Tom Van Deusen

How would you describe yourself and like the work that you currently do right now? Just to kind of get an introduction to yourself as a creative person.

Right now I'm working at Hogarth under currently on the SiriusXM brand. So that was the position I actually started like right out of school. I was actually working under SiriusXM, but then this is being what they are. They axed the entire department then I got brought over to the agency that works under SiriusXM, but I'm a motion designer. So I do animation for graphic designers. The stuff I work on is animating a lot of social media, but also I've done something like 50 plus Times Square billboards. So huge, like city block sized animations, like 10,000 pixels across, tons and tons of work. And, you know, we have to do this on an extremely tight turnaround. Everything I do feels like it's on this extremely tight turnaround, but I get to work with a lot of really cool talent. I feel lucky that I get to work with people I've heard of, whether they're celebrities that care about or not, depends, but it beats doing, you know, pharmaceutical stuff or whatever?

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Did you originally want to get into motion graphics when you started the program, or was that something you found out through the program, or was that something you figured out once you left the program?

That's a great question, yeah. So I think the really cool thing about the program is that it's very open-ended. When I was applying, I had been working other jobs. I have a bachelor of fine art from 2008. So that was a long time ago. And I worked in the field for 11 years, just doing whatever jobs were available. And a lot of customer service. By the time I went back to school, I was working in financial operations at a consulting firm. So at that point, I was like, why the hell am I here? And so I had a friend, several friends that had been involved with the program. And so my friend Bjorn, I went to his portfolio show. And my friend Odin Amador was also in his first year, going on second. And I was very jealous of them. And I was like, wait, I could maybe do this, you know? When I thought about it, I wanted to do something very pragmatic. I want to be a UX designer. I'm living in this tech hub of Seattle. And I didn't know exactly what a UX designer does - but that's what I'll do, that's where the money is. I'll finish, get a good job and live a comfortable middle class lifestyle. And when I was in school, I immediately gravitated toward visual stuff. The UX stuff was interesting, but it was not what really compelled me. And I remember when we did New Media, we had one little unit on After Effects. And I remember learning the basics and I was like, oh my God, you can keyframe every single thing and animate every single element of a graphic design. And that was just so neat to me. And because of that, I was able to incorporate motion into most of the projects I produced for the different classes because they encouraged it. Especially in your second year, it's a bit more open-ended and they encouraged me to do a little bit of motion if I was interested in it. Like it was kind of a bonus points thing. And when I finished school, I had 40 seconds of animation. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it was enough for me to put a little reel together and get a job right out of school. And I remember when I finished school, I got an offer for a job as a digital graphic designer. So it would have been mostly graphic design, but with some like a lot of production design, but also a little bit of motion design. And that was for a branding agency. And yeah, then on the day after I got an offer at Sirius XM under Aquent, I started at Aquent. That was my very first in. And they told me the salary and I was just like, oh, my God, you know, that was life changing. And it was not hard to make that decision, you know, and that was just based off of a little bit of animation I made in school.

That's awesome. When did you graduate?

2021. In the middle of Covid. So when I was, when I was finishing undergrad, I graduated in 2008, right into a recession. And then I was so freaked out my first year that Covid happened. I was like, oh, I'm getting screwed again, you know? But when I actually was in school, I think that actually they were able to pivot very well. And, you know, I've heard after the fact from Jill that she was like, well, we didn't know what we were doing, but it actually was what the job market was at the time. And, you know, we used Slack in school and a lot of the same tools. And when I actually entered a job, I knew what I was doing, you know?

What originally inspired you to join the program? Like what did you hope to get from your education?

Money. Like I said, I'd done comics for Vice and I had done, you know, I wrote a lot of comic books. I was very involved with the Seattle comic scene. And I think that also was something, and I know a lot of cartoonists that went through the program and that really parlayed well with learning even UX like storyboarding and that type of thing, but also it's really useful to be able to visually display something. And so using those skills, using something I knew how to do. And when I was in school, I realized I almost have a superpower or something. It was actually like I could utilize something I should have been utilizing for the previous 11 years and I was just moonlighting using and not making any money.

With the education that you got at SCCA, how has it influenced your current work today in terms of your process, your collaboration, or your creative process?

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I think that working in teams, especially when I first started at Sirius, I felt at home because it was a lot like what I was used to when I was doing projects through SCCA. I was working on a small team and we had different roles and I knew what I was supposed to do. And they relied on me to finish exactly what I was going to do on time and cooperate with everyone. And have a clear expectation and deliver and be prepared. That was another thing is, I learned how to pitch, even those interdepartmentally, and stakeholders. Especially like Eric's classes, you had to present, you had to be prepared. And you know, screwing that up a few times in the safety of a classroom setting made it so that I knew what not to do. And also what to do and how to work with a team to make sure that all functions properly and everyone gets along.

Were there any projects or like experiences during school that had a lasting impact?

Definitely - Magazine. That one was really, really cool. I'm really proud of that. It was kind of a drag because we were the first COVID class that we didn't get to print ours. But that was kind of a shining star in my portfolio, even though it didn't end up getting me a job. I was extremely proud of that. And it was such a huge project. It was wonderful to work on something for an entire quarter. And have one big thing that you accomplished at the end of it and have it be something that will go on your portfolio. Like almost everyone that was in the program has their magazine on their portfolio. Because it's kind of a culmination of everything you learn in that first year. Micro macro typography, layouts, hierarchy, everything. It's all in there as far as everything that she had taught in visual design. So I'd say that that was the big one for me. And when I did that, I also incorporated it a little bit into an Eric project where I made an AR cover for it so that when you pointed a phone at it, it would animate the cover.

For special topics or independent learning, do you have any advice on how to go about it?

So, I figured out second year that I thought motion design was really cool and really fun. My one tip for that would be to, if you find something fun, especially in any of those modules where you're learning stuff with Courtney or Eric, the other Eric that does motion, I'm not sure if he's still doing that, but If you're learning After Effects or, you know, if you want to learn how to do editing, because that's actually a useful skill as well. If you are at all interested in working in media, if you do a graphic design, but like actually having audio skill, having video skill, any of this stuff is useful. It's great to have on your resume and anything that you find fun. do that. And I don't, I don't regret any, anything I did in those modules or in those independent studies. I feel like I utilized it about as well as I could and I got a ton out of it. My one tip is just, you know, as long as it's not like, as long as it's something that can get you a job, if you find it fun, that's the good stuff. That's what you should be trying to do.

What is your day-to-day role or just your day-to-day work life look like?

Well, the cool stuff I get to do, you know, having done something like 50 plus Times Square billboards, they get old. Anything gets old after you do it a bunch of times. My mom and dad saw the big Times Square billboard, the first one I did. And they were like, wowie zowie, you know? But after that, it's like anything. It just becomes a bit rote. But what I really like to do is help flesh out pitch decks, it's almost like branding. You know, we have, let's say, a campaign for all of rock and roll stations and all of rock everything rocked with SiriusXM. I get to help do the whole visual motion look for it and figure out how these brand new elements that the designers just came up with from scratch for this campaign, how those things will move and help be utilized by other motion designers and create a system for other people to build on or to utilize and follow. That's what the client's going to be seeing and approving and it has to wow them. So I really get to focus on making something bespoke and something very interesting and put all myself into it and make something that's really supposed to wow the pants off of them. That's the stuff I really love to do because it's very personally challenging, but also exciting. And that's the stuff I tend to work on later than work hours, because I really want to make sure it's spit shined and looks awesome.

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Are there any specific professional projects or anything that you've been working on that you’re proud of?

There's one specific one that I'm really proud of recently. We have to show our work that we did over the previous six months, say, and display that for the rest of the wider agency. So I worked for Hogarth, which is a big production agency under WPP, which is a massive, massive design agency, like one of the biggest in the world. And when our team has to justify what we're doing and show what we're doing to all the higher ups, we have to make a sizzle deck to present that work. And I worked very closely with an editor to make a 30 second animation that summarizes everything that we've done. And everything that I was responsible for was just showing data. So how many assets we made, what types of assets we made and that type of thing, you know, and a lot of numbers presented very quickly, but I had to make them as dynamic as possible with just text. And that was a really cool challenge. And I feel really proud of how I did it. I feel like I did it very dynamically. And when you get to work with very simple assets, very simple, they're called style frames. Those were handed to me by one of the lead creatives for the whole department and I had to figure out how to make them really punchy. Doing something like that with very little direction, it was really just well-designed text on a black background. I think it came out cool.

As a person who graduated in 2021 and started your career, is there any specific advice to your past self or just like newer designers or people who are getting out of school or currently in school like hey i wish i would have done this or do this kind of like word of advice

For me, it's not what I wouldn't have done because I got really lucky. And, you know, it's partially luck. It's partially that I wasn't going to not succeed. I risked everything. I put everything down. If you're going to make a huge leap like this, you’ve got to be all in.

Don’t be too picky, and don’t say no to anything. If you don’t think you can do it, you can do it. I said yes to a motion design job that I didn’t really think I was qualified for, at all. And I was like, “crap, they’re gonna figure it out quick!” But I’ll still have a little bit of that salary, and I’ll have it on my resume even if I only work there two or three months. It’s still a job. And it ended up working out, because I worked like twelve hour days, figuring out how all the software works.

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