Kean University alumnus illustrates global ad campaign for Ketel One Vodka

By Craig Epstein | Published by October 17th, 2019

Kean University alum Max Friedman graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in Graphic Design. His passion for graphic design has taken him from places like Korea and Mexico to areas in London and Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Just recently, Friedman illustrated the global ad campaign for Ketel One Vodka.

“I was just in the right place at the right time. Ketel One was extremely excited about an illustrated approach,” Friedman said. “I was doing all the sketches for the campaign and the client fell in love with the style.”

Tasked with designing advertisements that were going to be seen on a global scale, Friedman worked on the illustrations for about six months.

“It involved lots of sketching, ideation, and refining trying to nail the tone and style of the work to make it feel unique and special,” Friedman said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever illustrated work on this scale. It’s very different illustrating something for my Instagram page versus illustrating something that’s going on a 60-foot billboard in London.”

Coming out of college, Friedman began his career at Droga5, a New York City-based advertising agency.

“The day before graduation I won a portfolio competition in New York and while there I met someone who worked at this agency called Droga5,” Friedman said. “He showed my work to their boss and they called me the next day asking if I wanted a job.”

Friedman would go on to become Design Director for Fig Agency, a marketing and advertising company based in New York, where he works on many different projects for multiple brands.

“A lot of times we look at big brands like Ketel One, Spotify, and Puma and figure out how they want to look and sound to the world, how they’ll stand out against competitors, and how to creatively push them to the forefront of culture,” Friedman said. “Other times we do one-off creative projects like a big stunt or film for a brand to talk about something new they’re doing.”

Some of Fig Agency’s clients include Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Benjamin Moore, Casper, CNN, Diageo, and Vimeo. According to its website, it was named as one of Inc Magazine’s Best Places to Work in the U.S. and honored in the Ad Age Agency A-List in both 2018 and 2019. It was included in the Inc 5000, which is the definitive list of the fastest growing privately held companies in America.

“FIG was born in 2013 from a desire to create a smarter, more nimble alternative to the traditional agency model,” its website states. “We believe that stories are the best way to convey information and persuade people so we have built our thoroughly modern agency to deliver on this.”

As it also states on its website, Fig Agency sees itself as “Storytellers for the Information Age” and is looking to raise the bar in the graphic design industry by “improving the quality and effectiveness of the stories told.”

While Friedman enjoys getting to create and design images for others to see, he originally was not sure graphic design was going to be his life’s calling. It was not until high school that his mother Marci Friedman, who occasionally works with Kean as a sign language interpreter, brought him in to meet Professor Christopher Navetta where he became hooked.

“I’ve always liked art and creating things, but for a while, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do,” Friedman said. “My mother’s a sign language interpreter so sometimes she interprets different collegiate courses and when I was in high school she was interpreting for this deaf graphic design student and brought me in to talk to Professor Christopher Navetta who ended up being a really good friend of mine.”

In his senior year of college, Friedman created three books for Pearson Publishing along with Navetta. He has also released an experimental photo book titled “Things You Know” which focuses on Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York and wrote an untitled film that he is looking to bring to life soon.

As for what Friedman is looking to do next, he is taking things one step at a time and trying not to think too far ahead. His main concern is about what the next project is going to entail.

“I want to get the Ketel to work out into the world and see how people like it,” Friedman said. “I’m always thinking about the next project or the next thing I want to do.”

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