Creative Director of Something Creative Co - Jarmaine Stojanovic tells us the importance of confidence when being fresh out! Also a few great hard lessons learnt along the way.
What are some of your earliest creative memories and what lead you into design?
Besides colouring books when I was a little trouble maker, I use to repeatedly draw the Chicago Bulls logo when I was between 5-9. It got to a point where I didn’t even look at the image anymore and would try and perfect each curve better than the last. My nerdiness in high school lead me into design, dodging having to take cadets as an co-curricular so I joined a digital media class. I remember our first project for the term was to re-design a playstation 1 game cover on photoshop 7, that must of been around 2000.
What qualities and skills to you look for in a graduate?
Confidence! I think the most charming and refreshing aspect of any grad is seeing confidence in themselves. Obviously your book, body of work is important from a skill set level. But I think more importantly how engaged that person is with what’s going on in the industry. Understanding what’s out there, how they react to that, what they do to move past that.
What has been some of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt along the way?
1. Always go that extra mile, I can’t tell you how many briefs we have ended up grabbing because of that little extra. It goes a long way!
Where do you think design is heading in the next five years and how will you adapt?
One word, motion. Motion is becoming one of the most in demand skillsets that we can see coming in fast and strong. A lot of branding projects are now required to add some sense of motion to it, having that skillset in the bag of tricks definitely adds value. I would say Print is also making a bit of a renaissance which is great to see. We are looking at incorporate motion into our end delivery and hopefully adapting along the way with it!
Personally, continue to grow as a designer. I still think that we can never stop learning and understanding on how to extract the ideas that are locked inside our heads and create more friendships with like minded designers.
What's the big goal in the next five years?
I think for us as we are only 2 years young, is definitely refine our process but also grow as a business. Hopefully by this time next year we can be a team of 5 and try to add a person every year. Five years is a bit scary in looking into the future, a weird goal of mine is to somehow someway try and collab with an NBA team in helping with identity work as there are a few teams out there that could do with a re-brand! Haha
What's on the cards professionally and personally in the next 12 months?
Personally, continue to grow as a designer. I still think that we can never stop learning and understanding on how to extract the ideas that are locked inside our heads and create more friendships with like minded designers. Professionally I want to try and branch out more into music industry more, we are currently working with a couple artists overseas in creating their global identity which hopefully could be pretty awesome!
Where to find Something Creative Co online.
Website: somethingcreativeco.com
Instagram: @somethingcreativeco
