From Concept to Reality,Chris Petit on Elevating Brand Experiences

I’m just wired this way, I have always enjoyed creating something from nothing – and wouldn’t stop designing until it was different from the rest.

As an executive creative director, I am involved in all and/or any part of the design process. This includes developing anything from team building, the initial overall and creative strategy, customer/attendee journey, visuals for 2D static and motion graphics, 3D spatial design, best fabrication practices, and then wrapping all of this up into one cohesive story that is exciting and memorable to make brands shine.

It’s an expression of how your mind can extrapolate a million pieces from the plethora of our infinite surroundings, weed out the bad, keep the relevant, and then piece those together into something clever that clicks with an audience.

The process, the reasoning and the story behind it.

Every project is obviously different. However, the one thing that stays consistent is developing an overall and creative strategy based on the objectives given.

Everything that follows – development of architecture, graphics, media content, customer journey, etc. - is vetted out in a variety of ways that all point back to the initial reasoning and tie harmoniously into the brand.

Sitting front row watching the evolution of an idea or thought manifesting itself into the tangible.

Precise, detailed, clever, meaningful, balanced and vetted.

I think one’s country/cultural heritage could have some impact on the human ego, personality traits, and one’s own willingness to consider multiple solutions, which in turn I suppose could have an impact on the creative process - especially when the creative process involves a larger team.

That is, as a leader I believe you have to be confident in your own right, command respect by lifting others, navigate multiple viewpoints and personalities, all while steering a large ship with unforeseen obstacles and tight timelines. And on top of all that, as a leader you need to acknowledge that the creative process can be an emotional and vulnerable one - where your work, big or small, will be subject to opinions and scrutiny.

It is at this point that one’s creative process and leadership, whether impacted by country or cultural heritage or not, will reveal itself.

To have all the work that went into this be recognized at this level is truly a blessing. We hope that this brings awareness to the brand as well as inspire others in some shape or form (left or right brained alike).

The enormous scale and scope of the project, the insane timeline to design and fabricate, and the story of Kia’s commitment to a clean future all played a role as to why we wanted to enter this piece.

Timing was the biggest challenge. Once the design was approved, we had less than two months to engineer, fabricate, and install on site without compromising any of the design details.

Motivation for the next one!

1) Seeing your work get built will always reign supreme at the top of the list.

2) Blessed with a great team and leadership makes the process fun.

3) Having the opportunity to travel around the world.

Simply, we are a melting pot of creative diversity continuously pushing boundaries in everything creative.

AI will undoubtedly be fully woven into our industry and will completely commoditize creative writing, visual aid, and media content (if it hasn’t already). The line between trained creatives and novices who have access to AI will be blurred, thus disrupting the industry in ways that yield a convincingly false reality accepted to be true by the majority.

That said, as this industry evolves with more and more integration of AI, my hope is that human discernment for authenticity and the need for human emotional connections will never succumb to prompts.

When I was a professor at Long Beach State University teaching an advanced 3D Studio Max class (and graduating from the same design program as my students), I would always tell them that dedication and passion is everything.

You are either all in or not at all. Like all creative fields, the training, research, and countless hours of work will consume you – but remember to balance this dedication with other interests or hobbies.

Anything that involves putting pen to paper. I think having the ability to draw and sketch is the best tool you can have with good communication skills as a close second.

Discretion and privacy are golden!

My inspiration comes from those who live by “Culture over claps” - a saying in the music industry where one stays true to the integrity of the craft (culture) and not ‘sell out’ to an unrealistic expectation of the majority. Be true to yourself and the betterment of your team without giving into self-serving decisions at the risk of compromising your integrity.

Success for me is finding a balance between work and life balance.