Oakland, September 2nd, 2020

He has done extensive work at agencies in the UK and the US where he drove the design efforts for a variety of clients such as Lonely Planet, Apple, Oculus Adobe, CNN.

Now, he is the Group Creative Director in Huge Oakland, responsible for the creative department in Huge’s west coast office.

In an interview with TIA, he described his professional experiences so far and his role at Huge, one of the world’s most successful digital design and marketing agencies.

Why is your city a great place to live and work?

Oakland is an amazing city to work in. It was named one of the most diverse cities in the US with more than 125 languages and dialects spoken in the city. It has great restaurants, an amazing Art Festivals and a great music scene.

Oakland is close enough to San Francisco and Silicon Valley to quickly commute if needed and at the same time close to tons of outdoor options in the East Bay if you need to disconnect and see some nature.

Walk us through your journey. How do you recall your first steps in the industry?

The beginnings were rough. I was born in Spain and the maturity of the internet and our industry when I started wasn’t what it is today. I moved a few times, I made mistakes, and I got tons of rejections before I landed the right gigs.

With that said I’ve also been extremely lucky along the way. From the start, I was already spending my time tinkering in Flash and Photoshop before I even knew that could be the beginning of something. The leaps of faith I’ve taken have always paid off and finally I’ve been fortunate to meet and learn from some of the most talented and inspiring individuals in the industry.

Name a challenge your team is currently facing.

Just like everybody else we fully transitioned to working remotely a few months ago. During this time we have all adapted to the new normal and have had the chance to flex over video conference presenting pitches, interviewing candidates, driving workshops and even presenting to large audiences in digital conferences. With that said, I’m still missing something. There is something to be said about the non-crafted, serendipitous casualty of random interactions in the hallway or midafternoon breaks. While I can tell we have gotten more efficient in our time management I miss the weirdness and collective chemistry you see when people share the same physical space.

What metrics do you track and how do you define success in your role?

As the Creative Lead in Huge Oakland I have a yearly list of objectives and key results attached to my role that I tracked and keep an eye on every week. Those OKRs are structured by growth, employee experience, the quality of the work and my own contribution to our Huge Brand. To every objective there is a series of performance indicators where I become actionable and I’m ultimately measured against.

Please name some steps that you have put in place over the years to encourage innovation at the workplace

The most innovative environments I’ve been part of were those where people from different backgrounds came together, felt empowered to try new things and naturally created a sense of play and healthy competition. That’s easier said than done of course.

The steps I’ve taken over the years to encourage this have been:
– Learn. Foster a culture of learning and growth. By bringing new roles and helping grow new skill sets in the team via workshops and courses.

– Play. Create an environment where the makers have enough time and space to allow themselves to play and apply their new skill sets.

– Inspire. Enable cross pollination between members by putting together multidisciplinary and diverse teams working together from day one in a project and creating the right checkpoints for our XD team to come together and share agency projects and passion for projects.

Needless to say I keep learning every day from this process and improving it with the signals I capture from the team.

Can you provide any successful usability study or focus group while working at Huge?

We have a really strong research team at Huge and we collaborate in almost every work stream with them. Their insights, combined with our Strategy discipline, drive how we approach the design and development of products and services for our clients. It’s nothing short of mindblowing what you get to uncover it, but, sadly, I’m not allowed to share any of those publicly.

Your experience has taken you over different cities. What differences do you find most interesting in cultural and working terms?

That’s a tough one. I started my career in Málaga and from there moved to Valencia, London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and now the East Bay in California.

In Europe I definitely found a stronger push to socialize with your coworkers in and out of work settings. Either through visits to the pub or other events, I saw deeper connections happening. My guess too is that’s because many of your coworkers were as new as I was to the city.

I found the US surprisingly a bit colder in that sense and much more work / results driven. In terms of working styles my heart belongs to the East Coast’s straight forward, raw and brutally honest attitude towards work which is surprisingly similar to my experience in Spain. I must admit that the West Coast and London are much mellow and surround the subject much more before diving in. In any case I love every city I have lived in and always find reasons to come back to them.

What advice would you give to someone looking to pursue your position for the first time?

It really depends at what stage of your career you find yourself. My advice to anyone looking to lead a multidisciplinary experience design at an agency is to work their way up from a core skill and, little by little, graduate in what other disciplines are capable of doing and are able to unlock. Eventually you’ll have to handle a wider variety of tasks beyond those disciplines (business needs, employee experience) but it’s important to keep your finger on them and listen to and empower your team in order to break through the noise and do better work.

Is there a playlist that helps you get inspired?

Here!

Can you name a fun-fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

Many years ago, before internet capable phones I crossed Russia by myself. I spent around 10 days on the Trans-Siberian route, from Vladivostok to Moscow, barely able to speak to anyone. It was one of the craziest trips of my life and it gave me a deeper appreciation for small talk and long silences.

Thanks Claudio!

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Claudio GuglieriCreative DirectorHugeLeadershipWest Coast