Lessons of youth, passion and following your soul

Some years ago I was a creative director for the inter­na­tional agency known as ATTIK in their New York studio. For years and years I’d yearned for total creative freedom that so many young creatives dream of. To me, this was creative Nirvana.

Many of you are familiar with the Noise series of books published by ATTIK and I had been a fan for a long time. These are books filled with design exper­iments and explo­rations with absolute creative freedom. This led to some really inter­esting and stunningly beautiful works that inspired people like me.

Things that you look at and (if you’ve been in the business of adver­tising for a while) think “That’s great, but you’ll never get a client to buy something like that”. But that is one of the things that made ATTIK so amazing.

The two founders Simon Needham and James Sommerville founded ATTIK in James’ grandmother’s attic with passion and a dream. (Read the story here.) They took their youth and passion for great work and focused everything they had on feeding the fire within. To date, they have created amazing work for clients like Scion, AOL, Adidas, SONY, and so many others, at a level that most “experienced” adver­tising people would never believe could be commer­cially viable. Now, ATTIK is part of Dentsu, one the largest global players out there.

NOTE: If you ever have the chance to work with ATTIK, do it. You won’t be disap­pointed.

Was this Simon and James’ goal from the get go? That I cannot honestly answer, but I would guess not. So why was ATTIK able to succeed where so may others have not?

Innocence? Why not.

Luck? Maybe.

Passion? Definitely.

Unwavering dedication to an idea? Damn straight.

No one can define what exactly is going to make a successful company or effort. It just has too many varying elements. But more oft than not, the companies that I see succeed, and companies that inspire me, share these same attributes.

1. A willingness to explore, push boundaries and have fun
2. No acceptance of “failure”, only learnings toward future progress
3. An unwavering passion and belief in who you are and what you do (not ego driven!)
4. The ability to get out of your own way and let your zeal lead you to people who share the same ideals and values
5. An openness to always learning new things and new ways
6. The absolute rule of never settling for “good enough”

To return to the beginning of the story, when I was at ATTIK we would get hundreds of portfolios from young creative hopefuls every week. So much great design talent out there, but so few with vision beyond the trends of the day.

One of the portfolios that came across my desk was from Ji Lee. There was something unique and different about his work and his perspective. I had the oppor­tunity to meet him. He was an unassuming young man with vision and passion for creative thought. As much as I wanted to work with him at the time, we were unable to make him a permanent part of the ATTIK NY team. I have never forgotten his work, his passion or his ideals.

Today I came across a video of a lecture he’d given discussing the power of personal projects and how that translates to your profes­sional vision. He hasn’t only lectured on it. He lives it. One of the really inter­esting things I remember from his portfolio was the Bubble Project that he talks about in the video below.

Ji Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, he studied design at Parsons School of Design. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. Success indeed.

So my point is this. Don’t let what might NOT happen, what may NOT be “feasible”, what hasn’t been done, or what everybody else does, stop you from thinking, from dreaming or from following that little voice inside that drives you.

Two great thoughts before I leave you with the video. There’s a sign in my office sent from one of our clients (Thanks Leslie!) that says

“Live What You Love”.

And another thought that I ran across today that said

“Redefine what is possible”.

So there are no guarantees of anything here. Just a viewpoint and fire that I continue to feed. That I have to feed. There are a lot of you out there. Don’t let the fire ever go away.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. Find out more about THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.