Life & Work with Liran Federmann

Today we’d like to introduce you to Liran Federmann.

Hi Liran, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Relocating to Nashville has been on my mind since autumn of 2020. My sister is a singer/songwriter currently based out of Boston (my original hometown), and she’s visited Nashville several times for business and networking in the past. Each time she has always returned home with rave reviews of the city.

I graduated from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts this past May. I studied Communications Design, a rigorous program through which I learned how to think up and execute creative solutions for logos, brands, packaging, websites, advertising campaigns, mobile apps, and even exhibition spaces. I was a young designer ready to make my mark, and the more I thought about Nashville as a post-grad option, the more appealing of a starting point it was.

Shortly after my graduation, my friends and I took a road trip around the southeast, starting in New Orleans and bouncing around from Louisiana to Mississippi to Nashville to Atlanta to South Carolina, up to Virginia, and finally home to Boston again. Of our group, I insisted on stopping in Nashville. Looking back, it was definitely the right decision. I’m a visual person (as most designers typically are) and actually seeing Nashville and getting a sense of the city as well as how to navigate it was enormously beneficial. I saw the colorful murals of East Nashville, the lively bars in Midtown, and the full-size Parthenon in Centennial Park. Everyone was so incredibly welcoming and kind, and I loved all of it.

Following my road trip, I immediately began researching, targeting, and applying to small design and marketing agencies in and around Nashville. LinkedIn became my best friend. Once I was able to identify a Creative Director at a particular agency I liked, I messaged them. After reaching out to about twenty Nashville agencies, I decided to travel down, here again, this time for business. Armed with personalized business cards I had printed a few weeks prior, I flew down to put a face to the name on my applications. I was able to organize only two meetings in advance, but I had upwards of fifteen agencies I aimed to speak to.

One of my pre-planned meetings was with Marc Acton, the Founder, chief-strategist, and “words guy” at Alpha/Echo Agency (AEA). AEA is a small and relatively new marketing agency based out of Franklin with clients mainly in healthcare, commercial services, and tech. We met for lunch at the Pinewood Social on a scorching August day. From Marc, I learned about agency life, how Alpha/Echo formed, and some of the thinking behind Marc’s marketing philosophies. Although AEA was not hiring a designer, Marc was adamant that the two of us find a way to work together. I continued to knock on the doors of other agencies, but before I arrived back in Boston, Marc and I had set up the beginning of a four-week freelance project whereby I would research and produce content for his agency’s social media accounts.

However, my visits to the other agencies also bore fruit. As I arrived back in Boston and began my freelance project for Alpha/Echo, I began interviewing with three other agencies—two in Nashville, one in New York City. Four future employment prospects at the same time were exceptionally flattering, not to mention an awesome endorsement of the skills I had accumulated in college. This quasi-race came to a head at the end of August. I was offered my first job in Nashville, and I was ecstatic, except that I was not fully certain of the type of work the job would entail. I have always felt that the allure of design work was the thinking—the strategy and concepts behind it all. I was not too sure that this role would satisfy that need.

I called Marc and told him about the offer. In response, he asked for my first round of freelance work, with stakes raised: it turned out Alpha/Echo was hiring a content strategist of sorts, and if I was able to prove that I had the skills to not only design good content but to strategize and develop it, there might be an offer around the corner. That same day, I put every ounce of energy I had into a presentation of my work and sent it to Marc. About forty-eight nerve-wracking hours later I had my answer. Marc and Alpha/Echo would be delighted to offer me a full-time position as a Junior Designer!

Two weeks later, I drove down from Boston and moved into my new apartment at The Metropolitan in Nashville’s West End. A week after that was my first day at Alpha/Echo. I’ve now been in Nashville for nearly a month! And everything has been phenomenal.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Yes… and also no.

I think with hindsight (and job security) it’s easy to say that the transition and timeline of events from my graduation to my move here were smooth. But with summer still relatively fresh in mind, I know that there were moments that were far from that.

Before COVID, a highlight of my academic program was a portfolio show in New York City at the end of the spring semester. Over the course of our senior year, we would collect, photograph, and then design large portfolio books showcasing all of our work. Those books would then be on display in New York City for two days, and creative directors from around the country would visit, flip through them, and select graduates to hire at their agencies. COVID forced the program to pivot. No longer was anyone willing to go anywhere—we have computers! And Zoom! Thus, our portfolio books became our portfolio websites.

Instead of days during which potential employers might flip through our books, our websites would be “released” to a virtual mailing list on a specified “drop date.” The result was meant to be the same—creative directors would view our carefully curated and photographed work online, and then reach out over the phone or through email and invite us to interview. Unfortunately, none of that happened. Our “drop date” came… and went. Many of us heard nothing and began our own job searches. Some of us worked leads prior to graduation. Some of us might still be searching or waiting.

The drop date occurred during my road trip with my friends. I expected to be fielding calls and emails while on the road and was fully prepared for that, but I never had to. Having worked so hard to get my portfolio pixel-perfect, it was a real ego blow. On top of that was the general discouragement that comes with a job search. Ignored emails, unread LinkedIn messages, botched interviews—all added to the disheartenment. However, after I visited Nashville to knock on the doors of all the agencies I applied to, those feelings began to vanish. I felt I had taken a step in the right direction and successfully stepped beyond my comfort zone to do it. Not to mention, the results that the trip yielded were worth the time and energy.

Then there was the actual move. It’s cliche to say that change is hard, but I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. I’d grown accustomed to my home life for the majority of the summer, and then I upended all of that. I procrastinated organizing and packing as close to the end as I could. The night before I left I was folding, taping, carrying, and car-tetris-ing for twelve hours. My mom cried a lot.

Thankfully, my drive to Nashville was easy, and my move-in was swift. My apartment is beginning to look and feel more like my home each day.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My craft is design, and I like to refer to myself as simply a “designer.” I think my work would technically classify me as a graphic designer, but the reason I like the broader terminology is that I can do work outside the scope of typical graphic design. I may be a Photoshop wiz, but I also do research, competitive analysis, visual analysis, ideation, conceptualization, copywriting, presentation, and project management, etc.

If I had to sum it up in a word, nearly everything I do is, in some form or another, branding. That is, I develop and execute visual communication solutions for products and services so that an intended target audience understands what the product or service can do for them. Marketing and advertising are an offshoot of this. A mobile app, an exhibit, a website, or a 3D package are all different, but all of them can be effectively branded and identifiable as different products or services. For example, Grubhub is not the same as DoorDash; Frosted Flakes are not the same as Fruit Loops, and Apple’s website is different from Microsoft’s. These companies may all exist in similar mediums, but they are all identifiable as themselves. That’s branding.

The more projects I do, the more difficult it becomes to pick a favorite. However, one project on my website still stands out. It’s called Piggies infant nail parlor. The project is from my junior year of college. We were required to pitch our own branding ideas, and then execute them. In the days before my pitch, I overheard my supervisor at my on-campus job at the time talking about how difficult it was to cut her newborn’s nails. An idea hatched in my head—what if there was a place where new mothers could take their infant children to get their nails cut, painlessly and fearlessly? Thus became Piggies infant nail parlor. I like the project because I very much failed before bringing it to where it ended up.

My ideas were surface-level, silly, and reliant on stale visuals from previous work. Then I called my mom. I asked her to tell me about the relationship between infants and mothers, and that conversation opened doors upon doors. All of sudden, I could infuse the brand with first-hand knowledge of the intended audience, and I was able to work with a more nuanced perspective. I got help from a professional illustrator and found an opportunity to photograph a baby. The timing of it all was just perfect, and the result is more than I could have hoped for.

I don’t think any two designers today are the same. Historically, designers used to belong to schools of thought—Modernism, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, etc. After Post-modernism in the ’80s and ’90s, none of that seemed to matter. Designers began work that would make them money, and the field became very individualized. It’s only now that we are starting to build in the philosophy behind what it is we do, and the philosophies we have can vary from person to person. These philosophies can be extremely broad (i.e. “only designing for ‘good'”) or very specific (i.e. “no work for industry x”).

As for me, I believe in clarity, and that the right combination of words is just as important and powerful as an image. I enjoy thinking solutions through to completion before beginning their execution, and I like squeezing out every last drop of an idea so that I know I’ve done the best I can to come up with a winner. I think designing for any reputable product or company is worthwhile, and I’m glad I get to touch so many at my current job.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
There’s very little about me that I refuse to disclose—I’m pretty much an open book with everyone.

That said if I were to go ahead and “surprise” anyone, I’d say that I really like math. I haven’t taken a math class since calculus in high school, but I’ve always loved and appreciated the elegance of math and the process of finding solutions to a problem. Basically, if there’s anyone who may have thought that art and math are mutually exclusive interests, they are incorrect. In fact, I’ve used math in some form or another to ensure the quality of my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: liranfdesign.com
• Instagram: @liranfdesign