The client wanted to consolidate its 10 automotive brands into one, in order to find new audiences and forge new partnerships. The automotive industry is the most dynamic and inventive in the world, and the branding of Autovia needed to reflect these qualities. We also created a brand book to inspire designers into making powerful visual communications whilst also understanding the overall mission. Steve Fowler, editorial director, said: “The launch went well, and much of that was down to the visuals. Thank you!”
The i is the only national newspaper that has never supported a political party. During the 2024 UK elections, its integrity and impartial journalism have never been needed more. I cowrote and art directed this integrated campaign with my creative partner Bill Dunn at Thinking & Doing.
In 2020 Dennis US launched The Week Junior in America. My role was creative director. Working with the global CEO of The Week and EIC of The Week Junior I created and commissioned the creative strategy and campaigns.
This included directing lead photography, brand film, social assets, tone of voice, brand book and campaigns up to launch and creative strategy as we moved into Coronavirus era.
The primary shoot in Los Angeles fed into the campaign’s stills and film. Its job was to connect families to the power of literacy.
The first issue went into production the same week New York went into lockdown. Six weeks in it had 25,000 had subscribers spread across every state in America.
This innovative start up needed to convince huge players in the auto trade market that they could fix the inefficiencies of their system. The product makes a complex system simple.
Representing that in the visual branding needed optimism, simplicity and sophistication. Bespoke geometric typography that is minimal, bold and touches on the themes of auto industry logos. A dramatic library of images allows the sales team to create stories that are beyond the facts and figures of the industry. An optimistic palate of colours and graduations brings a bright optimism to all assets.
When Atlas launched into the subscription consultancy market, they needed a big impact look: the antithesis of the usual understated B2B branding. They required a bright, optimistic, characterful visual identity to reflect their brand truth – years of expertise gained from launching and running big, exciting publishing products.
The deconstructed A is visually disruptive, while the optical trick of allowing the viewer to complete the letter represents what Atlas do – mapping a clear path for their clients, and guiding them into unknown territories.
The company is expanding fast, launching sister companies that move their skills into other sectors. The first was Atlas Advisory, aimed at the VC world. It needed a more austere, “modern boardroom” look and feel. Explaining their process required a more graphically demanding information design, employing a rich colour system that sits under the primary brand architecture.
WIRED Consulting and JP Morgan launched a journalistic platform to cover the future of payments. They needed a new style that would link on the trust and authority of both brands on this huge subject. I worked with WIRED’s journalists and illustrator’s to create a magazine that would be distributed at finance events around the world. That content also became a download.
I directed and commissioned this shoot for The Week Junior UK. It needed to cover all their marketing requirements for the next few seasons. The children need to be happy, relaxed and real. We use my brand system that means children are either ‘Reading’ or ‘Owning’ in any picture. Reading is happily absorbed. Owning is presenting the product in a proud, upbeat way.
As creative director at Men’s Health I conceived and directed hundreds of images a year. Still life, portraits, CGI, illustration beauty and fashion.
This edit was shot by: Kingsley Barker, Luke Kirwan, Jamie Baker, Adrian Myers, Max Oppenheim and Barnaby Wilshire.
Trouva commissioned myself and my sometime creative partner Bill Dunn to help them communicate with the boutique shops that are at the heart of their business.
We found their messaging at that time was not in step with the client culture. It was stiff and sounded like the big business that they were trying to get away from.
Our solution was a leave-behind booklet and accompanying gif for email. It had to combine a straight forward business pitch of numbers and anecdotes with a Trouva charm that would be in-step with the curators of the coolest shops across Europe.
Brooklyn based Filmmaker Eva Midgley asked me to create the titles and visual branding for her film The Birthday Cut.
The typography was inspired by an old American hardback edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letters.
We used stills shot by Eva’s husband John Midgley and created a logo, poster, social posts and the title sequence. The film premiered at the Toronto Short film Festival in 2019.
• The brief was to create a new brand that could stand alone in a very established, specialist marketplace.
• It had to immediately and authenticallymeet the needs of both a new and existing audience who buy luxury products and advertisers who wanted to expand their reach.
• The finished product launched in print, tablet and, eventually, HTML on 6 platforms. The app also has a constant 4.5 star rating and excellent reviews from users on Apple Newstand and other platforms.
• Within its first full year of trading it exceeded all of its targets and went into profit.
• It was also nominated at the PPA 2013 and the British Media Awards 2014. It has also been shown and praised in talks by Kaldor, Clearleft and Contentment.
The Week Junior’s New Year campaign would normally revolve around resolutions, fresh starts, and the joys of literacy. January 2021 was quite exceptional. We believed there was space for a message that focussed on optimism through understanding.
Book design for Otium Press featuring the prints of British pop artist Brice McLean.
• Giant magazine was an independent entertainment and popular magazine based in New York. It needed to break the mould of the mens mags of the time. It had outgrown its first iteration as an unruly glossy fanzine.
• It wanted to take the best of Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and the men’s mags of the time and make something new.
• Working from the logo down we created a new look and feel that would sit well with the Hollywood agents we relied on for our interviews but still had a newsstand precence with its audience
• In less than a year it won an SPD merit award in New York and became a calling card in Hollywood for everyone who worked with it.
• SHIFT56 is a health and fitness system designed to undo common myths about self improvement. Its demographic is young proffesional men and women.
• As a launch they needed a brand message, mark and look that was optimistic, aspirational and worked primarily on social then, eventually, in print and other brand spaces.
• The final version is an abstract that comes from the the principle that you cannot improve your health without metrics. It is somewhere between a sun and measuring dial.
• The first paid for product was a book for sale through Amazon and later major high retailer. Its cover was designed the brand in Amazon search and still work full size. The inside needed to be bright, inspirational and useful.
• Rotageek helps big business manage scheduling. They are technologically sophisticated and creative. They believe they serve big business in a unique and valuable way.
• We established that their top line message is that Rotageek delivers simple solutions to complex problems. The brand mark needed to represent that idea in it the simplest form with the most character.
• They rebranded the company from the top down and kept winning accounts off their major rivals. Their clients now include O2, Lola’s Cupcakes and Dune.
• The brief was to develop a publishing product and a campaign that conveyed the excitement of reading about the world to children, adults and loyal readers of The Week. The marketing was on all platforms and included this cinema ad.
• We needed to ensure that the product captured the imagination of 8 to 12 year old readers whilst still being true to The Week family.
• With subscriptions passing 20,000 in 40 issue The Week Junior is the fastest growing product in Dennis Publishing's history. It doubled its projected figures for the end of 2016 by August - making it Britain's fastest growing children's magazine. It also won Launch of the Year at the British Media Awards.
• In the run up to launch of Portfolio we needed to develop a brand message that lived beyond the existing sites.
• The message needed a look and feel that was a natural extension of the functional nature of a news format site and tell people that there was the latest in luxury journalism to be enjoyed - from a trusted news source.
• Within 3 months of launch we had 3000 uniques a day and high end brands like Audi, Jaguar, John Lewis and IBM were all advertisers.
• As Creative Director of the fashion bi-annual I was responsible for the brand management, art direction and production.
• We worked with and published some of the best known photographers in London and New York.
• In that time we won 2 Magazine Design Awards and brought on some of the highest end advertising ever to buy in to Dennis Publishing.
• Since 2011 one of my main clients has been The Week. It’s print and digital edition have a readership of over 200,000 and it is constantly investing in the development of new products and campaigns whilst iterating its live products.
• I conceived and designed the core brand message for this period: Intelligent, Balanced, Concise. It is a distillation of the most loved values of the product.
• We have prototyped, built, launched and thrown away apps, magazines, websites, badges, ad campaigns, moving billboards, films, newsletters, social content, shop fronts, ebooks, ad sales pitches and brand world books.
• The Week has a unique and loyal readership: 50% male, 50% female readership. 69% AB profile. Everything it that goes live has to feel like a natural extension of the brand - to these people and new audiences alike.
• 2015 was there most successful year in 20 years of trading. The brand continues to grow and evolve.
• I spent 6 years at GQ in London overseeing the whole magazine. Brand management, concepts, commissions, design and print.
• We worked with and published some of the best known photographers in fashion, portraiture and reportage.
• In that time we won 2 PPA awards for art direction and numerous other accolades for the magazine as a whole.
The Ethical Butcher’s purpose is helping connect people’s kitchens and diets back to nature. They select and deliver high quality meats reared using regenerative agricultural techniques.
The concept work we created together blended together several themes: simplicity, modernity and a back to the land idea. This lead the visual design to very pure geometric fonts and the Fehu. An ancient rune meaning wealth specifically through cattle.
- Land Rover wanted a premium newstand product to celebrate their 60 year anniversary. The images were largely sourced from Land Rover’s extensive picture archive.
- It needed to be interesting to all Land Rover fans without excluding new customers who were thinking of buying one of their latest products.
- The book included 160 pages of editorial covering the history of the brand, visually edited and layed out to convey their exciting and diverse heritage whilst still talking to the luxury goods market, which is Land Rover’s focus.
• Prosperis The Week’s finance supplement edited by Money Week. It is part of the guides series that was designed to accommodate editorial subjects that didn’t belong in the main issue.
• The bulk of the subject matter is visually quite dry so we found an illustrative style that makes it bright and modern. The typography also needs to be a step away from the main title to keep its feel as a separate entity.
The Week At Home launch is part of the ever expanding portfolio of content brands aimed at their exclusive ABC 1 audience.
It had to be clever, informative and simple and stylish. I worked with editors Bill and Katy Dunn to create the issues and the over all look and feel.
- Men’s Health could see an opportunity to become the market leader in the men’s magazine sector. They wanted to know how art direction could help them achieve that goal.
- The challenge was to avoid making health and fitness stories feel repetitive. The pages needed to be constantly benefit driven but also be full of aspirational lifestyle journalism. This involved taking an innovative and ideas-based approach to commissioning the magazine’s art and creating its design.
- Under my creative direction the magazine reached 250,000 copies a month - an all time high for the brand. It took over 50% of market its share and won two PPA Editor of the Year awards.
• Former Shortlist and NME editor was launching a new media brand. It set out to create a new space for talking about masculinity in the modern age.
• I was asked to create the top line visual identity and the first round of film content.
• The brand mark had to be taken seriously sitting above content that might be as simple as men’s fashion or a weighty as mental health issues.
• My solution was a modernised and simplified Vitruvian Man. An icon that could sit between aspiration, inspiration and the everyday.
• The film content needed a strategy that allowed an editorial approach (telling the best story possible) but still optimising the content for sharing. The productions needed to be responsive to the individual stories and create the family styles that would be The Book of Man.
• The launch was covered in The Drum, Campaign and on The Media Show, Radio 4. The company is set to break even with in its first year of operation.
- The Sunday Times Magazine was celebrating its 50th year on a variety of platforms.
- They needed a logo that would reflect the standing of the magazine and was versatile enough to flag a feature, lead an ad in another product or be on display at their Saatchi Gallery show.
- The simple and elegant logo had just enough elements to hold all those platforms together, from the gallery foyer to a spot advertisement in a sister product.
• We started with the proposition that news for children was a market opportunity for The Week.
• Over the 12 month development period we tested and brought together numerous influential factors and requirements. These included visual accessibility and legibility, editorial tone, graphic and news room systems.
• We had to see how those ideas could make a product that could be loved by children and still hold the vales of The Week magazine.
• In the 12 months since launch paid subscribers have passed 25,000 - double the expectations. The magazine had won Launch of the Year at the PPA and the BSME on top of a host of other awards for both editorial and marketing.
• IronLife Media had established a business case for launching their first product as a digital only magazine.
• In order to work it needed a bold and contemporary look and feel and to ensure it was a very different product to the popular newsstand products. It needed to be more journal like and yet still be be a platform for changing amounts of quality video content.
• The templates needed to work efficiently within the restrictions of their journalism and their production team.
• Within the year they had a loyal, global audience of readers and contributors. They were all publicly championing the brand - helping the magazine grow and the company launch other brands.
• As Creative Director at Jack I was in charge of the look and feel of the most diverse and interesting Men’s mag of its time.
• We combined an eclectic editorial stance with up to the minute fashion direction in a compact size issue.
• It was much loved by readers, advertisers and publishers alike.
• The company wanted to stand out from the large corporates on the stylish New York contract publishing scene.
• We decided that the city was still the inspiration for how they did business and worked with shapes and typefaces that were inspired by the city.
• We found a solution had a was clever, simple and elegant. With a minimum of fuss it created a strong statement that helped them stand out.
• Freedman innovations in furniture were looking into how to establish themselves as both a new and and timeless furniture brand.
• The core principle of their first product was the idea that a seat should lie at 27 degrees in order to create a healthy posture.
• The icon is a graphic representation of that sole idea.
• The Masterclass Coaching Academy are Britain’s leading performance sport climbing school.
• As part of their expansion they wanted to make an interval training app that helps climbers train using their unique expertise. The existing apps had no expertise behind them.
• They needed a UI that could guide people safely through the encyclopedic, customisable set of instructional films and interval training program. All whilst still holding the authority of their already existing brand.
• Ampere are a start-up at the overlap of tech and business broadcasting information. They needed a logo to fit into there existing content systems
• I worked with the CEO to establish what the parameters of message might be.
• The solution combined utilitarian type with a decorative badge that could used in different combinations.
• I worked with Jason to try and find the simplest graphic expression of his studio.
• The end result was an abstract representing the LED light that featured in a lot of his early works.
• Jason’s Studio went on to work for some of the most impressive client list including Tate Modern, Bloomberg, Mercedes and Number 10 Downing Street. He retains an update version of the same logo.
Over 2020 The Week’s business model changed radically. The focus moved to subscriptions through clever editorial values. A redesign needed to feel like it helped you read and understand the news - and in turn would represent The Week’s unique editorial take on the world. I prioritised an asymmetric design and a commitment to reading and legibility as ways to making the experience feel unique and refreshing.
• Swiss Strength needed a new look to help establish their expanding and wealthy London Client base.
• I worked with them to create icon that could fit neatly in to the world of health and fitness.
• Swiss Strength have expanded to the point where they have now opened there first London showroom in Kensington.
