After beginning his career at The Portfolio Center in Atlanta, then working at shops like Cole Henderson Drake, Austin Kelley, Fitzgerald, Leonard Monahan and The Zimmerman Agency, Damon Williams found the perfect situation: A creative driven agency in his hometown of Jacksonville Beach Florida where he's currently an associate creative director at The Robin Shepherd Group. His work's been featured multiple times in CA's Advertising Annual (it was on the cover in 1995), in the One Show (he also won a pencil in 95; that was a good year) and has a ton of ADDYs, London International, Art Directors Club Annual, Effie, Hatch and Show South awards.

02.20.08

Troublemakers and Know-it-alls

If you have a degree in what field is it? I have a BA in art direction from The Portfolio Center (1990).

If you could choose one person to work with (outside your own agency), who would it be? Most art directors would probably choose a writer but I would rather check my ego at the door and work under someone like Bob Barrie at Fallon to pick his brain and see how he crafts such solid work year after year.

Who was the client for your first advertising project? I had the good fortune to work under Dick Henderson of Cole Henderson Drake in the early years as a junior art director and my first projects were ad campaigns for the Ritz-Carlton. Not too shabby.

If you were to change professions, what would you choose to do? Since this is a fantasy question I would have to say, professional surfer. Traveling the world surfing and getting paid? Seriously, can it get any better than that?

What do you consider to be the greatest headline of all time? That's a tough one. So many headlines come to mind; so many old writing partners who are gonna kill me if I don't mention one of theirs. But I’m going to have to say one of the older Harley Davidson Campaign headlines done by Carmicheal Lynch, “When’s the last time you met a stranger and knew he was a brother.” It was just so dead-on for the target market. I remember seeing it in CA and just thinking, “Damn, I wish I wrote that.”

From where do your best ideas originate? I know one thing: My best ideas rarely come between the working hours of nine and five. I seem to get my best ideas in traffic, or in the shower, sometimes even while I sleep (I’m one of those people who really sleep with a pad and pen near my bed. Yes, my wife thinks I’m strange, too.)

How do you overcome a creative block? I go surfing if I can; if I can’t, I go wander through a bookstore. The best thing to do when you’re not coming up with good ideas is to take your mind off the project and relax doing something you enjoy. The good ideas will eventually come, you just can’t force them. The more pressure you put on yourself the more your brain will lock up.

If you could choose any product to create an ad for, what would it be? I like a good challenge: How about a campaign for that book on parenting that Britney’s and Jamie Lynn Spears’s mom wrote? Maybe a bit easier, though, would be a campaign for the new PlayStation3. That way I could finally buy one.

Do you have creative outlets other than advertising? I paint. I sell mostly to other surfers and donate a lot of my work to raise money for the SurfRider Foundation. For an art director, I think it’s a must to have some other outlet of creativity. After all, it’s not like you work on the next breakthrough Nike campaign everyday and you need to somehow keep those creative juices flowing.

What’s your approach to balancing work and life? This has been a bit of a struggle for me during my career; when I was younger I worked crazy hours to make sure I was doing the best work possible no matter what. My personal life definitely took a backseat. But after I got married and children came into the picture it changed my perspective. Clients became less of a deciding factor regarding where I worked or moved. I quit taking jobs chasing “magic clients.” The clients and budgets may not be as big but the work is as good and the people I work with make life much more fulfilling--at The Robin Shepherd Group life is as important as work.

What product/gadget can you not live without? Hands down, my iPod.

What’s your favorite quote? I’m tempted to go with one of my favorite movie quotes but I’ll go with something more advertising related by the late Henry Wolf: “It’s a fallacy to assume we are always operating at top capacity or even at a steady level. We are subject to moods and rhythms, and the Muse only visits occasionally. Yet everyone works against at least a hypothetical time clock which is mechanical, steady and endless.”

Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? The best advice I can give is to be a sponge and soak up as much as you can from the people you work with. Don’t dive in thinking you already know everything, even if you do. Listen more, work hard and stay out of office politics. Troublemakers and know-it-alls don’t last long in this business.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? I wish I’d known that copywriters didn't have to use Spray Mount....I should have been a copywriter.