How Christopher C. Lee Spearheads The Creative Process

There’s the artist and entrepreneur who was trained and cherry-picked from top organizations in America. We’ve also heard of the fortunate few who started their own companies from huge, risky investments that somehow managed to catapult into success.

This is a story of an auteur who has experienced both sides, but is ultimately, neither – and that’s what makes Christopher C. Lee unique.

Chris’s story is one of grit, willpower, and compassion. The primary factor he hinged his success upon was respect – respect for creative peers, clients, friends, and family. He always made sure to gauge the effectiveness of his entrepreneurship based on how happy his customers felt from receiving his products and services. He would work tirelessly, to a perfectionist standard, in order to keep his customers happy, and it all paid off. Client appeal and retention results from emotional satisfaction, a fact backed by data gathered from his extensive experience in field testing, surveying, user research, and focus groups.

Making sure all the branches of your business, from the bottom up, are all unified to represent a brand that is truly genuine, is the goal. In other words, the focus is not in the numbers, but in the humanity. “Leads and conversions follow a business who can stay true to itself,” Christopher remarks. While many discuss creating such a personable brand, only a few achieve this feat. These same achievers pioneer onwards to help change the narrative of what’s tenable and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship.

Christopher graduated half a semester early from UC Berkeley with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, alongside a background in mathematics from Stanford University. He spent most of his early post-graduate days as an engineer for a video advertising division of Adobe. As his Silicon Valley background suggests, he is no stranger to tech start-ups and entrepreneurship as well. As he gained professional experience, he began to lean more on the design aspects of the industry. His past served as a stepping stone to a bright future - he now doubly leads as a creative director at fashion brand, Troo Wear, and his own photography studio, Photomochi.

One of the most inspiring traits I discovered in Chris is that he is completely undeterred in his creative vision. He walks the talk. Proving to be a true pioneer, he manages to improvise new forms of inspiration and strategies for success daily. He also regularly donates money to help budding artists to regularly put forth new ideas.

His photography works are filled to the brim with luscious visuals and creativity. This can be attributed to his unconventional art philosophies, but also to his gift of synesthesia, where he is able to “visualize sound”. His video work for SF Bay Area companies such as Google, Airbnb, YouTube, etc, demonstrate his expertise in this industry. His social media marketing has garnered a massive following, with over 800,000 followers on Instagram. He attributes the success of his creative works to certain aspects in the planning process. As put in Christopher’s words: “being able to visualize the end result, how it will move people, how it will be visually striking, how the overall theme and message will be communicated to a viewer’s mind and heart - that is crucial.”

“A great creative work should be powerful,” Chris says. “In each and every individual, there is a heart that is born of passion, hope, joys and fears, archetypes that are deeply ingrained in the human mind. A creative work must call out to the profound depths of these traits, and bring them forth in catharsis. That’s what makes the art powerful, beautiful, and finally, timeless.”