Erik Kessels on getting fired, doing the firing, and never making compromises

It’s Nice That: This place is amazing. That must be how every conversation here starts...

Erik Kessels: Yeah, or how they end!

INT: What was it like when you first moved in? How much have you done to the place?

EK: So we started in 1996 after Johan and I had spent two years working in London. Our girlfriends were here so we came back and spent two years working somewhere else and looking for a more open space, and this was perfect! It was available to rent or possibly for sale in the newspaper so we came to see it immediately – some Hare Krishna people wanted it as well, so we made a decision very quickly to take it. And we don't regret it.

INT: You and Johan left London because you both got fired, right?

EK: Yeah... We were working at Chiat Day. Johan and I met each other in Amsterdam initially but were working in different companies and we decided we wanted to work abroad – that was in 1994. At that time, Holland was quite well known for its creativity; a lot was going on, there was a big boom. We were headhunted into this company in London – Naresh Ramchandani and Dave Buonaguidi were the creative directors.

This was only 94 and they already had a paperless office! There wasn’t even internet yet but they had an internal network called Quick Mail and when you needed a document, you had to scan it and send it – there was hardly any paper and it was very hip, I think the average age was 23. But there was not a very nice atmosphere, so one day, we arrived at work wearing chicken suits which we got from this costume rental place around the corner on Shaftesbury Avenue, and we had a ghetto blaster playing The Birdie Song. We thought we’d try and cheer things up a bit! Some people had a laugh and others were not amused... Two weeks later, we got fired.

INT: Where did you both learn that way of working, or do you think it’s part of your personalities?

EK: I don’t know actually! I met Johan because he was the new boyfriend of my ex-girlfriend. We also fell in love with each other a little bit, which wasn’t very nice for my ex-girlfriend. I think there was just a meeting of minds.

INT: Would you say the chicken suit story is indicative of what you were like growing up? Were you a bit of a class clown?

EK: No, I think we were both quite shy when we were young! I lost my sister when I was very young – I was 11 and she was nine – so my youth was quite impacted by that event. In a way, I skipped puberty a bit because I was alone at home with my parents. And Johan lost his mother quite quickly, she was chronically ill, and that also changed him. In my case, when I look back, I was always drawing – maybe it was a way to get out of it and do something else.

INT: In 2003, Johan left to direct full time?

EK: Yeah, I had three of four employees at that time that had been there since the very beginning with us so they all became partners. And now, in total, we have 40-50 people and seven partners – which is quite a lot but it’s nice because you can spread; Max is in London, for example. He joined as an intern and has stayed since. For us, it’s really important that we can have fun with what we do. Many of us have worked in other places and the thing I’m most proud of is that we have never made any compromises. Of course, sometimes we’ll change small things but nothing has ever gone out of the door here that we don’t like. There are a lot of design and advertising agencies that create work under the table, and it’s never shown to anyone, just to pay the rent but we are totally transparent. Our website has everything we’ve ever done on it and in our 2 Kilo book is every flier, every invite, every stupid sticker we’ve ever made – it’s all in there.

INT: Is that because you feel every single project is as good as the next or because you understand it’s OK to mess up sometimes?

EK: I think there is a big misunderstanding in the whole design industry. It’s a very opportunistic industry, there’s money to be made which is fine. But a lot of companies think that to make money, they have to do shit work so there’s a lot of rubbish being made. You don’t want to know how many people I’ve met who are totally frustrated about the work they’re making – and I’m not talking about independent designers who have a very small unit and are very autonomous in what they do, of course, but when there’s a bigger company it’s like you have to make shit work, that’s part of the job, which I completely disagree with.

Actually, twice we’ve fired a client who was 60-80 per cent of our income – seriously!

INT: That’s so brave!

EK: I know... The first time we did it, it was the best decision we ever made. We were scared but it worked out.

INT: KK has a strong identity in terms of the work you make and some of that seems to come from the fact that you have a very strong set of beliefs. Can you tell us a bit more about what, to you, aspiring to do things differently means?

EK: I think that the work in itself is no different to what other agencies or designers are making, it’s more that, at least from my perspective, I work with a group of great people, there are no assholes in the company. Which is important because life is too short to work with arseholes! We are all friends, even with our collaborators. We like each other, we like each other’s work. I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that the company was started from a creative point of view, one of the things outlined in the business plan was about how people should work on their hobbies because a lot of creative people have other passions in the creative field – photography, film, somebody makes a magazine or somebody does strange knitting, whatever – and I believe in that.

The team is so important and there’s never a formula for that, it’s purely a gut feeling – and it’s never comfortable, that’s also important, creativity should be uncomfortable, you should never lean back. Even with how much work we’ve done, for every client, it’s like we start all over again from the beginning. If you saved your money all your life to build a house and asked an architect to design it, you’d want something very specific to you – let them forget all the work they’ve done before and build your house. And that’s how our clients also think. Your reputation and everything you’ve done before no longer counts.

We are also honest – lying is a big part of advertising but we don’t do that.

INT: Back to what we talked about before with giving people the space to do personal projects, that’s important here, how do you go about encouraging people to do this? Why do you think it’s so important?

EK: The process of creativity is not that you sit at a desk and say, it needs to happen now so now it’s going to happen. When you have to come up with something, there’s no formula for that. So what I always did was kept myself busy with eight to ten projects on the side. When I got stuck on a project I would divert to another one, work on that, then come back to the main problem and that helped. No one is born with the talent to be a graphic designer or an art director or a writer, it’s something that you learn – and it helps to have outside influences.

Another thing I have to admit is that some days are not fruitful, you can’t be brilliant every day. It’s not possible. And that’s frustrating but when you have lots of things on the side, you just take a little thing and make that thing good. So then at the end of the day, you’re happy because you have accomplished something. I see that creatives work like that, they need to have little sweets, a little carrot to run after.

INT: How do you manage it as a team though?

EK: Creative people need to be extremely busy. You need to do as much stuff as possible, that is very important! Some companies might worry that an employee can’t do “this” while also working on “this” but people are responsible, they know that the job is to come up with an idea. But the game is to divert and do something different, I like people that do this, when they come for an internship or an interview with personal projects. It happened once that this girl who we have now worked with for a long time, a designer, she talked about her work and some other passions she has and we talked for a long time, we clicked. And in the end, I said we should work together and asked when she could start and she said: “you haven't even seen my work!” She had a whole portfolio with her that we hadn't even looked at.

INT: It’s interesting that people find that side of your practice odd because there are obvious links between your interest in found photography and your ideas around advertising.

EK: Yeah, people don’t often see that link but it’s there. For instance, in some campaigns that we’ve done over the years, there is some “human” thing in there, in the storytelling. And that’s in the books I make, there will be something very ironic, or tragic, or funny.

INT: Earlier, you mentioned that image you chose of a model with her eyes closed. That’s something you work with a lot – mistakes within creativity – how does that come into your everyday practice?

EK: Sometimes it’s within my method, you try to constantly divert in your head. For instance, this has nothing to do with creativity but I remember when I was 16, I went to school by train every day and it took 1.5 hours. The first week I took my bike to the train station, waited at the platform and then I realised, hey I do the same thing every day at the same time, I see the same people – this guy is always standing there, I always follow the same path with my bike and I turned it into a game over the next four years, to take a different route every day. But that’s also about creativity, you need to find new ways to surprise people or surprise yourself.

INT: You’ve used the metaphor of a Sat Nav before I believe, that sometimes it’s better to ignore the directions you’re being given when trying to be creative.

EK: To come back to the Sat Nav idea, the metaphor of it telling you to turn around when possible is a nice one. You should go in the direction that no one wants you to go in with creativity, because there is so much around on the highway now that if you take a small side street, it can be much more interesting.