The Power in Your Perspective with Anastasia Simone

Interview by Leah Morris.

Senior Art Director Anastasia Simone has come up against the ‘spiky walls’ that many opinionated women face in creative communications. Now, with plenty of career wins under her belt, she champions the value of her perspective – this article is an invitation for you to do the same. 

The art-based creative believes we need less thought leaders who can’t do, and more doers who make time to think (let that sink in). In her words: “No one is better positioned to form opinions than the people with their hands on the work.” 

It’s these opinions that have seen her influence the Hong Kong government to definitively ban the ivory trade (via WWF), build a virtual kitchen to preserve home-cooked Cantonese recipes, and create a shopping cart to fight childhood obesity in the UAE among many other challenges. 

If you didn’t catch her at SXSW this year (talking to indie game developers about art direction), here’s your ten-minute download from one of our industry’s finest minds. 

Of all the jobs in the world, how did you come to be a Senior Art director? 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been good at anything creative, and pretty objectively bad at everything else ;) Growing up I drew a lot, painted, I made bands with my friends, organised photoshoots, performed in local theatre, edited and animated Naruto AMVs. I sucked at math, but I learned to code so I could design pages for my Neopets. So I’ve always been on this track, have known I would do something creative, even though I didn’t know it could be a career.

I earned my BFA in Advertising at Savannah College of Art & Design (Hong Kong), where I met my creative partner, Jay. We got each other’s style, were aligned in our values, and saw the world through two different perspectives that brought out the best of us both. We spent senior year building our portfolio, collaborating with other students to film spec ads, shoot campaigns. Looking back, I think we sweated it, but we learned a lot of craft. .

In the end, we had some spec campaigns that really showed the way we think. We landed our first gig as a junior creative team at Geometry Global, Ogilvy’s activation agency at the time, and kicked off our careers with a very cool brief from WWF, which eventually became “The Last Word”. It’s probably still my favourite project to date.

What do you love most about your job? 

Once your wacky and wonderful idea is sold, people ask “Okay… so what does making this actually look like”. Finding that answer is one of my favourite things about being an art director. My easily-distracted-and-then-very-obsessive brain gets to tackle something absolutely new every day.

I like that there’s no real definition for an idea, no guardrails (unless someone convinces you there is) for what shape the answer has to take. So I can spend months obsessing over Black hair in video games, interviewing devs, creating toolkits and definitions for hairstyles I’ve taken for granted; and then the next brief finds me brewing a local beer, taste-testing hops, learning about altitude and taste buds so we can organise a beer tasting at 35,000 feet. Every project is a reflection of the things I find interesting, and I get to learn a lot when I dig in.

We know that neurons that aren’t firing forget how to fire. Being an art director keeps me curious.

In 2022, you earned your place in the See It Be It cohort which took you to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity – you wrote a great reflection about it on your blog. What’s one thing that’s stayed with you from that experience? 

Vulnerability was key for me that first year: Being open to sharing more of myself in my work and with my peers. I started mentoring, volunteering, writing, and generally putting more of myself out there in the world, understanding that I can still inspire someone even though I’m very much a work in progress myself. 

Being vulnerable has definitely meant bumping against spiky walls. There are plenty of places in advertising where people do not appreciate a Black girl speaking up about the racism and sexism that are baked into our processes. But what’s really stayed with me is that I don’t feel like I have to prove the value of my perspective any more.

Now I understand that my perspective is always an added value, and that when I’m in rooms that would have absolutely no access to a voice like mine otherwise, the benefit of my experiences is their privilege to lose.

You’ve worked on some massive brands including Uber Eats, IKEA, Fiji Airways and Cathay Pacific. Which piece (or pieces) of work are you most proud of and why? 

I’m still most proud of “The Last Word”, which Jay and I created for WWF Hong Kong. It continues to be one of my favourite examples of how a small change to culture can make a long-lasting impact.

The insight was simple. In Chinese, “tooth” and “tusk” have the same character, leading to widespread misunderstanding that an elephant’s ivory can come out naturally, like a tooth. To convince the Hong Kong government to ban the ivory trade, we decided to change the language.

We created a minisite, where over seven thousand people submitted suggestions for a new character for “ivory”. This new character would communicate the vital nature of an elephant’s tusk, as well as the violence of removing it. Four months later, armed with a new word for ivory, we delivered over 65,000 signatures to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. That day, they banned the ivory trade.

I love that this idea created an opening for people to rewrite their own culture. I’m a big questioner of tradition, and this idea underlined how small but intentional changes to the things we take for granted can mean a better future for all of us.

You’ve served on the D&AD creative jury in 2022 and again in 2023 – which isn’t easy because creativity can be so subjective. What did you learn about your personal taste when it comes to the craft? 

I learned that I have a low tolerance for hyperbole, haha.

 So much goes into a well-crafted idea, and for it to land, everyone who touches the work pours in a lot of heartfelt, meaningful effort. But an easy way to poison its potential is to build your idea on an untrue, wish-it-were-true, only-in-adland-true, foundation. My favourite ideas start with an insight that’s familiar to its audience, fresh to everyone else, and tells you why this campaign is the perfect way, even the only way, to make the most of that perspective.

 There were promising submissions that were held back by an insight that was much bigger, or less true, than the idea which followed. Insights don’t have to present a massive problem to solve, they just need to be insightful. I learned that seamlessness from your insight into your idea plays a critical role in craft.

 A great idea is sticky in your guts, because it begins with something absolutely true, said in a way you haven’t really articulated before. The unusual perspective is important, a lot of agencies lean in to it. The truthful element is a must.

Is there a piece of advice or wisdom you can share with our readers that has served you well in your career? 

There’s a line I love in Hamilton, “If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?” (originally, “Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything”.)

Creative industries are full of flashy opinions about how to create and quantify creativity, formed by people who can’t make the work. The thing about opinions is that if you don’t have one, someone will form one for you. And as a busy creative, it’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of making things, pushing them out, making things, pushing them out, without stopping to think about your processes, what you’ve learned, why you approached things a certain way, what you would like to try next.

We need less thought leaders who can’t do, and more doers who make time to think. No one is better positioned to form opinions than the people with their hands on the work, so my piece of wisdom for creatives is to actively and intentionally engage in the how and why of what you’re making.

View Anastasia’s work here.