Dare to care more than everyone else - Alex Center

0:10People want to work for people that care. People want to work alongside people that care. And I don't know what's right or wrong. I don't know if your brand is going to be a success. We just have to make thousands of decisions. And all I know is that if you don't care, then you're not going to make the right ones. But if you're doing it from a place of true care and caring about the result because you want it to be a success, not because you want it to be successful for monetary reasons or you want it to be successful for award reasons, but because you really care about it being good or you really care about being as good as it possibly can, it will only lead you to places that I've been really privileged and grateful to be at this place in my career 20 years in where I can sit in front of a bunch of awards and work and if I can point to anything and be like here's my secret it's because I care.

1:07Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinich. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that inspired lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create

1:51today i'm talking to alex center who's a designer podcaster and the founder of the award-winning design and branding studio center having worked for the coca-cola company helping build brands like vitamin water power rate and smart water today he and his team at center are building the next generation of iconic brands. In our conversation, Alex shares his journey of an insecure art student growing up in the 90s as he discovered confidence through art classes and developing a relationship with brands that made him feel important. After an eye-opening internship in the New York Knicks, he found his calling at Vitamin Water, working alongside marketing legends on campaigns and rebrands.

2:36For the last seven years, Senta has built 25 plus brands from scratch, earning international recognition, not by working with the biggest brands, but by creating brands of the future, challenging the status quo and helping people belong. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Alex Senta.

2:58Hey Alex, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. How's it going? on. Alex, for those who may have never heard of Center, Alex Center, and everything that you do, how would you introduce yourself? My name is Alex, and Center is my real last name and the name of the design studio that I started seven years ago. I'm a designer, and I'm a founder, and a podcaster, and a human being. How would you describe your journey into discovering branding and brands? Yeah, I think when I was growing up, I didn't really know what a brand was. I didn't know what a designer was. I just knew that in the classroom of art, people treated me differently.

3:36And I had a lot of hobbies. I played sports. I played the drums. I liked to snowboard. I did a whole bunch of different activities, but I did them all pretty mediocrely, I would say. No noticeable talents in any of those arenas. But in the art classroom, my teachers were nice to me. The other students looked at me in a way that made me feel confident, that made me feel special. And I think that was sort of where I first early diagnosed the fact that this may be something that made me feel good about myself. And this was the 90s. And so being an artistic person, especially a guy, there weren't a ton of them in my grade.

4:17I was one of the very few amounts of people. and for me I just knew that this was a path that I wanted to pursue and a path that teachers encouraged me I had good arts teachers and people that encouraged my talents and said hey Alex this is something that you have yeah a little bit of skill and you excel in and you should kind of pursue was there peer pressure from you know the snowboarders from the dramas from anyone who would call themselves more than mediocre and then you were excelling in art classes was there peer pressure? I don't know if it was peer pressure. I just think when you're a sort of young person, maybe insecure, unsure of themselves trying to find their way, I think I was looking for something that made me feel better than myself.

5:00And so I think it was a combination of those art classrooms. And then I think when I found brands or I started wearing clothing that made me feel special or made me feel important or made me feel better, it gave me some confidence that I realized that, And yeah, there was a relationship that I had with these logos or these brands that I made that I wasn't aware of. I only put this together later when I was in college and was introduced to the idea of design and what a graphic designer does. That I even started to find out that there was a job where I could work as a commercial artist working for a brand or working with a brand.

5:37And so that was really where my journey begins. What was your upbringing like? Were you surrounded by creativity? to see? What did your parents do? So my father is a dentist and he had his own practice. And so that was something I quickly also diagnosed that wasn't for me. Like I was not going to be a doctor or dentist or any looking in people's mouths was not a future that I wanted. And my mother actually was a painter and a calligrapher. So she was the one that interested me to drawing a painting. And when I was growing up, we had these things called hobbies. It was before the internet and before sort of Netflix.

6:13And one of those hobbies was setting up still life in my kitchen and breaking out charcoals or pencils and even sometimes paint and watercolor and just trying to capture a fruit basket as realistically as possible. And this is something that I did with my mother when I was a kid and it was something that we did for fun. Amazing. I just wonder like how many still life paintings with fruit baskets have actually ever been created in a life of humanity because it just seems like before anything else there's just a lot of fruit baskets in paint in oil color that's right yeah millions i would i would hope but i don't know that's something that kids do these days i don't maybe they do and maybe they do with their ipads and their apple pencils i think it's more it's the influence isn't it like you've got a you've got a product placement and then you kind of place it into your hyper curated life.

7:06And then like you create still live pictures in a different way. But when you think about the fruit baskets, I mean, was the life dull before Netflix? No, I think it was, we were more connected, right? Like we were, we were, we, yeah. I think back on these years very fondly. And I think it's my journey to finding something that I love to do, both as a hobby and as something that I wanted to do professionally. And I think that's the sweet spot, I think, for any creative professional. It's like finding that space where you can do something that you love to do and also you can make a living from it.

7:44Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, we were definitely a lot more mindful because there was a lot less noise. So you could actually focus on what you're doing, what you're looking at, what you're tasting. It was slightly simpler and more, as you said, more connected life. Yeah, and I think it's something that my mother and I shared. She, as I mentioned, did calligraphy. So I sort of saw her love of doing lettering and typography. And so she could do various different styles of scripts and bubble letters and all these kinds of different things. And so that was certainly something that I was drawn to and something that I was interested in.

8:18Yeah, again, as just a kid, and I think about this a lot as kids these days grow up making their own mixtapes or making their own magazines and fashion lines. And they're exposed to a creative suite of tools on computers at very young ages. And I didn't start working in Photoshop until I was, yeah, I guess in my later years of high school and really college. So I think that ability to do things and learn those skills or even just explore and experiment younger is interesting to me because I think it just allows people to sort of find design and this profession or this job or this hobby earlier and i think there's just more designers than ever before because of that absolutely absolutely nothing with everything that's been technologically creative with the advances you can be pretty good designer pretty quickly i've had a portfolio from someone who said oh i've been designing since i was 13 i'm 18 i'm self-taught and the portfolio was fucking mind-blowing absolutely mind-blowing i'm like what this is on paper if i was to hide the cv part of the portfolio i'd be like that's a 25 30 year old person who's got 10 year industry experience and i think that really good foundation can be achieved with so little these days because we have created the basic tools so good that you can really turbocharge that development stage because it took us time to work it out and we made it easy for somebody else now yeah and you also have to make a ton of bad shit to find something that works and i think for me that was happening in college in my early 20s i think to your point people start at 10 and they just are doing reps and making a whole bunch of junk and that's really important right like you have to go through that journey of finding your style or finding what you enjoy doing and just learning and i think yeah the earlier that you can find that the better you'll be you mentioned that you felt empowered by the world of brands like putting on a certain jumper associated with a certain sort of clothing brand made you feel something and i've been mulling it over for quite a while in terms of how we go about self-acceptance how we go about worth like how we think about ourselves and sometimes when our self-esteem is not the strongest certain people like that logo let's say the armani logo or the gucci logo to be as big as possible because that means that they've achieved certain status for themselves they've achieved certain potentially certain acceptance and they hope to be seen by others in a certain way.

11:06And it was only just recently when I actually linked it back to how young designers want to work with Coca-Colas and Pepsi's and Nike's because it's that perception of, oh, if I work with this company, I will be accepted for who I am. Therefore, that will give me another badge of approval. A thousand percent. Like it's a sign of success. It's a sign of making it. It's a sign of working as a professional in achieving, making an achievement of some sort. And that puts value into who you are. I think we as people are constantly, that's one of the first questions you get asked at the party. Hey, what do you do for a living?

11:43What do you do for work? And I think that's the first entry point for a lot of conversations is what do you do? And I think being a designer at Nike or being a designer at Coca-Cola, yeah, for me, it seemed like that was the dream. That was my dream job was to be the creative director for the New York Knicks, my favorite basketball team. So it's like this, these are signs of success. These are signs of value, or these are signs of importance as much as they were sort of dream jobs. And I think that is ultimately a big part of what drew me to working directly for a brand or directly with something that was a part of culture that people knew that wasn't just a design studio or a creative shop that was maybe known by a sliver of people on planet earth but instead of working for one of the world's most famous brands and i still think that way today like i want to work with the biggest brands and work and create work that touches the most amount of people i'm gonna circle back on this one later because i don't think you need to be already you're creating brands of the future you're creating a whole new universe you don't need the biggest stuff but you mentioned that potentially you wanted to be a creative director for the knicks when you were quite close to start that path as a as it was an apprentice junior intern at Nix right yeah it was my first job as a creative professional because in my mind that was the dream and so when I was in college I lived about 45 minutes from Madison Square Garden where the Nix play and where the offices are and I applied and 20 years ago that was my first time in design meetings it was my first time as a working with other designers seeing how creative directors both create the work that they do and also presenting it to internal teams going to meetings and seeing just how design is bought and sold inside of an organization so being thrown in deep end which part of got you excited and which part was slightly not sad but it must have been a bit of reality that you realize okay is this how creativity works because you expect everything to be fireworks and amazing stuff and then you realize we have to compromise with people you You have to do things in a way that are not always your own vision.

13:55You have to sort of play by rules in a way.

14:00Alex Center:We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lax Coffee Co., the first creative speciality comfy company, building a platform to shine a light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lux Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxcoffee.co.uk. You can use the code podcast to get 15 % off your first order.

14:50Yeah, no, for sure. I remember the office, like in my head, it was like this sort of playground or sort of this beautiful designed office. And it was literally a closet. And like I had to wear, I had to dress up. There was a dress code. I had to wear like a dress shirt and a tie and slacks. And so I had to dress because it was a professional organization. And despite the fact that I was just, I was a creative on the team, I had to wear the, I had to look the part. And so commuting on the train, wearing a suit to go and make flyers for ticket season, ticket holder events and things like that. It's, it feels a little less glamorous than maybe what you have in your brain as I'm going to be a designer working for my favorite basketball team.

15:39And yeah, it was certainly I think it was definitely a great experience. And then but also some eye opening moments. And I think part of it also was seeing how the sausage is made behind the scenes of something that you love takes away some of the magic. Right. Like you don't want to meet your heroes kind of thing. And it was for me getting the job and working for the Knicks in my head. I had made it seem like this amazing thing. But in reality, it's like kind of a thankless thing because sports franchises make a lot of money and none of that is determined by how well the tickets are designed.

16:16It's very much impacted by how well the team plays on the court. And I think the designers and the creative team weren't treated as royalty in any way, shape or form. They were, again, stuffed in a closet and, oh, yeah, we need new ticket designs for this year. And like there wasn't a ton of respect or appreciation or really enthusiasm for design as a vehicle for change and for brand and for the value of what we were doing. I appreciate your honesty from behind the scenes. Yeah. I mean, again, it's like you think in your head it's going to be this magical, amazing experience where I'm going to be shaking hands with all the players and I'm going to be in the locker room or you're going to be courtside.

17:01a Madison Square Garden with Spike Lee and you're in a closet wearing a suit sweating and designing some posters for basically events just to placate the people that pay the most amount of money in the summer. I wonder how many people have given up on wanting to intern for their favorite basketball team. I know I shouldn't talk so much shit about it because I still do love like working in sports and also again bringing things that i'm into in my personal life into the work that i do here at the studio i wouldn't say it's talking shit i think this is how situation was 20 years ago i remember 25 years ago when i started my first job i thought i was the superhero on day one and then realized that legs luther and kryptonite is waiting for me in forms of clients deadlines politics changes whatever you're like oh i was expecting this to be real good no the reality is totally different.

17:57You just reminded me actually of something. I actually, if I recall correctly, and this is, you just jogged the memory I haven't thought about a long time. I actually remember trying to rebrand the Rangers because it's the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. They're both owned by the same company. And I remember like actually trying to change some of the logo marks. I guess I was just a brash kid and I was thinking like, oh yeah, I'm a designer for the team. I can start messing with some of their identity and proposing new solutions. And they were like, yeah, that's so far out of the possibility of what you're brought here to do.

18:36Like, why are you messing with the iconic logo of the New York Rangers and trying to simplify it or change it or make any adjustments whatsoever? You're literally an intern and that is not your job. Don't you love that naive positivity that you think you're like, I'm here to sort of world. Like I've been here for two days, but can I change the logo? Because I think I should. Yeah. I know this logo has been around for probably 60 years, but I'm, this is my first day. And I think if I could just make a couple alterations, I think it's probably will be best for the team moving forward. Yeah, for sure.

19:12I absolutely love it. I know that the company that you work for next has showed up in one of the meetings in the form of a drink for one of the executives that you admired her presentation style and her gusto for her work and that was when we call it vitamin water but it's a vitamin water right correct yes all right so magic liquid i thought tell us a story yeah again like it's the summertime i'm wearing a suit in a meeting that I'm not really that necessary in. And I just remember watching because I was so interested, intrigued, and curious about the roles of different people within an organization and the way that they interacted with each other, right?

19:59And the way that the brand team interacted with the design team, which interacted with some of the marketing people. And it was just all really interesting to me. And in one of those meetings, the head of marketing for the New York Rangers came in and she really was in control of this meeting. Like she was leading in terms of giving direction and she was calling all the shots. And I just thought she felt so confident to me. I think as a kid, right, you're just in awe of people that have opinions, can clearly communicate them and seem like they're just effortless in terms of their beliefs and what they know is right.

20:41And watching this woman have this kind of impact over a room of people that everyone just got quiet and listened and was so respectful, but also just was guided by her aura and decisions. And she was drinking a vitamin water focus. And at this moment in my life, I had never seen vitamin water before. It was the first time in this moment that I had seen this drink. And I grew up drinking Arizona iced tea and Coca-Cola and I was unfamiliar and it said focus on the front. And I was just like, is this the reason why she is so incredible? Is this the secret to her success? And obviously it wasn't, but it was something that from that moment on, I was intrigued with the design.

21:23I was intrigued with the taste of vitamin water and then went back and tried to go and find as many different flavors as I possibly could in any store that I would find myself in. And yeah, vitamin water was at this moment entering in the cultural consciousness. 50 Cent was a big part of that. He was one of the biggest rappers in the world at this moment. So it's like discovering a band, right? You start to hear it or it's just like immediately became a big part of my life. And I became a fan instantly because it was such a delicious drink, still is. And the design of it really spoke to me. It was just bold and simple.

21:58And yeah, it was really different than anything else I'd ever seen before. Before we talk about the next step, I want to talk about the person because you said how confident she was. Did you take anything from her presence? Because personally, the reason why I ask you that question, I'm retrospectively looking and the things that I wanted to achieve in my career were not always, oh, I want to work for the brand. It was like, I want to be as connected as a certain person. I want to be as confident as that person. I want to be eloquent as that person. And the story is potentially about just discovery of a new brand, but was her presence in any way showing you possibilities of what you could do in your future career?

22:41Yeah, I think for sure. I think I've, Throughout my career, I've worked for a lot of really impressive marketers, creative leaders. And every time I would be in a meeting with anyone that seemed to just flow effortlessly, their ideas, their confidence, their beliefs, and maybe they weren't always right. Who knew if they were right or wrong, but they had an opinion and they believed in it and they stuck with it and they didn't waver on it. And I think at this time, especially when I was younger, I was just kind of forming my creative voice, but I wasn't sure of anything. I was like, oh, I like this or maybe this is good.

23:21I made this. I think it's I think it's interesting or I think it could be interesting for this event. Or I just didn't have that sort of sense of self or self confidence or belief in what I was doing. And I think I just watched these people that they were so sure of themselves and they were so sure of the decisions that they were making. And that confidence and that sort of sense of self made everyone else in the room believe that. No one questioned them because of the way that they presented themselves, but the way that they approached every decision creatively. And I think one of the people that really for me was probably the most important person in that way was a man by the name of Rohan Oza.

24:03So Rohan was a sort of VP of marketing at Vitamin Water when I was there and has later gone on to form Kabu Ventures, which has been behind Poppy and Watermelon Water and Pop Chips and a million other brands. And he was a guest shark on Shark Tank a couple of years ago. And so Rohan is an absolute legend in the world of branding and marketing. People call him the brand father. And when I was at Vitamin Water and I was, again, that was my first job after that internship. I just graduated school, got a call to get an interview for Vitamin Water, which was, again, coincidentally, the brand that I'd seen last summer.

24:43I applied on a job board that had no listing of what the job was. It was just looking for a creative designer to work in-house on a beverage brand. And I got a call from a recruiter. I went in and I got a job working for Vitamin Water in 2006. And Rohan at this moment is, you know, he is the leader of that place. And every decision, creatively, marketing, brand, everything, he just, he instinctively knew what was right, always. And he was sometimes straightforward about it. He wasn't, he didn't cut corners. He wasn't shy. There were some moments where he said some things to me that certainly stick with me that I won't say on the program.

25:28But no, he was confident. He knew what was the right thing to do for Vitamin Water and what the brand was and what it wasn't. And I just always was in awe of that self-assuredness and confidence in his own beliefs and instincts. I mean, it must have been amazing to work with people who believe in themselves and commanding the room and actually showing the direction to all the others. And of course, the mid-2000s, the pre-mental health phase that we now luckily engage with. Some of the stuff that was said and done was horrendous. Yeah, I mean, it was a different time. And again, I hold nothing, I think, so fondly of those years there.

26:06But yeah, it was a different time. And the way that people, yeah, reviewed creative work was maybe a little bit less soft around the edges. You know what I've learned? And I've learned that usually angry people are lacking the eloquence because they can't focus in the moment. Yeah, sure. Maybe what I was doing wasn't great for that one project for vitamin water energy. Maybe it just wasn't the right solution. And it's funny, like, again, this is my first job and I'm 22 years old and I'm just quite literally learning the ropes and being a professional designer with a cubicle and a business card and an email address.

26:45And all this is still so new to me. And I think I looked up to those people that were, in my mind, brilliant adults. And they were 31. In my head, they knew everything. And they had all the right answers. And they had all the right instincts. And the brand was on fire, right? It was doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It was in every bodega. It was part of the culture. It was a lifestyle brand before people were ever saying the word lifestyle brand. It was something really special and unique and different. And I really cherish those years. And now that I have more distance from them, I can really understand the value that they provided for me, both in that moment and the lessons that I learned and bring with me today.

27:36was the dress code a little bit more relaxed now yeah no my my creative director at vitamin water he had come from hip-hop and p-war had every day and the vibe at vitamin water was certainly more chill i remember people used to play this game called salami ball in the hallway where they would just take like some big piece of salami and they would just basically play baseball in the hallways. We did some like team trips, company-wide events at retreats at hotels in Vegas. And it was a significantly more laid back, fun, vibrant, colorful office experience than working for the New York Knicks. You mentioned Evers 50 Cent was involved with the brand and you said you did some work with him.

28:23What did that feel like? Because you're making leaps and bounds like you are going five minutes ago you're basically traveling to new york nicks in your suit high-end slacks and now you throw a salami across the corner across the hallway and 50 cent is in the mix and all of this so what did i feel like for your development process on how did i feel i think i was i felt gratitude i think i was just really hungry to show what i was capable of and I think there were a couple of designers there. I was one of the first, but there were other team members. And I just remember this feeling of, I want my ideas to get picked.

29:01Like this is my first job and I want to be a successful designer in my career. And I was just hungry. And I was like, I'm going to work harder. I'm going to pitch anything and everything that I can. If we need to like present designs on Wednesday, I want to have the most designs on the table, right? If every designer is going to come and throw down five ideas, I'm going to bring 10 because that's going to give me a better chance of getting my idea picked for the 50 cent campaign or something. And I just felt like, I don't want to say competitive because I'm not super competitive, but when it comes to design, I like to win.

29:38And I think that's really the first time in my life where I had really been in a scenario where my love of what I do and the opportunity that I was in, I was very aware that this brand was a huge opportunity for me to build a portfolio, to build a ton of experience and also, yeah, to work with my favorite rapper. Right. And so if a couple of people were throwing ideas in a hat, like if my idea got picked, maybe I got to go to the set and meet him and be there while he maybe took something that I came up with and did for a photo shoot. And so that kind of stuff really motivated me at that time because I was just so young and so hungry to just to get in the mix and to make stuff and to do it at a at a professional level.

30:23I remember I did a billboard once for 50 cent and I didn't even come up with the concept. I just re-laid out someone else's creative like an agency had made the work like the campaign but then they brought it in-house to like reformat it for a bunch of different billboards in New York City. And that was my job. And I remember going to that billboard in Manhattan and being like, I made that. And it's like, I just wanted to make stuff that people would see. And to your point earlier about that, creating value and confidence for me as an individual and someone that maybe was insecure, maybe didn't necessarily feel like you always belong to the places.