From The Creative Directors Desk

As the Creative Director at LyricVids.com, I spend a lot of my day communicating ideas to our talented illustrators and animators. That’s why it’s so important that as our company grows, we recruit team members who are strong communicators, and thrive in a creative team environment.

Every day at LyricVids, we create whole universes from scratch that match the client’s unique branding and the song’s vibe. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of talking things out and bouncing ideas off each other. In our company’s earlier years, this was all done by Anthony (LyricVids.com Co-Founder) and myself. We’ve come a long way since editing videos together through the night, alone in our small Toronto apartment. Our team of two has grown to a team of ten talented illustrators and animators. And our tiny apartment has been upgraded to a two-room production studio with ample space for an expanding team of creatives.

The new space, along with our client list growing at an exponential rate, has created the need for yet another full-time LyricVids animator to join our creative family. But who will this person be?

While I’m sure Human Resources would not approve of this comparison, hiring a team member is a lot like speed dating, isn’t it? You have a limited amount of time to get to know a person during the interview process (which we all know most of the time, isn’t the most authentic representation of themselves), from which you have to decide if they’re a good fit to join your team. As with all industries, you want to find someone who is not only good at their job, but who you enjoy working alongside. But particularly in a creative work environment like ours, which requires daily mind-melding, you really need to be simpatico with this person. We got lucky with our head illustrator, Shayla. Her and I were already close friends, having worked together in a previous life. And as luck would have it, she just happened to be an amazing illustrator. When an artist contacts us and wants to be turned into a cartoon for their next music video, I know I can trust Shayla to not only nail the brief, but to add in a few small details from her creative mind that will surprise and delight the artist and their team. She truly loves drawing and character creation, and it shows in her work.

We want to surround ourselves with co-workers like Shayla, passionate people who just want to dream up fun ideas and collaborate with fellow creatives. We want to share our knowledge with them, lift them up, and give them all the support they need to produce show-stopping visuals for our music industry clients. As our company flourishes, our goal, of course, is to expand our rolodex of major label clients and to fill the internet with music videos, lyric videos, and other visuals created by us. But a secondary, equally important goal is to cultivate a work environment that encourages new ideas, fosters creativity, and that allows us to merge our artistic strengths to produce truly inspired work. I’m excited to see who this new animator and newest addition to our growing family will be. Will they be a coffee-addict like me? Will they be loud and passionate like Anthony? Will they hum quietly while they work, like Shayla? Will they work with headphones on, or will they be a great multi-tasker who can chat with me about their weekend as they dive deep into a lyric video project? Whoever they are, I can’t wait to meet them and bring them on this creative journey with us.