Jeremiah Britton’s life changed with a tweet. An acquaintance who was living in New York sent him a direct message on Twitter about a startup in the city that was looking for an art director and said he should apply. Britton quickly fired off a generic email on a whim, expecting it to be ignored. “There was no way this cool design company making beautiful spaces was going to hire a 22 year old [living in Michigan],” he says. That email happened to be sent to Miguel McKelvey, who, two years prior, launched WeWork with chief creative officer Adam Neumann. Within 10 minutes, he responded.
The company was scrappy, with only 20 or so employees, and McKelvey was looking for someone who was as ambitious as they were creative. A 30-minute phone call turned into 2.5 hours, where they bonded over Oregon (they both lived there at one point), basketball (they both played in college), and an unabashed excitement about art and design.
Britton started freelancing for the company that night, took a fulltime position two weeks later, and within two months moved to New York to help open WeWork’s fourth location. “It was all these cool, weird, serendipitous connections that felt like it was supposed to happen.” It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but also a bit of a whirlwind for someone who had never been to New York or had any desire to live there.
In 2012, Britton, like the company itself, was still honing his design personality, having worked design internships in Portland, Oregon for the likes of Nike and Adidas. But his edgy, irreverent collage art personal style, inspired by typography, photography, and gig posters, lent itself to WeWork’s brand, he says. Working alongside the in-house interior design team, he can produce a custom graphic pattern for a banquette’s upholstery or craft an abstract impressionist painting that makes the room feel immersive and tactile. By partnering with local artists, the spaces all feel deeply rooted in their locations. “Everything we do is on purpose,” he says. “We don’t want it to feel corporate. We want to create places you would love to live in.”
From working as the lone art director, Britton’s now in charge of a global team of 67. He likens himself to “your favorite professor from college who encourages you about the work you’re making,” which means he has less time to draw or go to every opening. Recently, however, Britton was in Tokyo for WeWork’s latest launch—his first in a couple of years. He was up until four in the morning moving furniture and finishing murals just like in the early days. “I knew I was going to be dead in the morning,” he says. But it was worth it. “Being there the next day when the members come in, that’s always the best part.”
A cerulean wall in a small workspace in Devonshire Square, London
Britton’s love of bold colors livens up the WeWork Champs-Élysées in Paris
A piece at the WeWork headquarters in the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco is a tongue-in-cheek play on California’s fault lines
The nearby redwood forests are alluded to in a painting at a WeWork in Mill Valley, California
Photography by Lauren Kellen, VRX Studios, and courtesy of WeWork
