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Omar Morson: “I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Be Happy to Simply Sit and Reminisce”

29/09/2022
Advertising Agency
Toronto, Canada
190
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The Local Collective’s newly-appointed creative director and head of design tells LBB’s Adam Bennett why variety will always be creativity’s greatest fuel

It’s impossible to pin Omar Morson down. And that’s precisely the way he likes it. 

Over the past two decades, Omar’s career has seen him whip up defining campaigns for the likes of Samsung, Audi, and Budweiser amongst many others. And his work, ranging from the ambitious to the iconic, has stuffed his cabinet with over 60 design awards (and counting). Now, the creative designer finds himself in his happiest and most natural environment: face-to-face with a new challenge. 

The Local Collective (TLC), the fiercely independent agency based in Toronto, has recently added Omar to its team as creative director and head of design. It’s a perfect opportunity, then, to take pause and figure out what makes this ambitious creative mind tick - and pick through Omar’s plans for the future in his new role. 

To do just that, LBB’s Adam Bennett sat down with Omar Morson. 

Above: Omar was instrumental in designing Samsung’s kaleidoscopic ‘Discover Our Seoul’ OOH campaign in Toronto. 


No Creativity Without Curiosity

“I was a curious child, for sure”, reflects Omar. “I wanted to get a taste of everything without quite taking a full bite. My parents and family might have called it hyperactivity - but I just figured out where the limits were by pushing them!”. 

If an over-active childhood is evidence of a creative mind, Omar’s career to date bears that theory out. “Life”, says the storied creative, “amounts to the feathers you’ve collected in your cap along the way”. 

Not that Omar is content to spend much time looking backward. “It’s up to others to notice what we’ve done”, he says. “Our job is to focus on what we’re doing”. That’s indicative of Omar’s style and worldview - one which places just as much emphasis on the process as the result, or where the journey is just as important as the destination. 

In fact, it doesn’t take long speaking to Omar to figure out quite how deeply that philosophy - a relentless, joyful embrace of the present moment - runs. “I’ve had plenty of brilliant colleagues who’ve been at their most creative when after diving deep into a topic and losing themselves in it for months. But that’s never been the way I work”, he notes. “I tend to get my epiphanies - those true lightning strike moments - from moving around, exposing myself to new ideas, and reinvigorating myself”.

As professional philosophies go, it’s one that seems ideally suited to life at TLC. In the agency’s own words, “Local is what we feel when we are immersed in a place, a community, or a ritual. It’s our connection to something common, a shared experience with others who feel exactly the same way”. For Omar, with his pervasive desire to immerse himself in as many places, communities, and rituals as he can, those words hit home. “It feels like I’ve hitched my wagon to something amazing”, he says.

Above: The campaign in support of the Luminato festival lit up Toronto earlier this year.

“The homogeneity of culture that we see at the moment - where so much feels designed to fit into a pre-existing box - has left a huge space that needs to be filled”, he continues. “In my mind, ‘local’ can be a synonym for ‘unique’. It’s something heartfelt. It’s the reason we connect more to the voice of a friend than words spoken through a megaphone”. 

As Matt Litzinger, co-founder of TLC, explained to LBB earlier this year, “there’s a reason the home team’s fans cheer loudest when they’re playing against their local rivals. It’s personal, meaningful, and connects to their identity in a way that can’t be faked”. For Omar, that’s the perfect place from which to devise a winning creative philosophy in 2022 and beyond. 

Similarly, Omar touches on a desire to welcome tension into his creative work. “It feels in our industry, and perhaps in society, too, that we’re often led away from friction or challenges - but it should be the other way around”, he says. “Not everything needs to be the same. Not everything needs to fit in. That speaks to the idea of being local, having an identity, and being true to yourself”. 

Across Omar’s career, he’s found that ideas land best when they’re the result of collaborations, or multiple forces playing off against one another. That’s manifested in the scope of his new role at TLC - simultaneously creative director and head of design. 

Above: Omar’s creative and design philosophies help products to pop both on-screen and out of home. 


A Symbiotic Relationship

For some observers, there may be a certain tension between the concepts of creativity and design. Where design attempts to set boundaries and create structure, creativity specialises in blurring those boundaries and breaking down structures. In Omar’s eyes, however, it’s a welcome and productive tension. 

“I don’t think you can have one without the other”, he says. “Creativity and design are symbiotic. Design is like a glass, and creativity is the drink you have inside. Without design, your creativity is just going to spill all over the floor!”. 

Whilst tongue-in-cheek, Omar is sincere about the essential balance between the two. “They add value to one another. Without structure, a creative idea will struggle to hit home in the right way. And without creativity, structure is pointless and empty”, he says. 

Ultimately, the beneficiaries of that worldview are set to be TLC’s clients. Whether it be formulating a ground breaking event for Samsung, or marking the 150th anniversary of the iconic Canadian brand Roots, Omar’s career is littered with examples of welding creativity and design in service of something magical. 

Another quality that shines through when speaking to Omar is his positivity. And, happily for TLC, that’s something he’s keen to build on in the near future. “As a traveller through the industry for many years now, I think we can stand to celebrate each other a little more”, he says. “And I don’t mean with awards shows - I mean in the day-to-day. We can all take time to lift each other up and celebrate the work we make. That positivity feeds itself, and there’s no telling where it might take you”. 

The challenge, then, for Omar and TLC, is to ensure the future contains plenty of projects worth celebrating. Fortunately, that’s an assignment for which they’re more than ready. 

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