Backpack students sit down with Lecturer Erik Kvålseth to talk about finding creative freedom in weird problems.
Lecturer Erik Kvålseth doesn’t shy away from difficult problems or hard projects — in fact, he prefers them. Rather than chasing easy wins, he gravitates toward work and clients that require ingenuity to reframe familiar challenges in unexpected ways. With nearly three decades in the advertising industry, he has worked across print, radio, digital and social, creating work for brands such as L.L Bean, Harley-Davidson, Northwest Airlines and Ikea.
A creative director, copywriter and lecturer at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kvålseth approaches teaching with industry-tested thinking, emphasizing curiosity, inventive risk and finding the value where others might not look. For him, creativity is about uncovering opportunity in constraints no matter the industry or the restriction.
We sat down with Kvålseth to discuss his mindset to the changing advertising industry, his approach to ideation and why he likes working on the weird stuff.
Backpack: How did you end up at Hubbard?
Erik Kvålseth: I got laid off and was looking on a job board when I decided I wanted to freelance. I was seeing who was hiring because I figured if they’re hiring, they probably need freelancers until they finish hiring, which as a theory worked relatively well for a little while.
Then I saw that the U was hiring for a teacher, and I had taught back at Brainco, a portfolio school, where I really thought it was fun teaching. Even when I was going to college, before I went into Strategic Communication, I thought for a while it might be fun to be a teacher, so I thought, “I should apply for that job.”
It says you don’t have to have a master’s degree — which I didn’t have — you just need industry experience, and I had lots of that. I applied and was offered to be an adjunct professor. I did that for four or five years and then got hired full-time.
B: You describe yourself as someone who likes difficult problems. Where did that mindset come from and how has it shaped your career in advertising?
EK: When I first started in advertising, I wanted to do cool, fun stuff. I worked on projects that I thought were interesting, but every time I worked with a client I thought would be cool because I liked their product, I realized I didn’t like dealing with their problems because they think they’re too cool and I didn’t want to deal with any of that. What I liked instead was working with clients that had really boring products and nothing exciting to say about them. These products were more fun because nobody ever bothers to give them anything creative. Most people just give them something boring, and they’re content with that.
All of a sudden, I can do cool stuff, and they’ll buy that. They don’t have all the layers of people that think they’re cool. I realized that finding solutions to weird marketing problems was more fun. I think there’s a lot more creative freedom in difficult problems than there is in simple ones. That’s why I like working on weird stuff. So give me your weird thing.
B: How has your role as a copywriter and creative director changed since you first started? What do students today need to understand about that shift?
EK: Oh, it’s changed massively. When I first started, almost every ad was a headline with a picture or a photo with a tagline. You worked on print campaigns almost exclusively or newspapers. Now it’s kind of similar again, because everything is social. Something happens, someone posts and you have to respond quickly. You have to come up with an idea, create it and get it out before it feels old. The big idea is still the same. The difference is that before, you had to execute an idea three or four times. Now you have to execute it forty times and have it still feel fresh. The creative process is very similar — but the executional process has changed a lot.
B: What skill helped you adapt to those changes?
EK: Curiosity. That’s really it. I like pushing limits, trying things, breaking things, seeing what works and what doesn’t. That fundamental skill is the single most important thing. When you get a new product, you don’t know anything about it. I try to approach it like a toddler — like I don’t know anything. So tell me, what do you know? Show me everything. I want to know everything about it. What is this thing? Why do you think it’s cool? What’s interesting about it? The more you learn, the more interested you get. The more curious you are, the more you try to keep learning about it. Then the better the ads you make are.
B: What is your Hubbard Hot Take?
EK: Hubbard is too insulated in the middle of the university. It needs to work in more design and art focused concepts for industries that are very focused around trends, fashion and design. The halls feel very university instead of feeling cool and exciting like the art or design school. I think we need that energy in our hallways and it’s not there. Students do a lot of cool, interesting, fun work and it would be great to have more of it up all the time.
To learn more about Erik Kvålseth and his work, visit his CLA faculty profile.
Text by Ashaar Ali, photo by Jessica Chung, Office Hours logo by Reagan Frystak, Backpack students.