From Sheridan to CNN and CNBC

Robert Poulton is many things. He is a Sheridan alumnus, a vice president and global creative director for American business news channel CNBC, a member of Sheridan's board of governors, and (in his spare time) even a T-shirt print designer.

But more than anything, Poulton is a creator. And much of that he credits to his time as a student at Sheridan, where he graduated from the Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design's Graphic Design program in 1992.

It might seem a strange thing to contemplate that the man in charge of a global network redesign for an international media company also creates T-shirt artwork and collects trendy sneakers, but Poulton’s journey defies convention.

Born in the United Kingdom to Caribbean parents, his family emigrated to Toronto in 1974, where Poulton grew up in the Bay Mills area of Scarborough. After graduating from Wexford Collegiate for the Arts, he studied marketing and entered the work force in real estate, building newspaper ads. That line of work only served to remind him that he had missed his calling, and his creative itch needed to be scratched.

He applied for the Graphic Design program at Sheridan because “it was the best program,” but was asked to study a year of Art Fundamentals first.

“To be honest, I wasn't crazy about that,” the now married father of two daughters (21 and 19) says with a laugh. “But I had really good teachers. They gave me work and things to do that I found interesting. They were great.”

“I had really good teachers. They gave me work and things to do that I found interesting. They were great.”

After a year, he was accepted into Graphic Design. What he learned at Sheridan, he still uses now.

“Every day,” says Poulton, with emphasis. “It is the foundation and base understanding (of my work).”

Colour theory, scale and proportion, lighting, type spacing … all of it. No small thing from someone who can list having created a new font on his résumé.

After Sheridan, Poulton started working in print design and production, before gravitating toward building graphics for broadcast television, eventually landing a job at Global TV in Toronto. Then came the big leap: moving across the continent to take a position in San Francisco for KGO-TV.

"The pressure of (TV news deadlines) reminded me of playing sports and it was really the only thing that, since I left high school, the only thing that gave me that feeling. Like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a thing.’”

After two and a half years in San Francisco, a desire to move closer to family saw him land in Atlanta with CNN as head of design, where he spent 14½ years and won a pair of Emmy Awards – one for his work on the documentary series The Seventies and another for a brand campaign called “Go There.” He won more than 100 design awards while at the 24-hour news network and wound up developing the network’s first proprietary typeface (“CNN Sans”) along the way.

While Poulton says both are “nice,” his proudest professional moment was a simple promo spot for he worked on during his early days at CNN.

“We shot it in a conference room using an overhead projector. And it literally was done in three or four days,” he says of the project, which was for a Dr. Sanjay Gupta primetime special on AIDS, called RU+ [Are you positive?].

“It was just a notion that we had no money and we had a very limited time to do it. And I just remember the collaboration between myself, the producer, the editor and the fact that we were able to come up with something.

“I always go back to that as one of my favourite things because it just felt so pure and honest.”

During his time at CNN, Poulton worked on shows like Anderson Cooper 360° and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, amongst other things.

In 2017, he moved to Boston to work for the NBC Owned Stations group as vice president of marketing and creative for three and a half years. Then in 2022, he was named as the global creative director for CNBC, where he has led a network redesign and redefinition of the brand message.

When asked if a kid from social housing in Scarborough, whose father passed when he was quite young and who “had literally nothing,” could possibly have imagined his career journey, Poulton shakes his head.

“There's no way I would have seen it,” he says, adding that he had little to lose in moving so far away from home. “The risk was nothing.”

That decision also served to inform him about future moves.

“I would say that the times when I've taken the most risk have been the times that the rewards have been greater. It is definitely proportional. You know, the bigger the swing, the bigger the reward on the other end."

A chance involvement on a Sheridan panel during the pandemic reconnected Poulton with his alma mater. It also reminded him of a deep connection to the school that trained him, a kinship that eventually saw him join the board of governors.

“I try to put myself in the place of the student,” he says about his role on the board. “You know, how would I feel about (decisions made) and how would this affect my life?”

To paraphrase that old expression, you can take the student out of Sheridan, but you can’t take Sheridan out of the student.

For Poulton, that also means continuing to put what he learned in college to use in his personal creative projects, which serve as an outlet for someone who has worked himself so far up the chain that he does less and less of the thing he loves.

"I will always need an outlet for self-expression. I’m always going to need and want to make things,” he says.

Which is what led him to Sheridan in the first place.

Letting his mind wonder back to his time at Trafalgar Campus, he offers this bit of advice to his past self, which would probably serve current students, too.

"I'd say don't be so hard on yourself," he says, while adding: "I wish at the time someone had said to me ‘It's gonna get better and you're gonna be fine.’

“And if I could impart that to someone who may be struggling ... it’s that it gets better. Success is possible.”

Pictured in the article are (from top to bottom) Robert Poulton (right) with the late Anthony Bourdain, whose show 'Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown' appeared on CNN for 12 seasons; various awards Robert Poulton has won over the years, including an Emmy; graphics from a promotional campaign for Dr. Sanjay Gupta's CNN show 'RU+'; and Robert Poulton with some of his design work. Photos courtesy of Robert Poulton.

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As Canada's largest art school, Sheridan's Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design (FAAD) trains performers, animators, filmmakers, designers and artists to realize the full potential of their talents. To learn more about the many programs FAAD offers, visit the Faculty's webpage.