CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Creative Director at Mana Battery. I led the brand's visual identity and art direction across its marketing and product communication, and produced much of the design work myself.
One look, everywhere the brand appears
A company that sells engineering products still has to look like one company. My first role at Mana Battery was making sure it did.
I directed the visual identity and the art direction, so that a product sheet, a campaign and a social post all read as the same brand. I also stayed on the tools: most of the assets and campaigns were produced in Adobe Illustrator and the wider creative suite. This is also where I learned the company from the inside, which is what later made the digital-solutions role possible.
- Visual identityDirected the brand's identity so every touchpoint stayed consistent.
- Art directionSet the look of marketing and product communication.
- ProductionDesigned assets and campaigns hands-on, mainly in Adobe Illustrator.
Every vector shape is a cubic curve
Every logo, icon and letterform I drew in Illustrator is built from one mathematical object: the cubic Bézier curve.
Two anchors and two handles define it, and it is drawn by repeated linear interpolation, the de Casteljau construction. Drag any of the four points. The moving lines show the construction at the current t, and the dot they converge on traces the curve. It is the same reason a vector logo stays sharp at any size: the file stores the four points, not the pixels.
Identity is rules, not taste
A brand stays consistent across hundreds of pieces only if the decisions are made once, as rules, and then reused.
Type size is the clearest example. Instead of picking each size by eye, every size comes from a base and a single ratio, so headings and body text always relate in the same proportion. Change the ratio and the whole hierarchy moves together. The same thinking applies to colour, spacing and grids, and it is exactly the engineering habit I bring to design.
Craft on the tools, judgement on the direction
Creative direction is half making things and half deciding what should be made, and keeping a whole brand consistent while doing both.
// HARD SKILLS
- Adobe IllustratorVector design, logo and icon construction, print and digital assets.
- Artistic directionSetting the look of campaigns and product communication.
- Brand identity systemsColour, typography and layout rules applied consistently.
- Typography & layoutHierarchy, scale and grids that hold across formats.
- Wider creative suiteProducing finished assets across print and screen.
// SOFT SKILLS
- Creative leadershipHolding a clear direction while others contribute to it.
- Aesthetic judgementKnowing when a design works, and saying why.
- Giving and taking feedbackIterating quickly without losing the idea.
- Working with marketingTurning a message into a visual that carries it.
- Attention to detailConsistency across hundreds of pieces.
An engineer who can also design
Two and a half years of art direction left me with something most engineers do not have: the habit of asking how a result looks to the person receiving it. It shows in every simulation and tool on this site.