The future is integrated

I grew up in a family of engineers and journalists.

My first design role was at Today newspaper in 1987, it was working with the Creative Director John Paed, the innovation was Newspapers in color. I went on to work with Vince Frost at the Independent, then after school at the Royal College of Art and Cranbrook I worked for The Guardian and Observer under Mark Porter and Simon Esterson. From this experience I gained the label, editorial designer, although in reality redesigning the format of the Newspaper, moving the staff from green screens to DTP and the inception of The Guardian Unlimited was really my first experience of product design.

I showed my portfolio to Michaels Nash at this time, their feedback was that I was more of an Editorial Designer 

At the same time I was moonlighting as an animator. I got my start in the industry with Pat Gavin the celebrated Titles Designer who created The South Bank Show and Omnibus amongst others. Pat hired me on the basis that I could read music and understood time, feet and frames. We animated using CoSA After Effects. None of the Macintosh computers had graphics cards fast enough to real time render and display animation. So much of the work was done like traditional animation, with Frames and Test animations which would be debabelize’d frame by frame on to Flame. From this experience I gained the label, animation assistant.

I interviewed at Lowe Howard Spink at this time – they said that I could only work in the Typography Department and not a ‘Creative’ who came up with the concept.

I got my big break in Graphic Design from Studio Dumbar. Joost Roozekrans, a senior designer there, attended my end of year show. He invited me to one of the legendary open studio sessions in Den Haag to hang out with the Studio team. I joined the following year. My time there relearning design as Vormgeving, or designing through form, alongside the following year as assistant to Tibor Kalman at M&Co earned me the label Graphic Designer (or Grafische Ontwerper).

I did a small project for John Hegarty at BBH on Poloraid, John was one of my idols though he didn’t think my thinking was emotional enough to work in Advertising.

Tibor was very sick toward the end of my time working for him, he let me know that he couldn’t keep me on and to go get another job. By luck, Robert Nakata, both a Studio Dumbar and Cranrook alumni was looking to hire an Art Director at Wieden and Kennedy, an advertising agency in Amsterdam. Wieden and Kennedy had a practice of pairing Graphic Designers with Advertising Copywriters. From this I acquired the label Advertising Creative.

After working with Wieden and Kennedy in Amsterdam and London and a short stint at Leagas Delaney and Goodby Silverstein, John Hegarty invited me to lead the Levi’s account for BBH, for which I was the sole creative director. The wonderful design team at BBH lead by the brilliant Mark Reddy had no idea I was a designer – I had acquired the label Advertising Creative Director.

I met with two partners from Pentagram at this time, they were worried that I was too focused on marketing and advertising to be a graphic designer.

I returned to Wieden and Kennedy in 2006 to help them win The Guardian Account. It was the first time I’d worked on the total business. From editorial inception, product design to marketing expression. It felt natural. Mark Porter, my old boss, was still at The Guardian, as was the editor Alan Rusbridger. In the meetings I felt like I was the bridge, between all that I knew of the product and all that I understood about the marketing need. Steve Henry then head hunted me to run Play Station at TBWA – it was at TBWA that I met the Game Design Company Media Molecule. We were working on launching Little Big Planet. MM had so many great ideas on how to market the product, but when I realized that the marketing budget was such a sizable chunk of product development I knew that the spend was inefficient. The players wanted more game design, less advertising. 

I interviewed at Wolff Olins at this time, but when I asked about digital they told me that the didn’t get deep into execution. I’d meant the digital age, not the digital medium. 

It was at this point I decided to return to design. I decided to head for the digital agency R/GA. Nick Law understood my design chops and he and Bob wanted to reinvent Branding for the Digital Age. I founded the Brand Development Group for them. Bob evolved R/GA every seven years, the next incarnation was as a fully fledged advertising agency, rivaling the likes of Ogilvy. The incoming advertising creatives had no idea ‘d worked in advertising. From this I acquired the label Brand Strategist.

I craved greater integration with product. With influence from Chloe Gottlieb, Richard Ting and Ian Spalter I crossed back into experience design and joined the exceptional Experience Design Shop Method. Partick Newberry and Kevin Farnham knew the connection between Brand and Product, their thinking connected with the Brands as Patterns ideas I’d developed became a compelling narrative to redefine end-to-end experience design thinking.

Method was acquired by engineering giant Global Logic a year after my joining. I grew up with engineers, so it was second nature to me. Shashank Samant, CEO of Global Logic was a huge supporter, Shane Brentham, Principal at Method joined the GL team and we started integration of the two companies. 

Many of the design team at Method initially labeled me as a Brand designer, but a few of the team accepted me as more. Creative developer Brad Griffin understood my lineage. He’d started development in flash, we collaborated in After Effects and processing to get to designs which performed expressions of data. Another designer Adam Weiss, who’d worked at Burton Snowboards also mentored me – both of their visions showed a more integrated approach to design.

Matternet asked me to join them in an adventure in 2013. Both co-founders Andreas Raptopoulos and Paola Santana shared my complex lineage. Andreas was both an engineering grad from Imperial College and an Industrial Design Grad from the RCA. Paola, a Fulbright Scholar and graduate from Georgetown established the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court. At the Singularity University they had a vision of a company that leveraged existing technology to solve massive human problems. I joined Matternet as Chief Experience Officer in 2013. From this I acquired the label Experience Design Leader.

As CXO I sat between marketing and product, with purview over the entire experience. We started from nothing, so we ended up sharing many roles. From painting the workshop to soldering the vehicles. Soon the team expanded to five, bringing on board Jason Calaiaro as first engineer and I began my long creative collaboration with Ido Baruchin, who’d designed Matternet’s first vehicles. Between Ido, Andreas, Paola, Jason and I, we practiced end-to-end design. From Vehicle Design, to engineering, to UI, to Landing Station, to Box Design, to marketing and even Ted Talks, At Matternet I realized that the customer and end users wanted no corporate divides in their experience.

When Karl Issac asked me to join eBay, his first sentence was about the fact that the Brand Team worked for the Chief Product Officer, RJ Pitman. Karl and I had kept in touch because he’d had a similar vision about the future of Brand. I joined eBay to found the Brand Innovation Lab to connect the dots between product, marketing, service and business. After a year I inherited Brand Creative and Design Systems. Within two years I was fully part of the product team, also owning end-to-end product experience. I’d acquired the label Product Design Leader.

I’d known Gary Friedman, CEO at Restoration Hardware for 10 years. I’d worked on the PDP page of RH.com when I was at Method, where we’d also renamed the company. He asked me to Join RH in 2019 at the height of the pandemic as Chief Digital Experience Officer. My team were Product Managers, Merchants, Marketing and Product Design. My partner at RH was the CTO Prakash Muppirala. The roadmap that we created together was on another level. Prakash and Gary made me realize that I was a business leader, that my responsibility was the numbers and underlying technology that created a profitable business and a great customer and employee experience. Here I gained the Label Executive.   

Yesterday a Product Manager at one of my clients labeled me as a ‘More of a Marketer’, as a way to express how the product process and frameworks he’d learned in his short career were really different from mine. I replied that I find labels problematic. That we’re responsible for the business and the experience of our customers and that extends to every department, every conversation.

To all those who have been given labels, or told they can’t, or that they don’t have the experience, or that their background doesn’t fit the exact criteria – it’s most likely the manager that has a too narrow view of the role. Continue to defy labels, keep pushing to learn and adapt, keep connecting the dots, because that is where the magic lives. The future is integrated.