Here at Designity, our talented Creative Directors have one thing in common: they’ve been telling visual stories for a long time.
Some since college, some since high school, and some — like our feature CD — since their kindergarten days!
Are you ready to hear about the journey of one of Designity’s brightest stars? If so, you’re in luck because today’s blog is your backstage pass to an exclusive interview with the one and only Creative Director extraordinaire, Joseph C.
He’s the kind of guy that can handle any challenge thrown his way and now it’s time to pull back the curtain, see some of his amazing work, and get to know him a little bit better.
Get ready because it’s time to meet Joseph C.!
How did you get into design? What’s your origin story?
So, when I was six years old, I had to do a project for my kindergarten or first-grade class.
And I don't remember the parameters of the project, but I remember going to the local drugstore to buy poster board, and colored paper, and scissors and glue and stuff.
I remember sitting on the floor with my mom and she helped me create this poster. It was a bird's-eye view of a roadway with sidewalks on either side and we had a bicycle that was riding on the right side of the road, and a little person walking on the left side. It was very simple, very graphic, just basic shapes. Then we wrote across the top, “Ride on the right, walk on the left.”
Evidently, the project was about safety.
And I just remember seeing this thing come together as a six-year-old and suddenly it was like, “Oh my gosh, we're communicating something with these shapes. What started out as blocks of colored paper is now this thing that we made.”
So, right there as a six-year-old, it sparked in me this desire to tell stories visually.
I credit it back to my mom too, she's really creative. She usually doesn’t call herself an artist, but she is. She quilts, she's written a book, and is really creative. And for me, that's my origin story. So, like many others before me, I owe everything to my mom.
From there, you decided to become an artist?
From there, I would doodle in all my textbooks, draw stuff all the time, I drew cartoons at home. I got in trouble at school because I was always drawing in my books.
My first paid gig, as I call it, was when I was a junior in high school. This would have been 1997. So, before any of the comic book movies except for Batman and Superman in the 70s and 80s.
I collected comic books when I was a teenager and I would draw the characters, and people saw me doing it, so they would pay me money to draw them pictures of Batman, Superman, whatever it was.
And so that was my first paid gig, illustrating comic book characters. And it was around that time that I started to get stuff from colleges about the different majors you could go for. I read about graphic design and that graphic design meant you can make graphics for movies. I thought, “my gosh, that'd be amazing!”
So, I decided to go full bore in that. And so, from 1997 until today, it's been all about this career for me.
Did you go into graphic design right out of college?
Not right away.
I went to school at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and got a four-year bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in design. So, it wasn’t actually necessarily for graphic design. I spent as much time doing sculpture and photography as I did actual digital design work. It was a very well-rounded fine arts education, just with an emphasis in design thinking.
I graduated in 2002 and got a temp job as a proofreader at a pharmaceutical label printing company.
Which was the most boring thing.
I actually fell asleep at that job one time. I would sit at a design and wait for designers to finish designing a label. Then they would bring me the label and I would take a magnifying glass and compare all the ingredients and stuff against the medical dictionary to make sure they hadn’t misspelled anything. I learned all the names of these chemicals.
And then I spent eight years as a full-time carpet cleaner. I got the certification, and I helped run the business I was in while I built up my graphic design client base and then, in 2008 I went full-time with my own business as a branding designer and marketer.
How did your career lead you to Designity?
The experience I gained running my own business led me to getting a job as a web developer in Pennsylvania in 2014.
And while I was there, I did more and more marketing stuff. I was there from 2014 to 2022. So, the last two years I was there, they promoted me to digital marketing manager.
And what's funny is, I applied at Designity right around the time that promotion to marketing manager happened. So, I applied as a CD and did not get the job. That‘s right, Designity rejected my first application!
But then a year and a half goes by and I saw them repost the Creative Director job position on LinkedIn. So, I reapplied, and I had a Zoom meeting with Natalie and she's like, “What have you been up to the last year and a half?”
And I said, “I've been all marketing.”
Well, in hindsight, Natalie said that they needed a video expert at the time I first applied. So, when I told her I had been all marketing the last year and a half to two years, she said, “Really? Because now we specifically need a CD with marketing expertise.”
And that got me hired as a CD at Designity!
So, it's funny that in my previous job as a web developer and marketer, I was frustrated with the marketing stuff because it was all analytics and numbers. It wasn't creative. And it's funny how that thing that I really didn't like led to this better opportunity with Designity.
That was a huge lesson for me. You never know the thing that you hate today might actually be preparing you for the thing you'll love tomorrow.
What is your favorite kind of project to take on?
As a designer, probably a website.
Because there's so much you can do with it; it has a lot of impact. There's a lot to think through and it really gives a lot of value, starting with information architecture. What do we need to actually say on this thing? How should we organize it? And then dreaming up the best layout for that.
Sometimes the best layout is really simple, depending on what the thing is that you're trying to sell. It's rewarding and there's a lot of elements to it; there’s copywriting, there's graphic design, there's often some video editing, and then even developing it can be fun. I had a lot of experience with that in the past. So, that's probably my favorite project as a designer.
As a CD, probably branding. Because it's similar to marketing but instead of being about what our customers need, it's who we are. I love to help companies figure out who they really are.
Like, “What makes you different?”
“If you're just starting this business over today, what would you do differently?”
If you're talking to the CEO or the president of a company, “When you're a kid, what did you dream about becoming? Did you want to be an astronaut? Did you want to be a farmer? What was it that was your dream as a kid and then how can we tie that back in today to who you are?”
So, it's really deep. It's like a therapy kind of thing and you all wrap all of that up in a visual language and it's really powerful stuff.
What has been your most challenging project and how did you overcome the challenges?
For me personally, it would probably be 3D animation just because I have so little experience in it. But I love directing it! I can use the right word to direct a Creative, but I can't go in and edit it myself.
Marketing is probably the most correct answer though because ABM or whatever kind of marketing campaign is the most difficult thing to run in general because there's so many pieces and you're always guessing.
People love to say, “We use data to make our decisions,” but the data is always from the past.
And what's happening today in the world is different from what happened yesterday; the news headlines today are different from what they were yesterday. So, if you're marketing to today's clients and tomorrow's clients based on what happened yesterday or last month, you can't actually get a hundred percent win.
So, in marketing, that's always a source of tension and stress and you can't solve for it.
Some of the best marketing wins have been people taking just a gut instinct risk. If you think about some of the best campaigns — like the “Got Milk” campaign — there was no data that said people would resonate with that. It looked different from anything ever before it, and no one had ever done a slogan like that. There was no data to support that and it was one of the most successful campaigns of all time.
But people are always afraid to take that kind of risk. So, that's probably why marketing is the most difficult thing for me to do. Even though I know how to pull the levers and get in and use the tools, from a high-level perspective, it's always stressful.
What is your favorite thing about working at Designity?
I love working with so many different Creatives with different skill levels across multiple brands.
That mix, even more so than working with different clients, having all these different designers, writers, video editors, all these different personalities, different ways of communicating, it's really fun.
It's also such a blast to know that you're not alone. Because as a Creative Director, a lot of weight comes on us. The client sees us as the one point of contact — which is good; they should — and then there's pressure from the system itself.
So, to have all these teams of people who are in it with me, it's such an exciting and wonderful thing. To be able to say to a group of people, “Here's what we need,” and then the next day, it's there. It's done.
I'm so grateful. My favorite part is working with Creatives.
How do you keep yourself up to date in the world of marketing and design?
LinkedIn is pretty helpful.
It can be overwhelming because there's so many people who want your attention and everybody's trying to look like they're great and sound impressive.
But if you push through all the BS, sometimes you'll find these little nuggets, like an actual study someone did, or a trend analysis, or something that someone tried, and it worked that no one's tried before. And that stuff I love because it’s someone not just trying to just posture, they're actually giving helpful information.
So, that's actually pretty big help for me and then there are some people I specifically follow, like Giles Edwards and other people who are in marketing who don't really care about the rules.
So, there's this sort of marketers who don't care about trends and data, they're always taking risks. I get inspired by them big time.
And in terms of visual stuff, I subscribe to the Graphic Artist Guild newsletter, which is pretty helpful. And then, AIGA stuff can be helpful as well sometimes.
Is there any insight you can give about current marketing trends?
The trend I'm seeing currently is, it seems like every business is just stressed right now.
Everybody needs more and faster and it's always an emergency.
I'm not sure if it’s because it's an election year or if we’ve finally kind of come out of the weirdness of COVID-19, but there's just a mad rush.
Everyone's stressed and what’s tough is since every client has nothing but emergencies, there are no emergencies.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I love my dog.
We go to the dog park every day after work. So, we have friends there now because the same crew goes every day And we actually just signed her up for an agility course. So, starting every Thursday for six weeks, we'll take her to this training facility, and we'll be doing agility together like jumping the hurdles and going through tunnels and all that stuff.
And then I love music.
I’ve played guitar since I was 12 years old. I tell people, I'm a better guitar player than I am a CD, because I did it every day for 30 years.
My wife and I are learning cover songs from the 80s and 90s right now to start playing at coffee shops and bars and stuff.
<div class="c-blog_comp-cta cc-component-2"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-wrap"><img src="https://global-uploads.webflow.com/61cdf3c5e0b8155f19e0105b/63695243d096983691046ac3_Potential-Creative.png" loading="lazy" alt="" class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-img"></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-right cc-dark"><div class="c-blog_comp-content"><div class="c-text-wrapper cc-mb-32"><div class="c-title-4 cc-bold"><strong>Like to work as a freelancer with consistent income?</strong></div></div><div class="c-text-wrapper"><div class="c-text-2">Designity's collaborative model is designed to give you all of the perks of being a freelancer without the income instability.<br></div></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-wrapper"><a href="http://designity.com/creatives" target="_blank" class="c-button w-button"><strong>Join Our Creative Community</strong></a></div></div></div>
Any words of inspiration for aspiring creatives?
What I always want to say to people is, blaze your own trail.
We all have to pay the bills. We all have to learn the tools. So, we can do stuff that clients need but I think you have to find a way to blaze your own trail and be creative.
You have to find a way to be creative, especially in our field where you're using a creative tool for money-making purposes. It sort of profanes it a little bit, like unholy art, but you still have to find a way to be your own thing — and the lucky few of us who can do it? That ends up becoming your money-making opportunity. I mean, that's the ultimate goal is to find your own style and that's something people want.
And now there's no boundaries, you're doing whatever you want to do and people are paying you for it.
So, yeah, you have to find a way to blaze your own trail and do your own thing.
