An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
“You could never work here.”
I’ve heard this from dozens of places I’ve interviewed with or tried to work at. In hindsight, almost all of them probably wouldn’t have known what to do with me, anyway. I tell people all the time that I’m “unhireable.” That’s the real reason I’m an entrepreneur.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Ritter.
Chris Ritter is an award-winning designer, artist, and co-founder of C-90. Throughout his design career, he’s worked with notable brands such as adidas, GE, lululemon, and the New Orleans Pelicans. As an artist, he’s collaborated with and has had his work shown beside notable artists such as FAILE, The London Police, Ivan Crush, Vinz Feel Free, and Gene Spatz. He’s the Co-Founder and a Creative Director at C-90, a full-service creative agency and culture lab serving clients that need to be noticed, refuse the status quo, and need co-conspirators.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Even at a young age, I’d always been aware of graphic design. In fact, I’m a rare second-generation graphic designer. My great-grandfather was a commercial artist in Cincinnati from the pre-war era until he retired in the 1980s. Most of his work I’ve seen was illustrative in nature. Personally, I went to college as a chemistry major with a dream to work in a medical lab. After two years, I was failing all my chemistry classes. I decided I needed to make a change, and a guidance counselor suggested I should try to take some design classes. I quickly fell in love with it and here I am today.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
“Disruptive” is a word that’s thrown around so much these days, I feel like it’s lost much of its meaning. At C-90, we talk a lot about providing a distinctive point-of-view on problems. This allows us to focus our thinking and come up with creative ways to help our clients. I feel like this approach is increasingly rare in a world where everyone seems to be tactics-driven and chasing the latest trends.
What we do is work hard to define problems that we can solve through creativity and design. If our team comes up with a particular solution that requires our clients to do something outside the norm, we consider that a great thing because it sets our clients apart from their competition and allows us to explore truly new opportunities. For this reason, we work best with ambitious clients who are comfortable challenging the status quo.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
It wasn’t so funny at the time, but earlier in my career I was leading a fairly substantial design project for Mountain Hardwear. As I remember it, it was our first big meeting with the client and we were building a big presentation with lots of fun design ideas and some work that our team was really proud of. We got on the call with the client to present and after exchanging some pleasantries, the client abruptly stopped the meeting. He said, “Everyone does this, so you get a pass. Our name is ‘Mountain Hardwear.’ W-E-A-R. Not Mountain Hardware. The second time it happens, you’re fired.” We had misspelled the company name in huge, bold letters on the first slide. To add insult to injury, their name was also misspelled in the footer of every slide in the presentation.
I absolutely didn’t make that mistake twice. Luckily, the work was well received and we were able to recover from the rocky start.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
That statement is so true. I’ve had many great mentors throughout every stage of my career and I make a point to keep in contact with as many of them as I can. College professors, people I’ve had job interviews with, old co-workers, former bosses, ex-business partners, design school classmates, famous designers — these relationships have all helped me through some of my ups and downs. I even like to keep in contact with some of our direct competition to talk shop. That’s actually how my partner Emmit Jones and I got so close. We were owners of competing firms and I found myself in a complicated work situation. I reached out to him because I needed some good advice from someone who’d been in my situation before. Three years later, we co-founded C-90 together.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
“Good design is long-lasting.” That’s a Dieter Rams quote, but it’s also something we say at C-90 frequently. Disruption and timelessness are not mutually exclusive. We build design systems on top of disruptive insights. Designing systems make the assets we create usable, memorable, and timeless. I think our recent work for NMUGS&R is a great example of this. It’s built on insight, looks radically different from other graduate schools, but is also systematic in its execution.
Misguided disruption is pointless. If you don’t have a problem to solve, there’s no reason to innovate. Any good designer will be diligent in identifying a specific problem to solve first. Once the problem is agreed upon, innovate away. Chances are, if you’re thorough in your work, solving one problem will uncover another problem to solve.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
“Pioneers take all the arrows.”
Words from my late business partner, Mike Amann. It was a casual comment he mumbled under his breath after a tough meeting. It’s a constant reminder for me that if you’re going to take the road less traveled–the disruptive route–there will be many more obstacles along the way.
“Son, you’re from Erlanger. You’d never survive in the country and you’d never survive in the city. But if you’re smart, you’ll be able to play the line in almost any situation.”
Growing up in a blue collar suburb in Northern Kentucky taught me much about being street smart and dealing with people. These were words my father said to me when I was about 8. I took it to mean that I had an opportunity to find common ground with almost anyone I meet.
“You’re fearless.”
This isn’t really advice, but more of an insightful comment. A fellow creative director told me this after we had finished a brainstorm for a big, well-known client. It was clearly said as a compliment. We were both really excited with the ideas we landed on. In that moment, I also realized that pushing towards new directions can legitimately be scary for some people.
“You can either be afraid to fail or be afraid to succeed.”
Fear is a part of life everyone deals with in the early days of running your own business. Fear gives you a choice. You can let your fear of failure build determination and drive you forward or let your fear of success (and the work that goes into it) keep you from reaching your potential. Pro tip: be afraid to fail.
“You could never work here.”
I’ve heard this from dozens of places I’ve interviewed with or tried to work at. In hindsight, almost all of them probably wouldn’t have known what to do with me, anyway. I tell people all the time that I’m “unhireable.” That’s the real reason I’m an entrepreneur.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Currently, C-90 is focused on expanding to take on more national work. We’re always searching for ambitious clients that want to do some truly interesting work. Recently, we hired our first employee in New York City and are looking to expand our team there.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I mostly read books for self-improvement. Here are four that have shaped me as a designer.
Josef Müller-Brockmann, Grid Systems In Graphic Design
Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Canon
David Carson, The End of Print
Sefan Sagmeister, Things I have learned in my life so far
Two books from pioneering modernists and two books from avant garde designers. All four are classics that walk through design philosophies in meticulous detail. I’ve read all of them multiple times. When I’m creating, it’s rare that I don’t recall some detail from one of these books.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This would have to be the same quote I shared before from my dad. What I didn’t mention before is that moments after saying that, he taught me how to box. Pretty soon, we were bobbing and weaving right in the middle of our kitchen. I think what he was trying to add to the conversation was that even if you do find common ground with others, you still need to balance it by being tough and being able to stick up for yourself.
I think I’ve always had that mentality in work and in life. It fuels my “fearlessness” while allowing me to connect with my clients.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought of myself as a “charismatic leader” per se, but more of a great “worker bee” type that inspires others by example. There are so many people and organizations doing great positive work for social causes, I’d likely team up with someone who’s got some positive momentum.
I’ve had a chance to work indirectly with Parley For The Oceans when I was doing a project with adidas. Parley’s mission inspired me to think differently about cleaning up the oceans and caring for the environment. Maybe I’d do some work with them. Climate change and the environment has to be the biggest global issue, right? The consequences are literally world-ending.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can learn some more about C-90 and see some of our work at c-90.com. We’re on Instagram at @c_90studio. Or you can always email the studio at [email protected] to say hello or start a conversation.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you for having me!
Meet The Disruptors: Chris Ritter Of C-90 On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
