By Design: Why Ardella Strickel Believes Quality will Always Rise to The Top

Ardella Strickel is a New York based design director. She leads H/L’s studio design team supporting McDonald’s, Toyota, and new business initiatives. After completing her bachelor’s in art history, she worked as a studio manager at art and architecture firms and as design director focusing on start-up marketing and new business development. Telling stories using visual design systems is her passion.

LBB> Tell us about your current role and design specialism(s)?

Ardella> I work as a design director for the Studio department with H/L. My current responsibilities involve diving deep into the nuances of large brands and developing new business — there’s a curatorial aspect of understanding style guides and new clients that I greatly appreciate. I enjoy creating and working in systems.

Part of my job is examining how information can be shared and streamlined most effectively with others. There’s a dialectical experience in working in advertising and production work in my role — we work with set style guides and technical processes, but there’s room for creativity and consideration on the best way to impart that knowledge in a broader way for new people coming onto the team. 

LBB> What drew you to design in the first place and how has your design career evolved?

Ardella> I grew up in both rural areas and big cities as a child. The one constant was that my mother loved the arts and architecture and wanted me to share in those experiences—giving me a sense of design as a holistic pursuit that encompasses all aspects of life.

When I think of my core memories that formulated an interest in design, I think about industrial architecture in Chicago. Seeing train bridges, giant machines, warehouses, quarries, and the taxonomy of graffiti styles from the train as a small child… and then coming into downtown and walking past the Louise Nevelson sculpture. It all sparked my interest in aesthetic categories and systems.

Ever since I was small, I’ve always liked structure and practicality, but also aesthetic functions too — and would pick apart small details compared to the larger whole. Visiting the Bauhaus as a teenager was very influential in seeing how people can manifest art and process in teams. Those were some of my early influences that led me to an interest in design, and eventually turned into work with different creative departments.

I first started working in video production and brand development for a single client over the course of four years as a day job while also I studied art history. That first creative department drew strong inspiration from film and architecture, aligning heavily with my interests at that time. Through those experiences, I became interested in building organisational systems, digging into the design process, and branched out into brand identity and digital design.

LBB> Design Thinking—thoughts?

Ardella> I encourage the teams I work with to critically evaluate how design processes play out when we try something new — proposing solutions, testing them out, and revising them. A lot of the creative process is chaotic by nature and often involves chance. I tend to have strong aesthetic responses, but I also tend to unpack and analyse all the ways a design isn’t working. Design Thinking is a nice way to package some of those forces up in a collaborative way that gives the creative process structure and reproducibility. 

LBB> What aspects of design do you get really nerdy about personally?

Ardella> I enjoy designing style guides and learning them. Referencing design thinking, there is a universal type of creative process that might look different for each individual but has applicability across a wide variety of different mediums. Plus, there’s a curatorial aspect to learning the structure of a brand and its attributes and exceptions.

Book design is my absolute favourite. Objects have aura and their own type of tactile pleasure in a way that the digital world just doesn’t replicate. 

LBB> There are so many new design tools out—what tools do you like to use and why? (whether digital platforms or old-fashioned pen and paper!)

Ardella> I like notebook and collages for artistic work. I use ProCreate on the tablet to ideate and draw out my ideas. It’s one of the fastest tools I’ve found for concepting. It takes the collage and notebook combination and scales it up as a tool that is highly adaptable to the design process in advertising to create quick mock-ups to share with others.

Figma is my favourite tool now because it’s fast and collaborative. I’ve been working remotely since 2020 and collaborative tools are essential. The spread of resources out there that allow designers to collaborate in real-time is only going to become more refined.

LBB> What are the most persistent misconceptions about your particular design specialism that you see across the advertising and marketing landscape?

Ardella> There isn’t a single point of entry to the advertising world. Increasingly, I see that there’s a less-linear path in how young people define their careers. Quality will always rise to the top and stand-out, but the democratisation of tools and ability to share with the world is going to contribute to next generations that are very saturated in the creative process from a young age.

I see non-traditional career paths as becoming increasingly accepted and a deeper focus on how people express their vision to the world rather than where they started out, but how they can adapt to different challenges.

LBB> What design controversies or challenges do you find trickiest to navigate or do you find yourself thinking about most frequently?

Ardella> I think about what the deluge of images in our culture does to people — it creates a climate of comparison that can be difficult to escape from, and I think about how this contributes to mental health. I am a social optimist and I see Gen Z questioning these structures more than my generation did growing up. The designers I work with in their early 20s are asking different questions than my peers did growing up as part of that technological bridge generation, and it’s a good thing. 

LBB> How do you think about the ethics of design?

Ardella> I think about the emergence of AI as a tool and how it also borrows from existing art and design in a way that is difficult to track and quantify. It brings a new realm of questions about originality and reproducibility and how we compensate artists and creators for their vision. Your own notebook and sketches are always going to be the most original starting point.

With any pursuit, it’s always important to consider the ethics of who a design project benefits, and if there are people whose perspectives and experiences it negates or erases.  

LBB> What are some of your favourite examples of creative design solutions that inspire you?

Ardella> In my current role, I tend to think about scalability and how information is structured and archived. I’m always interested in practicality. Getting it done on a budget, and getting it done well. Time is money in production and having streamlined workflows and pushing for technical solutions elevates your team and their capabilities.

I personally like motion graphics and compositing in design. I’m always looking at advertisements to see how they break down the structure of a composition or visual. I like watching movies with the sound off to study the visual language. A lot of my favourite design solutions are simple and involve architecture and habitability in cities. There are certain underlying principles of efficiency and repetition in urban planning and fine art that you can extrapolate into production design in advertising. 

LBB> Which design projects throughout your career have been the most satisfying to work on and why?

Ardella> My favourite design projects are immersive installations that combine multimedia with specific settings. I have a background in timelapse animation and stop-motion animation, and I like working in these areas. I designed a foreign-language translation experience for students using augmented reality that was spread across a warehouse that had been renovated into a school.

Playing with scale and space and taking the user experience into consideration of how students interact with language digitally in a large physical space — that was a lot of fun. It’s a design system scaled into the physical world.

Ultimately, the most satisfying projects are the ones where I’ve had a good creative bond with my team. Learning about different personalities and seeing value in people’s individual knowledge and interests is something I think about every day as a very important part of managing a team. I’ve had an enriching experience at H/L to work with such a talented team and staff. The agency’s commitment to diversity and its examination of mental processes helps inspire my creativity and interest in being better at what I do.

LBB> Who are your design heroes and why?

Ardella> I saw a lot of movies at the Gene Siskel Film Centre in Chicago growing up, and I liked reading about film a great deal. I liked the experience of having a collective experience in a dark room with strangers. Roger Ebert was my hero, and although he isn’t a designer, what I took away from my exposure to him was his analytical, human-focused approach to art that for me is a mental framework that transcends mediums.

His writing examined not only how a visual work succeeds aesthetically but what state of being or purpose does this visual creation engender to the audience.

However, when I think of who current design heroes are, I look up to the creative directors and designers who have paired a strong sense of stewardship and mentorship towards their younger colleagues. The ability to work with people who were able to create an environment where I felt I was able to express and explore ideas fully without judgment is a powerful inspirational force. 

LBB> Thinking of people at the beginning of their career, what advice would you give them for navigating this constantly changing field?

Ardella> Good design is ultimately an empathic experience of understanding what your clients and team needs to thrive. Delving your own individual tastes and preferences is the place from which creativity springs. The ability to work with people who are very different is what sharpens those edges and challenges your own sensibilities.

Advertising is all about a visual link between the auditory and visual centres. Keeping up a practice of my own art and creative exploration keeps things fresh and encourages me to branch out into different areas and examine different strengths. Design is ultimately a creative experience that comes from our senses, so why limit it to one medium?

Finally, remember on the challenging days that gratitude and humour are the glue that keeps things moving forward.