It all started in SoCal over citrus 🍊🍋
With different strengths and shared standards, we come in with big taste and low ego, going all-in on the work.
We’re a couple of constantly curious creatives with a combined 25+ years in the ad game. We met inside a global agency, working shoulder to shoulder on marquee accounts where our creative chemistry clicked from day one.
Years, pitches, promotions, and a plethora of projects later, we’ve slowly seen our own creativity get priced out of the process.
So we built ShortStops.
A small, nimble studio built on the belief in pausing on purpose. It gets us back to what we love - solving problems, making things that matter, and staying close to the creative to build the kind of work we used to fight for in the room.
Aaron Straka
Design-forward. Detail-obsessed. Aaron’s creative journey began in journalism, where craftful writing and curiosity were his first tools. Over the years, he’s led marquee work for brands like Starbucks, Sunkist, and Hawai‘i Tourism. He leads with empathy, precision, an eye for visual clarity, and a deep belief that good design is strategy.
Chris Swanson
Story-driven. People-first. Chris has always lived between worlds – account and creative, strategy and story, the brief and the big idea. That fluency shows up in his high-impact work for brands like Warner Brothers, SI Swim, TUMS, Sunkist, and Marshalls, as well as in the teams he’s built along the way. He leads with questions, lands with conviction, and strongly believes the work and the people who made it are equally important.