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We Dance The Freelance

Freelancing is one of the most immediate paths back into meaningful work when you’re in between roles. Whether you’re navigating a career shift, recently left a full-time job, or simply exploring more independent ways of working, going freelance can be a practical way to stay sharp, be visible and get paid. For some, it’s a short-term bridge. For others, it becomes the start of a more flexible, self-directed career. Either way, it requires a different level of readiness.

Clients are rarely hiring freelancers for long strategic processes. They want designers who can step in and start producing right away. That usually means being hands on with the tools, delivering quality work quickly and with minimal friction. To do that well, you need a solid setup, not just in your craft, but in how you collaborate, present and hand over work. The freelancers who are thriving are the ones who come prepared.

1. Build a rapid-start design system

You need a design system you can drop into any project and start building immediately. That means having your own component library in Figma built around best practice. Not for expressing your opinions, but for removing them when speed matters. It should include all the common UI patterns you see in every product: sign-in screens, contact forms, navigation layouts, search, account settings. Do not build these from scratch every time. Have your own system ready, but adapt it based on your target audience. If you’re working with engineering teams, align to what they already use. Tailwind, for example, is popular and has a structure that suits component-based development. If you’re working with small businesses or solo founders, then get comfortable with platforms like Webflow, Framer or even Squarespace.

2. Use templates for everything

Templates reduce decisions. The more reusable assets you have, the faster you can deliver. That means building templates not just for components, but for whole journeys, workshop boards, user flows, wireframes, proposals, content, branding and presentation decks. Create mockups of devices and everyday scenes so your work looks real and grounded in its future context. These templates do not need to be perfect, they need to be functional. They are the foundation you adapt to each client. Build them once and use them forever.

3. Prepare your UX assets

User experiences need more than screens. You need flows, customer journeys, diagrams and key moments that tie back to the story being told. These should also be templated. Every time you create a journey map from scratch, you waste time. Have one that can be tweaked quickly. Make sure it is clear enough for clients to understand, and structured enough to support buying decisions and align stakeholders. Freelance work often moves without a product manager in the room. Your job is not just to design, but to guide.

4. Preload your workshops and presentations

If you run workshops, every minute of client time matters. Prepare your Miro or Figma boards before the session starts. Have assets, instructions, flows and agendas already in place. The same goes for presenting. Your decks should not be reinvented every time. Have a base deck you simply populate. Clients want clarity, not surprises. They want to feel that you’ve done this before and can guide them through it.

5. Package your branding work

If you do visual identity work, you need a setup that makes you look fast and smart. That means having brand decks, real world mockups, and sample assets you can plug new work into. Put the logo on business cards, vehicles, T-shirts, shopfronts and devices. Most clients can’t visualise anything. That’s your job. Your deck should include logos, fonts, colours, tone of voice and guidelines. Build a template once and stop reinventing it.

6. Offer content templates that speed up execution

If your work touches content, then have templates ready for thumbnails, posts, profile layouts and advertising formats across all key platforms. Most clients will want these and they rarely come prepared. You don’t need to be a content creator, but you should know how to lay out a YouTube thumbnail, a LinkedIn carousel or a homepage hero that works. These quick wins buy you time to focus on better creative decisions elsewhere.

7. Build your own brand assets to market yourself

You are your own client too. Build your brand properly so you don’t spend time redoing it every time you post or update your site. Create your own templates, content, decks, icons, tone of voice and presentation layouts so you can focus on doing the work instead of marketing it. No one cares what your process is if the work isn’t visible.

8. Have a full business setup behind you

Being freelance means running a business. That includes contracts, quotes and invoices. These documents protect you. Brand them properly and structure them in a way that helps you look professional and experienced. If you don’t have the money to pay a lawyer, start with a strong template and get a lawyer to review it once you can afford to. Get these wrong and they will cost you.

9. Create structured communication tools

You are your own project manager. That means making it easy for clients to work with you. Start with a proper briefing questionnaire that captures what you need to begin the work. From that, create a simple briefing template that you can present back to confirm alignment. Set up project timeline boards in Notion, Trello or whatever suits your workflow, with key milestones, assets and deadlines mapped out. Use Slack channels or shared folders to keep conversations and files organised. Have clear labels, standard file naming conventions and a reliable system of version control. You will be judged by how easy you are to work with, not just how well you design.

10. Understand how engineers work

This is the part most designers skip. You do not need to code, but you do need to understand how things are built. Learn the difference between building in pages versus components. Understand how APIs, headless systems, front-end frameworks and dev handoff tools work. Ask your engineer contacts what they use. Figma to code plugins, design tokens, component libraries and naming conventions all matter. Most importantly, document your work. Do not assume that screens are enough. Leave notes, usage guides and structure your files so that they can be used without you in the room. That is the handoff.

Freelancing is not a fallback, it’s a craft of its own. The work might be temporary, but the reputation you build is permanent. Your setup is not just about speed, it’s about consistency, clarity and trust. Treat it like infrastructure. The better it runs, the more energy you have for the work itself.

If you’re serious about doing great freelance work, act like a business from day one. Build the assets, sharpen your tools, and create the kind of working environment that clients want to return to. You’re not just selling design. You’re making it easier for others to move forward.

Digital creatives it’s time to move on

Art Directors, Designers and Writers who switched from agency roles as digital creatives to in-house product designers. While many are still sitting in-house teams in tech firms, like banks and insurance companies, you’re most likely pretty bored and feeling pretty insecure as you hear rumours that there are going to be even more cuts. Any day now it could be you.

You should start your shift out of in-house and back to agency, or at least in service to agencies, more aligned to the digital creative work being done by marketing and brand teams, including everything from microsites and content creation to branding and digital art direction with emerging technologies.

While it was cushy in corporate, those opportunities are dying. Yes, it’s great being the creative in those sterile old corporate environments where you sit in a room and iterate the same old features to death. It was what everyone did and served as a great transition five to ten years ago, but that easy path is over.

It’s not too soon either, because most of you have forgotten how to create. You’ve become process and data driven, instead of being free to explore new territories. The hope of doing meaningful work is being replaced by repetitive tasks, working within the same constraints to refine a feature that will eventually die a slow death, if it sees any further improvement at all, while corporates quietly move away from design thinking in favour of vibe coding.

Everyone’s a designer now. With a short prompt, anyone can generate work that looks like it was done by the best in the industry. So what is there left to do. Unless you’re in a strong position to continue pursuing design, maybe you’ve got a foot in a startup that’s actually building AI products, you’re at risk of becoming as outdated as the corporate furniture around you.

Instead, dust yourself off. Go find that one coloured sweater and replace your black t-shirt for a while. It’s time to start vibing with AI. Explore new platforms where you can articulate what you want instead of pushing pixels. And if you’re still passionate about shaping visuals, shift your energy toward animation, 3D, or more augmented forms of content. These are exciting new fields that are less saturated and offer more potential. It will take time to get up to speed, but it’s a move worth making.

If you’re more of an art director than a hands-on pixel pusher, now is the time to learn how to work through voice or text prompts, leveraging tools that can produce content and branding assets that used to require the largest budgets. You might have to take a drop in salary, but it’s a small step back that puts you in a market that’s not nearly as flooded and genuinely in need of digital creative talent like yours.

So what now.

Start learning and making again. Reconnect with the parts of your creativity that got buried under product strategy decks and Jira tickets. Build a portfolio that shows you can create content, not just refine flows. Test new tools. Work faster. Focus your energy on the kind of work that still requires creative thinking and clear direction.

If you’re serious about staying relevant, this is the moment to act.

Create the Future of Design

It’s an exciting time to be a designer. Now is the time to elevate the work, using your passion, experience, and judgement to take your craft to a new level. The future of design is open to those who are willing to cut through the noise and lead it.

The machines have already learned everything ever designed, which means the highest standards are now available to anyone. What once took years of experience to master can now be generated. If you still have a passion for design, now is the time to learn these tools and move beyond what has already been produced.

You should be looking at the tools that are now being used to perform the tasks you once did. Figure out how they can remove the repetitive work and create more space for you to design a better, more thoughtful product experience. Use these tools to save time, and combine them with craft, good taste, and sound decisions to move your work forward.

Below are just a few tools to start with. Learn them if you want to stay competitive in the market, and once they are second nature, build on them. Use them to push the quality and ambition of your work further than before.

In early discovery, AI enables speed. Perplexity can help you explore markets, identify behavioural patterns, and review competitive products more efficiently. ChatGPT is useful for drafting briefs from loose inputs or assembling initial documents that outline direction. Notion AI supports the organisation of ideas into clearer formats. Tome enables those ideas to be presented in a coherent, visual structure without unnecessary time spent formatting. These platforms reduce friction in the early stages of thinking.

That said, choosing which signals to trust, what problems to address, and where to challenge assumptions still comes down to experience. Tools help you see more. They do not decide what is relevant.

During research, Dovetail and AskViable increase coverage by helping you transcribe sessions, extract sentiment, and cluster findings quickly. These efficiencies matter, especially in time-sensitive settings. But no system can detect hesitation in a participant’s tone, catch inconsistencies in their responses, or understand what they chose not to say. The task of interpreting meaning still belongs to the person doing the work.

For workshop preparation, FigJam AI, Whimsical, and Miro AI offer ready-made canvases, templates, and content generation. They allow you to plan collaborative sessions in far less time. Real-time synthesis features help condense insights while the session is running. But leading a workshop requires skill. You still need to follow the discussion, redirect focus if needed, and manage the energy in the room. No tool can substitute for effective facilitation.

In concept development, Galileo, Uizard, and Visily convert inputs into interface options with minimal delay. This allows for faster exploration of alternatives. You can quickly scan multiple directions, discard those that feel generic, and continue developing stronger approaches. These tools are useful for moving beyond the first idea, but they do not resolve what should be built or why. That decision still rests on purpose, not convenience.

In visual execution, Diagram and Figma’s native AI features provide layout suggestions, help with spacing, and manage repetitive actions like component creation. When used alongside a solid design system, they reduce effort and enforce consistency. But they do not account for how something feels, or whether the visual language supports the intent of the product. Assessing whether a design communicates effectively still requires human judgment.

Design systems benefit from platforms like Supernova, Locofy, and UXPin Merge, which streamline documentation, validate consistency, and translate components into code. These help close the gap between design and engineering. Even so, systems need curation. Knowing what to keep, what to remove, and how to evolve a framework requires clear ownership and ongoing input. The system reflects product priorities. Tools do not make those decisions for you.

In prototyping, tools like Framer, Anima, Locofy, and Quest AI enable designers to produce functional models with little or no handoff. This can increase alignment with engineers and help teams validate ideas earlier. But fidelity alone does not explain how an idea works. A prototype should demonstrate logic, explore edge cases, and help answer specific questions. Producing output is not the goal. Communicating purpose is.

As handoff becomes more automated, tools like Zeplin, Specify, and Relay help translate decisions into usable files while tracking updates. Code generation now includes components with production-grade formatting. But alignment with engineering depends on trust, mutual understanding, and conversation. Those relationships are not managed by software.

Testing is increasingly efficient. Maze and Useberry support unmoderated tests, collect interaction data, and surface usability issues quickly. ChatGPT helps write test scripts, group insights, and structure follow-up questions. These improvements make it easier to run tests more often. Still, observing how someone interacts with a feature, where they get stuck, or when they become disengaged tells you more than any metric. Analysis remains a human task.

In marketing, Jasper and Copy.ai create headline variants, body copy, and microtext at scale. This speeds up iteration and removes friction when trying different tones. But context still matters. Effective content reflects the product’s purpose and the audience’s expectations. Matching tone to intent is not something AI can do without direction.

You do not need to learn every tool in depth. But you should understand what they offer, where they apply, and which ones support your workflow. Choosing a reliable set of tools gives you a base to build from. Once that is established, your focus should return to the problems that need solving.

This shift expands the space in which you can apply your craft. With less time spent on repetitive production, you gain more room for exploration, clearer framing, and stronger decisions. Designers who integrate these tools effectively will not just increase their speed. They will raise the quality of their work. The machines become partners that amplify your ability and support the creation of new standards in design that you will lead.

Recruiters should be talent agents

Recruitment works better when it feels more like representation. The most effective recruiters aren’t acting as middlemen but behave like agents. Such professionals know their talent, back them, build trust, create access, and understand how timing and fit actually work. This shift in mindset changes everything.

You’ve seen this before. A client sends over a job spec and the recruiter reposts it to LinkedIn. Hundreds of applications come flooding in. Within hours, the inbox is full and the system is overwhelmed. No one gets a good experience, not the client, candidates, or recruiter.

Recruiters often complain they do not have the time to respond to everyone or to sort through portfolios properly. But the chaos is a symptom of waiting for client requests and then call for candidates begins. Theres only going through CV’s and forwarding them on.

I propose a better approach. Start early, build a bench of talent before the demand appears, know who is doing good work, and understand what they are looking for. Stay in touch with the people in your network, even when they are not actively searching. That way, when a client calls, you already know who to call back.

Clients do not need help reposting jobs. If they have written the spec, they can post it themselves. What they expect from a recruiter is access. Such clients want a shortlist and perspective. People want to know who you rate, and why. That is what earns the fee and builds trust.

Talent agents work this way all the time. In film, in sport, in music: representation is proactive. Agents do not wait for the casting call before getting involved. Such professionals know their client and understand the brief before it arrives. Agents pitch, coach, and prepare while creating the opportunity, not just responding to it.

Recruiters could be doing the same in creative and tech. Many already have the network and just need to activate it differently.

Help your candidates refine their CVs, shape their portfolios, understand their ambitions, know when they are open to move, offer interview prep, and give feedback. Bring creative leaders into your process if you do not feel confident reviewing portfolios yourself. Turn quality into your edge.

Recruitment agencies should be attracting candidates by sponsoring industry events, regularly publishing trend reports and making sure candidates up upping their skillsets to respond to demand.

You don’t need to be a middleman pushing paperwork between two sides because that isn’t the role anymore.

The people you represent should trust you before the job goes live. Clients should feel the preparation in your process, not just see a name on a list.

The best recruitment is built on readiness rather than rush, where you represent people well, stay close to them, and earn the right to place them.

That is the job.

The client is your friend

One of the most damaging myths in agency culture is that clients are something to be managed. It shows up in subtle ways. Side conversations to debrief after meetings. Deliberate staging of good cop and bad cop. Internal teams rolling their eyes once the call ends.

It usually starts after the honeymoon period, when the pitch has landed, the vision has been sold, and the energy is high. In those early workshops, everyone feels aligned and excited. Once delivery begins, ideas become real and decisions get hard. That’s when the shift happens. The work becomes transactional. Clients quickly become the enemy.

That mindset is not only short-sighted, it is creatively corrosive.

If you’re serious about doing good work, the client cannot be kept at arm’s length. You need to bring them into the process, not just for approvals, but as a core part of the team. You’re not just delivering a service. Helping someone realise a vision is what you’re actually doing. That requires trust, proximity, and care.

Working this way doesn’t mean over-servicing. It means being clear. Investing upfront in a shared understanding of the product, the ambition behind it, and the constraints you’ll need to navigate together is what matters. If it’s a large engagement, give them a dedicated resource. Not to act as a barrier, but as an enabler, someone who can capture expectations, track decisions, and keep the dialogue open.

You do not need layers of process to collaborate well. Small startup teams in a garage do not have account handlers or project managers standing between them and the work. They sit beside the founder, sketch ideas, write tasks together, and get on with it. Moving fast becomes possible because the feedback is direct, the intent is clear, and no one is protecting egos.

That speed and simplicity does not come from chaos. It comes from trust.

You do not need to replicate the structure of a scrappy team, but you can learn from the way they reduce friction. If the relationship with your client is healthy, red tape becomes unnecessary. What you need is shared tools, a shared language, and the space to build together.

This isn’t about creating a buffer. It’s about creating alignment.

There is no need for theatre. You do not have to pretend everything is fine to protect the team’s feelings. There is no value in isolating design from engineering or content from business context. When the client is treated as an equal partner, you can speak plainly. Challenges can be shared early. Resolving them together builds momentum and trust.

The way you structure that collaboration matters. Falling into the habit of two-week sprints followed by a big reveal will only create distance. Daily check-ins, even brief ones, keep feedback flowing. Issues can be surfaced and solved in real time. The best work does not come from big presentations. It is shaped in the in-between.

This applies whether you’re working on a low-budget MVP or a well-funded platform. The resource levels might change, but the principles should not. Stay close, stay transparent, and stay committed.

The most successful client relationships are the ones where everyone feels like they’re in it together. Wins are shared, setbacks are faced head-on. The team understands the client’s product inside out and the client understands the creative process well enough to defend it when needed.

That is not easy to build. It takes maturity, structure, and effort. When it is done right, it changes everything.

You do not just ship another project. Creating something meaningful becomes the focus. Together.

The client is not your enemy. The client is your friend.

Interviews Should Be Conversations

The job interview shouldn’t feel like an interrogation. It should be a casual conversation over coffee, not across a boardroom table. A chance to show who you are, how you think, and whether you’d be a good fit, without being made to perform.

You’ve done the work, made the time, and are already under pressure to make a major life decision. The least you deserve is to be treated with warmth and respect.

You shouldn’t be forced through a formal process full of questions designed to catch you off guard. The goal should never be to test your nerves. The person speaking to you should already understand your work and career path, or they shouldn’t be interviewing you. You should be met by someone who knows what to look for, who wants to understand your experience, values, and whether you’d connect with the team.

When just starting out, it’s about excitement for the opportunity to practice your craft, a hunger to learn, and the energy you’ll bring. As a senior designer, you’re still coachable, have passion for the craft, and how you add your experience to the team. And as a leader, it’s about vibe, whether you bring energy that uplifts the team and if your values align with how we work and what we do.

This process should never feel like surviving a Ninja Warrior course. Meeting someone excited to do meaningful work  together is a privilege.

When referred by someone who’s actually worked with you, that recommendation should count. There’s a big difference between a mate doing a favour and a respected peer backing you because they know what you bring.

Applying through a public process due to reach or regulation doesn’t mean you deserve less. If there’s little to go on online, a good hiring lead should ask for more, not disregard your CV. It’s their job to look a little closer, ask the right questions, and find out who you are. By the time you meet, it’s just a final gut check. A relaxed, honest chat to confirm you’re excited, understand the offer, and are ready to join.

You deserve to know what you’re walking into, not just the version being pitched. You deserve the transparency of where things are working, where they’re not, and what’s still being figured out.

Maybe you’re still employed and are simply searching for something new, a place to grow and contribute in a way that feels meaningful. Either way, you’re being asked to leave something familiar behind and give up a third of your day to help build someone else’s business. That comes with expectations and you deserve to know this next step will move you forward, not hold you back.

When companies don’t take the time to have proper conversations, they have no business posting jobs. Recruitment agencies that neglect to maintain a live network of candidates shouldn’t be scrambling to fill roles on demand. A good recruiter builds relationships well before a client reaches out. Their role is not to forward CVs, but to help talent succeed. Too many act like middlemen, stepping in only when asked, instead of doing the work to find, support, and prepare people ahead of time.

The creative industry isn’t that big. It’s often the same pool of talent moving from company to company, all trying to find the right fit or a new challenge. Right now, something’s broken. Too many great people are out of work. Standards have become so unrealistic that almost no one can meet them. The market feels flooded, so companies keep raising the bar, assuming there’s always someone better, rather than recognising what’s right in front of them.

If you’ve been in this industry long enough, you know the most valuable thing you bring is experience. That can’t be replaced by a piece of paper. What matters is who you are, how you think, show up, and work with others. None of that fits neatly onto a CV.

Your portfolio might open the door, but that’s not the full story. If someone truly wants to hire you, they’ll check your LinkedIn, read your recommendations, and look at your site. Even if there’s not much to see, there should be something that gives them a sense of you. And if not, they can ask.

Your application should never be disregarded without a little effort, as you deserve a fair chance to be understood, not just assessed.

That starts with a conversation. Not an interrogation.

Beyond the Job Title

I don’t design so much as I give design or creative direction. I’m a leader, but I still give direction. I default to Creative Director, and given the level I’m at, I sometimes say Executive Creative Director. I’ve been a Chief, but that seems to scare some and confuse others.

But that’s not what this is about.

I’m talking about the role you play. Not your title, but the actual role. The way you show up. What you take responsibility for. What others rely on you for.

This isn’t about me and my experience, I’ll try to keep it about you.

What role do you play?

It’s usually a really tough question to answer, and if I told you to explain it in one sentence, I’d probably stress you out. While you think about that, and you’re welcome to add your answer in the comments, let me explain what I mean.

If I ask most people in advertising agencies what they do, I’ll get two common answers: “I’m a copywriter” or “I’m an art director.” Sometimes with “junior” or “senior” in front. But that tells me very little about the role they actually play or the work they actually do. Is it print, web, above the line, below the line, through the line? And what does that even mean to someone outside of the ad industry?

If I asked a designer in an in-house team at a fintech, most would say they’re a UI designer, UX designer, or maybe a product designer. If pressed, some might say “I do user research and user flows,” which is a bit more specific to their day-to-day practice. But few would say “I work on the user experience of banking products like how to freeze your credit card” or “I work on onboarding for the business banking app.” Not many people go that granular because they might be jumping across multiple features while working at the company.

Most are likely also distracted by chasing the junior, senior, lead titles. It’s understandable, we all want growth and to be recognised for our achievements.

Another thing that sometimes gets added by advertising folk is “award-winning,” and by designers, “user-centred.” There are lots of crafty ways to say these things.

Let me bring it back to me for a second.

I can remember trying to write a one-liner that explained what I did, something that captured the breadth of my experience. I would say Executive Creative Director, then add “from concept to execution.” Whether it worked or not, I don’t know. I don’t recall getting too many questions about it. But I felt it worked because it included the job title, which covered the seniority, the “creative” (since most things at the time were still lumped together), and the fact that I give direction. Then it explained that I work from the concept of a campaign all the way through to execution, meaning building out the full solution.

This felt important to me. In advertising, most creatives only really did conceptual work. They were paid to come up with mood boards, storyboards, ideas and campaigns, but they handed it off. The work was then done by DTP teams, directors, campaign managers, art buyers, producers, etc. Rarely did they do the final work themselves. That was outsourced. They would give final approval and still get most of the credit, as agencies were mostly in the business of big ideas.

But as a digital creative director, we often had to come up with the big idea, create all the assets, build it, and run the campaigns. Hence “from concept to execution.”

In in-house teams, there’s broadly speaking a UX phase and a UI phase. Maybe a discovery phase and a delivery phase. Research and conceptualisation, then development of visual assets. But it’s usually handed over from design to dev, and the output is often not what you originally intended. Many designers are left feeling disappointed.

But given how long these things take in corporate, “shipping is shipping” and apparently we’ll iterate next time. Or so it’s sold.

So my earlier soundbite after Executive Creative Director made sense at the time. No one challenged it. It worked. But now I find it more challenging.

Again, this isn’t about me. What about you?

I read titles and headline descriptions all the time. Very few actually say more than the job title. The ones that do try to describe what they do often end up making a really confusing statement. And I often see the same generic “user-focused” blah blah I’ve probably used myself.

Occasionally, I read something with a bit more clarity. It might explain that someone works within a specific industry or business unit, or on a specific product or feature. That certainly helps.

But what do you actually do? That’s the elusive nugget we should all be searching for.

Some of these headlines include a flex, like “award-winning.” In tech, it’s usually “ex-Google” or “ex-Facebook.” That’s just a flex, like saying “Oscar-winning director” or “three-time best-selling author.” You have every right to flex. It adds credibility.

So what do you do? What if you had to pick one statement? Maybe two. I understand how diverse your skill set has to be to get any job these days. There’s no judgement from me. I’m simply trying to work this out in my own mind. Trying to figure out if what we say makes any sense to anyone else besides ourselves.

I usually try to explain that I lead teams, building experiences people love. It says what I do. It says what we deliver, not just with my input, but together, as a team. And who it’s for. Oh, and that they actually love it.

I also have a cheekier line I use now and then. I say I’m the creative leaders’ leader. Because I am. I lead creative directors and other senior leaders. I use “creative” because “design” feels too narrow. I say “leader” instead of “director” because not all leaders direct. There are leads, heads, managers, and so on. But I’m their leader. I represent their function within the organisation.

I’m always trying to find the most elegant way to say this and to make sure it lands, which I have to admit has gotten tougher over the years. I’m asked all the time what I do, and I fumble. I throw things out to see what lands.

And if I struggle to explain it to someone in person, writing it in a way that makes sense to anyone else is even more challenging.

Do you feel the same way too?

I’d love to know how you describe yourself, in person or in your headline, outside of your job title.

In Good Company

There are a few companies I wouldn’t mind working for. Some because they’re innovative, some out of curiosity, and others because I use them regularly and know I could help make them better. I admire the craft, the clarity, and the culture some have built. They’re real places where I believe I could add real value. My career has taught me that the best opportunities often come from unexpected places. Every role sharpens your instincts, strengthens your systems thinking and makes you a better designer.

Lego

Anyone who knows me knows I build Lego. I don’t want to be a set designer or a master builder, that’s my hobby. What I’d love to do is help elevate their digital experience. From the website to in-store journeys, there’s room to build more cohesion and consistency. With the right structure and creative leadership, their experience could feel as satisfying and smart as the product itself.

Grab

When I lived in Thailand, Grab became my go-to for everything. Rides, food, groceries, cleaning, you name it. It’s probably the most-used app I’ve ever had. The core product is powerful, but the experience can feel disjointed. I’d focus on bringing unity across services, sharpening the flow, and simplifying support. It’s a product I respect and use, and one I know I could make even better.

Amazon

Most of my experiences with Amazon have been difficult. I still can’t access my account, and the interface is hard to navigate. I use it often in design audits as an example of how inconsistency adds up over time. That’s exactly why I’d love to work there. I’d bring leadership, structure and clarity to a platform that millions rely on. This one is all about the challenge.

Apple

I use the ecosystem every day and it works the way I work. It supports, syncs and connects without friction. I also admire their willingness to take risks and stay the course. Their design team is one of the few that still moves with purpose. I’d love to be part of that environment and contribute to the next wave of experiences inside a system that values both restraint and innovation.

Porsche

I’ve grown to really appreciate Porsche. Not just for the product, but the precision of the brand. From language to visuals to touchpoints, everything feels thought through. That kind of consistency doesn’t happen by accident. I’d be proud to help maintain and extend that strength across digital products and future-facing platforms.

Red Bull

I don’t drink energy drinks, but I love what Red Bull has built. The strategy, the brand worlds, the culture around it, it’s an incredible ecosystem. The content, placement and community are on a different level. I’d love to build experiences that bring those stories to life digitally, with the same energy and originality they bring to everything else.

Liquid Death

It’s just water, but the way they’ve branded and built around it is clever. The tone, the packaging and the attitude all cut through. It’s not my typical style, but I respect how clear and bold they are. I’d like to help them grow without losing that edge.

Revolut, Wise, Monzo

These fintech platforms are part of my daily life. I use Wise the most, Monzo is polished and easy to use, but Revolut stands out in terms of potential. Their growth is impressive and their features are genuinely useful, but the experience could be sharper. I’d bring clarity, consistency and structure to help any of them move faster and more confidently. It’s a space I know well, and where I could contribute from day one.

Teenage Engineering

Their products make you feel something. The aesthetic is strong, the thinking is clear, and the connection between form and function is rare. They remind me of what Dieter Rams might be building today. I’d love to contribute to shaping the next digital layer of their ecosystem. Products like these deserve experiences that feel as considered as the design itself.

Formula 1

I’ve always liked the racing, but it’s the data, overlays and live interaction that I find fascinating. The way they present complex information clearly, and bring it into the broadcast experience, is world class. As F1 evolves into more than a sport, I see massive opportunity to contribute to the lifestyle, media and technology experiences around it.

A24

Everything they release feels crafted. The films are distinctive, bold and filled with creative details. I’d love to build immersive digital experiences around their sci-fi and genre pieces. Interfaces that fit the world, not just the film. There’s huge opportunity to create something original and meaningful in this space.

LV

Luxury is expanding its audience. Brands like Louis Vuitton are showing up in culture, sport and tech, not just fashion. The physical side is refined, but the digital side still has room to grow. I’d love to help elevate that. Something that feels like Moleskins Timepage, useful, elegant, clear. That level of product design is where I’d add value.

Tesla and SpaceX

I’d work on any of Elon’s companies, including X. The challenges are clear and I have ideas. I’ve already prototyped voice interfaces for Tesla, and know someone working on the rocket UI for SpaceX. These are spaces where traditional interface thinking doesn’t apply. That excites me. I’d give everything to help shape these experiences, because they’re not about browsers or phones, they’re about future interaction.

Gymshark

I train every day, and I respect how Gymshark built their brand from the ground up. I don’t wear their gear, but I know their story, and I admire their approach. The connection with athletes like CBUM is strong, and their community is massive. I’d love to help shape the digital tools and platforms that connect it all.

Dyson

Whether people love or challenge their products, I admire how design-led the company is. Dyson solves real-world problems across hardware, health and home, and does it with ambition. I’d move to Singapore if I had to, but the UK base also appeals to me. I’d bring creative leadership, system thinking and experience design to a company that experiments with purpose.

There are a few agencies I’d be happy to work with too, but that’s a conversation for another time. I’m not trying to build my own thing. I want to lead a creative team inside a company. That’s where I do my best work.

Which company would you want to work for?

Considering Fractional Leadership

Over the past few years, the market has shifted in ways that have forced many of us in executive creative roles to rethink how we work. The budgets that once supported full-time Chief Creative Officers or Chief Design Officers are harder to justify, especially for smaller or scaling businesses. This reality has prompted me to explore new ways to apply my experience and leadership without requiring a full-time executive headcount.

One option I have been considering is stepping into a fractional leadership role. In this arrangement, I would serve as the CCO or CDO of a business that needs senior guidance but is not in a place to bring on an executive permanently. The idea is simple: dedicate a predictable amount of time each month to the company and its teams, delivering strategic direction, supporting execution, and coaching internal talent. For example, this might look like two hours every day, which could cover team catch-ups, creative reviews, leadership discussions, workshops, or client meetings.

While that sounds like a lot of meetings, if time is structured thoughtfully, it becomes surprisingly manageable. The time allocation does not have to be a strict daily schedule. Some days could require only an hour, while others might need three. Some weeks could be lighter. The important thing is that there is a clear monthly commitment that everyone respects. As the business grows and the value of the role becomes more apparent, the hours can scale accordingly.

This is not an ideal substitute for a fully embedded executive. Building genuine relationships and understanding the nuances of a company’s culture and processes takes time that is hard to compress. However, when both sides are committed and communicate openly, it is possible to create an arrangement that delivers real impact.

To be effective as a fractional leader, you need to manage multiple clients at once, which requires discipline, transparency, and mature boundaries. It is essential to have regular check-ins with company leadership to confirm that expectations are met, to highlight any gaps you see, and to request additional time when deeper consideration is needed. Without that trust and clarity, the model will struggle to deliver value.

Despite the challenges, I believe fractional leadership holds promise. For companies under pressure to reduce fixed costs while still needing strategic creative guidance, it can be a practical solution. It can also be a more flexible way for experienced leaders to share their expertise across multiple organisations that otherwise might never have access to that level of support.

If you run a business or lead a team, I would be interested to hear whether this approach resonates with you. Could a fractional CCO or CDO help your company grow without the full cost of a permanent executive? Feel free to share your thoughts. This is an evolving idea, and the conversation is worth having.

Learning and Leading by Design

No matter how much you invest in mastering your craft, or how committed you are to staying ahead, the industry will eventually force you out of your comfort zone. I spent most of the first ten years of my career fully immersed in Flash, determined to be among the best in the world. Even as I began transitioning into creative direction, I refused to let my Flash skills fade. I would spend my days leading teams and my nights perfecting builds, driven by the idea that being a great leader meant staying deeply connected to the work itself.

At the time, I couldn’t imagine a world where Flash wouldn’t be relevant. Then one day, Steve Jobs made the decision to effectively end Flash’s role on the web. I spent a few months convincing myself it would somehow bounce back, but it quickly became clear the shift was permanent. That December, instead of taking a break, I spent my entire two-week holiday learning HTML5 and CSS3. I built my first responsive website from scratch. I had never even created an HTML portfolio before, but I understood that staying still wasn’t an option.

Moving early turned out to be one of the best decisions I could have made. While my love for Flash never really disappeared, it was obvious the opportunities were shrinking fast. At the same time, responsive design was gaining momentum, and clients were already expecting websites that worked seamlessly across devices. I decided to leave Ogilvy and start my own agency, which allowed me to apply this new approach to our work from day one. We embraced WordPress as our CMS of choice and focused on building responsive websites that delivered value across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Over time, running the agency became more challenging. Fully responsive WordPress themes and powerful plugins flooded the market, making it harder to charge a premium for work that increasingly could be done by almost anyone. I returned to agency life, directing campaigns and continuing to support teams. Flash never completely disappeared, and I was fortunate to still be involved in some remarkable projects, but responsive web design had become the norm.

After a couple of years, I was laid off. For a while, I freelanced and kept building websites, but the fallback of being able to rely on that work was already under pressure. When Squarespace launched, I struggled with the idea of taking a client’s money to build something I could set up in an afternoon. It felt disingenuous, and I knew I needed to rethink how I created value.

I leaned further into design leadership and systems thinking, areas I had already started exploring long before they became popular talking points. While working on a design system for Nikon, I saw firsthand how critical this approach would become for any large-scale design operation. Later, when I transitioned into an in-house role, I was responsible for centralising a fragmented design team around a single system, ensuring that multiple squads across the organisation were aligned. This alignment allowed teams to focus on improving the experience rather than spending their time reinventing the interface.

As I moved into early-stage startups, I applied the same principles to help teams align and scale products effectively. Even now, I believe systems thinking remains one of the most important aspects of delivering great design at scale.

I was fortunate to avoid the more speculative side of trends like crypto and NFTs, though I still took the time to understand how blockchain technology worked and explored what it could mean for creative industries. Learning for the sake of staying informed has always been part of how I work, but I have also learned not to chase every shiny new object.

We are now in the middle of the biggest shift since the dot com boom of the 90s. AI, automation and emerging platforms are forcing everyone to rethink how they work and what value looks like. While I have always embraced technology and continued to learn new skills, the heart of my work has been leadership. I have been doing that far longer than I was a full time practitioner of any single discipline.

Over the years, I have spent time learning everything from designing logos and working in print to storytelling, 3D, animation, video editing, motion graphics and countless other skills that would take too long to list comprehensively. For me, these were not isolated capabilities, they were simply part of delivering more complete and considered work. Often, it made sense to bring in specialists who could focus on a particular area while I concentrated on ensuring everything held together strategically and creatively.

It honestly makes me laugh that so many people are not even willing to work across lanes, because I have spent my entire career moving between them. I have always been curious to explore new things and never cared whether the challenge involved creating an AR experience, designing merchandise or staging an event. I am creative, I always have been, and I am comfortable doing just about anything I get the opportunity to do, while still making leadership my primary focus.

Today, I still believe in staying close to the work, but I know where I add the most value. I am first and foremost a creative leader. I have never stopped learning, and I do not plan to. Experience has taught me that no matter how confident you are in your skills, history will repeat itself. Sooner or later, you will be forced to adapt, evolve and find new ways to contribute.

That is the constant in this industry. Nothing stays still.