5 Questions with George Tong, Senior Art Director @ Flexport
5 Questions is a series where we ask CMCI Studio alumni to share insights about the future of design and how to grow as a creative. To learn more about the Studio masters program check the details at the end of this story or visit our website. Enrollment is now open for fall 2019.
This week we’re featuring George Tong, Senior Art Director at Flexport.
George graduated from the Studio program in 2011, spending time at a few agencies before joining several other Studio alumni at Uber in 2014.
“After I graduated from Studio, I went to Evolution Bureau as a design intern in San Francisco. I worked on clients like Zynga, Glad, Facebook, and Jameson. After that, I went over to Attik, as an interactive designer, there I worked on digital efforts and campaigns, primarily for Scion. From there, I freelanced for a little bit, but then ended up going in-house at Uber in early 2014, after seeing a job post from a fellow Studio alum.”
Getting in early at Uber provided George with a lot of opportunity for growth.
“Uber was a small company at the time, and was growing very fast, so my role changed a lot. I started on Growth Design, which focused on marketing efforts to grow the business. Then my team split and we focused on Rider Growth, which focused on the rider and rides.
In late 2014, I was brought on to the newly formed International Growth team to do product design. The team was formed because Uber wanted to grow the business into India and China, but the experience needed to change due to challenges like: dense traffic areas, low network connectivity, and most people not having a credit card. By the end of my time on International Growth, I had created the first versions of: Cash Payments, Intercom (the in-app call and chat feature), Phone Number Signup, and Signup Lite (for low connectivity areas).”
Eventually, George moved back over to the marketing side at Uber and helped launch campaigns for Uber Eats, Rider, Driver and more.
“Coming from the product side of things, it was great to have those product insights carry back over to the creative campaigns that I produced on the Marketing team.”
Early in 2018, George made the decision to leave Uber, and pursue a job at Flexport as a Senior Art Director on the Brand & Marketing Team.
“I wanted to find a different problem space. Flexport interested me because it’s trying to change international shipping, an industry that hasn’t really changed in decades. Joining Flexport when it was about 700 people global reminded me of when I joined Uber and it was about the same size, also massively changing a taxi industry that hadn’t changed in decades.”
With everything George has done at Uber and beyond his favorite project so far has been creating the cash payments system within the Uber app.
“Creating a system for cash payments on the Uber app has been one of my favorite product design projects. It all started as a random idea that we came up with on an offsite, that quickly grew into something our whole team believed needed to happen. After several prototypes and in-person testing, we were able to launch it and see the immediate impact it was having on the business.”
5 Questions with George
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned over the course of your career so far?
[George] Presentation matters. In every aspect of your career, you’re going to have to sell yourself and your ideas. Anything from an interview to a nationwide campaign, you’re going to need to present, and present well. Know who you’re presenting to and how you’re going to present it to them.
When you look at the current landscape of design and technology what are you most excited about and most concerned about?
[George] I’m most excited about more immersive experiences. With so much of advertising that is done digitally, it’s great to see fun ways that bring experiences into the physical world. It’s all about surprise and delight in weird ways.
I was once told, for projects, “Speed, quality, and quantity, you can only prioritize two out of the three.” I still hold this to be true today. In Silicon Valley, there’s a consistent push to have quality and quantity, while going faster and faster, and you are seeing a lot of burnout because of it.
When you think about the designers of the future, what do you see as the most critical skills they will need in order to be successful?
[George] Having a bias towards action. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm and maintain a status quo in your day-to-day. No budget? Not in your job description? Rather than waiting around for someone else to do it, take action. Some of the best projects I’ve seen and worked on didn’t have a brief and didn’t have anyone requesting it. But the ideas were pitched, got people excited, and were sold through, which goes back to my previous point about being able to present an idea well.
How did your experience in the Studio graduate program impact your ability to be successful in your career?
[George] Studio’s structure gave me a better idea of how to handle real-world projects, which some were. Anywhere from just brainstorming to building your ideas, Studio gives you a taste of everything. The projects I worked on at Studio definitely pushed to consider how I needed to think about a problem in order to tackle it, this included anything from trying to figure out why the code on your portfolio site is breaking to how to make Instagram display on a vintage TV, to the next big idea for a car model. Going through these experiences helped give me focus on what I wanted to do as a career, and which agencies I wanted to work for coming out of the program.
Studio also provided me with a great network. There were so many great mentors that you can reach out to and now a great group of alumni as well. Studio gives you a solid foundation to reach out to the network for career advice or an intro to a company.
What are some of the most important tools and processes you use in your job right now?
[George] Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, pencil, paper, and Spotify.
You can check out more of George’s work here. You can follow him on Instagram here.
Follow the rest of our “5 Questions” series here.
About CMCI Studio
CMCI Studio is a design graduate program at CU Boulder. Driven by a culture of collective creativity and fueled by design thinking, our mission is to transform our students into design professionals capable of leading us into the future and solving problems in a rapidly changing world. Our graduates have gone on to design and lead teams at Google, Apple, Spotify, Uber, Pinterest, Dropbox, Airbnb, Wieden+Kennedy, R/GA and many more.
We are currently accepting applications for our 2019–2020 school year. The application deadline is March 1st. Get more details and apply at our website.
