creative-direction
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The Woman Who Learned Brand Strategy in a Soap Opera Wardrobe
BRAND AMBASSADOR sells a rare kind of access: the judgment to place a luxury brand in the right room, on the right person, and inside the right story.
ERNST knows a brand is only as good as its next product
A ski bag, a driving shoe, a motocross boot. The Los Angeles design studio works where brand promises have to survive contact with the things people actually use.
Gayle Midnight turns a change of scenery into a change of medium
An Iceland sketchbook changed the way Gayle Midnight paints. Her San Francisco studio carries that habit of translation into original art, illustration and design.
The Branding Boutique LA knows a pretty feed is only the beginning
A skincare feed can look lovely and still leave shoppers guessing. This Los Angeles agency sells the work that connects the picture to the proposition.
PS Design knows a logo can’t fix a confused company
Before the new colors came the awkward questions. Inside the California studio turning company identities into systems people can actually use - and sometimes unwrap.
Libre Design & Digital makes the brand. Then comes the hard part.
From surfboard identities to gaming checkout pages, Libre connects how a business looks with how it sells. Its most revealing work happens after the logo is approved.
Lovely’s big-name portfolio began with a small-budget idea
The Los Angeles agency lists work for Angela Bassett, Issa Rae and Nicki Minaj. Its founding pitch was closer to Main Street: give charities and small businesses access to professional design without five-figure budgets.
Andrew Speight Turned a Rebrand Into a Career in the C-Suite
He arrived at RXNT as a senior graphic designer and, in the same year, became its chief marketing officer. His career makes a tidy case for the executive value of noticing what everyone else skims past.
Lada Leitsius Learned to Market Technology by First Learning to Tell a Story
Before she marketed engineers, Lada Leitsius edited stories, shaped brands, and helped turn a modular furniture idea and a mobile bank into award-winning communication. Now, as StartupSoft’s CMO, she works where narrative meets a distributed technology business.
Andy Bergmann Has Spent a Career Making Complicated Things Feel Obvious
Before he marketed software that untangles prior authorization, Andy Bergmann made charts behave like stories, turned 37 years of waves into a game, invented a four-ended measuring spoon, and gave a giraffe an orchard. The medium keeps changing. The instinct does not.
Chris Valencius Put an Art Director Inside a Biotech Lab - Then Made Silk Speak Business
After two decades in advertising, Chris Valencius moved from selling familiar brands to translating unfamiliar molecules. At Evolved By Nature, his job is to make silk-derived biotechnology legible, useful and commercially real.
Bernadette Fitzpatrick Knows a Brand Is More Than Its Marketing Plan
After helping Sephora turn content into retail infrastructure, Bernadette Fitzpatrick built a career around a deceptively hard idea: creative judgment and commercial discipline should sit at the same table.
Daniela Guzman Is Turning Brand Strategy Into Something People Can Walk Into
The First Move founder works where the moodboard meets the guest list, turning strategy into launches, pop-ups and social moments built to hold together after the photographs are posted.
Robert Atkins Spent 35 Years Making Games. Then He Gave Play a Second Job.
The veteran artist behind work on Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and SiN now builds systems where a player’s attention can do useful computational work. His career is a lesson in treating creativity as infrastructure, not decoration.
Mari Loewen Built a Food Brand Around the Small Rituals That Make a Life
She turned a kitchen-table magazine into an education in publishing, digital reinvention and retail - then brought the same editorial instinct to the grocery aisle.
Mickey Rubin Has Spent Three Decades Turning Complexity Into a Customer Journey
Before insurance, Mickey Rubin built websites, animations and digital systems. His career explains why the hardest part of selling protection is often designing a process people can actually finish.
Gian Luca Bersezio
Gian Luca Bersezio is the Chief Marketing Officer of Max Mara Fashion Group, the Italian luxury house behind Max Mara and Max&Co. A marketing and brand-communication leader with more than 15 years across global fashion and lifestyle brands, he built his reputation as director of global brand and communication at Timberland - where he led campaigns like the 50th-anniversary 'This Is Not A Boot' and high-profile collaborations - before moving into the Max Mara group. He is known for blending creative instinct with commercial strategy across brand positioning, campaigns, retail and omnichannel growth.
Liz Capitani
Liz Capitani is the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Hello Molly, the Australian-born, globally shipping women's fashion e-commerce brand. A marketing leader with roughly two decades in retail and apparel, she has built brand vision, run global campaigns, and led customer and user experience work for fast-growing fashion companies including Petal & Pup, Lulus, and her own fine-jewelry venture, Stay Goldee. She is known for culturally resonant, storytelling-led campaigns and for building brands with loyal, devoted followings across the US and Australian markets.
Matthew Pantoja
Matthew Pantoja is the Chief Brand Officer of Alpha Industries, the outerwear label famous for the MA-1 bomber and M-65 field jacket. Over two decades he has moved through New Era, Reebok, Palladium Boots and Triple 5 Soul, building a career on turning heritage product and youth culture into commercial energy. Since joining Alpha in 2016, he has helped steer the 60-year-old military supplier from surplus-store staple to global lifestyle brand, overseeing product, marketing and brand experiences across every region and channel.
Tricia Mahoney
Tricia Mahoney is the Chief Marketing Officer of Twisted X Global Brands, the Decatur, Texas footwear maker behind Twisted X, Twisted X Work, Black Star, CellSole and Wrangler Footwear. With more than three decades in marketing spanning agency and client roles, high-tech and western lifestyle, she is the only female member of the company's C-suite. Since joining in 2019 she has led the launches of collections such as Black Star, Zero-X, Tech X and Wrangler, earned more than 100 industry awards, and built a retailer-first brand strategy. She is also a two-time published author whose third manuscript, Trust the Path, is in development as a book and screenplay.
Teija Bean
Teija Bean is the Head of Product Design at Forum Ventures' AI Studio, where she transforms zero-to-one AI concepts into market-ready B2B SaaS products. A decade-long storyteller at the intersection of tech and design, she has guided companies through AI, Web3, and SaaS — from ideation to funding — bringing a rare blend of creative direction, brand strategy, and hands-on product craft. Based in New York, Teija leads design across Forum Ventures' portfolio of AI-native startups, co-building companies from scratch and proving that great design is often the difference between a funded startup and a forgotten one.