Craig Elimeliah

Craig Elimeliah (0:01)

We are now becoming a community or a race of authors. Authorship becomes the thing we're doing when machines are doing all the grunt work.

SPEAKER_2 (0:14)

From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with Craig Elimeliah about the early days of the Internet and about what AI might mean for designers.

Craig Elimeliah (0:40)

AI has definitely flattened the distance between design and technology.

Debbie Millman (0:49)

Craig Elimeliah is a creative leader whose work has consistently challenged the boundaries between design, technology, advertising, and culture. Over the course of his career, he has helped shape new ways for brands and people to interact, while thinking deeply about how emerging technologies change not only what we make, but how we make it. Today, he is Chief Creative Officer of Code and Theory, where he continues to explore what creativity can become in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

Craig Elimeliah, welcome to this very special episode of Design Matters, live at the Clio's on Culture in New York City.

Craig Elimeliah (1:34)

Thank you, Debbie. Honor to be here.

Debbie Millman (1:37)

Craig, is it true that as a kid growing up in Cheapskate Bay, Brooklyn, you memorized television commercials and covered your bedroom walls with advertisements you cut out of magazines?

Craig Elimeliah (1:49)

This is true. My mother was often very, very angry at me because I would steal all her fashion magazines, her Vogue and Cosmo, and I'd cut them up and reconfigure them without thinking whether she had a chance to read them or not. I thought they were there for me.

Yeah. And for many years at family gatherings, there was always a moment where everyone would just sit around and I would perform TV commercials.

Debbie Millman (2:20)

Really.

Craig Elimeliah (2:20)

It was just something that I felt very connected to. It was something that I understood kind of the persuasion behind them. And I was just very attracted to just sort of the cultural connection they had to people's lives and like a moth to a flame. I was just always extremely interested in communications, really.

Debbie Millman (2:46)

I understand that you singled out the Absolute and Nike campaigns of the 1990s as particularly important to you. Before you knew words like branding or art direction, what were you noticing in that ads beyond the persuasive quality?

Craig Elimeliah (3:03)

Looking back, we didn't have the Internet, and culture needed a language. You needed a common language to be able to speak to other people about culture. For me, that was the common language. My birthday is on February 8th, and it also happens to be every February 8th, Nike would release the new Air Jordan sneakers. And if you're a seven-year-old kid, that's a big deal. And for me, that was how I developed my own culture and design language. It was through the lens of these things that I felt gave me some kind of connection to what the world saw as culture.

Debbie Millman (3:44)

You went to City S School in New York, a public high school built around internships and learning through the city itself.

There you began working inside real companies and organizations while you were still a teenager. What kind of work were you doing?

Craig Elimeliah (4:00)

Some really, really weird stuff. Okay, let's hear about it.

So one internship I had for almost half a year was, I was Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger's private assistant when they were doing Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. So I'd have to run scripts and stuff to their house. So I get to see them in the morning.

Debbie Millman (4:25)

How did she look in the morning?

Craig Elimeliah (4:27)

Flawless. Right?

Debbie Millman (4:28)

Is she not the most beautiful woman?

Craig Elimeliah (4:30)

And I worked on the Sally Jessy Raphael Show logging film.

At the time, I was designing stuff on my own. I didn't yet have a computer. And so everything was cut out and drawn and hand done. But what City of School taught me was the things that would have to go on behind the scenes. And so I quickly learned about how to deal with logistics and production and all the things that went into making a thing. And I think that gave me a tremendous sense of comfort around creative environments.

And I felt myself, some of my friends would go to like Goldman Sachs and some of the, you know, and I was-