I have many creative things I like to do. Music, art, design, photography, film-making, writing and building things with my hands. I have always liked the creativity process and fulfilment of creating, making, fixing, editing.
Constant curiosity and these skills have all fed into my career as a creative director who can work across many disciplines, building and leading creative teams that deliver brand communications across multi channels.
Working my way up as a designer, through in-house studios and small agencies, mainly working on corporate and B2B accounts, to eventually being Head of Design for a large branding consultancy, and then moving on to Creative Director in design agencies, creative agencies, and in-house creative studios for some big brands. I have been part of some big rebrands and worked on some large global campaigns.
I have built brand design functions inside complex B2B businesses such as fintech, compliance, healthcare, crypto, and turned them into category leaders. For over 20 years I’ve led creative teams from 4 to 16 people across the UK and North America, running brand, advertising, film and UX/UI under one vision.
I attended the D&AD Creative Leaders Programme in 2019, learning leadership skills from the likes of Sir Clive Woodward (pictured).
BTS
Having experience across all these disciplines makes it easier to manage the creatives – brand designers, art directors, writers, planners, motion designers, UI designers, videographers, sound engineers etc. Comfortable being hands on, directing film, editing video, operating the cameras, photoshoots, designing etc but I prefer to direct and oversee all the creative, it enables me to get the best out of people, and the best outputs for the brand.
History
Born in Bulawayo in what was then Rhodesia, I won a National Arts Eisteddfod in my second year of school for a painting of my brother and his skateboard. I used to use my parent’s Kodak Instamatic camera and loved taking photos of the fauna & landscapes around me. I would also get told off for using the vintage 8mm film camera, that was expensive to get developed.
I owe a lot to my parents, my mother, a school teacher, who taught and encouraged my art, and to be inquisitive. And my father, a real man’s man, a professional rugby player, who taught me the value of hard work and skills to use my hands to build or fix things.
I started playing guitar at the age of 10. I moved to South Africa, and my love for storytelling using visual medium or music kept growing through my school education. I played in school orchestras in the school plays, and also came from a very sporting family, and played baseball, tennis, basketball, volleyball, squash, rugby, football, cricket and martial arts.
At age 12 I found a 35mm Pentax K1000 SLR in a park and started getting into proper photography.