We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Vamosy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, appreciate you joining us today. Do you have any advice for creating a more inclusive workplace? Are there any moments from your journey that shape your view? Perhaps moments where the workplace wasn’t inclusive or where it was and why you think it was impactful / important / etc.

At Vivid Zero, we create and innovate through collaboration, artistry, and truth… And to achieve this, we make sure the entire team knows what it really means and how to truly embrace it. That’s why our brainstorming sessions and reviews feel more like art school critiques. Everyone feels empowered to share their opinion and help drive the collective creative and innovation to a better place. We support each other and incentivize crew to think team first. Afterall, what’s best for our team is best for our clients. We reward constructive comments and affirming support. Afterall, we strive for innovation, and we must have a safe place to present some ideas that are new, fresh, and sometimes… “out there”. We invest in our talent’s overall creative development. We invest in our interns and our junior creatives by giving them our time, our stories, advice, guidance, and opportunities to excel. We treat our seniors with respect, professionalism, structure, and allow them freedom to explore at the same time. We share credit with the team and call out personal contributions to project wins. We all need to feel safe to grow as a creative person. Everywhere I’ve been, the more collaborative, supportive, and nurturing the environment… the better the work is. In those environments where it is not, well…we know those stories.

I have always taken a little bit of good from each of my past experiences and shaped it with a new spin as I brought it into the next place. Always evolving and working with the existing teams to elevate morale, instill creative confidence, inspire those who need it the most, and to get the best work out of our people and teams.

My advice… define who you are as a leader, company, team, or department. Explain it. Then let your team help shape the environment as you continue to provide the tools for them to continue a shared path.

Set collaborative meetings, brainstorming sessions, and allow your team opportunities to challenge senior level direction in a respectful arena. Remove defensiveness from yourself and from your senior level team. I love when I’m challenged. It focuses my thinking and lets me know my team is committed to the projects they are on.

Michael, For folks who may not have read about you before, can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide, what problems you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc. 

By trade, I am a graphic designer. I started off as a print designer, then got interested in motion design, digital design, copy writing, and eventually live action and stills photography. I was at a few small agencies, and while on the agency side, I would stay late every night, after everyone went home, and I taught myself After Effects and Flash. Yes. Flash…I think I just dated myself.

I then moved over to FX, where I eventually became the VP of design for FX.

While on big campaign shoots, I kept asking to have more and more things shot for me in very specific ways. Eventually my bosses Stephanie Gibbons and John Varvi got me my own camera and a crew so we could shoot all of our graphic needs. So we started concepting, designing, shooting, editing, creating visual effects and one thing led to another as we created some pretty striking visual packages and teasers. While at FX, John and I also designed STUDIO FX. The creative hub for designers, animators, producers, editors, and edit bays. It got me really thinking about where people sit, how they work, interact with each other, and how the physical environment can help the collaborative and creative integrity. Afterall, we were all working extremely late hours and making some very cool stuff. We needed a space that reflected that. It helped define who we were.

After FX, I went on to become the SVP of Design at FOX, then to an agency called Stun. Then I became the SVP of creative services at Starz. There, I led a team of around 150 people. We rebranded the internal creative team as ROCKET, a boutique agency that serviced all the network needs. What better way to get to the STARZ than with a ROCKET, huh? We even had the ROCKET awards, where we celebrated the team’s best work and handed out fun trophies to individuals and teams that went above and beyond. I even dressed in a tuxedo to host our show. Cheesy I know, but kinda fun too.

Then we launched Vivid Zero with our data partners Smith Geiger. We are a much smaller team, but we got the chance to build something new from the ground up, in an entirely new pandemic and post pandemic world. We offer data-driven creative services to entertainment and consumer brand clients. We design brands, write & concept campaigns, shoot live action & still photography, edit & animate motion graphics, and tell visually compelling stories across all media. We can focus on any one element, like designing a TV Series logo, creating a main title sequence and the graphics package needed for that series like THE VIEW, AMERICA’S MOST WANTED or GOOD MORNING AMERICA. Or, we can work with a company that needs naming, logo, tagline, brand strategy & brand manifesto, website design, social toolkits and help to launch them at the Detroit Auto Show, like EV company Harbinger Motors. We create, produce, and shoot campaigns for Showtime PPV Boxing with full-service design & editorial. And we work on major live news brands to create graphics packages for ABC News Live (coming soon) and the ABC O+O Stations group, along with marketing and promotional campaigns as well. If it is creative. We do it.

But the thing I am most proud of is… our team. We formed during a pandemic, evolved our work process post-pandemic, and continue to create our culture of creativity all while working from remote locations. We meet constantly to inspire and push each other through the process as a team. And the team is tight.

Henry Jamin interned with us a few summers ago. Internships are hard enough, but then factor in east coast vs west coast time zones, a pandemic, and things become even harder. Henry started the summer off like most interns, and picked up speed as he spent more time with all of us, including our Executive Creative Director Gilbert Avila. Gilbert really took him under his wing. After graduation, Henry came on as a junior designer based on the east coast, while most of us are in LA. We continued our Zoom brainstorming sessions, daily art school critiques, reviews, tutorial sessions, and included him in the biggest client meetings. We even got Henry to a few live action shoots in NEW YORK CITY. Henry did almost every job possible on set and was extremely helpful. He even got into a helicopter for a quick up and down. After second thoughts, we should have sent him up before lunch. Sorry Henry. After Henry spent a year and a half with us, he started to win us projects, his work improved at light speed, and he was recently promoted to Art Director. Gilbert takes such personal pride in his success. While at a recent Showtime PPV Boxing where the creative came down to two final ideas…one Gilbert’s and the other Henry’s…Gilbert said selflessly, “I wish they picked Henry’s idea on this one.” Can you believe it? Our client went with Gilbert’s amazing idea, but he was thinking of Henry and the team. To me, that’s a win.

One of our other amazing creative directors, Alex Ishida, has just been crushing it for us over the past couple of years. I almost forget that he was an intern with Gilbert and me at our previous agency. His maturity as a creative director has absolutely blown me away. He brings so much clarity, organization, and innovation to large scale projects like the ABC NEWS LIVE rebrand and the ABC O+O NEWS rebrand. He thinks big picture while taking care of the details, designing smart solutions and amazing frames, all while leading his teams.

For us it is about the team dynamic. We’re open, not defensive. We’ve managed to build a team that looks out for each other and helps develop each other’s creative and personal growth. Our collaborative work extends to our clients, and they love when we bring them into the process. They see our approach, hear our discussions, see our thought process, and appreciate the artistry we bring to their projects.

To maintain high morale, it comes down to celebrating your wins and giving credit to the team. Afterall, without them we wouldn’t have the wins. Then, you take the blame for the loses and make sure you put those behind you as soon as possible. 

We also make sure everyone knows their role and that they are empowered to do it. We need everyone to lift their share and take pride in that. Our operations team supports the creative teams and aligns budgets, calendars, assets, freelancers, and client notes. And they work extremely hard to do it. Derek Tacconelli, one of our producers works his tail off to make sure the creative team can focus on creative. There is a balance to it. 

We try to remove defensiveness from the workplace. We let team members challenge orders… afterall, this is not the military. When you can do that, then you can challenge your staff and they are more receptive and open to changes as well.

Any advice for managing a team?

For us it is about the team dynamic. We’re open, not defensive. We’ve managed to build a team that looks out for each other and helps develop each other’s creative and personal growth. Our collaborative work extends to our clients, and they love when we bring them into the process. They see our approach, hear our discussions, see our thought process, and appreciate the artistry we bring to their projects.

To maintain high morale, it comes down to celebrating your wins and giving credit to the team. Afterall, without them we wouldn’t have the wins. Then, you take the blame for the loses and make sure you put those behind you as soon as possible.

We also make sure everyone knows their role and that they are empowered to do it. We need everyone to lift their share and take pride in that. Our operations team supports the creative teams and aligns budgets, calendars, assets, freelancers, and client notes. And they work extremely hard to do it. Derek Tacconelli, one of our producers works his tail off to make sure the creative team can focus on creative. There is a balance to it.

We try to remove defensiveness from the workplace. We let team members challenge orders… afterall, this is not the military. When you can do that, then you can challenge your staff and they are more receptive and open to changes as well.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

First, I think everyone is creative. The numbers people can get very creative with their solutions, just like Derek and our operations team can get extremely creative with their production calendars, workflows, and production paradigms. Creativity is not just pretty pictures or colorful videos. But I think the biggest struggle of the non-creatives is their understanding of talent. They assume that your talent is what gets you through everything and that your talent comes easy to you. I also think people in the “non-creative” space just assume that what we do is fun, easy, and it just naturally flows from our minds to our fingertips. Some outsiders tend to discount the value of creativity because of their lack of true understanding of it. We work extremely hard. We’ve put in years of dedication to train our thought processes to solve wildly complicated problems with simplified visual solutions that communicate our client’s biggest problems in a matter of seconds. Some people think it all just comes easy to us. And the truth is…sometimes it does come easy. But that is because of our years of experience and training. But once we have that idea, no matter how long it took to conceive it, we still develop that idea, sculpt it, refine it, test it, redesign it, rewrite it, throw it away, and start fresh. What we do is extremely valuable to our clients. To create the perfect solution for the budget, in a certain time frame with numerous known and unknown considerations in play…takes experience, collaboration, artistry, and trust. While we manage expectations on both sides through the course of a project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vividzero.com
• Instagram: vivid zero_sg
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057501037117
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/66746362/admin/feed/posts/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ssoGFBPyM

Image Credits
1. VIVID ZERO / SHO PPV BOXING 2. CREDIT VIVID ZERO / SHO PPV BOXING / PAT NOTARO DP 3. CREDIT VIVID ZERO / SHO OOV BOXING / DANIEL MARRACINO DP 4. VIVID ZERO / THE VIEW / ABC PHOTOGRAPHER JEFF LIPSKY 5. VIVID ZERO / SHO PPV BOXING 6. VIVID ZERO 7. VIVID ZERO & FOX SPORTS 8. VIVID ZERO & GOTHAM FILMS