Orecchiette
A journey to Amsterdam via D&AD, Sunshine and Disney
Hey, my name is Ellis Sargeant and to your disappointment, this blog is not about one of the most underrated pasta shapes out there. It is in fact about one of my most well-versed subjects, myself! Recently I have got into the habit of naming blogs, passwords or usernames after things that are surrounding me at that point in time and currently, I am blessed to be in the company of some beautiful dried Orecchiette pasta.
Now we have got that out the way, Hey! I am one of the new interns here at VBAT and therefore have to pass the right of passage which is a brief blog about me, myself and I. So like I said before my name is Ellis, I am 23 years of age, enjoy long walks in the countryside and candlelit dinners. My star sign is Gemini and therefore enjoy the company of fellow Leo and Aries human beings, however, Virgos have been known to rub me up the wrong way. All jokes aside I am your typical creative, I wear clear-framed glasses, turtle-necks and my wardrobe consist of clothes that are either black, white or somewhere in between.
Now onto what I do. My discipline is a confusing cross-breed, in fact, if I was a dog I would be classified as a Mongrel. However, for all intensive purposes, I am a Creative, compiled of 2 years of photography, 3 years of art direction and 4 years of self-taught design. I started university studying Editorial and Advertising Photography where I explored the realms of image making and late models. I was also fortunate enough to fly over to Shanghai to shoot for Converse but that’s a story for another time. After second year I decided to switch course to Creative Advertising and trained as an Art Director which I ended up graduating along with two shiny awards.
After university, I exhibited my work at the D&AD New Blood festival in London where I got selected to be part of the New Blood Academy and first stumbled across VBAT who had partnered with us (so we go way back). Once the Academy ended I found myself in a unique position being a solo Art Director who struggled to get a job, because I wasn’t in a “conventional” team of two which comprises of an Art Director and a Copywriter.
I could rant all day about how frustrating this is and how I believe it’s is extremely detrimental to your creative department to be so rigid in this traditional (outdated) structure, but that’s another blog post altogether.
So, to get work I had to sell myself as a very conceptual designer. Emphasis on very!
The first break I had was at Sunshine, a medium sized agency in North London. Nathalie Gordon (my mentor at Sunshine) spotted me at D&AD and was one of the only people in the industry trying to pioneer solo creatives, so she decided to take me under her wing. However due to obligations abroad she flew out to New York for half of my internship and consequently I found myself a bit lost in a very busy agency with no work for me and the internship withered out after my allotted 3 months.
My next endeavour was with family favourites, Disney. I became a freelance Digital Designer for them who also dabbled in conceptualising adverts and script-writing. However, despite the huge abundance of cuddly toys, a life-size Iron Man and a cinema in the office, the company structure and politics didn’t suit me and like most freelance gigs it came to an end after 6 months.
After floating around a few other agencies for short freelance stints I decided I needed a change to reignite my creative spark, this is when I took the opportunity to hop across the pond and come here. VBAT and Amsterdam seem like the perfect defibrillator to jump-start my career and really progress my creative practice with an amazing team, some seriously good clients and banging lunches.
That pretty much leads me to this exact point in time writing this blog, sitting at my new desk in this beautiful open plan office. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and my Orecchiette now is accompanied by a fine looking Passata and 3 Heinekens.
I am sure this won’t be the last encounter we have, so keep up to date with the VBAT blog to see more badly written entries by myself and some well-written ones from the rest of the team.
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written by Ellis Sargeant, Creative Intern at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme, PR at VBAT
