Alex Wipperfurth, brand marketing consultant and accessory to hijack.

Alex Wipperfurth is a San-Francisco-based marketing consultant who traffics in radical ideas. Through his agency Plan B, Wipperfurth has elevated grassroots marketing into something of an artform. Brands as diverse as Napster, Dr Marten’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Barbie have all benefited from Wipperfurth’s methodology, which often times flies in the face of big budget, mass media, focus group tested marketing. Wipperfurth creates a cult following for most of his brands through a creative, low-budget, person-to-person strategy that "seeds" the product with a target audience of trend-setters. The customer in effect "hijacks" the brand, sparking an authentic buzz that makes the brand cool.

Prior to the release of his new book Brand Hijack, we interviewsed Alex about what his ideas mean for visual designers. After all, marketers and designers do face the same challenges: How do we reach our target audience without placing an ad on Fox? How do we make a design "cool" without trying too hard?

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Holly Becker, décor8

As a freelance writer and interior design consultant, Holly Becker has created a very loyal readership to her blog, décor8. Holly is an Interior Design Consultant practicing in New Hampshire, Boston and the surrounding areas. She’s also a published freelance writer, having 10 years of combined writing and design experience, working for Fortune 500 companies and smaller companies in both the U.S. and Canada, including designers, salon owners and artists.

Q. Holly, on décor8 you point out that you look to reach out to others who share your passion for design and the need for creative living. Can you tell us what you mean by “Creative Living?”

Holly: Yes, I’d be happy to expound on this. Creativity is expressing yourself, being original, imaginative, authentic, and productive. We are all alive, but there is a difference between being alive and living. A person who works a job they dislike, comes home to chaos, and has few deep and meaningful interactions in their life, is not really living. At least in my opinion. To really live, you need to tap into your true self first and figure out what your passions and dreams really are. Not the ones you think you should do, or what your friends are telling you to do, or what your parents expect of you. It may not even be the career you’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

You need to be comfortable with who you are and you need to like yourself. And once you have that down, you will start to take better care of yourself - your health, your home, everything will fall into place once you realize your worth, passions, and goals. Layers will start to unfold as you continue to examine who you are, listen to your inner voice, and do things you’ve always wanted to do. Take a long vacation to that exotic locale you’ve always wanted to visit, just because. Once you’ve tapped into what makes your heart feel warm and your outlook bright (whether it is cooking, sewing, taking classes to learn about something that fascinates you…whatever), start doing those things and see where each experience leads you—One step at a time. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Live for today. This is creative living. (more…)

Bruce Livingstone, Founder, President, CEO, iStockPhoto

Bruce Livingstone, 35, is founder, President and CEO of iStockphoto, an innovative marketplace for imagery. Bruce started his design career in 1994, as a clerk in the mail room of Image Club Graphics, a Calgary company credited with being the first to put RF images on CD-ROMs. After a piece of software essentially eliminated his job, Bruce’s manager authorized him to spend $2,000 to create a plan for a potential new venture for the company. The experiment was a strong foreshadowing of Bruce’s future career at the helm of a powerful and profitable Internet company. Bruce then moved on to work as a designer at various places including the Idea Machine, where he was a graphic designer for the Web, helping to create Web sites for Air Canada and others.

During these years, Bruce sharpened his skills as a photographer, and eventually decided to try to market 1,600 stock images of his own on CD-ROM. He calls iStockphoto a "true example of success born from failure." After deciding he was not going to make it in the traditional stock photography business, Bruce created a free Web site to share his images with a network of designer and photographer friends, and iStockphoto was born. Initially a trading site, iStockphoto introduced the micropayment model in 2000, where buyers purchase credits in blocks starting at $10 each. iStockphoto filled a need in the industry for great images at affordable prices, and is now the leader in the value segment of the imagery industry, selling images from $1-$40 depending on usage. Today, iStockphoto is rapidly approaching one million members and a collection of images from thousands of artists around the globe.

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Lara Modjeski

Lara is the Vice-President, Creative, at Tom Ford Beauty. She held previous design positions at Ralph Lauren Fragrances, where she was also senior art director, and at L’Oreal USA, where she was a junior and senior designer for their European Designer Fragrances.

While at Ralph Lauren, Lara was responsible for concept, design, and project management of RL Fragrances worldwide. Individual brands under her leadership included Pure Turquoise, Polo Black, Purple Label, Lauren Style, Polo Blue, Ralph Lauren Blue, Romance, Romance men, Romance Silver, Ralph, Ralph Cool, Polo Sport, Polo, Safari, and Lauren.

Q: Tell me a bit about yourself and your current position.

Lara: After leaving Providence College after my freshman year, to "explore my interests" (a.k.a: Find a major!), I moved to Memphis with my parents. By luck, I linked up with a wonderful professor who let me attend a couple of junior/senior level graphic design classes at Memphis State University before taking basic 101 classes.  I just needed to see if I was really meant to take this path. Luckily, it clicked immediately and before I knew it, I had graduated, moved back to New York, and landed my first "career job" as a junior designer in the Designer Fragrance Division of L’Oreal. I spent 15+ years there until I was offered my current position as creative head for Tom Ford Beauty. 

Q: What is the most important aspect of the creative process? Planning, design, or implementation?

Lara: Being free of perimeters and guides. Allowing yourself to just be open. To just throw out those ideas without judgment. To make a space for the creativity in your mind—keeping it a safe, free space for idea-generating. Then the planning, the implementation, comes in to play, as you fine-tune and work with any must-haves, company guides, cost constraints, and so on.

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Eric Karjaluoto, Creative Director & Principal, smashLAB

Eric Karjaluoto is a bald man with a lot of ideas. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute and now leads creative efforts at smashLAB, where he focuses on brand strategy, identity, and interactive design. He has worked on a number of diverse projects for clients in the public and private sector. He strongly believes in a sobriety in design that results in work that is both pragmatic and meaningful. Eric often writes about design on his blog: ideasonideas. He is strangely obsessed with type design, and is an exhibited painter. He is working on his first book.

Q: Have you visited the new Intersections Digital Studio at your alma mada, the Emily Carr Institute yet? I heard that it cost $4.3 million to build and features some fantastic new digital equipment meant for projects in: sustainable design, health-related product design, video gaming and interactive digital entertainment.

Eric: I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t. I still drop by the campus from time to time, but I hadn’t realized that the new studio had already opened.

Q: What’s your earliest memory of making “art”?

Eric: I’ve always been interested in making things. I remember drawing logos in third grade and trying to make little comics, newspapers and the like. (I was a little nerdy.) (more…)

John Warwicker

Design company Tomato
(http://www.tomato.co.uk ) was founded in 1991 in London by John Warwicker, Steve Baker, Dirk Van Dooren, Karl Hyde, Richard Smith, Simon Taylor and Graham Wood. In 1994, Michael Horsham and Jason Kedgely joined.

tomato specializes in: Architectural Design, Consultancy,  Drawing, Education, Electronic Interactive Media, Film & Commercial Direction, Graphic Design, Fashion, Motion Graphics, Music & Sound, Strategy, Branding & Identity, Photography, Publishing, Title Sequences, Typography, Writing.

In 1997, tomato interactive was formed with Tom Roope, Anthony Rogers and Joel Baumann. Tota Hasagawa joined in 2001 when tomato and tomato interactive became one and the same.

Baumann has since become Professor of Interactive Media and Communication at Kassel University in Germany and is still a member of tomato. Roope is a lecturer of Interactive Media Studies at the Royal College of Art in London.

Currently, tomato has studios in London, New York, Tokyo and Melbourne.

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Marc Schiller captures the ephemeral world of street art.

Doesn’t matter if it’s New York, London, Tokyo, or Rio. Our urban environment is defined as much by street art (graffiti, murals, and installations) as by commercial graphic art (signs, ads, and billboards). Walk around any downtown and you’ll see that some of the best art is just … lying around. Mysterious works of visual alchemy and anarchy appear overnight, oblique messages that are unsigned and evanescent, waiting to be picked up or erased by the elements or the day’s foot traffic.

Who creates street art? What motivates street artists and how do they make a living? Sessions Product Director Scott Chappell talked to Marc Schiller, co-founder of a street art organization called the Wooster Collective. A street artist by night, by day Marc is the CEO of ElectricArtists, a innovative marketing services company. Oh, and he is also a photographer of the world beneath his feet. An ideal tour guide for the urban world. . .

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Interview by Laura Schwamb

As Executive Creative Director for Sullivan, a marketing strategy and design firm in New York City. John supervises all aspects of creative development across all media. For almost 20 years, he has worked closely with writers, designers, and technologists to create communication experiences that shape perceptions and change behavior. At the core of his process lies a deep understanding of the needs of the audience, and the ability to craft a visual language that dramatizes an organization’s values and vision, always keying off the big idea that will bring the core message home.

Sessions faculty member Laura Schwamb talks to John about his inspirations, his achievements and his goals..

Q: Tell me a bit about yourself and your current position.

John: I am the Executive Creative Director (ECD) for Sullivan, a marketing strategy and design firm. My responsibilities cover a wide range—from managing staff and budgets, to client service, to developing strategy, and of course, overseeing all design work. I like to think that no mater what I do, my role as ECD is still a creative function. Over the past twenty years I have worked in numerous environments: from branding agencies, to boutique design firms, and in-house studios. Regardless of the setting, I have always learned something new about myself, and about being a creative person in a business environment.

The most important thing that I have learned about design is to trust my instinct. You do not need to have a business rationale to believe in something, or to understand why some things work and others don’t. In order to succeed as a creative person operating in the business environment in which our clients live, you need to help them see the way you do, and in many cases, help them learn to articulate what they don’t see. (more…)

Matt Owens
Co-Founder Athletics, Creator of the flash design playground Volume One
Professionally Combining Design
By Margaret Penney

Matt Owen

Matt Owens is the creator of Brooklyn, NY-based flash design playground, Volumeone (www.volumeone.com), a multi-disciplinary approach to the creation of visual solutions for print, motion and digital media. He is also a founding member of Athletics, (www.athleticsnyc.com) a multi-disciplinary design collective based in New York City. With Athletics, Matt has done graphic design, music videos, photography web development and more for clients such as The Sundance Channel, New York Magazine, Puma and Ecko Unlimited. He also completed interactive media, print and broadcast work for clients such as Nike, Sony, Blue Note Records and the New York Public Library.

Matt is also a partner in The Riviera, a small gallery in Brooklyn that focuses on up and coming artists, designers and photographers. He has spoken internationally about design, and his work has been recognized by the Art Directors Club, American Center for Design, the AIGA and multiple domestic and foreign design publications.

Q: What did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut, a designer—or maybe something else?

Matt: I wanted to draw and possibly be an artist or a musician. I had been drawing since a very young age and was also into music. As I grew older, I ended up being in a band, doing record covers and flyers. I arrived at design through both art and music in a lot of ways.

Q: The experimental portion of volumeone.com is updated several times a year, featuring conceptual narratives and personal visual work. When I think of Volume One, I think of cracking open a fresh new book. Every issue you’ve made IS brand new and different. What is Volume One to you? Is it your design playground? What kinds of visual narrative explorations have taken place there?

Matt: I have been doing volumeone since 1997 and it continues to be a place where I can explore my own ideas outside of client work. In many ways, it is the same as sitting in my bedroom drawing when I was a kid, just on the computer and a bit more complex.. (more…)

Everyone knows the Blue Man Group. They are the sensational stage act with a fifteen-year run. Founded by three blue-painted extroverts performing on the streets of New York City, Blue Man Group now delivers their multi-sensory experience in NYC, Vegas, Boston, Chicago, and even Berlin (now that’s art). There are nearly 60 blue men performing today.
 

Like any growing organization, Blue Man Group has developed a visual identity to accomplish its goals. Unlike any other organization, that identity is based on "three enigmatic bald and blue characters." Sarah Seroussi talked to Michael Quinn, Artistic Director at Blue Man Group, about how this visual identity has evolved.

Q: Your overall identity at your site and in promotional materials revolves around the color blue. Why was blue originally chosen to be the skin color of the blue men?
 
Michael: Blue just felt right on all counts. All other colors had some sort of connotation that we didn’t want.  Green was alien or Martian, and it represents envy. Red is angry or has socio-political connections.  Black and white have racial connotations.  Yellow is jaundiced and sickly.  Blue was perfect.  It represents serenity, calmness.  It represents water, the stuff of life.  It is neutral, vibrant, and

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