Justin BLYTH

What was your very first job? What does it feel like to look back at it now?  My first jobs were waiting tables and scooping ice cream… It feels great to look back at it now. I think those kinds of jobs are necessary to give us the appreciation for what we have, or what we want to achieve.  Please describe, in your own words, what your current job is and what work it entails. Fun! I love what I do. I get to be my own boss, make the decisions I want to make, how I think it should be done. All with my partner Justin of course but we pretty much agree on everything. We’ve both worked in marketing and comms, on the client and agency side or many years, and we try to take what we know from that experience into what we do as an agency. We like to keep things open and not nail down one area, but we’re trying to make relevant work that has an impact on and a place in culture.  How did you discover that the creative world is right for you? Was there a time in your life that you credit to this discovery? Which train of events did bring you to where you are today? It actually came a little late for me. I could never draw to save my life, I still can’t. When I was about 21 I went back to community college and ended up taking some graphic design and software classes; Illustrator, photoshop. This was around 2002 when you could say there were less people trying to get into it. It was less common to have a fast computer like a G4 tower to run the software in a reasonable way. I guess when I realised I could get paid for designing, it was on, I never looked back. I enrolled in Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, got accepted, took out a ton of loans and went for it.  In your constantly growing and expanding industry, how and where do you usually find inspiration to keep your work fresh, innovative and relevant? I don’t have a problem staying inspired. When you start worrying about it, you have a problem. My family inspires me, my kids, my wife, the city of Amsterdam, my friends who are all doing amazing things… I think you need to stay surrounded by, and hire young people who are super connected to how things are changing on a mechanic level, or a software level. I guess also culturally. If you have those people around you, you can focus on what you know, and they’ll help you make it work in the current landscape.  

If you had to pick one piece of work or project that you are most proud of, especially for the creative work and innovation it required rather than its recognition or industry success, what would it be? This is such a plug but it’s totally true. The campaign we’re doing right now for a Dutch Rolling Paper brand called Mascotte is probably the work I’m most proud of. Not only is it going to be amazing, but the process has been amazing, and we did it all ourselves