Sublime began in 2015, in a first-year architecture studio at the University of Nairobi.

Our lecturer, Arch. Yasir Brek, introduced us to digital tools at a time when most of us had only ever drawn by hand. In one studio session we recreated the iconic Obama campaign poster; in another, we rendered our own portraits in lettering. By the end of that semester, Photoshop had stopped being software to me. It had become a second pencil.

I put it to work almost immediately. I designed a proposal for a new student ID for my alma mater, Homa Bay High School, and sent it to the Principal, Mr. Andrew Buop (now retired). He left me on blue ticks for four long months.

Then, when the new Form Ones were admitted, my phone rang.

“Joash, can you do our school IDs?”

“Yes.”

“How much will you charge?”

“KES 300 per ID.”

“Come on Monday next week.”

Once a Nairobian, always a Nairobian: you say yes to every opportunity first and work out the rest later. I marshalled what money I could and travelled to Homa Bay with Job Oyagi, a close friend and fellow first-year architecture student.

Abject poverty had drawn the two of us together. While many of our classmates rolled into campus in German machines, most of them from well-off families in Nairobi’s affluent neighbourhoods, we had nothing to fall back on, and it made us fearless.

We did the job, and we delivered.

“What’s your company’s name?” Mr. Buop asked. “As an institution, we don’t pay private individuals.”

“Let me text you the name,” I replied.

Oyagi and I conferred. I proposed Sublime Design Solutions, and he agreed almost immediately. I texted the Principal, the cheque was written in that name, and only then did we work backwards. We had not done a name search, let alone registered a business. We ran the search, and to our great luck the name had not been taken. We registered it.

That was our eureka moment. The rest, as they say, is history.