Zürich Metropolitan Area
Twenty years of brand work teaches you a few things. One of them is that creative problems are rarely just creative problems. I'm a Creative Director with a background that spans Ogilvy, independent studios in Ireland and Poland, and a stretch at Web Summit, where I scaled the brand through some genuinely chaotic growth. Along the way I've worked with Unilever, Diageo, Danone, Abbott, Bank of Ireland, AIB - and founders who were building from nothing. The categories change. The underlying work doesn't, really. What I do is sit at the intersection of brand strategy, creative leadership, and the organisational structure that makes both sustainable. Building visual systems is one part of it. Building the team, the feedback loops, and the decision-making clarity that keeps quality consistent as things scale - that's the other part, and usually the harder one. I move across industries without much friction. FMCG, finance, tech, pharma, education - the specifics shift, but the fundamentals hold. I'm also genuinely interested in where the tools are going. I use AI where it adds actual speed and leverage, not because it's expected.
We have a point of view about where the world is going. We're building for it.
At EF Language Abroad, I run the media operation - photographers, videographers, producers - from brief to final cut. We maintain a global media library, which sounds administrative until you realise how much creative discipline that actually requires. The other half of the job is building the infrastructure that lets distributed teams create well. Design templates, AI prompts, creative systems - the kind of toolkit that means a team in São Paulo and a team in Tokyo are working from the same visual logic without needing a Creative Director in the room. I use AI where it earns its place. Automating colour grades, generating brand-aligned assets, compressing the distance between idea and execution. The goal is always speed without sloppiness.
As DesignOps Director at EF, the job is making sure good creative work can happen at scale - and keep happening, reliably, across a global organisation. That means building the tools, templates, and asset systems that give designers less to reinvent and more space to think. It means running the centralized design hub, sitting in on creative reviews and strategy sessions, and mentoring designers in a way that's actually useful rather than ceremonial. The culture side matters as much as the operational side. Embedding design thinking across teams, running workshops, keeping people current on where the industry is moving - this is how you shift design from a service function to something that actually shapes decisions. The rest is coordination: working across functions to untangle workflows, align process with business goals, and anticipate where the organisation is going to need more creative capacity before it needs it. It's a role that sits between making and managing. That's the part I find most interesting.
As Design Director at EF, I owned the visual direction across a brand operating in 50+ countries - digital, video, print, product. Everything from interface design to campaign identity to how the brand behaved across platforms it hadn't launched on yet. The work was as much about coherence as creativity. With teams spread across that many markets, the real challenge is building a visual language clear enough that people can apply it well without constant oversight. I led the Global Creative Team and spent a meaningful amount of time teaching design thinking across the wider organisation - not as a formality, but because brand quality at EF's scale lives or dies in the hands of people you'll never directly manage.
On the freelance and contract side, I work with agencies, startups, and global companies on brand builds and evolutions - identity, campaigns, digital products, content systems, creative direction. The through-line is always the same: connecting strategy to execution so the idea doesn't get lost between the brief and the final asset. I'm less interested in one-off deliverables than in building systems that hold together as organisations grow and change. The clients range from early-stage founders figuring out who they are, to established companies who know who they are but need it to work harder. Different problems, same discipline.
At Web Summit - Europe's largest tech conference and a genuine crossroads for the world's biggest technology buyers, sellers, and disruptors - I led creative direction across the entire design function. The job covered a lot of ground. Building and enforcing the company design language. Setting UI and visual standards. Mentoring designers and holding the bar on quality across products and concepts. Running design reviews with the CEO and exec team. Recruiting senior design talent. Giving creative direction to marketing campaigns and establishing the visual identity for the conferences themselves. Beyond the studio, I represented design thinking in cross-team meetings, contributed to industry events locally and internationally, and made sure the discipline had a voice in strategic conversations - not just executional ones. I worked independently on design solutions while also leading teams across multiple concurrent projects, balancing hands-on execution with direction and critique.
As a Digital Art Director, I lead campaign development from the first spark of an idea through final execution. I partner closely with copywriters to build strong conceptual platforms, shaping narratives, visual directions, and campaign systems that cut through and connect with audiences across digital, social, and interactive channels. I drive the creative process end-to-end — setting the visual tone, defining the key visuals, and translating big thinking into scalable campaign assets. I self-manage complex projects while guiding and mentoring designers, ensuring the team’s work aligns with the overarching idea and maintains a consistent, elevated standard. I present concepts, scamps, and the strategic reasoning behind them with clarity, adapting the story for creatives, account teams, and clients alike. In creative reviews and agency meetings, I help steer the room, push ideas further, and keep campaign development aligned with strategic and brand objectives. In the studio, I take ownership of lead designs, hero assets, digital executions, and rapid concept explorations — ensuring every output is crafted, intentional, and ready to drive the campaign forward. My focus is always on delivering work that’s visually distinctive, strategically sharp, and built to perform across the digital ecosystem.