Jared Strain: cutting through the noise.

• Author: Sasich, Chris
• Position: Around Utah: Spotlight

Having a skate ramp take up half of your office isn't conventional, but for Jared Strain, partner and design director at Super Top Secret, that's the point. You don't get to work with top-shelf brands like Nike, Ubisoft, Riot Games and the University of Oregon football team by doing things the same way as everyone else. Strain's formative years, growing up in Salt Lake City, were spent being immersed in skateboarding, punk rock and heavy metal music--all of which have informed Strain's business acumen.

"I came out of BYU in 2003, but I am kind a product of the eighties," says Strain. "I grew up skateboarding in the late eighties, early nineties. I'm like the world's oldest teenager. Everything kind of points back to that; it put me down this path of art, subculture and self-expression."

Strain learned his love of design during his youth, when he sent skate graphic designs to magazines and skateboard brands, but it was at school where his path became lucid. "I went through the design program at BYU and it opened my eyes to different places where designers are actually involved and used, like advertising on the product side," says Strain. "So that's where I really began to geek out, and the fact that I could apply the same kind of methodology and thought into designing snowboards."

With Super Top Secret, Strain has built a full-service agency that is really an extension of who he is. "We put a lot of our focus and passion into what we deliver to the client--where, on the flip-side, with other [agencies] it might be the process, the set-up, the business strategy that shines through," says Strain. "Personally, I think that's where creativity gets watered down, so you're always walking...