Alumni Interview: Tim Lapetino

“As Atari’s creative director, I lead a team that helps market, design, and bring to life a new generation of retro video games that capture our ethos of ‘easy to learn, difficult to master,’” Tim Lapetino says. (Image by Clayton Hauck)

As a teenager, I spent long hours in Chicago playing Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and other classic video games. The games themselves were thrilling, but for me the experience went deeper than gobbling up dots or shooting at aliens. I was entranced by the imaginary worlds behind the games, including their artwork. Ever since then, I’ve followed twin passions: storytelling and design.

After serving as managing editor of the school newspaper at Buffalo Grove High, I majored in journalism at the U. of I. What an eye-opening place for a teenager in 1996! To this day, I quote Professor Walt Harrington, who told J-school students that we needed to know a little something about everything. “A good reporter should be able to talk intelligently about any subject,” he said, “for five minutes.”

I dove right into working at The Daily Illini—first as a page designer, then night editor, and finally writing a weekly entertainment column about comic books, which probably had more column inches than readers. I also audited a handful of design classes in the U. of I.’s School of Art and Design. With help from journalism professor Eric Meyer, I learned how to create data-filled news graphics, cutaway illustrations, and interactive maps. That knowledge helped me get an internship at the Chicago suburban Daily Herald. When I graduated in 2000, I had an opportunity to do the same kind of work at USA Today, but turned it down because I wasn’t ready to specialize yet.

For a while, I worked as a web designer at Horizon Hobby, a Champaign-Urbana-based company that made radio-controlled cars and planes. Then, with a partner, I launched a small design agency of my own called Hexanine (gamer-ese for 999,999, the highest score you can achieve before an arcade game rolls over to zero).

Design work kept me going, but I never forgot Atari, the company that made the great games of my youth. During its 1980s heyday, Atari had one of the most recognizable logos in the world—up there with Apple, IBM, and the Nike swoosh. After doing two years of research, I wrote the 2016 bestseller, Art of Atari, which featured interviews with founder Nolan Bushnell and others, and told the stories of unsung creatives like Atari Creative Director George Opperman, designer of the company’s iconic logo.

Instead of saying ‘No’ or ‘Stick to your major,’ my professors urged me to push boundaries and go down rabbit holes.” —Tim Lapetino, ’00 MEDIA

Working on the book opened doors to new worlds: corporate design, fine art, licensing, packaging, and other corners of pop culture. Soon I was doing design work for Target, Tower Records, and Sanrio, the Japanese company behind Hello Kitty. I designed packaging for an Ozzy Osbourne LP and an Apple smartwatch wristband shaped like Han Solo frozen in carbonite! I also continued to write and edit several more books, including one on Pac-Man.

But the best was yet to come. I’d done some freelance art direction for Atari, whose CEO Wade Rosen was determined to refocus on Atari’s strengths: innovative retro video games done well, infused with a healthy dose of nostalgia. It was a place I was uniquely suited for and I joined the team, ultimately picking up the mantle of George Opperman, whose work first inspired me decades earlier. Today, as Atari’s creative director, I lead a team that helps market, design, and bring to life a new generation of retro video games that capture our ethos of “easy to learn, difficult to master.”

Atari’s new 2600+ console plays cartridges from the 1970s and ’80s and connects to modern TVs for maximum nostalgia. It has landed with new and old fans, and has propelled us into new products, audiences, and ways to delight fans. I’ve also brought back some of the old guard, like ’80s Atari artist Hiro Kimura, who returned to create new illustrations for our 2600+ Pac-Man Edition after creating our first Pac-Man illustrations more than 40 years ago.

This all traces back to my game-playing days and four heady years at Illinois, where film and graphic design classes enhanced my J-school studies. Instead of saying “No” or “Stick to your major,” my professors urged me to push boundaries and go down rabbit holes.

My current job doesn’t leave much time for playing video games, but you will find an old TRON arcade game in my den. My brother and I found it on the curb near our parents’ house in Buffalo Grove. It took both of us to save it from the garbage truck—the thing weighs 700 pounds. But I couldn’t let a fun example of video-game history get left behind, could I?