Credit: This image was generated by Midjourney through prompts by Emily Plewes.

Strategy recently published its 2024 Creative Report Card assessing the best of the best among brands, agencies and creatives in the Canadian advertising industry. To coincide with this year’s CRC, strategy has spoken with many of those who received top marks on this year’s report card, including its top designer, featured below. For more of strategy‘s CRC coverage, read our interview with Rethink’s Aaron Starkman and Sean McDonald, our deep dives into last year’s Kraft Heinz campaigns and Black & Abroad’s “Black Elevation Map” campaign.

#1 Designer: Emily Plewes, Pine (formerly Performance Art)

What’s a fun fact about you?

Through college from 2016 to 2020, I worked as a background actor on movies and TV. I was on The Handmaid’s Tale at one point. And then I worked on Nightmare Alley with Bradley Cooper.

What is your creative process?

It’s a lot of sketching and coming up with completely outlandish and ridiculous ideas. Earlier on I was hoping that things would just come super easily; that the first thing I tried would be a genius, perfect execution. But there’s more to it than that. Lots of trial-and-error, taking breaks, walking away and sleeping on it.

What is the biggest challenge you typically face?

As a designer, you’re inheriting other people’s work or inheriting a project at a pretty late stage, and I think your timelines are not always taken into account. It becomes this mad dash to finish when in reality you’re one of the most important people touching it. But a lot of designers might be like me and claim they do their best work at 3:00am the day before it’s due. Maybe it’s just something to embrace.

What is the most impactful advice you’ve ever received? 

One of my university professors told us to “embrace boredom.” That has really stuck with me. If I have a 30-second break, my knee jerk reaction is to pull out my phone and watch TikTok. But some of your best ideas come from just letting your mind be quiet and wander where it wants to go.

How do you use AI in your work?

I recently spent the better part of an hour scouring stock sites for the perfect image of steam for a mockup in a pitch deck. I eventually turned to Photoshop’s Generative Fill and the output, created within seconds, was actually pretty damn good. I don’t rely on AI for final designs apart from the occasional retouching, but for designers who are often relied upon to be extraordinarily efficient, I think it can be a great ally.