About

ABOUT

It all started when my parents handed me my first set of crayons…

… JK. You aren’t here for my life’s story so I’ll try to give you the TL;DR version:

At the age of 11-ish, it was evident that my future held a career in graphic design when I would use Microsoft Paint on our family PC to create HUDs for my imaginary spaceships and create mockups for some strange trading card game that I concocted in my mind. Fast-forward to 2011, I graduated from The College of Visual Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design and procrastination.

From 2011 to 2020 I worked my way up the creative ladder from a Junior Graphic Designer to a Director of Strategy & Creative at cmnd+m—a St. Paul based experience design agency that has brought to life IRL experiences in all shapes and sizes for brands like Google, Target, Beats by Dre, Eero and the Minnesota Wild. During my time with cmnd+m, I led the creative efforts for award winning and nationally recognized design projects in addition to receiving Design:Retail’s 40 Under 40 award (at the age of 29).

For the last couple of years at the agency I found myself increasingly mired in a workload that was more business operations focused than it was creative, and my desire to simply focus on design grew insatiable. As a result, in October of 2020, I decided that it was time to put all of the experience that I gained and the skills that I honed to the test and ventured out on my own to freelance.

Read my Go Solo interview here: https://gosolo.subkit.com/brett-hurlbut/

BRAND EXPERIENCE