We were lucky to catch up with Sam Rayman recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sam, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?
My hero is one of my best friends, Yvonne. She is strong, fearless, and unstoppable. Ten years ago, she had a successful marketing role at Verizon, but she was on the brink of burnout, and wanted to regain control of life. At a time in her life where everyone she knew was working 9-5 jobs, she boldly decided to leave that stability to launch her own marketing agency. Running her own business gave her the freedom to decide which clients/projects to take on, how much she wanted to work, and where she lived. Almost a year to the day, I followed her lead and left the full-time job I had for 12 years to launch my own Design Consultancy, Super Great. And I’ve never looked back. Since then, I’ve lived and traveled all over the world. I’ve spent a few stints in Paris, avoided the last eight NYC winters by living in sunny Melbourne, Australia instead, and even lived on a luxury cruise ship for 3 weeks. I never would have had the courage to take that chance if it weren’t for Yvonne.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am the Founder and Creative Director of a design company, Super Great. I work with clients like Disney, Nickelodeon, Away, Verizon, and iHeart Radio to help tell their story. Whether it be branding and website design for a small startup, trend forecasting and product design in the bedding and stationery space, or cover design for the latest podcast. A few stand-out career moments include designing a limited edition suitcase for Away, being paid for a design job in caviar, and designing a collection of Justin Bieber bedding.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
Literally every moment of my business feels like a near death moment! It’s both scary and exciting, and motivates me to keep working hard. Things move and change at such a fast pace in my industry, I am constantly having to pivot. When Canva made design more accessible to the every day person, I lost a lot of work. I decided to learn how to code and build websites, which is a big part of my business now. And now with AI, who knows how I will be replaced (although most times when I try to use it, the results are so terrible, I think I might be ok for just a little longer, I don’t think it’s ready to replace me just yet)!
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
For me, there’s nothing more exciting than creating something from nothing. Clients have ideas in their heads (or sometimes they don’t even know where to start), and it’s so thrilling to help them bring it to life. I gather inspiration from everywhere: a window display in Copenhagen, a museum in Rome, a department store in Paris, a beautiful company website, industry research, and work with the client to build something they are excited about. It feels like magic!
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