Check Out Mack Garrison’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mack Garrison.

Hi Mack, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My name is Mack Garrison, I’m a Raleigh native, and I love creating great work with wonderful people.

I was always a creative. Tinkering, doodling, and drawing – I loved it all! As someone who has struggled with ADHD their whole life, art was the calming outlet for me from grade school all the way up through University where I found a passion and a career through the College of Design at NC State (Go Wolfpack!).

Like a lot of folks, I was thrown into the real world without a clear direction of what I wanted to do. Graphic Design? Editing? Animation? Finding interesting careers was not the problem; choosing one was. But thanks to a great mentor and former boss (thanks, Mike!) I landed an internship through NC State’s Distance Education and Learning Technology Association where I cut together online classes and brought them to life through animation and motion graphics – it was really a dream opportunity.

I delved into the world of animation and ate it up! Now, a lot of y’all will conjure up visions of Disney and Pixar when I say animation, but what I loved was “motion design,” that is graphic design in motion – typography, composition, abstract metaphors to explain complex subjects. I was fascinated with the idea of taking something hard to explain and creating a story, and visuals, to get that message across. I was providing clarity in a world of ambiguity.

That internship led to freelance work and eventually a pivotal moment in my life where I almost became a Cowboy! Well… farm hand is the technical term, but Cowboy definitely sounded more badass. I had applied to work at this local agency called Centerline Digital after freelancing with them for months and got denied. Bummer. So searching for what was next, a friend got me a job on a dude ranch in Jackson Hole, WY! I was going to put up fences all summer and then naturally become a Cowboy (it’s that easy, right?). The universe had other plans.

The week I was supposed to leave, I got a call that another job had opened up and the agency wanted to offer it to me. Choosing between a summer of hard labor and little cash or paying off my student loans and developing an emerging career turned out to be an easier decision than I thought for my 23 year old self – I took the animation gig.

Centerline introduced me to how good animation and motion design could be. I was green. A newbie. And I had a lot to learn. But thankfully, there were so many wonderful folks who were willing to teach me and I was shown the ropes quickly. From a jr. designer, to mid-level, and eventually sr. animator – I worked my way up through the ranks with hard work, dedication, and optimism. You have to have that last part to survive in the design industry. There are constant changes, feedback, and pivots that will drive you nuts if you’re not a glass-half-full kinda guy (or gal).

While I initially enjoyed the drive of hustle culture, it was burning me out. I felt like the more responsibility I had, the more I ended up in a silo. As a result I started asking myself what’s next. Was this really the industry for me? Late nights, pizza, and beer all seemed great for a 23 year old, but as I approached 30, I knew I needed something different – but what?

Thankfully I attended my first Motion Design conference in 2015 called F5: a two-day festival that gathers filmmakers, writers, digital artists, game designers, interactive artists, and motion designers to share ideas and inspire one another. And inspired I was.

After returning from the conference, and after a few late-night beers with my good friend, Cory Livengood, we decided to break away from the agency and start our own company. One that believes in the power of creativity and community. Where collaboration is at the forefront of what we do and the creative work is the best it can be. Just like that – Dash Studio was born.

Capitalism is funny. This idea of squashing your competition and doing everything you can to win was not our mentality. A rising tide lifts all boats and for my business partner Cory and I, we knew success would come from building bridges vs tearing them down. Over the last ten years as our company has grown we’ve done just that and lived by the mentality of what goes around comes around. As a result, we’ve been lucky to work with companies like J.P. Morgan, Coinbase, Lenovo, Red Hat, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and others by building strong relationships, producing amazing work, and going above and beyond when it comes to client satisfaction.

As we look into the future and what’s next for dash, it’s human focused. No matter what new tech or artificial intelligence comes to fruition, we plan to be digital stewards for brands and marketing teams looking to cut through the noise with authentic video content that simplifies complexity and connects to communities.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Some folks are born knowing they’re going to start a business and others, like myself, stumble into it. Stumble is a great word to use here because the reality of entrepreneurship is that you do stumble through things, learn lessons from those falls, and pick yourself up along the way – no nobody is perfect.

And that’s the point: perfection inhibits progress. If we all get caught up in being perfect, nothing moves forward. We’ve underbid ourselves, overcommitted on work, miss-understood directions, and have missed expectations. But each of those moments have provided the best learning lessons anyone could ask for because once you feel that deep-pit in your stomach from a mistake, you don’t ever want to do that again.

I think every entrepreneur should read some Brené Brown at some point in their journey. There’s one quote that I love from her book “Daring to Lead” which speaks towards the idea of showing up and doing your best. It sounds soft, but it’s so accurate. For every entrepreneur, you have to remember that you’re in the arena showing up for battle. Folks in the stands can cast doubt, say you should do it a different way (or their way), but the reality is you’re the one in the arena going to battle with the best information you have.

Sure hindsight is twenty-twenty but I take solace in the fact that every decision I make is based on the best information I have at the moment, and for that, I’m kinder to myself on all my decisions, or mistakes, I make along the way.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Motion Design is an umbrella term I use to describe the creation and organization of anything that moves on a screen. It could be live-action with actors and actresses, it includes animated content like 2d, 3d, and character work, or it could even be interactive and gamified. Motion designers combine these elements in conjunction with music and voiceovers to explain the complex, entertain, and drive action from the audience.

Dash Studio is a generalist motion design agency which means we specialize in all these aspects and act as a utility knife for our clients. We can be flexible and scale up to meet the demands of fortune 500 businesses or we simplify our services to help the up-and-coming start-up.

There are a lot of amazing animation and motion design agencies out there, and we’re proud to be considered one of the best in the game, but the real differentiator and why people choose us over others is not just our work but our great work and wonderful people. Dash was built around the power of creativity and community and that focus on people, the human connection, is unmatched in our industry.

We invest in internships, mentorships, and we even throw our own animation and motion design festival called the Dash Bash (www.dashbash.net) because we know if we support our community, they’ll support us. The same goes for our clients. When you overserve your clients, you know them as friends, they’ll go to bat for you as well. It’s why we’ve had relationships with folks like Red Hat for over 9 years and why we’ve been in business for 10! You can’t take people for granted and relationships are a key driver for our success as an agency.

How do you think about luck?
Have you ever listened to Guy Raz’s podcast “How I built this?” He interviews CEOs and founders of all sorts of companies, and one thing he asks everyone at the end of the show is do you think your success was built on hard work or luck?

For dash, it’s a combination of both. You have to work hard to take advantage of the luck (opportunity) when it arises. When Cory and I started our career together at the previous agency we busted our butts and worked so incredibly hard to meet deadlines and deliver for our colleagues and clients. That grit and determination led to work later when those same people referred clients to us or hired dash directly when they went on to new jobs. At the same time, there were tons of right place and right time moments that landed us huge opportunities solely because of happenstance. I think luck plays a huge part of it, but you can create more opportunities with hard work, and it’s the later part that will ultimately make you successful.

Pricing:

• Animation is a lot like buying a car: sometimes a Porsche is the right decision and other times a Honda Civic will do just fine.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dashstudio.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dash_nc/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dashanimation/
• Twitter: https://x.com/dash_studio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dashstudio
• Other: https://www.dashbash.net/