Anth is the Creative Head of Surreal. He has worked for various high-profile clients in his career and loves of all things creative (which helps!)
He sings when he gets the chance, would love to write a novel and has been painting for the last two years after a significant hiatus. His influences and styles are poles apart with current works varying from near-photorealism to abstract and loose pallette-knife work.
Anth has a love for automotive and American having owned ridiculous amounts of completely impractical tanks over the years.
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James has been with Surreal since 2009. He has worked on and created many brands, always using a concept in his work, as design without meaning is not design worth caring about.
Outside the madness that is design James loves the madness of martial arts. He enjoys training and competing in Kickboxing, BJJ and MMA. The thought process of any true martial artist is that there is always room for improvement and that nothing is impossible if you try hard. This gives him a positive, can-do attitude in life…if a little of a no nonsense, no frills approach to many other things.
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Jason is Surreal’s ‘Business Alchemist’. It’s a pretty snappy title, but we think it describes what he does quite nicely. He firmly believes what we do here does involve a little bit of modern day magic, a spark that creates a connection with you and your audience.
Jason originally trained as a graphic artist and won some splendid design awards before moving through the ranks and ultimately spending the last six years as a successful Marketing Director.
When he’s not trying to figure out Google’s algorithm you can find Jason mostly wearing unfeasibly large headphones playing great music in great venues across the country.
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Ben wouldn’t do it if he didn’t enjoy it and that goes for everything he does. Whether it’s cycling or walking, playing and listening to music, reading or writing, if he chooses to do it, it’s because he loves it.
As one of the founding members of Surreal of course he was apprehensive at first, but the safe way isn’t always the best way and he was ready for the new challenge. It was a steep learning curve and since then Ben’s role has gone through many transitions and reinventions to get the team and himself where they are today.
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Andrew can fill a blank space with something noteworthy. Often this can be a far more mechanical process than he first imagines, he finds creative success in the preparation, be that the research and thought, or basically looking at something from as many openings, alternatives and angles and then pressing play.
In his spare time, Bruce Wayne, stylee he is the Editor of Under The Influence magazine, an internationally published highly cool type-of-a-read. Andrew likes Woody Allen’s quote and continues to stick by it, ‘80 per cent of success is showing up.’ But his favourite quote though is from Dr Gonzo himself, “You can’t hoard fun. It has no shelf life.”
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Before entering such a surreal environment Jamie had worked as a Music Promoter, Visual Artist and Guerilla Marketeer, [you may well have seen him decorating roundabouts and slip roads with signs for the next big gig...].
An appreciation of brilliant aesthetics combined with clever conceptual approaches led Jamie to the design world. Apart from a passion for loveliness, Jamie like’s to mountain bike, keep chickens and hunt for carrots in his veg patch.
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Michelle is the youngest member of the team. She has her sights set on a career in numbers and accounts and we’ll be with her every step of the way.
She has a hunger for travelling, languages and loves to dance. If that’s with friends in the early hours or at classes every Friday she’ll be right in there in the middle of it all. She also likes to show her ‘creative’ side by drawing in her spare time.
michelle@surrealcreative.co.uk
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A lover of all things creative and clever Tom is always looking for the next big thing and how this can be applied to clients’ business needs. His favourite quote by Steve Jobs sums his thinking perfectly “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
Before joining Surreal Tom has worked as a digital marketer and event manager. Growing up he wanted to be a rock-star. These days the hair is shorter and he only picks up the axe when he’s not busy making bread in his kitchen.
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I am the Surreal Ian Smith, everything that surrounds me is a true reflection of myself.
