It's time to meet Brian!

Designity’s Creative Directors are the glue that holds our creative community together.

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They expertly manage their team, act as a go-between for Creatives and clients, and do whatever it takes to make sure that projects are completed successfully and on time!

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It takes Creative Directors with a diverse set of skills and passions to keep this creative engine running, and today, we’re excited to shine the spotlight on one of our amazing Creative Directors, Brian P.!

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From his early days as a kid documenting the world around him on his mother’s phone to a video production mastermind, Brian P’s story is one you won’t want to miss! So, if you want to see why Brian is such a valuable asset to our team (and check out some of his amazing work too), then we’re ready to show you.

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Pull up a chair because it’s time to meet Brian! 

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How did you get into video production? What’s your origin story?

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If you really want to go back, I started graffiti art as my very first shindig in graphics and artistry and design.

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I started there first because I saw a lot of it growing up and I wanted to copy it, emulate it. And then that led to me documenting what I saw because, obviously, I was a kid and I’m not gonna go to jail for graffiti.

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I would take pictures on my mom’s (I’m going to date myself here) Motorola phone at the time. That led to me wanting to do documentary-type stuff and that’s what led me to photography and photography is where I actually bloomed in my creative career. I’ve been a photographer for almost 14 years now.

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How did you go from photography to video production?

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I went to the University of California in Irvine, and they didn’t have a photography major. What they had was a film studies major and communications.

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So, I went to that and that piqued my interest in cinematography, video production, film production, and just videos in general.

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That’s how all of that boomed together and that’s technically where I got my education from, in terms of how the industry works, the type of roles that are incorporated, and all the technical stuff.

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What was your first creative-related job?

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From that point on, I just loved storytelling. I jumped into video production. 

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I started my first job at DAY O Productions in Melrose, California.

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They’re like a Japanese commercial agency that does commercials and video production in the U.S. for Japanese companies like Honda, Toyota, all those international companies.

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So, that’s where I started my first career in the creative industry. 

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That is a very cool first job! Did you work with other production companies after that?

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From that point on, I transitioned out from DAY O and started doing my own work with another production company called LAM (Light A Message) Production, which had more of an Asian American focus.

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This is when the whole rise of Wong Fu and The Jubilee Project were big; they focused on the Asian American experience and cinema.

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Wong Fu focused more on how the Asian American experience is jumping into the creative industry and just focusing on their lives. Jubilee was more of how the Asian American experience differs from other cultures and being in the US.

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So, our focus was on “What is the Asian American experience when trying to tell the stories of Asian Americans who hold back their Asian-ness and try to be more American than Asian?”

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That’s what our focus was.

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After that, I transitioned into more agency work and tried to see how I could take my skills to get a job.

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What was your role on your shoots?

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I never had a set position.

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At DAY O, every time we got a new project, like once we had a commercial with Taylor Swift when she was coming up. And one of my positions was to do location scouting. I was with the set designer, looking at different locations and wondering, should we do an outside shoot or should we build the set?

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Then once the actual production happened, I was with the PAs (production assistants), making sure they were doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

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Sometimes, I’d help set up with craft and help with the lighting and gaffing. I wasn’t the technical contractor for the lighting and gaffing, I was more behind the scenes, doing office work and making sure that whatever needed to be tied together was tied together.I also helped a lot in the office logistical work as well.

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I always give the analogy that doing commercial shoots like that is like a wedding where from AM to PM it’s really high tension. But once it’s done, it’s done, you can celebrate like crazy. 

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It’s really fun.

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How did your career lead you to Designity?

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To be super honest with you, I’m not entirely sure how I got connected with Designity!

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There was a season in my life where I was told that let’s just try applying to different jobs to see how it is, to see how it is to be in another creative career. 

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Because all of my previous jobs were connections, like “Brian, I saw that you do this, you’re pretty good at this. I have a friend; do you want to meet him?”

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So, I’d meet them, and I’d get connected. I never really “applied” anywhere.

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So, for Designity, I wanna say I did apply for it, I was already in the motion of looking at so many different industries. I didn’t really have a focus and Designity called back.

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I was like, “Oh, this is a very interesting callback. Usually, people will send an email or say, “Can you pick a day to talk, etc.” But Designity’s approach was a little bit different, which caught my eye. And I went through the process and met everyone, Natalie, Theresa, and Joy, at the time, and had a really great conversation with them.

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It was really interesting to see they’re trying to disrupt the traditional agency model for creatives. 

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It’s really interesting to see how they innovate and expand and also give an opportunity for creatives in general.

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I had never had that, that network or community. So, that’s what really caught my eye. And then that transitioned me into receiving an opportunity to be a Creative Director here and really work with Creatives from the beginning stages to the very high-level stages. 

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And that’s been a blessing and an opportunity that I really enjoyed.

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What is your favorite kind of project to take on?

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My favorite type of projects are branding projects.

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It’s very explorative. You can really pioneer toward different areas, really shape something. That’s my favorite thing to work on because you really get to explore that creativity.

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But the ones that I am super confident, my bread and butter, are video projects. I still wouldn’t call them my favorite because they get messy very fast and that’s just the industry, there’s no way to make a video project very clean cut and smooth. 

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You just hope that from phase 1 to phase 15, everything kind of connects properly.

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So, it’s not my favorite project, but it’s the one I’m most confident in because I know the intricacies behind it and it’s really cool.

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Do you have a favorite type of video project?

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I love documentaries.

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It’s scripted and non-scripted at the same time.

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We always talk about how authenticity always creates the best connection with your audience. And so, shooting a documentary, let’s just say the documentary is on a famous soccer player.

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We see that soccer player as they’re portrayed in the media, we see the media side. We see how the soccer player is portrayed with affiliations or brands, and we see that side of them.

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But in a documentary, you see everything behind closed doors. Where did they come from? What were their expressions when a certain memory was brought up? How did they feel from the beginning to the end to where they are right now?

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And so, as you're documenting that you're just creating a script of, “How do I want to show the audience what the real side of this player is and their story?”

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But then as you’re filming, you also find organic moments. You see moments they reflect on. Like, let's say a soccer player gives strong attributes to their mom or their family, parents, or what have you, and those parents aren't there.

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So, as you're documenting that, you've written in the script to have them talk about their parents, but then, this person cries, and starts sharing very, very strong emotional stories. All that authenticity and organic emotions gets captured and that creates a huge catalyst in your story that really drives how you finish the project.

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Like, wow, there's so much meat in here that you want to expand on that, and you expand and expand and, at the end of the day, you get to tell a story that would never have been told.

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Usually, you just hear maybe word-of-mouth type of stories about people. But with documentaries, you really open up the gates of where that origin story of greatness comes from.

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What kind of project is most challenging to you as a Creative Director and how do you overcome the challenges?

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I would say the most challenging are web-based projects.

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It could be an application production project, like an app project. It could be web design, it could be building different types of web pages.

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And the only reason why I would say that's the most complicated is because we're in an era where tech is innovative. We have so many tools, different sources of information, different methods of doing stuff, and so what I thought was efficient when I first learned and was effective when I first did it, might not be effective today.

And what I thought was the best way to approach something, now there's so many different other ways to do it, and depending on what creative you're working with, they might know the most modern way, they might know the most “prehistoric” way. Both will get to the same goal, but it's just a different way of doing it. Each person walks the way they walk.

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So, having to mend those different approaches together and really think about the future before the future even comes, constantly wondering, “If I make this choice, is it gonna break in the future or is it gonna be future proof?”

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Whereas branding is an organic type of project. It’s always changing, so you can always create a new one and innovate it.

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But with web design, it has to live and play on its own for it to be beneficial to you.

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What is your favorite thing about working at Designity?

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I would say it’s two-fold.

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First, the Creative Directors are amazing. They’re so supportive, they’re always fun to work with. Normally, I imagine coming and working with other leaders, it’s always gonna be, “No, my way is superior,” but instead, it’s a very “iron sharpens iron” type of community and that’s really awesome.

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The second is that the Creatives have been awesome. Everyone from Emerging to Pros, they’ve been so great to work with. Learning from them, bouncing ideas off them, and hearing what drives them as a designer and what excites them on projects and what type of things they want to implement and execute on, and trying to see how I can cater a project that way so that they’re growing as Creatives but always meeting goals for projects.

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So, yeah, the Creatives and the Creative Directors.

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How do you keep yourself up to date with video production or technology trends?

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I have a lot of design coaches and design mentors who I also trade information back and forth with. Every time we have a conversation, I’ll be bouncing my ideas with them, and we share different approaches I could try. 

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I read a lot of blogs and articles about new innovative tools that different companies like Adobe and Figma and even Miro are trying to implement. And when a company is trying to implement a new tool, their competitors are also implementing a tool. So, you’re seeing different approaches to it and that’s something that’s always in the back of my mind.

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Social media is also a huge tool. People are always sharing new things that they’re doing or how to do this or that on Illustrator, something I didn’t even know existed. Or even the Creatives on my team share new ways to do things I didn’t even know were possible.

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So, it’s just little bits and pieces that allow me to learn what’s new today and what’s being innovated for the future.

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Is there any insight you can give about any current design trends you’re seeing?

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As of recently, I’ve been trying to dive deeper into the music industry again in terms of my personal work.

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Cover art has been kind of dead. Back in the day, you had CD covers, DVD covers, but cover art is coming back again in the streaming industry. 

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People are streaming their music, but you have to have good cover art. If you have a song that’s really hot but your cover art is bad, the song doesn’t get played as much because no one wants to look at that on the phone.

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So, I’m seeing how illustrators and graphic designers are designing cover art to kind of portray the emotions of a song and to really reflect what the artist was trying to do. In that way, I’m learning a lot of ways to see how to connect with the musician or the artist and how the graphic artist connects with the audiences who the song is for. 

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It’s very interesting because you always want to make that connection for things to be significant.

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What do you like to do when you’re not working?

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Recently, I’ve been really into pickleball. If you’re not familiar with it, pickleball is like ping pong and tennis had a baby. It’s like a human-size ping pong game on a tennis court. I play that a lot.

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I also got back into trying to be a DJ. I started a couple years ago and then I sold all of that equipment because I wanted to jump into video production. But now I’m trying to get back into it because it used to be a huge passion of mine to help me really unwind, enjoy music, and really refresh myself and really exercising my creativity.

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Is there anything else about you we should know?

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Fun fact: I used to be a b-boy (break boy or breaker–break dancer in the mainstream vernacular).

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A what?!

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A breakdancer! 

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I did that for 9 years. Then I stopped recently. But that sparked my interest for DJ-ing because I wanted to provide music for the community for dance battles or dance events.

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Any words of inspiration for future Creatives or Creative Directors?

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I would say, always learn before you start designing. That's gonna reap a lot of results.

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For example, if you're designing for skateboarding, don't just look up inspirations on skateboards, really research on what a skateboard is and what a skateboarder does, what they feel, what they hope to achieve for and that's usually gonna drive your, your designs and you're gonna reap crazy results from that point as opposed to just designing from blank scratch.

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And for Creative Directors, I shared this before with some of my other Creative Directors, that you need a little bit of insanity in your work to show how good you are and how your creativity flows.

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If you work within the box, the box is as far as you'll go.

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But if you just drop a little bit of your insanity or your personality into it, it's gonna really free flow and your creative directing skills and creativity is just gonna overflow.

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