Sam Hendricks
As a kid, I was always drawing and making books and little flip books out of post-it note pads. In middle school, I created my first website—a site dedicated to all aspects of the popular Nintendo 64 game, Goldeneye. Little did I know I was planting the seeds for my future career.
I double-majored in Graphic Design and Illustration at the University of Kansas, graduating in 2006. From my sophomore year on, I landed a kind of ‘perma-internship’ at my first agency in Kansas City, Nicholson Kovac (now closed, unfortunately). It was a great way to get some early experience in the agency world. Afterward, I became an art director at VML. I spent a little over 2 years there before returning to NK. After a brief stint, I came back to VML.
I transferred to the New York City office and spent a little over 6 years there as the office grew, working on brands ranging from small start-ups and B2B to large consumer packaged goods. At the end of my time there I was lead on the Chevron social business as it was being moved to our west coast office. At the time my wife and I had been talking about heading for more family-friendly pastures so I took the opportunity to help transition that business out west.
Until the present moment, I’ve been embracing the gray rainy skies of Seattle—trading in the concrete jungle of NYC for mountains and evergreen trees as my source of inspiration.
As an art director, I am multidisciplinary. Beyond campaign concepting, I’m comfortable designing, doing some light (to intermediate) motion design, and fairly recently I’ve even built an Instagram AR filter build. But I also never gave up illustrating. In fact, I still draw and paint in my downtime—when I’m not chasing my kiddos around. I will take commissions, time permitting. If you would like to use my contact form, we can chat. I also offer some prints through Society 6 as well.