Newly minted as an Emmy Award-winning production designer and art director for a promotional video for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, Carlos Florez '07 (Graphic Design B.F.A.) has no intention of stopping there. Florez has clients to spare, including NASA, Target, Yoplait, Paramount, and Crown Casino, and has directed and supervised post-production on music videos for the likes of hip-hop star T-Pain (#1 on MTV’s Jam of the Week show and BET’s 106 and Park) and Kinky (#1 on the MT V3 Rock Countdown). His goal is to stand out among other filmmakers, making films that people line up around the block to see. He looks to James Cameron, Steven Speilberg, JJ Abrams, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas for inspiration.

After studying in one of the most competitive high school arts programs in the nation, he came to MICA on scholarship and credits the College for preparing him for his current career.

Florez says MICA is different from any other college because of a student ’s ability to explore many different art forms.

He started studying graphic design but soon wanted to work with moving images so he could tell different stories. He “made his own major,” combining graphic design, video, 3D and 2D animation, photography, and sound design classes into his own unique curriculum.

Then-Graphic Design Department Co-chair Bernard Canniffe took an interest in Florez’s passion and helped him land an internship at MTV Latin in Miami. There, Florez fell in love with creating motion graphic design and videos for television. He graduated with a job at MTV in New York, which served as the launch point for his career.

The creative training he received at MICA proved invaluable for his future, directing the short films that became television commercials and music videos — from knowing how to find resources and what equipment to use to identifying everyone’s role in the production. His college friends became actors in his first productions. At MICA, he says, he first started putting people together to pursue his artistic projects. He credits his success to his ability to get people to collaborate in addition to his understanding of art as a business. Talent, he says, is only 50%. The other 50%, according to Florez, is making connections.