Scott Sorenson - creative director | by Phillip Istomin
Scott Sorenson is doing exactly what he was born to do. He’s one of those lucky people who was blessed with a certain talent, the writing, or in Scott’s case, the typography was on the wall. In 2015 S.S. is the Creative Director of STRUCK creative agency. He’s held the position for 16 years and has an impressive body of work (as well as awards) any aspiring creative would be envious of.
It’s clear that a different career was never really an option when Scott tells me about the things that he would notice as a little boy. “I was taking calligraphy classes at the community center with a bunch of old ladies when I was 7 or 8,” says Sorenson. “When we went to movies as a family, I used to get really upset if the title on-screen did not match the ad for the movie in the newspaper. Think I even left a movie once and waited in the lobby, so confused was I about the discrepancy.” Some kids are piano prodigies, others can solve complex mathematical equations in their minds, Scott could tell if the kerning of a word on a billboard was slightly off.
Scott Sorenson was born in Boston, but lived there for about 18 seconds before his folks packed the car and headed West. He was brought up in Provo, UT by his father, who was Dean of Student Life at BYU, and a stay at home mom. “Mind you, she was the best stay at home mom ever," explains Scott. “Even after I moved out of the house during my college years in Provo, she continued to make me lunch every day!”
Most kids have a problem with limitations, but Scott was no ordinary boy. He enjoyed the challenge of solving problems within various parameters, and he loved typography. “I’d make up company names and design the logos, endlessly,” explains Sorenson. “I had tight red carpet in my bedroom, and it held water pretty well, so I took a squeeze bottle of water and “wrote” on the carpet. Logos all over the place. I’d wait for it all to dry and do it again. I can’t imagine how rotten the material under the carpet must have been when my parents replaced it.”
He’s had some great tutors along the way. Jim Campbell and Linda Peterson ran the art program at Timpview high School where things started to click for Scott, except for that one semester he went absolutely AWOL and turned in a “pile of crap,” only to earn himself an A. At BYU a friend suggested the Graphic Design program, which is considered one of the best in the state. Adrian Pulfer and Linda Sullivan provided “the right balance of criticism and encouragement,” according to Scott. “I owe them a lot,” he adds. Sorenson also studied English under Claudia Harris while at BYU. She taught Scott how to love learning, and the learning has never stopped. “Short stories are a tremendous source of inspiration to me,” says Scott.
“A well crafted short story can be as impactful as a novel, which is quite a bit like what a good logo can do for a company. It’s not going to say everything, but it doesn’t need to.”
Scott was hired by Smit Gormley Lofgreen in Phoenix, AZ before he even had a chance to graduate college. He spent a year and a half working and living in a pre-furnished apartment with “highly flammable couch/bed furniture-like item and about twenty thousand ants,” explains Sorenson. Luckily Scott was approached by The Hurst Group in Salt Lake City and took the job figuring he needed to see what the advertising world was like before committing wholly to traditional design. Hurst took up another year and a half, followed by a 4 year stint at Little & Company (now called Little) in Minneapolis. “Little was, in Minnesota speak, “a really super time,” Sorenson explains. “I was able to work with wonderful people and gain some invaluable experience (I knew I wanted to return to Salt Lake one day, but armed with the experience of working on a larger stage for top tier clients). I was still quite naive, still too focused on what I wanted out of the work rather than what the client needed out of the work. But you live and learn, and Minneapolis was the right place for me at the time.”
While working in Minneapolis, Scott kept in touch with the one or two Utah firms he admired. An opportunity opened up with Brent Watts at Axiom Design, and he took the job. Axiom boasted some impressive top tier clients as well (Sony, Universal, DreamWorks, etc.) which allowed Sorenson to go from working on more corporate-minded projects in Minneapolis to entertainment-focused work. Same principles, same design process, but a whole new ball game. Axiom, a more boutique-type design firm ended up merging with STRUCK, an advertising agency with strong digital bona fides, and Sorenson has been the creative director since 1999. He focuses on specific clients and lives and breathes their world. If a client needs design work, he works with the design team. If it’s advertising related, he oversees the ad team, same goes for Digital, etc.
I ask Scott what his career highlight is, his answer defines his approach to work as well as his vision as a creative director: “In truth, my career highlight will be my next project," says Sorenson. “Hopefully my work will continue to improve: I’ve liked much of what I’ve accomplished, but I’m not done and I could always have done something better. That is what fuels me, and that is what is continually exciting. I love the title of the song “Time Passes Strangely”. What better way to describe this trip we are on? You have to stay open to whatever is around the corner.”