We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Grant Reitz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Grant below.

Grant, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.

While working at Abbott Labs I had a fiery Creative Director named Pat. She was/is a kind women who loves gardening, plants, being outside, and ripping apart designs made by me. I say that with kindness as when I first started at Abbott almost all of my work experience up to that point was Illustrative and vector work. This new job with Abbott forced me to learn layout design trail by fire. Oh boy there was fire! She was able to look at a design and see things I was not able to see so quickly. Spacing issues, unnecessary negative space, and wrong color (down to shades I kid you not). She would systematically go through your design with you and tell you and show you why your decision making was wrong. That was so valuable to me, that I was getting immediate feedback and reasoning why that design was not going to get approved. She was brutal but fair. She would reject your design and give the reasons, and then expect you to implement them to bring your design to another level. As a manger she was responsible for our work, but she seemed not only to complete the job, she wanted us to grow and learn as well. She was a treat to work for, really. Above all of that though, she has a mouth of a sailor and nothing would make me laugh more than hearing her in her office dropping F bombs over an email at 915am :)

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I would say I got into the design industry from a career fair at highschool. A Graphic Designer, came in and he told us he was primarily a shirt designer. His specialty was Band Tees’. The old Avenged Sevenfold and AFI shirts for example. He described the process and programs used to make some of his shirts. It seemed like magic or wizardry from Harry Potter. His charisma was infectious as he just really enjoyed talking about it, like it was fun for him. Imagine that, work is fun! I didn’t even know what design really was at that point. Up until then I had no idea what I was gonna do after school. I had always had creative ability but I didn’t feel as though I had found my medium. After that day though, I was hooked. Oddly enough my first design job I got was essentially a shirt designer. Just sort of worked out that way (no Avenged Sevenfold shirts though).

Since that first job I have had many different positions and my work has changed VERY drastically. From designing t-shirts and apparel to, long format layout, marketing collateral and even funny little gifs of beer cans. I would consider myself today, a Multimedia designer. Being able to cover different mediums and having experience and understanding of animation, video, audio, and rendering. While some of these skills were learned on the job, a majority of them are from teaching myself. I feel as though as a designer, you should always think of yourself as a student. Always trying to get better or grow. Not only for monetary goals, but personal. I enjoy learning new skills and challenging myself and getting out of my comfort zone. It is because of this though trials and tribulations that I am able to provide clients with a one stop shop literally. From apparel design to animation, and everything in between.

I think what separates me from others is my humble attitude, and stubbornness. While I can work on a variety of projects with great skill, I know I don’t and cannot know it all. I think being open to criticism and listening to my clients needs ultimately just works out better for me and them. I am also stubborn haha. In a good way though! I enjoy a challenge, or a challenging project. I am stubborn in the sense that, I will not be deterred just because a task is difficult or something I am unfamiliar with. As I said earlier, if you do not challenge yourself, you will never grow.

The piece I am most proud of right now is my Slam Gammy 2d Animation intro on my Instagram. It is absolutely ridiculous and not for a client, its just for me. Essentially I am making small animations that will depict my created character from the game Elden Ring. For any who are unfamiliar, it is basically a brutal open world game with many disgusting and gothic looking characters and environments. Everything in the game is trying to put you out of your misery. I thought it would be fun to re create my character and stylize them in a way that I wanted, and to animate parts of the game that I found amusing. While all of this sounds ridiculous (and it is trust me) I had no idea the amount of work that would be required for it. I had to sketch my ideas and characters (which I have not done since college) to get limbs and armor proportional. Then I scanned them into the computer and illustrated them in Illustrator. After that I then imported everting into After Effects and had to learn how to rig a character. While it proved difficult to start, slowly I started to grasp the concept. After making my rig for my character I had to texture all the pieces (this wasn’t necessary I just am a stickler for details). After that, then I was able to animate my character for a walk cycle. While all of that work was just for a walk cycle of a creepy looking guy go across a loading screen….it gave me such a deeper appreciation for motion graphics and animation. I learned so much, and also learned what NOT to do while making this video.

I think my main takeaway would be, make stuff that makes you happy. Even if its just a passion project, or just for yourself. A lot of my work is a bit out there and different, I know it makes people laugh or say “what did i just watch”. That isn’t my main goal, my main goal is…does it make me laugh?

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I have always wanted to make a small 3d animations with my characters that I would make in the computer. Ever since I was a kid I loved cartoons and animation. I drew a lot, and soon developed a knack for it. Mostly monsters and strange designs. It wasn’t until I had gotten older and been in the design industry that I was able to figure out how some of these things I had seen on tv were made. It was one of those things that you think about….and wonder how they do it but never look into it ya know? As I said, being in the design industry opened my eyes to how a lot of things were made. How in order to even animate some of this stuff, it had to be modeled in 3d space. I would say the past 4-5 years, I have spent trying to develop my motion graphics, 3d modeling, and video skills. While these are all very valuable skills for many companies, I am selfishly learning these skills so that I can make 12 year old Grant happy. I guess my inner child is still rooting for me :)

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Oh my gosh yes! For starters, Unsplash.com. Just such a great resource for AMAZING photography. I think many designers who do not know about it, should check it out. I think Motion Design School and School of Motion for motion designers are really awesome. I wish I had known about them YEARS ago.   

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reitzcreative.com
• Instagram: @reitzcreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reitzcreative