Full interview with Timothy Alexander

Interview with Timothy Alexander

How important is social media in terms of getting yourself out there and creating an online presence?

It's something that I've never really made a big deal of, I appreciate the fact that it's important but a lot of the time I've come across people that seem amazing and perfect over their Instagram but in real life they're nothing alike. Ultimately it's not the be all and end all of things, having a very cool looking online profile doesn't make you any better of a designer.

What’s involved in the creative process for you?

When its a creative brief, I'll usually only spend a couple of hours with ideas. But when its creative on top of strategy, the strategy you can spend an hour and a half talking about people, figures, the world etc. all of that effects the strategy. Then you'll have to creative to run through and say this is the print ad, this is the digital version. It does completely vary depending on the project.

What essentially does a copywriter do?

They take care of the text, the headlines, the body copy, all the text that appears on an ad. An art director takes care of look, feel. Together they go through casting a little bit, together they also come up with the idea. The idea is never just one person's idea, it's the team’s idea and the ultimately the agencies idea. So egos are out that door! All the work is the agency's work, if you're feeling a little more egotistical then you can get your own office space, you put your name above the door and you create your own agency.

Considering you're such a big advertising agency, are awards something you actively strive for?

A lot of the work we've done recently within the past year or so wouldn't be award worthy I don't think, although we may be sending off one piece for Film Craft. But in terms of awards for best ad and such, a lot of the stuff we do, we likely won't be sending in. Saying that, the only one really worth going for is Cannes Lions; that's basically the Oscars of advertising. It's normally a big film festival, but they celebrate advertising during that week also. If you ever work in advertising and produce ads, they have something called the Young Cannes Lions which I've just entered into this year and from there you get a brief that you have to solve within 24 hours which you would normally work in a team for. I'm aiming to choose to work in print and to do that I'll work with a copywriter and I'll do the art direction to produce ideas and if it wins your phone will be buzzing none stop for weeks until someone gets through to you and goes "here's a bunch of fucking money, move to us". To get chosen for something like this is a big thing, you're up against thousands of other people all wanting the same thing. D&AD is also another good one to work on. There's one here in Germany called ADC, the Art Directors Club, very similar to D&AD. Red Dot awards is another one but is more to do with products, I actually have one of those for communication for something we did for a satirical Germany political party. Basically my job was technical realisation, maintaining the technical side for their stream.

How you sell yourself is also really important.

As a creative person you can always fix something, you can always improve it, you can make it better, always. But there's such a thing called time and that's a pain in the ass sometimes.

When you work on ads, or in advertising there is always that knowing in the back of your mind you're making something. You're piecing it all together, the idea, to going on the shoot, to then dealing with all the post production shit, which can be a nightmare, all the cut downs, language variations but then at the end of it you have some tangible, something substantial to appreciate.

Rule #2

Good ideas get killed all of the time and there's nothing you can do about that. On a daily fucking basis, you could have the best idea and it could get shut down, whether it's the vision, the budget or whatever.

Obviously as designers we get creative blocks all the time, so how do you best cope with them?

You need a stimulus for it. Walk around, get outside, do fitness, meditate, whatever you've got to do. You need something else that's not going to be in your room, in your office, you maybe need another person to buzz ideas off always helps. Maybe sometimes look online, but not too much because that can sometimes have the reverse effect, making you feel bad about your own work when you see really good stuff online.

What motivates you to push your ideas and your practicing constantly?

It's the drive for always wanting to produce something, I always want to make something, I always want to finish something. Solving problems is exactly that, making something to fix the problem and that is just the way I've been programmed. Whether I do that with music, if I feel the need to emotionally get something out there or if I have a business problem that I need to solve with an ad. Solving problems is something that really motivates me, it keeps my brain ticking.

Pitching, that's when things are completely different, it takes a lot of time that you've got to devote to it. You spend a lot of time going insane, scratching your head for ideas. On the run up to a pitch, especially during pitch week, you'll get taken off most projects and will have to put your full effort into the pitch. The volume of work you do during pitch week can get crazy, re-doing and improving the stuff you've done already.

So what do actually have to do within that last week leading up to the pitch?

You start losing your mind a bit, that goes without saying. You have to refine your ideas and make sure that every visual looks the best it can. The way that I work, I would normally do really quick sketches and whack them into Photoshop, roughly lay it out and then that goes away for maybe 6 weeks and everyone's happy with it... until pitch week. "Yeah you've got to redo this again". Always improving, proof reading, cutting films etc. You've got to be fast, in that final week you've got to be precise and get things done quickly. Get that shit finished!

The actual pitch itself is okay for me, being a musician I'm somewhat used to playing in front of a few thousand people. Always got to remind myself to speak slowly, less dialect, which is especially difficult when I'm with someone like you who has very similar ways of speaking.

Having been in Berlin now for 5/6 years, how is your German?

We don't go there about that. I mean I can understand it; I can speak it but I don't really just because I'm not that good at it. But I've only ever really worked in English speaking offices, here is the first office where my entire team is pretty much German but they do speak English to me, just to make things easier. But sometimes meetings when we all meet up to discuss projects, it usually is in German so I've just got to understand what they're saying.

But advertising in general, unless you're going for like a national agency, there you would likely have to speak German. Since here we have people from all around the world, we tend to speak English.

Something I'm aiming to do over summer is to find internships, how would you typically go about getting one?

Do you have LinkedIn? If not, then get on that and do a shit load of stalking, you want to look for a load of creative directors. You've seen some ads, a poster or some design work that you love, you look up that agency then from that agency, who worked on that bit of work? Normally it'll tell you the creative director, art director etc. for that project and from there you look for those people. Find them on LinkedIn and suggesting you coming in for two weeks and then from there haggle your way into an internship. Even if it's going down to a studio, unpaid, chilling there and finding out how they work is beneficial.

You'll of course have to sell yourself along with this. Showing off your work in a PDF, keeping it concise probably no more than 25 pages max and also a covering letter letting them know why you want to work there.

What specifically would you recommend including within your portfolio?

Experience, education, skills, work but write this in your style of course, allow your personality to shine through it whether that means using slang words or whatever. Always have a bit about each project, but not too much because when you go to interviews you'll likely talk about these a little more in depth. Each project on mine is just one page depending on how much work was produced for the project. Even include little projects, if you can do things such as sound editing pop that in as well, if you're a musician or whatever put that in, because that'll help sell you as a person as well.