Deepika Ross
Deepika Ross
VP Creative Director, FCB Health, New York
“Resist the temptation to look at what others are doing. Instead read up everything you can about the product or creative problem you are trying to solve.”
How did you get started as an illustrator + design?
Despite a master’s degree in graphic design and animation from Pratt Institute, New York, I wanted to do a lot of other things. I just couldn’t settle with being a designer. So…I wrote copy for Leo Burnett, curated non-representational art at the Guggenheim Museum, mountaineered and lived at 18,000 feet in the Himalayas and even apprenticed with a Jungian psychotherapist in Manhattan. But somehow and tellingly enough, design and illustration paid the bills and ended up financing my dreams of being somebody else. My earliest, most serious design jobs were with Women’s Wear Daily and W Magazine, New York. I spent my days directing photo shoots at Conde Nast and designing the front end of the issues. That was my day job. But at night, I started to illustrate for W, Cookie, Modern Brides, WWD International and the New Yorker. It started small but grew substantial over time. It was a twofold initiation into the world of editorial design, as well as working towards an illustrative style that I could own later.
You transitioned from working at Conde Nast to Advertising, what was it like transitioning from two industries and what advice do you have to creatives who want to make an industry change to advertising?
Transitioning to advertising was a necessity. I needed a work visa and editorial design just did not sponsor people in those days. But the big agencies like Foote Cone and Belding did that sort of thing. It was easy and difficult at the same time. As a designer you grow an inner muscle for problem solving that applies to both industries. Except advertising gets more conceptual and you really must work on the craft of presenting ideas to a multitude of people and stakeholders- creative directors, account folks, clients, production vendors etc. Editorial design gave me sensitivity to typography, an eye for photography, integration of illustration and a definite point of view when it came to layout design. My advice to creatives wanting to make an industry change? Do it, only if you really want to be in advertising. Advertising messaging & conceptual work, deadlines, budgets, and production make for a totally different world that can be a sharp learning curve to some folks. Editorial designers enjoy some artistic freedoms that advertisers and marketers cannot allow for. But we have far bigger budgets and resources - you are constrained only by the limits of your, and your client’s imagination at the end of the day.
What advice do you have to women starting in illustration and design?
You are in no way a minority. Illustration and design are equal opportunity employers for people with talent, drive and commitment. I have worked with some highly talented women and count them as my gurus and friends. My advice? Hold tight to your dreams even if they are a wee bit all over the place like mine. They will make good things happen for you. Hard work, the ability to multitask, and to listen, are not gender specific virtues but women just have a natural inclination for these “soft” skills. So, use them. Also, please be kind to yourself and allow for some grace when you fail (we all do at some point). Perfection is overrated and seriously ulcer producing.
How does a young illustrator make their work break through the noise of all the other designers?
I’d say resist the temptation to look at what others are doing. Instead read up everything you can about the product or creative problem you are trying to solve. Seriously research it. Find out all the interesting, and not so interesting facts you can about it. Write them down—fill up those notebooks. Wait till you isolate a fact, or two, that feels real to the human condition. At this point it helps to make an absurd leap of imagination about that fact. Say something weird, or cool, or unexpected about that fact. I promise it will come to you, if you do the work. I know we all want to get to technique and style fast, but those are secondary to the imaginative leap I am talking about. They get solved if you have something definite to say and not the other way around. This will move your work into a space that is unique to you. And is often a solution that stands apart. And one more thing that is almost rhetorical, but I’ll say it because some people are beginning to forget this. Draw all the time. Draw everything you can. Draw to learn, for fun, or when you are bored, or even when you hate it. Just draw. It’s the simple thing that builds an illustrator’s world. And it also powers that small thing called craft which will define you.
What inspires you and your work?
I am inspired by books and writers, so we may be talking about a lot of influences here. To simplify it to a simple list I am hugely moved by the work of Seymour Chwast. Seymour is seminal to graphic and illustration design as we know it today. He and his fellow Pushpin collaborators created the rules of creative thinking, layout design and the use of illustration (often irreverent) in advertising. They merged art with commerce in a language that is both unexpected and universal. He has many gifts for us, and we owe him so much. Maurice Sendak’s theatre illustrations are subliminal in their use of line, humor, character design and sheer artistry. His posters and sets for various ballet and theatrical productions are so rich and exotic they make you dream of cerebral and visceral adventures which is often the purpose of true art. For example, you can look at The Golden Flute and Nutcracker forever, and see something new every, single time. Just an enormous visual feast. And I haven’t even started to talk about his children book illustrations…he is a world in himself. And lastly and most importantly, Carl Jung, and his work on archetypes, the incredible powers of the unconscious and the symbol making function of the human mind. Carl Jung’s Red Book is not just a map of his psychological space, but his paintings and drawings are a major revelation. He clearly painted under the influence of unseen but powerful inner forces. One cannot help confronting one’s own unconscious when you look at his work. We often meet the same forces when we grapple with concepts and find answers that appear almost magically from some deeper world within. It’s beyond surreal.