I am joining Nansen as Head of Creative

Posted by Jaan on November 5th, 2011 | Add your comment

There are only a handful of digital agencies that excite me. And they are all a bit… different. They share a common curiosity that extends beyond the digital industry. It gives them a better understanding of how we – people – create, live, communicate, find, share, explore, edit and think.

They don’t fall prey to technology hype, shouting and chest thumping. They know the value of clarity and accomplishment, and that sometimes paper actually beats digital. They simple have a more natural approach to things.

This (diverse) group of agencies include Deportivo, Noc and Honesty in Sweden. Tesch, Clearleft, Berg and Magnetic North in the UK. BeansBox in Hong Kong. Studio Antwork and WOW of Tokyo. Brand New School in Los Angeles and New York.

And Nansen.

Nansen is the Swedish/US agency I’m joining as Head of Creative. My role will be to lead the creative work of this internationally expanding agency and hire and partner with outstanding professionals to complement Nansen’s existing network. And of course to do so in a slightly… different way.

To do so requires a solid foundation and in Nansen’s case it is our dev team. A smarter, more skilled, driven yet humble team of developers is hard to find. Now Nansen is building on that foundation and thinking about client projects from a perspective of concept, strategy, function and creativity of the non dev kind. Essentially the things I’ve done at Huddle and for years before that under the Functional Creativity moniker:

Functional is easy to understand and helps us get things done. A function has value.
Creativity solves problems, involves and encourages.

The Nansen founders have a plan for how they want this next chapter to be written, and I’m honored to have been chosen to contribute to it.

I’ll continue to be based in San Francisco when I’m not at the Nansen offices in Chicago, New York or visiting the Stockholm HQ or… elsewhere.

Exciting times.

Update: More on Nansen.se

PS. We’re hiring. A Senior Art Director/Designer to join the core international creative team is up first (web, app and print experience, solid CSS/HTML/JS skills).