OUGD602 - Studio Visit | Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong

During my visit to Hong Kong I got the opportunity to visit Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising and marketing agency that is world renowned for their work over the past 60 years or so.

While we were there we got a tour of the offices and saw the different teams and creatives that make up an agency as a whole. It was interesting to hear about how the different sectors communicate and how they ed up with a finished campaign.

After the tour, John Koay, the Creative Director, gave a presentation talking us through his career and some of the briefs and campaigns he has worked on. This talk was super interesting and honestly really inspiring. At such a young age he had already worked in 3 major advertising agencies across three different countries and became Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather.

He took us through his Behance page where he highlighted certain projects and explained them in more depth along with how the idea came about. It was really interesting to hear the design process of these major campaigns and it taught me a lot about how every single idea needs to be explored, no matter how ridiculous or weak it may seem at first.

Although not graphic design, hearing him talk through his work and ideas really helped me think about improving my own design process. Koay also advised us to try as many different cities and countries as we can before really settling in a job. He couldn't stress enough how much a city influences the work you do, and from personal experience he vouched for this and said his work and creativity greatly improved once he found a city he loved. This is definitely something I feel is important and want to try. I talked about this briefly in my Design Strategy presentation and I working on finding a internship abroad.

This studio visit was really helpful in helping me understand the creative process in major studios and agencies as well as making me think about my design practice and what route is best for me. It was a really inspiring talk and got me excited for my future in the creative industry.