Tim O’Donnell, “King Awesome”

October 12, 2011 • 2:53 pm • POSTED BY avansaun

As interns at 160over90, myself (Atlee) and my fellow intern Kay are surrounded by insanely talented people all day long. Not only do these great people work all around us, they also walk through “intern alley” a billion times a day to get wherever they need to go. This is perhaps the most intimidating part of our experience so far, knowing that Designers, Creative Directors, and the Chief Creative Officer are looking over our shoulders at the goods (and bads) on our screens. But everyone had to start somewhere, and although it may seem like everyone we work with is way more advanced than us lowly interns, we know that they once had people looking over their shoulders too.

Last Wednesday, Kay and I had the opportunity to accompany Creative Director Tim O’Donnell to a lecture he was giving at Kay’s alma mater and local Philly art school, Tyler School of Art. This was a great experience to get to know once of our CD’s better, and to join Tim on his first ever ride on the Philadelphia subway!

With the help of Kay’s navigational skills we made it to a very crowded classroom in Tyler’s Design Department, albeit a little out of breath and in Tim’s case, a little dazed due to his “lack of sleep [aka an upcoming presentation] and Dayquil.”

Tyler students ready to get their presentation on.

Tim started the presentation with how he first realized he was interested in design. At age 5 while living in New York, his dad asked whether he liked the Jets or the Giants. He chose the Dallas Cowboys because he liked the star. When traveling, he made his parents stay at Sheraton hotels until he was 18 because he loved the logo so much. His love of drawing segued into design, which led him to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he studied graphic design at a time when the program was progressing from hand skills to computer techniques. (This came full circle, he is now the CD for the RIT account here at 160over90).

His first experience out of school was unfortunately a “demoralizing first job” that left him burnt out after a year (we interns are treated much better here at 160!). He then worked at a gift shop until he was ready to apply to his dream job: designing record sleeves for 4AD Records in England. He put together a book that illustrated poems he liked, which he then hand bound and mailed to 4AD unpretentiously. Luckily, with this attitude and the knowledge of Mac computers during a time when 4AD was still doing everything by hand, Tim landed his dream job designing music packaging in London. Working in the music industry was insane. For example, an artist would say “mittens, stars, whales,” refuse to answer the phone, and give no other direction to the design. This was fun but crazy, and after 5 years Tim left to settle down and have a real life.

Tim worked at MTV for a year (“art directing the photoshopping of Britney Spears arm” among other things), followed by a year at Razorfish, freelanced for 5 years (Tim’s favorite job), spent some time at New York Magazine, and then worked as Design Director at Johnson & Johnson for 4 years. During his time at J&J, Tim heard of 160over90 and instantly loved their work. He sent a book to the office out of the blue of compiled work that he really liked, not just projects that were deemed important to have in a portfolio but “projects that reflect me.” Tim visited the office multiple times and as soon as there was an opening he joined as a Creative Director in February 2011.

During his career, Tim realized that “the mouse in between me and the screen is too many layers. Something is getting lost in translation.” He wanted to celebrate the work that went into design, the sketches behind the scenes. There are beautiful ideas on websites but with no context, they seem to be plucked out of the sky. Tim called it the “rabbit hole of The Dieline.” He wanted to explore the background and progress of these ideas, and so wrote a book featuring sketches of notable graphic designers. Check it out here.

At this point in the lecture, Tim guided the audience through RIT’s case study, detailing 160′s creative process from the brand concept to the executed ads. During Q&A one student raised her hand and said, “you just walked through about 10-15 minutes of work for RIT, and I wasn’t bored once. How did you do it?” Answer: MAGIC. But really, Kay and I will have get back to you at the end of our internships. That’s what we’re here to find out.

Love, Atlee (left) and Kay (right)