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Source material: "BRAT" Art Director Brent David Freaney finds design inspiration from everyday life The designer takes us through his world of color theory, photography, graphic systems, and found ephemeral. Share Source material: "BRAT" Art Director Brent David Freaney finds design inspiration from everyday life Welcome to Source Material, a weekly series where the designers and creatives shaping culture share the references that shaped them. Our next guest is Brent David Freaney, the founder of Special Offer and designer behind Charli XCX’s “BRAT” and Madonna’s “Confessions II.” Catch up on Brent’s Config 2026 talk, where he walks through what it takes to design for cultural impact, from the process behind a single shade of green for Charli XCX's “Brat” to the systems thinking that holds together large-scale creative campaigns. After the shoot, we caught up with Brent about his creative process: What were you making when you realized, “This could be my job”? I'd say it's the first website I made on GeoCities when I was in high school. It was a “The Real World: Seattle” fan page. What’s the first thing you do when you sit down to work? I keep an active digital library of design references. Just screenshots and images I like that I come across on social media, or that might've been shared with me, or a photo that I may have taken on the street. The first thing I do when I sit down to work is review the most recent additions to make sure I still like them, or see if I was acting crazy when I saved them. What’s a design object you’d take to your grave? My boarding pass collection. Whose work makes you jealous? Paul Rand and Bruce Weber. What current design trend are you tired of seeing? Stretched type. What rule do you break the most? Stretching type. What song do you put on to get out of a creative rut? “Ginseng Strip 2002 by Yung Lean.” What’s a piece of feedback you resisted, and later realized was right? Creating a body of work is a series of small adjustments, not full 180s from project to project. What’s a part of your process that most people don’t know about? I always choose color from IRL objects. The process of color picking from the RGB spectrum inside a software program is a never-ending fool's errand. What’s the last thing you came across that made you want to go make something? This image. Catch up on previous episodes of Source Material on YouTube.
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