Transcriber: An Nguyen Reviewer: lisa thompson
Hi. My name is Alex Lytle-Pracek,
and I will be talking to you today
about how designing with intention changed my life.
Who can remember life as a baby?
Can you remember when you ate your first apple or played in the rain?
Maybe you and your grandma loved baking cookies together,
but can you recall how it felt the very first time?
How did you feel after drawing your first masterpiece with sidewalk chalk?
Chances are not many of us can remember these moments.
When we’re young, living in the present,
enjoying life’s pleasantries and simply doing things
as they inspired us without question or much thought,
like taking a Crayola marker to your mom’s white walls
and thinking she would love it – I know I did.
As we age, these types of activities become pattern behaviors,
routines, if you will.
Perhaps now you know that every time you visit grandma,
you’ll make cookies.
In the future, you decide you want to be a baker
and that’s what you work towards.
Or maybe that first sidewalk chalk masterpiece
was your rendition of a dinosaur.
Before you know it,
you’re listening to dinosaur bedtime stories wearing T-Rex T-shirts,
and ultimately you decide that studying dinosaur bones is your thing.
Over time, these patterns start to mold the person you are
and essentially what you achieve in your career.
These experiences are your own curated aha moments in the making.
You're setting the foundation of creating and manifesting with intention.
When we’re young, it’s almost subconscious.
You can probably gather at this point
that I did not become a baker nor a paleontologist.
No, that was not my path.
I did, however, believe that perhaps I had a future
in being a famous painter or fashion designer.
I even dabbled in photography.
I excelled at various forms of art.
Ultimately, the rhythm of my aha moments molded me into a creator
through determination to inspire, engage
and build experiences through storytelling.
Throughout my childhood, high school days and college years,
I always drew or painted.
I was constantly cultivating inspiration from the world around me
and transferring them to canvas.
I could be inspired from a passing billboard on a road trip,
a movie, an artist series, a talk or a song.
But I never knew where or how I would eventually take my work to the next level.
For me, at that point, it was just fun to do.
It was a hobby, a pattern, a routine.
It was my routine.
It was around my sophomore year of college when I started to really question my work
and challenge myself to figure out how I wanted to elevate my skills.
I recall sitting in my art history class studying Botticelli's work,
specifically the Birth of Venus,
wondering, what was his intention when he started creating this iconic work of art?
What influenced him to tell the story of her birth in this way?
I tried to imagine patrons, people of the Renaissance,
how they would have reacted, resonated in awe, passion and wonderment.
That was a feeling I wanted to elicit through my works.
For me, that was the top-tier, mega aha moment
that sparked the concept of designing with intention.
As I grew in the fine arts field,
I started exploring other forms of creative mediums,
including graphic design and digital media.
I was already advancing as a painter and printmaker, but I wanted to do more.
I wanted to build on the continuation of my creative works
through intention and purpose.
My intention?
I intended on making my artwork flourish by figuring out how to make
what I’ve already designed on canvas or paper
and connecting it with other mediums to create something fresh,
something people would look at in wonderment,
something I would look at in wonderment.
My creative process involves layering techniques of old magazines, newspapers,
and heavily marking up my art with thick acrylic paint,
permanent markers, paint pens,
really anything that can give me a piece with more depth and more layers.
I find my expression through transparently just being messy,
being adventurous by creating outside of the lines
and discovering unconventional techniques through experimentation.
This practice expanded my mind.
I no longer felt boxed in to one idea or the echo chamber of unconventionalism.
Creating art is about self-expression
while acknowledging challenges without overthinking.
Through the aforementioned exploration journey,
I started to play with gold leaf foil.
Establishing this technique using some simple metallic materials
served as a major springboard
that continues to fuel success in my career to this day.
Who knows?
Maybe I got bored of magazine cutouts and felt-tip Sharpie markers.
But without experiencing this intentional journey that guided me to this point,
I'm not sure if I could have gotten here talking to you on this platform today.
As I've grown, I've continually found
I was creating digital gold leaf applications with lush filters,
rough edges alongside mixed media elements.
I began curating backgrounds, collaging art,
environmental elements and photographs to a series for playoff campaigns.
I also found myself hand illustrating typography
and throwing paint to scan into Photoshop for an exclusive product line.
I would then illustrate a Florida Panther surrounded by abstracted foliage
in Photoshop for an eight-foot mural for the Boys and Girls Club of America.
I was also looking at pelagic fish and figuring out a way to create
an abstraction camo line
inspired by the unique scales and vibrant patterns on each unique species.
We are surrounded by aha moments.
It takes a really special, successful person to identify when they’re happening.
While I may not have a top tier mega aha moment every day,
I am way more aware of them when they present themselves,
and I'm always working towards my next one.
These are the moments
that will take your career and life in general to new heights.
When I started my career, I took all the goals and passions
and I worked hard to develop and push them even further.
My first job out of college was a creative director role
for a brand owned and operated by an artist, scientist,
explorer and conservationist for the ocean and our magical marine life.
I had the opportunity to take on my knowledge of fine art
and graphic design and morph all into one market.
Whether I was working on fashion lines for the spring and fall,
curating and assisting in painting murals for theme parks around the country
or offshore fishing to tag white marlin
for vision research for the next product launch,
it was an adventure.
Later on, I decided to emerge myself to a new industry,
one as tough as it is on the ice, the National Hockey League.
Here, I was able to break norms and expectations.
I was connecting art and a love of hockey to fans in new ways.
I was subconsciously implementing the same elements I used for my painting,
such as gold leaf foil or mixed media collages,
to layers of grit typography into everyday graphics,
such as game day creative to playoff assets.
This led into the world of designing NFTs, draft campaigns and much, much more.
I wanted us to stand out, not only as a team but as a brand, a lifestyle.
I wanted our team to be different,
the ones to set the trends and the tone creatively.
And we did.
We didn’t have to fit into a template to be successful.
We paid very little attention to what others were doing in the market
when it came to aesthetics
because we were thinking as an individual team outside of the box.
During my time with the NHL,
I consistently asked myself what our focus was.
Not only did this help our team stay intentional,
but it was also a reminder to stay mindful
about what and how will the creation in hand occupy our fans’ memories.
Another aha moment,
the intention of making connections,
a.k.a. design for a purpose, not solely aesthetic,
this is where my exploration started to grow
and develop as a true creative.
I was able to bring stories to life through marketing campaigns,
branded style guides, and unique objectives
for the marketplace or product research.
I was bringing intention and furthering my creative purpose in my work.
I now work for one of the largest, most well-known companies in the world.
I am fulfilled every single day by staying true to who I am
as a creative, a leader, and a collaborator.
I did have many obstacles to overcome,
but I never compromised my vision to remain intentional.
So now I challenge you to ask yourself, how will I achieve my Botticelli painting?
Whether your painting is creating the most innovative cookie recipe of all time
or being the first to come across the next major dinosaur-related discovery,
establish your intention and collect the aha moments as they come.
Thank you.