Today we’d like to introduce you to Seth McWhorter.
Seth, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m originally from Athens, GA and attended UGA. I graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture in 2011.
After UGA, I took a job with a Landscape Architecture firm in Winston-Salem, NC. Quickly I realized that designing parking lots for fast food chains and shopping malls wasn’t going to make me happy creatively.
I turned to a side hobby I found during my childhood into college – design & drawing. At some point during my time in NC, I got the urge to start a blog and I posted some random drawings, paintings, and design works. To my surprise, people were interested in my work, and I quickly found myself spending most of my time on this side hobby. Thankfully that blog is no longer on the web, but it was the catalyst of my career transition.
I left my job in NC and returned to Atlanta to pursue graphic design at Creative Circus, an advertising portfolio school. After about a year in the program, I got offered an internship at Fitzgerald & Company, an advertising agency here in town. When I started as a design intern, we were working on rebranding the agency, and fortunately, that led to a full-time offer as a graphic designer.
After a few months as a graphic designer, my awesome creative directors at Fitzco (Mitch Bennett & Wes Whitener) gave me the opportunity to make the switch to Art Direction, which I did, and that’s where I am currently. I work mostly on our Coca-Cola business & the various other brands under the Coca-Cola business.
During all of this time, I got married to my lovely and awesome wife Claire, and we currently are looking to buy a house on the Westside – which is where Fitzgerald & Company will be relocating (thankfully) in August 2017.
Has it been a smooth road?
I’ve always had self-confidence issues when it comes to my own creativity. In the graphic design & advertising world, there is an enormous amount of talent out there, and everyone shares their work constantly, so it’s extremely easy to feel inadequate, especially when you’re constantly inundated with everybody else’s awesome work. It’s disheartening and inspirational at the same time. I also have a very hard time with the idea of self-promotion (which makes even answering these questions rather awkward and difficult for me).
I’ve been extremely lucky to have some great mentors and partners along the way. My bosses (Noel Cottrell – Fitzco’s CCO and my CDs – Mitch Bennett & Wes Whitener) are immensely talented and very supportive. My wife is also a huge help, she’s always there to offer praise (even when I’m positive it’s undeserved).
Is there some part of you work that is particularly difficult?
I think the hardest part of working in a creative field is the expectation from yourself and from others that you can just “turn it on” and create or finish something. I’ve found that a lot of the job is passive in nature. It requires time spent just staring at your shoelaces, or doodling something over and over, or mindlessly looking at Instagram. It’s during those passive daydreaming moments that something clicks and you have an idea. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happens. I envy the people that have the ability to allot time to one task, because I’m not able to do one thing at a time, so I usually have 10-12 half completed projects at any given moment.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success in any creative field seems really difficult to measure just because it’s all so subjective. Rarely do I look back on a project and say something like, ‘oh I’m glad I made that particular decision’. It’s usually the opposite. It’s a cliche, but I’m my hardest critic, and I can be brutal to myself. But it makes me want to try harder on the next project.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I’m currently very happy with where I am work-wise. I love the incredibly talented people I work with at Fitzgerald & Company, and I’m having fun working on some smaller design/illustration projects on the side. And I’m so lucky to have a wonderful, supportive wife – so needless to say, I’m not looking to make any big changes in the immediate future.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://sethmcwhorter.com
- Phone: 7062079153
- Email: sethmcwhorter@gmail.com
- Instagram: @mcwhortercreative
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/sethmcwhorter
Image Credit:
ID Condoms Ad – Fernando Decillis
