Jesse Stagg
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Jesse Stagg (born 1970) is a creative director and producer with extensive experience in art direction, design, advertising, guerilla marketing, and new forms of strategic branding. A third-generation filmmaker, his first love has always been music.
Born in New York, educated in London and Cape Town, he was raised in a Sufi community in England.
Despite his credentials as a premiere creative in the entertainment industry working for many of the world's media giants, Stagg has always been a maverick, particularly in his love for creating spectacular environments around music. In 1990 he founded UFO Collective and with it South Africa's first and highly influential dance club Club Eden, followed by a second equally successful club "Uforia". These seminal South African venues helped lay the foundation for one of the world's most vibrant emerging Techno scenes and helping kickstart the groundbreaking Kwaito sound.
During this period, he produced and promoted a steady stream of events, including the seminal "World Peace Party" (1989), the first rave in Africa, "T-Rox" (1990), a Jurassic-period techno festival set amidst 14 life-sized, motorized dinosaurs, bubbling swamps and erupting volcanos. These spectacular events were attended by upwards of 20,000 people and played a small part in the early social re-integration of the post-apartheid rave generation.
In 1998 Perry Farrell commissioned Stagg to develop a pilot techno web portal. Later that year Stagg was hired by Woody Harrelson to create an identity and campaign for the O2 oxygen bar. In 1999 he staged two major concept parties: one for Propaganda Films, the other for Hollywood executives Ari Emanuel, Rick Yorn, and Mike DeLuca of New Line Cinema.
As senior art director at Burbank-based “Feed The Monster Media”, Stagg produced and directed web sites for major-market modern rock radio stations KROQ/LA, KCBS, and LIVE105, winning three IWPA Awards, a Wammy and a Webby nomination in the process.
In 1999 Stagg's cartoon "The 7th Portal" was produced by Marvel's famed chairman Stan Lee. On its release in 2000, it broke all records for an online series, and in so doing coined the phrase "webisodes". The 7th Portal virtual theme park ride went on to break attendance records at a number of Paramount Parks.
Leonardo Di Caprio's millennium party on New Year's Eve 2000 was created and produced by Jesse Stagg. It featured a 50-foot geodesic dome on a five-acre Hollywood hilltop estate and giant projection screens which broadcast celebrations from around the world via satellite. The New York Post called the event "The best Hollywood party of the millennium".
Stagg began his career as junior art director at the South African offices of the Ogilvy & Mather Agency. After relocating to Los Angeles, he joined the Turner Group as art director of the Creative Corps at Hanna-Barbera studios. He was responsible for the concept, art direction and implementation of all major new studio initiatives and advertising, and oversaw successful launches of Dexter's Lab, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Powerpuff Girls and 25 other cartoon series of the Emmy winning World Premiere Toons on the Cartoon Network.
After leaving Hanna-Barbera he joined Disney Online as a designer of websites for The Lion King, Toy Story, Hollywood Records and many other major franchises.
Stagg then moved on to Paramount Studios, where he redesigned the creative department and developed a new global identity for Star Trek, art-directing the world’s first digital interactive styleguide. He also developed materials for all of Paramount Studio’s other licensed properties, from Terrytoons, to The Godfather, to The Twilight Zone.
From 2003 to 2005 Stagg was the communications chair of the Graphic Arts Council (since renamed the Prints & Drawings Council) of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). During his tenure, the council inaugurated "Into The Pixel", the first video game art awards, and commissioned works by artists including Shepard Fairey, Artemio Rodriguez, Salomon Huerta, and Kenny Scharf.
Stagg now splits his time between Los Angeles and Cape Town, South Africa, where he consults at the intersection of design, entertainment, technology and the emerging field of branded content.
