By OLIVER MORGAN
How likely is it that a lead creative / designer by day and racquets fanatic by night would land a job where they get to work in one of their favourite sports? Read on and try not to get too jealous.
From the outside, it looks like a typical, quirky London design consultancy. This is Leather Market, a clutch of beautiful London-yellow-brick, Victorian warehouses, in the shadow of The Shard, near London Bridge. It’s a busy, bustling area full of great little cafes and coffee bars catering to the sort of people who work at the HEAD London Creative Studio.
The offices are perched on the top floor, with panoramic views of South London. Inside is a vital part of the global company that is HEAD Sports, a leading manufacturer of premium, high-performance equipment for athletes and players, at all levels.
The studio is the design and marketing arm of the company. The team here, work together with their colleagues at the company’s main headquarters in Austria, creating solutions for the HEAD Winter Sports Division, the Racquet Sports Division and HEAD Sportswear.
HEAD have produced top quality squash racquets for years, but padel is increasingly becoming a priority for the company who have been involved in the padel industry for over 15 years.
The game is rapidly developing into the next big thing, with an exponential rise in numbers all over the world both playing and watching. If you enjoy squash, you will absolutely love padel.
The London studio is busy developing exciting design and advertising campaigns to promote the sport and the exceptional range of HEAD’s high-performance equipment used by professional athletes and amateurs all over the world.
The dedicated padel team have just returned from a three day shoot in Madrid, filming and photographing pro athletes, Paula Jose Maria Martín and Arturo Coello. “I love working with these guys, they’ve really got the padel bug over in London” says a grinning Arturo.
Back at base, Gion-Men Kruegel-Hanna, sits in his minimalist office looking at the first digital layouts of what will eventually be a global campaign. He’s a tall, ascetic-looking character, dressed in sober black, in complete contrast to the work he directs which is bold, disruptive and exciting.
“Our job is to get into the minds and the hearts of anyone who is interested in racquet sports. With padel, we’re trying to push on something that’s already gaining momentum. That’s why we want as many people who can play or would like to play, working in our racquet sports creative design team.”
Think of the lucky designer, back from playing squash or padel, and getting ready for work the next day in the design studio that has taken padel to its heart. When they talk shop here, it’s not shop, it’s skiing, tennis, squash, pickleball – and yes, padel. Lots of padel.
Naturally, they play the game whenever possible and even get to test the latest equipment sent over from the Research and Development department in Austria.
So, who is this person with this dream job? Who is the designer who is crafting images, logos and digital campaigns to promote this fun new sport?
“They’re not here yet, at least not all of the padel-crazy designers and creatives we need for our growing studio” Gion-Men, reveals. “The HEAD London Creative Studio, decided that a good way to find exactly who we’re looking for was to write our story and let our new designer read it for themselves. Actually, we have several roles to fill, at the moment.
“In additional to our lead designer, we also need an ECOM designer and a DIGITAL Copywriter. If you have ECOM experience or you’re a writer with a flair for social media, we want to talk to you.”
This sounds like quite an opportunity, so here’s hoping that a certain Senior Designer, (plus the other creative roles) – see job descriptions here – are on their favourite squash website and have just discovered their absolute dream job.
It wouldn’t, by any chance, happen to be you?
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