Creativity Squared: Priyoshi Kapur Starts with Relentless Curiosity

Priyoshi Kapur is an associate creative director and motion design lecturer based in Chicago.

Priyoshi is an ACD art director at Havas Chicago, an award-winning creative agency working on Moen and The Laughing Cow. She started her career as an art director and has worked for R/GA, Critical Mass and VMLY&R.

In the past five years, she has contributed to the launch of various brands like PepsiCo's bubly sparkling water, Equality Can't Wait with Melinda Gates, a Super Bowl social campaign for bubly vs. Bublé and activations for alcohol brands like Kim Crawford and Modelo.

As a result, her work has earned awards in The One Show, Webby's, Comm Arts, Effies and more.

For over two years, she's dedicated her Saturdays in the classroom at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), teaching students about the world of motion graphic design.

Person

'Creativity' is one of those many vague words. It’s a weird one for sure. I could easily tell you that it means working on a Van Gogh-level masterpiece, strapping a DSLR to my neck everywhere I go or tagging a wall in the middle of the night. I would love to be the next Banksy and cottage-core romanticizing painter, but I work in advertising.

Creativity really starts with being relentlessly curious but following it up with the what-ifs. When you see something that inspires you, start to think about how you can make something more unique, convenient, meaningful and memorable. Can you take something mundane and give it some shock value?

What if you could snooze social media with one button? What if you could make broccoli taste like candy? What if you could virtually practice going on a date? All these what-ifs are the beginnings of something larger. If someone hadn’t asked “What if you could get takeout without making a phone call?” we wouldn’t have access to Post Malone’s entire delivery history on Postmates.

Thinking about these ideas every day and being hungry for answers is what makes me a creative. I just so happen to be in advertising where I turn what-ifs into reality.

One question I think about a lot is whether creativity is something that’s innate or something that you learn. It has a lot to do with the American school system.

If you can think back to elementary school, we had opportunities year-round to make crafts. From horribly drawn hand turkeys to glue-stick cotton-ball snowmen, we were encouraged to make things with our hands and turn those creative wheels. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I always was with every prompt to draw or make macaroni art. As kids, we treated our arts and crafts like a badge. Whether our parents were posting our art on Facebook or hanging it on the fridge for a week, we were praised for our creativity no matter how squiggly our stick figures were (yikes). The value we put on art goes down drastically after elementary school.

With over 80% of schools facing budget cuts, art is usually the first to go. We also tend to value subjects that seem most likely to lead to 'success.' I started studying accounting because I was told by parents and society that art was a hobby. I was told to deprioritize my own art so I could have a good life, which is a constant theme in a lot of immigrant households.

If there was more value put on art during adulthood, we’d easily see that creativity is innate. Today, most of us see it as something learned because we never get the opportunity to exercise those skills as teens. We are all born creatives. Technique on the other hand, is something learned or practiced.

Product

Often, we are told that work that is the most striking or beautiful is the most creative. Maximalism and quantity over quality often gets praised. This is something I’ve been trying to reverse when it comes to judging creativity overall. As an instructor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, many students come to me with ideas that span too many mediums or with too many special effects, and the ideas and creativity starts to get muddy.

A phrase I tend to remind my students of often is “simple is strong.” When you take an idea and narrow it down to a phrase or sentence, it is then very easy to understand. Creativity is best judged by its simplicity and its memorability. If you can create a fun device or an impactful purpose-driven message, or even get people to laugh, it’s a good piece of creative work.

It’s easy to remember certain ads during the Super Bowl because they got you to laugh, were relevant to you personally or did something completely out of the norm. For example, Coinbase had a floating QR code. Is it a great piece of work? Some would say it was boring because it was just a bouncing graphic. But they took up space in an over-saturated celeb-driven area, which was completely out of the norm. It had a simple idea and call to action, which was to simply scan the QR code to learn more. The fact that so many people scanned the code until the system ran out of funds is an example of successful creative. Simple is always strong but find a way to make it memorable.

Process

As an art director, I get asked quite often how I gather ideas or go from ideation to execution. Often I find it extremely helpful to get away from the computer. Since so much of our work is digital, we forget that people might consume our work digitally but the way you affect people is still very personal. Our eyes might always be glued to our phones, but I bet everyone has a phone number like 800-588-2300 (Empire!) burned into their brains.

Whether it is a jingle or even a striking visual, I like to brainstorm when I’m looking at anything but a screen so I know it will have an external impact. Inspiration can come from anywhere — from random thoughts in the shower, while escaping my desk to grab matcha or visiting galleries on the weekends. I find that when you turn one part of your brain off, the other starts to ideate and flow. When you are working on one project, sometimes you start thinking about the other and it the ideas just pop up.

When it comes to digital inspiration, I really enjoy looking at earlier award show work. I also use Pinterest to gather my thoughts on boards. It’s important to have a bank of your ideas –anything from what-ifs to ideas that were never made. Sometimes I’ll even tell Siri about my amazing 2 am thoughts so she can save them in my notes.

Press

The most important external factor that shaped me was my first mentor. As a design intern at R/GA, during my first two weeks in the agency she pulled me aside and asked me a million questions. This helped me answer my big question: what should I do with my career? She said she could see me having success as an art director because the way I thought and worked was so similar to hers. I can still recall the exact conversation because I was in so much shock that someone would be willing to actually guide a junior in this insane competitive landscape.

I found many other mentors along the way who took an interest in my career. It is such a blessing to have mentors who not only want to check in with you every so often but also take a genuine interest and show you a plan from their own experience. I consider them life-long mentors.

As an instructor, I try to live up to that standard. Every student is someone I’d take the time to guide not only in our projects but also outside of our course. Every junior creative can do everything they can to enter the industry, but sometimes it takes one person to be the difference.

There will always be roadblocks from higher-ups, account teams and clients. The biggest thing that will make creative work successful is cooperation and communication. Bringing others along on your creative journey helps lead them to that pot of creative gold.