If Gregg Bauer could pass along one piece of advice to the students he teaches on the Atlanta campus of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), it would be to stick to your convictions. His experience, which includes more than 30 years in graphic design and advertising, is filled with stories of those unrelenting back and forth meetings between client and creative director (and when the light goes on for the client).
Over the years, the stories of Bauer’s exploits in the creative world span many genres. He has logged time in ad agencies, design studios, and freelance and in-house agencies. In the ’90s, he was a team leader overseeing a group of designers at Turner Broadcasting, when he was assigned an emerging news network, CNN. At the time, the network was on the front lines covering the Gulf War. The results featured myriad award-winning projects, including corporate communications, brochures, national consumer advertising, merchandising and helping establish CNN’s branding during this critical stage.
Today, he is CEO of BauerHaus Creative in Atlanta, where he works with a variety of clients in the B2B and B2C worlds, including hospitals, law firms, construction, financial technologies and restaurants. His agency’s work creates brands, collateral pieces, websites, ad campaigns and videos. For the past 15 years, Bauer has also served as an adjunct professor at SCAD, where he teaches advertising design and branding, as well as art direction and portfolio design.
CANVAS sat down with him to get his thoughts on dealing with today’s brands and what tomorrow’s creatives should know about design.
With new technologies and marketing expanding in a few different directions, today’s art directors must adapt and become more versatile.
