Class Visit: Karsh Hagan
Karsh Hagan’s landing page
Today, a group of talented professionals from Karsh Hagan, a Denver based advertising agency, visited out Professional Practice class. Among the presenters were Peter and Anniston, both art directors, Nate (a copywriter) and Eleeza ( a motion designer). Their diverse experience and insights in the development of advertising campaigns provided a detailed glimpse to the fast-paced world of advertising.
Karsh Hagan’s mantra, “moment makers” is clearly a foundational pillar in their approach to developing campaigns. Because they work primarily with organizations with experience-based offerings, the focus on “moment making” gives Karsh a solid place to begin conceptualizing campaigns for intangible offers. Their clients are primarily hospitals, airports and tourism boards. Specific clients include Sondermind, Denver Health, and Telluride.
It was particularly interesting to hear how different departments work together to put together a campaign. Account is primarily client facing and most initial communications with the client goes through Account. Once the client has requested a new campaign with Account, Strategy steps in to do some research and put together a brief that details the problem, the target audiences, and the deliverables. That’s when the creative team comes to bat, putting together some initial rough concepts to present first to Account for some initial feedback and then to the client to determine the campaign direction. It sounded like a well-oiled machine with different teams working fairly seamlessly together to deliver a campaign for the client. The iterative nature of their work stood out—campaigns are constantly refined, often undergoing countless edits to achieve the perfect balance between strategy and creativity.
The project that stood out the most to me was Anniston’s presentation around her work for the South Dakota campaign. There were so many detailed assets that were put together to create the style guide for the campaign. I wish I had asked how long it took to develop the custom typeface she created for the campaign. The details in the custom typeface, including different baselines and custom kerning between every single character combination was impressive. The resulting handwritten style typeface was so well done and supported the campaign’s concept so perfectly. I also loved hearing how her love for illustration was part of why she was placed on this campaign. Her hand drawn icons were another lovely element in a complicated system.
Overall, what I took away from this presentation was the intense work, seamless collaboration, and real pride and joy that all of the presenters seem to have found in their careers at Karsh Hagan. It was inspiring to see how a team with diverse talents could bring ideas to life, and it reminded me that strong storytelling lies at the heart of impactful design.
