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this. Fireside are aoj design and
future of design. Now, it is my pleasure to
welcome, Vinnie at Johnson & J's, executive director today is
against Rusev. Steroids, vice president brand
creative for Sesame Workshop, any holiday, greetings, everyone
and Welcome to our last Fireside of this year.
We're going to explore leadership in design and we
thought what better way to end our year with a way in which
many of us began our year in thinking about creativity and
Innovation from the start. It only takes these words to
bring a smile to minis face. Face face it.
Sunny day sweeping the clouds away on my way to where the air
is sweet. Just the mention of those words,
bring back fond memories of our childhood of our Parenthood of
our experience. That bring a delight to our
face. So today we're going to have as
our guest none. Other than Teresa Fitzgerald who
serves as the VP of creative brand for Sesame Workshop.
The education nonprofit behind the educational organization
that we love Sesame Street, she leads the in-house brand,
creative team, which is dedicated with this mission of
helping kids grow stronger, smarter and kinder.
Theresa has spent a career developing creative to entertain
and educate, and engage young minds prior to Sesame.
She oversaw design and branding vision from Nickelodeon Snoopy
and peanut Scholastic Mattel and National Geographic.
She's been an Adjunct professor in New York at NYU teaching
design and working with educational team members at the
Smithsonian cooper-hewitt supporting design in the
classroom. She's been a guest speaker at
all of the leading design schools.
She's always been committed to problem-solving mind evolving
and pulling it down to the Bears essence of creativity.
So today, I'd like to welcome to reach of his journal to our
fireside chat. Thank you.
My friend. Yeah, nice intro.
Well, it's good to have you have you have to have a good intro.
So I, you know I say it injects quits there's so many times when
you hear those lyrics and it kind of sums up with the break
point of, can you Tell me how to get how to get to Sesame Street.
So, I'm a dad. So I'm allowed in this season to
have a ton of dad puns in this conversation, okay?
So we want to start off with your design journey.
And the big question is, how did you come to this role?
You've been at Sesame Street for over a decade?
How did you end up at Sesame Street?
First, I want to thank you for having me, and it's kind of a
nice week to wind down with a celebrating design and
creativity. Um, so I grew up in Upstate New
York, in a family, big family, where creativity was celebrated,
you know, we were all encouraged to make paint draw all the
things, and I knew at a young age, I wanted to be an artist.
You know, I wanted to be maybe an illustrated children's book
illustrator, I just loved children's book, illustration.
So all the all the way through high school, I was always
drawing. And when it came to pick a
college of study, I went to Rochester Institute of
Technology which, you know, for me was a minute was a great
selection is a strong design College.
You know, design, a strong design education.
I'm very different than children's book illustration
where I was Just, you know, Swiss modern by house thinking
so it's really that combination of you know love of character
and story telling and then getting introduced to corporate
identity and Design Systems that brought me to New York City.
And I've continued to all my jobs have been working for kids,
working for kids in the entertainment field.
Field working with characters and story telling.
So it's really been kind of a straight path for me.
Oh, whoa. You know, they say a say that
was many times we have conversations and we talked
about the Securities routes baby come in.
But, you know, I love our conversations about you having
this fake Focus. You knew you wanted to work with
kids. That's right.
You should then design. So you get a chance to work with
some of the Most beloved characters in our world.
How is that on the day to day to wake up and work with characters
that we all can recite their name songs and can draw them
from memory and think about the colors and where we were, when
we first learned how to count, right?
I mean, so I've worked with a lot of characters.
So, you know, one of the first ones that I did was I worked at
Scholastic working on children's books, illustrating and
designing. There's books at Scholastic and
then working United feature Syndicate directly with Charles
Schulz and Snoopy and the Peanuts Gang and so really
working with art and designing, with his characters, which was
really exciting to work directly with him.
And then going to Nickelodeon where, you know, they the
content they create is so fun and dynamic working there during
the the big ears of SpongeBob and Dora and the Rugrats which
was, you know, having the strong characters and then creating
Brands around those characters and and now working at Sesame
Workshop where the Muppets have a 50 Year, you know, there
they've been on TV for 50 years. And there's such like you said,
such a strong connection with those characters.
So not only capturing the Delight in the personality of
those characters, but then creating Brands systems and You
know, Design Systems that work across all the platforms.
So my team and I have the great privilege of working with a kind
of small in-house team. We have designers sculptors
character designers, illustrators and animators, and
in every platform, every medium, you need the characters to
communicate. Who they are, which, you know,
true to their personality, in each area to work on consumer
products and educational, materials and games.
You know, we have a range of audiences.
We create content for kids for families, for B2B, for fans for
donors. So, So we're constantly
harnessing that love of the characters and creating content
for different audiences. What do you find is the biggest
challenge of having, you know, such history with the
characters. But you're always finding these
fresh ways for the characters of show up in our lives.
I think about your Partnerships with Lego, your Partnerships
with bomb bus with the socks. The game is entirely New Life to
this character library that we already know.
But what do you find the most challenging or the most
inspirational part of that? So, I mean the most
inspirational part is it's a purpose-driven organization.
So as a non-profit as really with the gold in improve the
lives of kids that after a long career working with kids
content, it's really rewarding to have purpose I'd patch.
So it's not just Eating delighted joy and Delight.
It's really, then also having it connect to Value, you know,
really having social impact, somehow connected to everything.
We do part of the challenges constantly.
Evolving the characters in new ways in New in new design,
expressions in news stories while staying true to To who
they are. So I feel like people who love
our brand. I mean, they know they'll let us
know if we think we go too far. Like if we feel like we're
stretching our characters too far or it doesn't feel right but
Sesame from the beginning, it's been an experiment.
It was an experiment to use media to educate and it's still
where we push ourselves is to identify.
Identify the needs of kids and then create content to improve
their lives. It's I want to call out, you
know, really one of the moments. It's been just incredible for
for the work, you're doing and your team and look at some of
the stats that have come in. It's amazing.
That 75 percent of parents have a deep trust and Sesame Street,
and that's higher than our trust value.
In any other entertainment or preschool Brandt, But it won't
leave it there. I will then make you blush a bit
and quote from the Wall Street Journal in moments of Crisis,
people often gravitate to institutions they trust.
It goes back to that 75% and few American institutions are more
trusted than Sesame Street. We talking about preparing and,
and navigating the brand for where your audience and
community and kids need you, one of the things that I thought was
really powerful was the way that Sesame Street stepped up.
In this last 24 months, as we've all been in this moment of
pandemic crisis, but really embraced parents and kids.
We talked a little bit about what that meant for you is a
brand. Yeah, sure, I mean, again from
the beginning, from the, they called it an experiment, right?
It was the first show of can think of the 1969.
The founders thought that they would harness the the Of
Television to educate in it. It seems so common now but that
was really a revolutionary idea at the time is using using
television to educate kids. And from the beginning they used
celebrities and parodies and kind of content that's written
on a couple levels so that parents and kids could watch
Watch together because they they learned over time that the
learning is much better when kids and adults watched, you
know, watch TV together Co viewing so.
Well kids may not be aware of who the celebrities are or what
the parodies are. Getting at, that was a way to
have the parents day and view with the kids during the last
two years. When covid, you know, first
first, you know, when it was spreading clearly disruptor and
all our worlds. But especially for parents of
young children for education purposes and then it just
explaining difficult, abstract ideas to kids.
So taking these important issues and writing them in a way that
If they can make sense to, you know, three-year-old, right?
So that is what the Muppets that's, that is really what the
Muppets are so good at is taking this complex information and
right thing in a way that is digestible for kids, and then
parents can have bigger conversations around these
difficult topics. So we rush to create content,
what we called caring for each other and Was around, you know,
why do you need to wear a mask? Can you hug your grandmother?
You know, all the things that a little a little kid would you?
No wonder about why these changes are happening.
And then we went into the summer of social unrest which has
really again changed, our culture, changed our
conversations and it really tapped into our roots of
address. Saying racial Justice really
bringing in creating content to help explain these difficult
moments. I know way that, you know, gives
parents language and it gives kids understanding of, you know,
how we want to live. I it's, you know, it's
remarkable when you think about it, all of those cold viewing
experiences that I know, Remember a my family from being
a kid on the other side and being a parent, it's passing
through, you know, at Sesame Workshop.
You always had a history of having leading into these
important and challenging conversations with story and
character. You know, if the heart of the
design in space in there, over the last, you've been with me
for about we will check the saying before but 12 years cut.
Yeah, and your team is responsible for creating.
My son is super excited about this one.
I told him that It that your team has a hand in helping to
shape the creation of new Muppets.
That's alright, I'll talk about some of the recent Muppets and
their role as both agents of understanding and storytellers
sir. So again, you know, so much of
what we do now is really based on those early experiments
experiments. So, everything we do at Sesame
is purpose-driven and what happens is, Is the Educators and
researchers identify the needs of kids.
They really go out and say, what are we struggling with then?
And they look at the current cast, you know, our regular
character that we have and the people on the show and to see
like, oh can we chat? Can we reach this audience and
these these topics of need with our current cast and And there
are times we cannot and so we that, you know, the Creative
Group works with research and education.
And we get the criteria of what we're trying to solve and then
they content as written and there's a decision to possibly
make a new Muppet. And this happens.
Sesame Street is an international program.
We have over 30 co-productions around the Old.
So we've been doing this again over our whole history.
We have a show in South Africa, that's 20 years old and that new
Muppets were created for that, show at that time.
It was when HIV, there was a one in four people had HIV.
So they created a muppet that had HIV that could teach
tolerance and understanding, which was something In their
culture in the Middle East where you know, girls education is, is
a challenge. We've created girl Muppets to
encourage and model education for girls.
So over time, we often will create a new Muppet if there's a
need and there's a story that can't be told through our our
existing cast. So With the recent current
events and social justice, we found we need more friends than
our neighborhood that can, you know, help tell some of our
stories. So we created Gabriella, and to
mirror and their new Muppet that were that are in, they were in a
special called The Power of we. And it's part of an initiative.
We're doing really to talk about About social justice while we
have a history of being a diverse neighborhood, somewhere.
Everyone's welcome, we found that this new era we needed to
be more direct and to have more direct conversations.
Being kind is fundamental to who we are, but we needed more than
kindness. We need language to explain You
know, where we are and how we want to grow.
And then there's also the west and Elijah who was created for,
you know, additional content and they're on the show.
So, we also just had a special over Thanksgiving called, see us
coming together where we had Korean Muppet, who was a new new
eight-year-old, girl, Girl, who's new to the neighborhood
and helps? You know, she is talking about
her background. So how you know, it's amazing,
just the scope of the work to you have.
How do you Foster and continue people?
Get excited about this Rich collaboration.
I think you said so wait, what is the question?
But how do you how do you keep people excited about
collaborating at this level? If you have a hyper level of
collaboration we do we have we have over 700 Partners around
the world. That either work with consumer
products or sponsorships. And like you said, I think the
power of The brand and the deep emotional connection.
People have to the characters is a magnet for a possibility and
for these different collaborations.
So, you know, it's a combination of people come to us as a
non-profit. There's there's certain
limitations on how we can present ourselves Different than
you know, right? Then you know, I'm more
commercial company. So often Partnerships come to
us. It's hard for us to shop around
right chefs. Yeah, but it's it seems that,
you know, as we've talked and we've seen the Partnerships,
you're always doing ones that reinforce the mission that you
can see why these Partnerships make sense.
Yeah, it looks like the character arak, you know, we
don't see Cookie Monster outside of him.
Yeah, that's right. And we always say that the
characters, you know, while they may, if we do our job, well, we
partner with care with brands that both Brands get the list
from from their strengths. But we always say the characters
don't do business like they are always model, they do not sell
products, they do not promote, you know, Commerce, They are
always, you know, Elmo's the three and a half year old
monster so he's always throwing a half years old.
He doesn't know. Right, you know, he doesn't know
anything outside of his world and what doesn't have a favorite
car, but he's promoting, he does.
I don't know. I don't believe he does get the
do now. Do you have a favorite Muppet
to? Oh my goodness.
I've been asked that question so many times this week.
So I have a, I have a handful that are my favorite.
So definitely a Grover. That's probably a little kid.
I remember reading. There's a monster at the end of
the book. It's good fun.
And yeah, it's a polar alert for those who watch and who don't
know, Grover's the monster at the end of the book
mind-blowing, I know you didn't see that one coming but those
are incredible. I I love a be in terms of kind
of young new characters. My daughter really appreciated
that. You know, growing up.
I loved I Love Snuffy and I love the fact.
You know I remember the conversations about you know
teaching kids that he wasn't imaginary friend that he was
real and that that space to go into it and the ways in which,
you know, Sesame and the brand work through those
conversations. So those are my favorites.
I do love the classic ones. I love the monsters that have no
names that are just random monsters.
Yeah, we call them everything muffin.
Muppets. Now I have a name for them.
They were random monsters in my house.
Yeah, that's right. But I love them.
But how about you? I, you're probably not allowed
to have a favorite. I have a fan Grover, see that?
Yeah. We hang out together.
Yeah. No.
I love Grover. I think he's so goofy.
And then I also am a fan, a big bird.
Yes. And I think my favorite new one
is. Conger and enough, she no
longer. Is it really funny?
Oh, seat now get to spend more time if figure out the wonderful
space in there. So when you think about
Innovation, what's next for you and your team, what do you, what
do you thinking about? I think the Innovation for us
comes with continue continuing with the formula that works.
So it's Muppets. We always are, like, Muppets
media and my mission. It's those, those three things
are Are the three four elements that make, you know, make the
Brand's. But then it's always looking for
new Partnerships that amplify it.
So We right now as a designer as brand creative we are investing
in really lifting the brand creative.
We're working with a lot of external agencies right now.
We're working with open, Scott's do well, the agency and he are
we've been updating our brand book Which is now going to be a
deep web site for a Sesame Street and linking Sesame Street
with it, you know, providing all the information with the assets.
So it's that it's the onboarding of the Heritage, the mission,
the culture, and then, you know, all the elements that go into
branding the logos. You know how Do my pet
photography. How to how do you do the
writing? What is the tone?
What are they attributes? We are creating Sesame, Street
and Sesame, Workshop, motion branding, something we've never
really had our history with working with PBS is, we would
give our content to a distributor and they would put
it In their Brand. Packaging in the complex media
landscape globally. We need to package our content
more than we have in the past, okay?
So that it's recognizable. So that that you know it can
stand out of the Clutter of so much content.
There's so much content for kids now.
So we're creating brand systems there we Are just in the
process. We work with Smith's design on
updating our consumer products, packaging system, that's a
global system that again, works with over 500 Partners around
the world. It has to adapt up to 12
languages. It's hard and soft goods and
e-commerce. So we're just what its gonna
save me. You speak about this really
complex web. Of all of the content assets and
design resources. I've seen ask the question
again, in terms of story arc and characters.
How much Transfer. An interaction takes place
between story, our Civic with the 30 properties that you have
in different countries and spaces.
There are a lot of what we may experience here in the US that
passes over the South Africa and back and forth or their stories
that are kind of amplify or localized and other characters
that follow through. Now that's it, that is a great
question. I mean where we are looking at,
Creating content that works globally, okay?
But that doesn't replace Regional content that is
specific to that region and to those Muppets that speak to that
audience. So we're trying to get more
intentional of creating Global content that can be used across
different territories and then continued to make regional
content. That really speaks to that
audience but it is a complex system because if you you know
if we have Elmo do something here in the in the state's you
know, will that work in Germany or Japan or you know China South
Africa you know it's it is a matrix and that's why I talked
about that brand. Website that we have is it's
really a central. You know, we haven't had a
central service for our Global Partners to work with so we're
really growing how we communicate and standardize our
our brand so that when we ask people to stretch it you know
and it's really the excellent Partners we have help.
Keep us, fresh innovate us but we need to stay true to the
roots. So we've been investing in how
to make that, you know, easier and more consistent.
I think that's, you know, that's a really powerful lesson for
those listening. How you're right at the front
lines of dealing with that creative tension between
Innovation, Innovation and Legacy and you can see the pull
and when you guys hit it spot-on, we you know you have
something new but it's still is fresh and refreshing.
Is that the message the message? So, when you think about, you
know, making kids smarter, how how are you working with
Educators these days as as educator as education, evolves,
how our Educators role in the content creation, evolving for
you? so everything we do is really
begins and I feel like ends with education, I mean the the
beginning is, they identify the needs, they identify the
curriculum and then it goes to this, this system of the
creative takes it and and, you know, has to deliver on that but
have to do it with delight and humor so it doesn't feel so it
doesn't I feel like we always say, it doesn't feel like eat
your broccoli, it feels like you're actually having fun food,
you know, you put it doesn't feel like punishing.
I mean, I like broccoli. Just so, you know, I like
broccoli, too. I know.
I know that Cookie Monster also eats vegetables.
That's right. That's right, that's right.
There are sometimes food but so I think with education, I mean
again because we're an educational nonprofit and
everything. Us to deliver on that whether
you feel it or not. It's really the Partnerships we
have and how we can stretch that content, you know, or the new
stories. I mean again you know our Comer
coming together. Content is really talking about
social justice and how we can help kids and parents and Care
takers have language to answer questions.
And and You know, grow grow the culture really well.
One of the Hallmarks of great design and great designers is
empathy and I know through the work that you're doing in making
students Kinder and more empathetic.
Can I say that you're actually helping us grow future
designers? Amazing, you know, we think
about no, it's true, it's true, you know, being a better
listener being Areas about the other experience.
Yeah, so our fun questions of this.
So we're going into the holiday, season's end of the year.
What are you? My friend looking forward to
doing the next couple of weeks. Aha, we were just talking about.
That's right. So due to the current spike, it
seems like holiday plans are a little more simple than they
were. So I am hoping to work on some
creative projects here. In Brooklyn.
So one of the things I've taken almost more that's one of the
things I like to do over the last two years that I've started
to wilt. And so what I love about it is
taking a very modern simple approach, kind of this, the
Swiss, you know, modern design and combining it with like the
classic craft of quilting. And there's something really
satisfying, it after being unzoom all week, being in
conversations all week and being on the computer, there's
something really soothing about making, you know, touching
materials and experimenting with shapes.
I'm going to share what my daughter has been working on.
And so, we're going to finish this over holiday break.
Yeah, we can see that we're working on this side.
This is the Lego Sesame Street. That's right.
Unit set that my daughter has been building and we're going to
take some time over break to work on together.
Well, that's amazing. So it's as we said before, it's
Sesame provides, these opportunities for us, to
continue to grow and learn and as a family.
Now, I asked a bit about, you know, your team as you think
about your team going into the new year, how are you all
working together better in this new way of work?
Look, I'm so glad you asked about my team because I am in
their one of their, they're a team of talent there.
It's really such a great group, there's creative talent, but
they all have huge hearts and big kindness for each other and
generosity in in their creative and how they work together.
And And so your question is how are we working together?
I think we've adapted nicely to this time of working remotely.
Moving into this you know the lockdown in 2020.
We were not a remote company at all and we we have adapted and
actually I mean honestly the going back to the office will be
you know, it'll be an adjustment now.
I mean for me I think I miss a little bit of the
cross-pollination. You can get by being in a room
and sharing ideas and and just the energy.
But, you know, I think in some ways we get more done at home,
it's interesting. You know, you talk about the
energy, well, that's where Sesame Street started and the
workshop model with the children's television Workshop.
We're bringing everyone together.
That's right. I'm storming and creating ideas.
Yeah. And now we have this new world.
So you've got this tension of creating new ideas and new
spaces. Well, as we look into 2022, what
encouraged me to do you have for the rest of your designers?
Out there in the world. Well, first of all I hope
everyone has a restful holiday. I think, you know, II know it's
been an exhausting year. I mean, I know at Sesame
Workshop. We have had the Good Fortune of
expanding and growing and lots of opportunity.
We're constantly working on I'm things we haven't done before
and what that means is people are tired, you know, they need a
long winter break, they really. So I hope they get that and time
with their families. I do look forward.
I mean, again, the first six months to the year, we have a
lot of exciting brand projects that will be finishing, will be
sharing with partners and implementing.
And we're creating a lot of, you know, a lot of style guides and
then working with Partnerships to get those style guides
bringing them to life. So I think one of the challenges
we're growing we're not enough for this.
Still a growing resources, but we're growing responsibilities,
right? So we've been asking everyone to
stretch and hopefully our operations grow to meet
immediately expanded work because it is We're we're, we're
asking a lot of the creative team.
Well, I will speak for all of the notes that I received in
emails, and we announced that we were going to be talking with
you and sesame that the world is ready and open to receive the
stretch for one of the most beloved Brands and collections
of characters. It's been fun to have all of the
responses and people talking about how much Sesame and and
most recently, your work has meant to them and to the design
community. A T-cell.
I'd like to thank you for joining us for this Fireside.
It's hard to believe that there were already at the end.
Once again our guest today has been magic maker Storyteller,
future design Creator, team leader award winning creative
leader, Theresa Fitzgerald Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for, for your leadership and sesame and giving
us all Delight learning and care to look forward to Thank you so
much. We'll catch up next time.
I can't wait to see what the Muppets do next.
All right. Well, will say happy new year.
Happy New Year and thank you all for joining us for our fireside
chat. This has been leadership in
design. Thank you.