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COMMUNICATION ARTS DESIGN ANNUAL 58

Jason Seiler Los York Maria Louceiro Schema Exhibit

BYU DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND MEDIA ARTS YOUNG COMPANY

CYRANO BASED ON THE BOOK BY

EDMOND ROSTAND

ADAPTED FOR THE STAGE BY

JO ROETS

PRODUCED WITH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH PLAYS FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES

September/October 2017 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com

LOS YORK W

By Julie Prendiville Roux

hen Seth Epstein and Dexton Deboree set out to buy waning Los Angeles–based design company Stardust, they hardly knew each other and they had only 24 hours in which to pull off the purchase. At the twelfth hour, the deal appeared to be falling apart, so they took a leap. And they ended up buying not only the Los Angeles office, but also the New York annex. There were no endless meetings, mapping out pros and cons. No itemized lists of financials and year-over-year numbers. They didn’t have the assurance of years of working together, seeing each other through fat times and thin. Hardly a recipe for success.

Although both had been working off and on as freelancers for Stardust, they’d collaborated on only one or two projects— Deboree as executive producer/managing director and Epstein as creative director. But that was the extent of their relationship. When Stardust began to falter and was in danger of closing, Deboree and Epstein decided to try to buy it. “There’s the way you think it’s supposed to go, and then there’s the way it goes,” Epstein says with a laugh. “Dex and I had to come together and align within 24 hours. When the whole thing was going to collapse, we made it happen in a way that was magical and unpredictable. We got to work, and we couldn’t overanalyze it. We have this thing now. We had both been around a fair amount of time. We got together for 30 days after work and started the envisioning process.”

“While it was a really big risk, I think the alternative was as much of a risk and downside as well,” says Deboree. “We realized, wait a second. The model of traditional advertising

is so broken down. We wanted to start something from scratch. A brand called Ahnu contacted us and said, ‘We don’t have any money, but we have a great brand. We need something from soup to nuts. Do you think you can do that?’

And that was the spark. It was our first ‘aha’ moment when we did a project taking a new kind of lean approach.”

Now, more than four years in, Los York is thriving, having transformed the Stardust discipline from design to content generation and execution, using practices as impulsive and intuitive as the firm’s beginnings. Stocked with creatives, producers and a roster of directors, its method is a paradigm that’s working. One big switch from the traditional: for a company whose clients include Apple, BMW, Nike/Jordan, Samsung, Sonos, Wilson Sporting Goods Company and ad agencies, Los York has surprisingly few layers of personnel.

Like none.

Still based in Los Angeles and New York (hence the name, although that’s not the whole story), Los York’s staffers hold hyphenated titles: senior account director–executive producer. Creative director–director of photography–editor.

They run lean, fast and often without exact parameters for a project, which will usually be seen on TV and in digital and social spaces. “A traditional ad agency is like a Navy warship. Tons of people, hard to turn,” Epstein says. “We’re the Navy SEALS. We need it done, we need it done quietly and we need to know it will work. We really get to the heart of it.”

The agency does 80 percent of its projects directly with clients, and 20 percent through ad agencies.

Back to the name: “Los York” has more meaning than just the two cities it resides in. “Seth and I had this idea that creative has its own ZIP code,” Deboree explains. “So we started batting this idea back and forth: Instead of it being that we physically have an office in Los Angeles and New York, what if, as a creative, you’re a citizen of a creative world, you’re part of a community? Global nomads for the arts. The dimension where great ideas arrive.”

When Nike’s Jordan Brand first reached out to Los York, Deboree seemed a perfect fit to concept and direct. In this world of hyphenates, he’s a heady one: jock-producerdirector-filmmaker-poet. Who better to understand the science and art of the highly gifted athlete? Michael Jordan, also a hyphenate, epitomized the athlete-entrepreneur. The huge hit Air Jordan had debuted in 1984. Not one to simply lend his famous handle, Jordan was vocal about the design of the shoe and its subsequent variations. In late 1997, Nike officially launched the Jordan Brand.

Captions supplied by Los York.

Right: “Slang” :60 A montage of lifestyle imagery accented with chartreuse, the brand color of the sneaker and street wear vending app Slang. “Slang needed to rebrand itself to stand out to drive adoption and downloads. We redesigned its identity mark and created this visceral launch film, which worked wonders.” Andrew Smart, creative director; Wildchild, editorial manager; Win Bates, producer; Santino Sladavic, executive producer; Slang, client.

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INTEGRATED BRANDING PROGRAMS 1 (series) Anthony Verge, art director Jacques de Varennes, creative director Sylvain Grégoire/Marc Rivest, production artists lg2 (Québec, Canada), design Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, client “This new brand identity platform, including all the promotional pieces, reflects the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec’s unique experience: lively, timeless and bursting.”

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INTEGRATED BRANDING PROGRAMS 1 (series) Rob Alexander/Will Ecke/Brittany Waldner, designers Rob Alexander/Jill Robertson/Jason Schulte, creative directors Dave Eggers/Jill Robertson, writers Mimi Chau/Dominique Mao, production artists Reva Parness/Cindy Wu, project managers Interstice Architects/Jonas Kellner/MKThink, architects Gensler/Office (San Francisco, CA), design firms 826 Valencia, client “826 Valencia, the world’s most creative nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids, opened a new location in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. The center is fronted by King Carl’s Emporium, a store for explorers and adventurers of all kinds, where a world-traveling royal puffer fish sells strange wares he brings back from his trips. When our team first met with 826 cofounder Dave Eggers to help create the concept’s visual identity, experience and products, he told us to ‘make it weird.’ That’s the magic of 826. Weird is what engages kids and sparks their imagination.”

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FRESH ALPHABET

Founded by designers Sam Lane, Sebastian Needler and Abbas Mushtaq, Alphabet uses its intelligence and dedication to create work that captures the vibrancy of the brand it represents—no matter the application. “We love brands, and we especially love concepts,” says Mushtaq. “What fascinates us is taking a big idea and applying it to media the size of a business card and the size of a building.” The design firm’s flexibility also extends to its style, since it prioritizes solutions that effectively communicate the brand message over design that follows a specific look. “We don’t try to apply our own biases and prejudices to design or believe that a clean, concise solution has to literally be clean and concise,” Mushtaq elaborates.

“Design just needs to do its job for the right people in the right way.”

It’s this all-encompassing ethic and contemporary energy that draw clients like the Manchester-based teahouse Cha.ology and Extrajet airlines to Alphabet. “We’re a young design team made up of millennials, and we don’t shy away from that,” Mushtaq says. “It enables us to work with like-minded clients and understand their target audiences—we’re often part of it!” madebyalphabet.com

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