Max Sawka
Max has spent just shy of 20 years in the design and advertising world. He started as a copywriter and is now Managing Director at OneMethod, where he’s helped lead everything from creating La Carnita to designing Scotiabank Arena.
In a surprisingly-not-too-distant former life, he was a mid-level graffiti writer who travelled the world painting words on trains. Outside of those things, he has two wonderful kids, terrible posture, and not a whole lot else going on.
I spent twenty years of my life addicted to painting graffiti on trains. Then I got arrested.
At that point I truly thought my life was over, but the truth is that this was in many ways the beginning for me because I was finally forced to apply my graffiti mindset to all the the other things in my world.
This talk explores some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my graffiti days and how they’ve translated to the biggest milestones of my career, which include winning dozens of international design & advertising awards, running a world-class and ever-growing studio, and even a few fresh takes on parenting. It also features a handful of key learnings from other notable artists (MF Doom, Virgil Abloh, and Kaws) who have translated graffiti thinking into their careers.
