Serenity Strull (Film & Video, 2019) had driven her pared-down belongings to her new home in New York only a week earlier, but she had things under control. She’d found a regular grocery store and optimized her commute (bus, not train) to work at BBC Studios in Midtown Manhattan. Plus, her dog Margot was napping and then flopping dramatically on the floor, a furry, chill bellwether.
Strull can trace the path here, to a job as a visual editor creating digital collages to illustrate stories on the BBC website, and also how that path has diverged in surprising ways. She credits her parents—who recognized her as a creative being early on and nurtured her talents—and her experience as a student at Columbus College of Art & Design with showing her how to handle the journey with grace.
Since graduating from CCAD, Strull has honed creative endeavors for love and money. She’s designed creative assets for digital and print media, filmed professional ballet dancers, and connected films with audiences, all the while building a portfolio for her dream interview. It’s an eclectic collection of pursuits. Or is it? Maybe it’s better to see them through the lens of the collages she makes at work—layered, textured compositions that may seem dissimilar or even jarring if viewed too closely, but which, when you take a step back, are actually perfectly clear.
Just as she’s done in New York in her first few days, Strull has a habit of checking in with what she needs and where she’s at and then getting resourceful about building community, ideas, and solutions. When she arrived at CCAD, she was both returning to college and arriving for the first time. She had spent a year at a traditional university that left her feeling disconnected and dissatisfied. During a gap year at home in Cincinnati, she saw a photograph of CCAD’s Art Sign on a photographer’s Instagram. It was a “yellow brick road moment,” she says. She explored CCAD’s website to learn about the film program. “Everything was just speaking so much louder. It was more exciting. It just kept me wanting to find out more,” she says.
CCAD classes and clubs help Strull gain career skills
She dove in, joining CCAD’s Film & Video Student Collective and eventually becoming its president for two years. “From there, as I kept building these friends in different majors. It was like, ‘well, I want to learn more about what you do,’ or ‘I want to support you,’ or ‘I just like being around this group of people.’ ” She joined the Graphic Design Collective, visited a couple of meetings of the Interior Architecture & Design Collective, and participated in Black Student Leadership Association and the Student Government Association.
Strull worked for the CCAD Student Agency, a full-service creative firm staffed by student-employees generating print, photography, video, digital, and web creative for the college. There, she won a regional American Advertising Award, or ADDY, for her role as creative director on a CCAD admissions campaign. She gained the hands-on experience so critical to landing jobs, and she learned key leadership skills by working with Ryan Feeney, Student Agency director and college art director. “He navigates it so gracefully,” Strull says. “He was such a big part of me finding success and being able to go into a professional job after school and knowing how to handle myself.” Later down the road when she was promoted to director of marketing and communications for the nonprofit Gateway Film Center in Columbus, she turned to Feeney for advice. “He was one of the first people I emailed, and I was like, can we sit down and chat? He got coffee with me, and I’m like, I need help, because you’ve done it so well.”
Strull embraced the CCAD experience with enthusiasm and with a commitment to make the most of her decision. But she wasn’t immune to hitting creative walls. In her junior year, her passion for film was waning, at least in the way she thought she’d wanted to work in the industry. Shooting and editing video didn’t feel vital anymore.
I still felt excitement for this career path, but not the way I was pursuing it,” she says. “I know I can’t succeed in a job I’m not excited about, challenged by, that I’m not finding passion in. It was a real come-to-Jesus moment.”
Around the same time, entertainment company A24 was emerging as an exciting place for daring, creative film production. She saw Ladybird and Moonlight. “They changed my life and perspective,” she says. “I took the time to understand there’s a million different pathways. If I’m studying film, there’s so many jobs.”
Even before Strull graduated, she landed a job as a video producer with BalletMet, Columbus’ professional ballet company, Columbus’ professional ballet company, filming performances, events, and promotional assets. She stayed for more than a year. And she got to know leaders at Gateway Film Center, a nonprofit organization near the Ohio State University campus screening a variety of independent and major-studio films as well as hosting special events for film lovers. “I knew I wanted to do this route of what happens after a film is made, specifically distribution and theatrical exhibition,” she says. “What can we make happen? I just want to be part of this world.” After several meetings with Gateway leadership, Strull was hired as a design coordinator. Her hiring supervisor was a CCAD alum who knew the design and professional skills Strull gained at CCAD.
Strull follows inner compass toward work that feeds her creative spirit
Fast-forward two years through the pandemic, and Strull was promoted to director of marketing and communications, which at the small nonprofit meant she was creative director, designer, public relations manager, and intern coordinator. “It was exactly what junior-year me was looking for. I got to understand film programming. How do you take something like a movie, break down audiences and storytelling, and apply the tenets of design and understanding of film and find these people? That was the work I got to do there. It was honestly a dream.”
After almost four years, Strull was reassessing again. “I knew I wanted to move out east, into New York and I knew I wanted to get back into more hands-on creative work. Maybe 20% to 30% of my day was creative work. [Gateway] wasn’t going to take me on that creative path. It would be a great one, but it was one I knew I didn’t see myself doing.”
She spent the last 10 months or so of her time at Gateway creating a plan and a vision. “What’s the job I want? What would I seek for that portfolio if I was the hiring manager? And then I would just create fake projects of that. I don’t have a lot of environmental design in my portfolio. Alright, I’m going to just build that up and design it,” she says. An interviewer at the BBC mentioned he’d seen her portfolio somewhere. “I knew I wanted my job to be a big job and to be a job with a company that I was really proud of and had name notoriety. So, really funny, the BBC. Kind of crazy that manifested.”
The visuals team at BBC Studios is relatively new since Strull joined the company about seven months ago. She creates two or three illustrations each week, working alongside editors and writers to ensure her visuals support and reflect the text. Even though she’s been working as a designer for several years, she still feels like a newbie.
I just want to keep getting better at it and keep feeling like I can say I’m a designer, I’m an editorial illustrator. I want that to be true, and I will feel that it’s true if I keep growing at it,” she says.
Serenity Strull
Film & Video, 2019
Movies made grade-school-age Strull believe she could become the characters on screen. A cowgirl. A doctor. The teen journalist in Almost Famous. “I was like, I want to go live in 1970 and follow a band around,” Strull says. So many possibilities. Then she had a lightbulb moment: “I liked the storytelling. I wanted to be part of the people who were creating those worlds.” No matter the medium, she’s doing just that.
Learn more about the Film & Video program at CCAD, or apply to CCAD here.
Learn more about Serenity Strull and her creative work by visiting Strull's website or following Strull on Instagram.
