The Work That Made Me: Chris May
Chris May is chief creative officer at Elephant, an IPG creative company. With over 20 years of international experience, Chris is a digitally focused thinker, maker and leader for Elephant’s entire client portfolio. Having an open-minded approach has allowed him to work on a broad range of digital products spanning digital-first campaigns, social content, eCommerce and apps for clients including Apple, Beats by Dre, Domino’s, and FX Networks. Prior to Elephant, Chris held creative leadership roles at Razorfish (Berlin) and AKQA (London and Berlin) where he oversaw creative work for Audi, Adidas, Volkswagen, Montblanc and MTV, among others.
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Chris> It has to be Hovis ‘Boy on the Bike’, I didn’t know it was directed by Ridley Scott until coming across this short film of how the BFI restored the original footage.
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Chris> ‘Underworld, Cowgirl’, it brought together everything I was interested in at the time… typography, animation and electronic music! Also, as someone studying graphic design I was interested in the band's association with the design studio Tomato – the idea of different creative disciplines coming together as a collective always intrigued me.
The creative work (film/album/game/ad/album/book/poem etc) that I keep revisiting…
Chris> Sticking with the music theme, but stylistically in a very different direction from the answer above, I’ve admired the work of Mark Farrow’s design studio, particularly the branding and album artwork they’ve done over the years with the Pet Shop Boys.
My first professional project…
Chris> I suppose it was the front cover artwork for the school play programme, aged seven. To my surprise and delight the art teacher picked my design, I got paid handsomely with a handful of boiled sweets.
The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Chris> Nothing against awards or having work recognised… but I get frustrated seeing the industry’s unhealthy obsession with them, specifically the desperate lengths agencies go to get work recognised – work that probably (obviously) didn’t deliver real results, or wasn’t even a legit project in the first place.
The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that still makes me jealous…
Chris> Honda campaign: ‘The Other Side’. I was doing a lot of automotive work when this came out, and I thought it was just brilliant. Such a smart idea that came to life with a simple interaction of hitting the ‘R’ key on your keyboard. Take a look at the case film.
More recently would be the MTA’s live subway map by Work & Co. Beautiful, smart, useful and the film they made to explain the project was also top notch.
The creative project that changed my career…
Chris> There have been several for Apple but that’s all a bit confidential so I'll wind the clock back to when I was working for Audi — we had a grand idea to tap into the 2014 soccer world cup buzz by creating a massive LED scoreboard showcasing their advanced lighting technology.
This was a career changing moment because it encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone. I'm a graphic designer at heart, and most of my career has been designing digital experiences, however this project challenged me in new ways giving me confidence to execute ideas that exist in physical spaces.
The work that I’m proudest of…
Chris> I’m incredibly proud to see what the Elephant team has done in terms of sharing their knowledge and experience to inspire the next generation of diverse talent in our industry. It’s called the Elephant XD Academy and you can read more about the programme on our dedicated site here.
I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Chris> I’ve been a part of some terrible pitch work over the years. One standout was for a contraceptive brand, and the idea was to use the language of ‘sexting’, terrible use of audio (I’ll let you imagine that). We really didn’t execute it right and the client looked horrified… we obviously lost that one.
In hindsight it was an enormous failure from the start, but mistakes are part of the process and often where the most learning and development happens.
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Chris> I love projects that inspire me to learn and understand a category or business that I have no idea about. Earlier this year, we completed a project for a company in the music royalties space. It's a really interesting web3 concept and we got to work closely with the founder and his team to shape their brand identity for their upcoming product launch.
