VP & Global Executive Creative Director

Previously
Other places I play

Music

Post-punk electronica with feelings. Best enjoyed loudly.
Weather ReportMachineHuman

Bland Land

My exploration of how design got stuck — and how better judgment, taste, and making can pull us out.

Rogue School

A home for my books, frameworks, and experiments — including my course AI → Aesthetic Intelligence, how to work with machines without losing your creative soul.
Rogue School

First Things Club

A simple gathering for creative people: no agenda, no hierarchy — just space to show up as humans. Now in London, San Francisco, and Chicago.
First Things Club
2004 — 2007
Graphic Designer at Cog Design.

Cut my teeth in a proper “learn-by-doing” studio — making work, learning craft, and figuring out what good taste actually means in the real world.
Helped friends open their first shop (& my first tiny taste of publicity).
2008 — 2009
Senior Designer @ Emak Mafu
Founder @ Cure Studio

Started shaping early digital/brand work and slowly learned how to talk about what I was making — not just make it.
Got featured by the team at Ala Champ after work for DJ Sasha, Busaba, Vans and more.
2010 — 2013
Co-Founder @ HiggonsonHurst
Founder @ The Type Foundry

Built a businesses representing illustrators — one obsessed with type. Learned how much culture matters behind the work.
Grew HigginsonHurst (thank you Chrissie Abbott, Daisy Fletcher, Damien Frost, Esra Røise, Han Lee, Mike Ballard, Paul Bommer).
Released a few EPs described as “discordant”, “noise”, and “interesting”.

(Not for weddings. Probably not for funerals.)
HumanMachine
2014 — 2019
Creative Director → ECD → Principal · DesignStudio (now Further)

Learned what it means to lead — not just make — and how to build teams that can ship ambitious work with care.
Moved from London to San Francisco, and started First Things Club — a simple ritual for designers to meet, share, and help each other do good work.
First Things Club
2020 — 2021
Global Creative Director, Pinterest

Led global creative and learned how to keep clarity (and optimism) inside complex organisations.
Finally wrote Use Design To Design Change — the thing I kept saying I’d write “one day”. That book later became a course and an early AI experiment.
Rogue School
2022 — 2023
I’ve been lucky to support a handful of teams as they build what’s next — usually at the intersection of brand, product, and storytelling.I've been lucky to have joined some inspiring organizations as a brand advisor.
Head of Brand Design @ Google

Focused on brand systems, craft, and helping teams make work that scales without losing its soul.
Creative Boom were kind enough to let me drone on.
Read it here
2024 — 2025
Used Use Design To Design Change with startup and scale-up cohorts — asking simple questions that unlock smarter answers across people → product → brand.
Recently
Music has become a constant alongside my work — something I carry with me as I move between cities, clients, and conversations!
‍
This album gave me space to think through our climate and I am so touched that Mark Baugh-Sasaki let me use his wonderful artwork for the cover.
Weather Report
Developed and co-taught a course with friend and inspiration GP. The course explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative practice — not just tools, but judgment, taste, and authorship.Alongside a generous group of guest practitioners, we unpacked how creatives can work with AI while staying grounded in human sensibility.
The Course
Speaking at DesignWeek San Francisco has been an absolute treat. Unpacked the drive behind Use Design To Design Change and the many lessons I’d learned along the way. I also unpacked the thinking about weirding the normal and normaling the weird which ended up becoming it's own book soon enough!
SF Design Week
Weird the Normal / Normal the WeirdThe book exploring how progress often comes from knowing when to challenge convention, and when to make unfamiliar ideas feel usable and human.
Rogue School
After years of working across the US and Europe, I moved from San Francisco back to London — closing one chapter and making space for another. The shift created distance, perspective, and the headroom to reflect on patterns I’d been circling for a long time.
Got to talk to Rob at Design Week about why i'm so excited about the move.
Design Week
What started as a small ritual quietly became a distributed community — carried forward by trust rather than structure. First Things Club has gone global with events in London, San Francisco, Berlin & Chicago (and counting)!  
First Things Club
Work
Etc
Me at work
Typeform
Deliveroo
Treatwell
Drivy