I have been a huge fan of John Jay, Wieden and Kennedy's, Executive Creative Director for quite some time. A designer, taste-maker, visionary, incubator, instigator and mentor - with a supernatural instinct for creating beauty and what lies just beyond the public's perception of Now.
A few decades ago, John was working in New York as Bloomingdale's creative director and was tapped by Dan Wieden to bring his eye for elegance and grace to campaigns they were working on for Nike. Dan's idea of bringing in someone outside of the advertising industry to creatively drive Nike's visual language was nothing short brilliance. John's passion and drive was evident from the start and he has been inspiring and informing W+K's creativity culture internally and externally ever since.
Taking his vision and experience globally, he expanded W+K into Tokyo in 1998 and Shanghai in 2003. The Tokyo studio, W+K Tokyo Labs, in particular, has become a hotbed of experimentation and has been a key factor in spreading the hip-hop aesthetic into Asia. He now divides his time between those two offices and his base in Portland, where he plays a quiet role in the emergence of the city's exciting arts, design and music scenes.
Recently he was names as one of Fast Company's Top 100 Most Creative People in Business 2011. A video of his creative philosophy can be seen here.
