Erik Spooner

Erik Spooner is the marketing creative director at Quad, the global marketing experience company, where he oversees the brand identity system for the company, its products and subsidiaries, as well as a creative team that manages dozens of campaigns, events and content efforts each year. Beginning its life as a commercial printer in the 1970s, today Quad integrates its robust printing and production capabilities with traditional advertising, interactive, digital marketing, creative and content production, in-store marketing, media, and packaging capabilities that help every marketer seamlessly perfect their customer experience. Upon joining Quad, Erik led a year-long brand evolution and repositioning with partners at Champions Design that transformed the organization from an industrial vendor to a consultative partner for the entire marketing ecosystem.

As an entrepreneurial creative leader with more than 15 years of experience in the media, entertainment and technology industries, he directs creative strategy and high-performance brand, design and multimedia teams to make award-winning products, experiences, content and images that grow businesses, support strategic pivots, engage audiences and earn critical acclaim. Prior to joining Quad, Erik was creative director for Ad Age, where he oversaw its 2017 redesign and rebranding effort, which helped grow the business more than 20% year-over-year, reinvigorating a nearly-century-old newspaper into a vital, provocative, insightful and influential platform for the world’s most important commercial culture makers. For more than two decades, he worked in newsrooms and magazines as a designer and art director, including: Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, The New York Observer, Discover, InTouch, Life&Style, Closer, Elmore Magazine and many others.

Formerly a member of the board committee for students with the Society of Publication Designers and trustee of the CBYX Alumni Association; currently a trustee or director on the boards of: Art W Global and City Limits News. Other clients have included Teachers College at Columbia University, Time Warner Book Group (now Hachette), RoundGlass, Capstone, and Hammock Inc. From 2012–2015, he was the creative director for Nomad, a mobile content startup that built mobile-first content and campaigns for brands from Shire Pharmaceuticals to Jaguar, building a seven-figure creative business with the founders from the ground up in little more than a year.

Since 2014, Erik has taught classes in the undergraduate Communications Design department at Pratt including Typographic Design I & II, Graphic Design Intensive, Brand & Messaging, and Integrated Visual Communications: Cross-Platform Design. In his work at Quad, he’s also taught in the company’s Trainee University apprenticeship program and led workshops in design thinking and problem-seeking.

BFA, Pratt Institute; MBA, Berlin School for Creative Leadership, Steinbeis University Berlin (in progress, all but thesis).