Episode 29: Building a Business on Visual Culture
Carl Rush is the director of Crush Creative & Crush Motion, founder and owner of The Vine Club and Co founder of Glug Brighton.
Crush Creative is a design agency providing creative solutions across all print, digital and moving media. Crush is based in Brighton, UK and New York, USA // Art Direction, Graphic Design, Illustration, Web Design, Animation, Film, Idea Generation & everything in-between.
Image 1: Catatonia Vinyl Cover
“Cerys Matthews who was the lead singer of Catatonia… she became a good friend of mine as we were working on all the album art with them. That was my first client 25 years ago. They contacted me three weeks ago and said we're bringing out our 25th anniversary of the album. Will you design it? So that’s a nice little circle.”
How was graphic design school like?
“Our tutor said, “Right everyone draw a bus.” So everyone drew an oblong with some wheels on a road, we pinned them up on the wall. And we looked at all these buses, and they all look quite similar. And then he said, ‘Right let's have a discussion about buses. Let's talk about what happens on buses, has anyone got any good stories about buses?’ And so all of these people came up with bus stories, and we're all laughing about various things that happened. And he said, right, stop. Now everyone draw a bus. And everyone drew a bus with people hanging out of them. Like the bus was either huge or bubbly, with crazy eyes and people jumping out and then we put all the buses back on the wall. We looked at the difference between drawing a bus and thinking about the backstory, the content of a bus and what can happen.”
Heineken Project
“We're in we're in Heineken office in Amsterdam, I am pitching this work and I had never really done any strategic work at this point. Because I had done record covers, it had been like, you listen to the music, you talk to the band, you create something. But for Heineken’s dance music projects, I went in with the with the pitch that I'm a raver. I know the scene. I know the scenes’ graphic. Look, I totally understand that and here's my work.”
How do you hire?
“So I've hired people straight out of uni quite a lot. If we've had people on internships, quite a lot of people got jobs straight after their internship. The field has opened up a lot more. And I tend to hire people that are quite multi-disciplined as well. So their core might be graphic design. But hey, they can draw as well. Illustration has paid played a big part in what we do over the years.”
Are illustrations more important now?
“And over time, I think more and more the people I hire are great illustrators, and it's become a little bit of a trademark of what we do. Now for a lot of the big entertainment brands it is crucial that we we are great at that illustration side as well.”
Advice to young Illustrators and Designers
“The best interns we ever had were the ones that asked ‘what you doing? How does this work?’ Rather than just come in sit down, be quiet, you're not gonna learn anything. You've got to talk. You've got to ask. So it's like constantly reaching out, constantly being interested in everything. That's culture, I think that to immerse yourself in art, fashion, music, books, theatre. It's all the same. It’s influences from different areas. And you can extend that to sport and politics. Just be interested in stuff. And I think that makes a good designer or good creative.”
Book Recommendation
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
More from Carl Rush
