the symptoms of the disease holding him back.
Alex continued his study of Graphic Design at the University of Las Vegas Nevada (UNLV) after his high school graduation, however a little more than two years into his education, he discovered that the woman he was dating was pregnant with his child. Feeling that he had to do the right thing, he quit school and married her. They had two beautiful daughters during their five-year marriage, which ended in 2011.
Quitting school didn’t stop Cotton from continuing to succeed in the graphic design business. While seeking work in the corporate world, he would get jobs over people who had far more formal education than he did due to his undeniable skills. Alex began developing skillsets normally taught in school at a desk by doing on the job training with companies like the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, Office Max, Las Vegas Car Wraps, and Franklin Documents, just to name a few.
Black celebrity icons like P.Diddy and Jay Z were Alex’s role models when he was growing up. He admired the life of a rich, hard-working entrepreneur who became successful in their own way, lighting their own paths. He would watch the way they presented themselves, words that they said, and how they worked. Alex felt that there was no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Coming from a middle-class background, where his father held an honest job driving 18-wheeler trucks over-the-road and his mother worked in the school system for over thirty years, Alex wanted to be the one to take his family to the next level. His desire is to retire his parents and give them a life where they can rest and be comfortable. When he first expressed to his father that he would run his own graphics design firm, his father was apprehensive. His father came from the old school of thinking. You go to school, graduate, get a college degree, and find a good job. You collect your paycheck until it’s time to retire and then get your pension.
Alex had bigger dreams. He knew that it wasn’t in his future to work for someone else for the rest of his life. Creating Ginisis Media Graphics made it possible for him to design for many different types of people. He could create billboards for large corporations, campaign signs for political candidates, logos and business cards for new start-ups, and websites for everyone in between.
“I love creating a dynamic design for someone. My design allows them to have a successful event. My logo gives them the confidence to create their business. For some people, they can’t visualize actually owning a business until they see that logo. Once I create a book cover, the author gets the courage to finish the book,” Alex states, excitedly.
Alex Cotton has been categorized as an Urban Corporate Designer. This is due to the fact that his design style can be directed all the way urban, if promoting, say a party or a musical concert. However, he has been hailed for his incredible corporate design work, promoting judicial candidates for an election, or creating billboards for Mario’s West Side Market. People recognize his unique and dynamic style, even without knowing that it was he who did the designs.
“Oh, that’s Alex Cotton’s work!” People have been known to say when picking up a magazine or a flyer around the Vegas Valley.
“My work is HD. It has depth. I remain a student. I am always picking up new things to add to my toolbelt. In this day and age, where people are starting to use programs and apps like Canva, you are limited to utilizing their limited templates and designs. I am totally free to start from the beginning and be free to be as creative as I choose,” Alex notes. “I’m not in competition with anyone, really. I stay in the lane God chose me to be in. Someone may be able to say they got their work done cheaper or faster than me, but one thing they will never be able to say is that it was done better. People recognize my work above others, so I don’t have to compete. I just do me.”
In 2015, Alex happened to attend a close friend’s get together at their home. As people began to show up, the doorbell rang, and Alex offered to get it.
“When I opened the door, there was a Black Goddess standing before me,” he fondly recalls.
Unbeknownst to him, this woman, aptly named Hope, was the best friend of his host’s wife. They began talking and getting to know each other. She listened to him speak on his life’s challenges and his dreams, and Alex grew smitten quickly. After courting her with flowers at her job and fancy dinner dates, less than six months later, Alex proposed. Within five more months, they were pronounced husband and wife.
“You have to keep God first,” he responds when asked how to keep a marriage successful. “What I did to get her, I need to do to keep her. My Pastor, Paul Kelker of Fresh Wind Ministries, has always said that if you can’t hear your wife, you definitely can’t hear God. So, I listen to my wife. We are both very involved in church and spiritual.”
Alex candidly mentions that there was a time that he felt that his wife was above his level. Along with being extraordinarily beautiful and charming, it would be easy to be intimidated by her success. Hope is an awesome and accomplished singer, and the spotlight is often on her. Alex has ensured that he remains her biggest cheerleader. Instead of having the perspective that others may have had that they were in her shadow, he has been sitting in the audience at her shows, and all he could think was, Wow. I’m the luckiest man here. All of you are cheering for her, but she’s my WIFE.
There are a couple of important people who have helped shape the man that Alex Cotton is today. Being under the tutelage of Pastor Paul Kelker has been integral to the way Alex behaves as a man of God, a husband, a son, and a father. Learning how to treat the women in his life, how to give the proper respect to his elders, and be an example to his children have all come from him.
“He wouldn’t have to say one word. I could just watch how he lives his life, and emulate what he does, and I would be a better man,” Alex concedes. “I follow my Pastor as he follows Christ, and he has taught me how to be the best man that I can possibly be.”
In addition to the spiritual guidance that Alex has received at Fresh Wind Ministries, Alex has received a massive amount of business knowledge from Joseph Abraham of Unrelenting Media Group. For the past six years, Alex has been the lead graphic designer for all the magazines that Joseph has in circulation in the city of Las Vegas. He has also been introduced to so many prominent public figures and leaders of the community and has been asked to create design work for them due to the connection he has with Abraham.
“Joseph taught me to know my value. He was the first one to tell me that I was undercharging for the value of my work. He recognized my value. Heavy hitters in the city now know my work and know me by name because of Joseph. That’s priceless,” Alex nods appreciatively.
Despite all of the work and accomplishments that Alex Cotton has achieved, he states that his proudest moment was when his first and only son was born. After having two daughters in his first marriage and two more daughters with Hope, in 2021 they introduced Alex Cotton IV into this world.
“I love my daughters, don’t get me wrong; they are my blessings,” Cotton laughs. “It’s just that a man longs for a son to be able to pour all of knowledge about how to be a man into him. I want him to be everything that I am but greater. I want him to be more and do more. This is my chance to extend my legacy. When I cried out to God about why I hadn’t been blessed to have a son yet, He told me it was because there were still some things in me that He didn’t want passed down to my next generation. I was standing in my own way of having my son. So, it changed my perspective, and I began to make decisions questioning myself first, ‘Would I want my son to do that?’ Soon after that, he was born.”
In his down time, which he doesn’t usually have much of, Alex enjoys drumming for his church, singing, and hanging out with his wife, who he considers his best friend. He loves volunteering at his church in the teenager’s group, Generation Now, and being one of their mentors and teachers. One of his current goals is to learn to take a rest from business more and have more fun to maintain his sanity. He would love to master the art of doing nothing.
If you would like more information about Ginisis Media Graphics and how Alex Cotton can bring your business to the next level, please visit http://ginisismg.com.