Europe

Marc Atkinson Marc leads the in-house Design Studio at London’s Southbank Centre, the UK’s largest cultural centre. The team has a very broad remit, from signage and wayfinding, to campaigns for Hayward Gallery shows, and all major seasons and events including Summer, Meltdown, and Classical. They act as brand ambassadors, responsible for everything design-related on site, as well as much of it off.

Prior to this he co-founded several of his own design studios, working primarily within the art, design, culture, and charity sectors, for clients such as Arts Council England, Central Saint Martins, Nike, and British Heart Foundation.

Prior to joining GWR in 2016, Juliet worked for 20+ years in PR, representing brands in a broad range of sectors including children’s IP, entertainment, sport and media.

Miriam is the Senior Brand Manager on Nescafe, the world’s leading coffee brand, part of Nestle – the biggest food and drinks company in the world. With over 10 years’ experience in Marketing and brand building working on both agency and clients’ side across UK and Europe – she has undertaken great brand challenges from exciting new product development, creating new brands and repositioning and new communication strategies across different categories and amazing inspiring brands such as Mullerlight, Cheerios, Lion and Nescafe.

David is Creative Director of OPX Studio, with a career spanning more than 25 years. He has worked with the likes of McKinsey & Company and Arup, activist brands such as VENT and Ekō, public sector organisations Arts Council England and Design Council, through to charities and not-for-profits like Turn2us and Reset.

He is host of the Create great podcast, a series of conversations with creative people from different backgrounds, disciplines and schools of thought.

He also curates visuelle.co.uk, an online showcase of the best international design, followed by over 164,000 designers around the world.

Silke is a Design Executive with 20+ years of international experience in FMCG and non-FMCG corporations such as PepsiCo, Mars, Beiersdorf, Vodafone and Colgate. Since 2011 she focuses on Design Leadership developing approaches, frameworks and instruments defining how to integrate and scale design successfully within ambiguous organizations.

She won awards for both, the way design has been integrated in organizations as well as for the outcome of it, beautiful brand designs & experiences. Silke is a seasoned leader, strategist and system thinker with diversified experience having worked at agencies and corporations, headquarters and regions, reporting to different functions from R&D, Marcom to Supply Chain, leading multi-billion icons as well as small brands, mono product as well as complex portfolios throughout the entire process from FEI to production.

With over 25 years industry experience, Chris joined the LEGO Group 14 years ago as a Graphic Designer & Illustrator, and is currently Associate Creative Director for the LEGO Agency (EMEA).

Over the years he's worked on almost every creative aspect of the business, from designing brand identities and integrated campaigns to building digital experiences and virtual 3D concepts. As part of the EMEA leadership team he has a close eye on design trends, the future of play and how technology and AI is changing the creative landscape.

A senior executive level creative with over 30 years of industry experience on both agency and now client side at TSB Bank. Experienced in brand and product ideas, creative strategy and visioning, brand management, advertising - TV, radio, OOH, press, digital and social content. Awards include; Campaign Digital, DMA, Revolution, BIMA, IPA, NMA and D&AD, Design Effectiveness from the DBA and a BIMA for eCommerce. In his spare time, you’ll find him dressed in black Lycra and pedalling up mountains in Europe.

Lewis is a Creative lead and art director for globally renowned footwear brand Clarks.
With a focus on the Clarks Originals brand, Lewis' role is to concept, art direct and visualise the core seasonal marketing campaigns, lifestyle shoots and key product and collaboration stories.
Lewis, along with the award-winning in-house creative and marketing teams, uses Clarks’ incredible heritage and connection to culture to tell authentic and compelling brand stories, making the brand relevant for today’s consumer.

Rafael Florián is a Colombian industrial designer with over 15 years of experience leading brand-building projects, design initiatives, communication strategies, and partnership collaborations in the creative industry.

From Latin America to Europe with knowledge of different consumer and business perspectives, Rafael's primary focus at Coca-Cola involves crafting and leading consumer-centric design solutions integrating both physical and virtual brand expressions, creating meaningful experiences, and custom solutions for brand identity systems, packaging, retail environments, and digital products ensuring rich, seamless customer interactions at every touchpoint, all the while aligning design excellence with market needs.

His work with consumer experience and brand expressions deployment addressing audience motivations and needs allows him to create desirable and actionable solutions enhancing the branding experiences through strategically managing, protecting, and elevating their essence, values, and assets.

Ellie Green is a senior designer specialising in Food & Beverage marketing and branding. Her practice of graphic design and illustration focuses on typography, signage and architecture.

Babak has over 15-years of marketing experience in the sustainability sector, specialising in strategy, brand, and campaign planning. Working across the full supply chain of renewable energy and sustainability has seen Babak's role evolve from working with disruptive technology, using attention grabbing campaigns, to mainstream energy efficiency, switching focus to ROI driven strategic marketing.

Babak joined Warmup to drive the business mission to change the way people heat their homes. He oversees all marketing from the global digital presence to POS while introducing a layer of lead-generation to create measurable ROI that will fuel future brand marketing comms.

Babak's previous roles include, BELECTRIC, the world's largest installer of utility-scale solar, Ascential PLC a global player in events and exhibitions, and Pavegen, a product designed to engage people in sustainability through floor tiles that convert kinetic-energy into clean electricity using the power of a footstep.

Gwyn has over 15 years’ experience in the brand and design industry. Originally a designer, he worked agency side where he developed and led award-winning work with clients including LVMH, Associate British Foods and Diageo. Over time his focus shifted to strategy and it was not long before this interest led him to move client-side, subsequently taking-up the role at Reckitt - overseeing the global brand experience and design strategy for Dettol and later the Infant Nutrition category. Gwyn now leads global design for Dermatology at Bayer, in Switzerland, driving remarkable consumer experiences that transform everyday health.

Juliet is the Senior Brand Manager at Guinness World Records (GWR) where she forms part of the team responsible for brand guardianship, as well as devising and communicating the vision and strategy for the GWR brand. Her remit includes the creation and delivery of brand assets, processes, and training across GWR’s offices in London, New York, Tokyo, Beijing and Dubai.

Her favourite record-breaking moments include meeting the person with the world’s longest fingernails and taking a show-jumping llama on Blue Peter.

Prior to joining GWR in 2016, Juliet worked for 20+ years in PR, representing brands in a broad range of sectors including children’s IP, entertainment, sport and media.

Jules's background is in advertising, where she has worked on brands large and small to create campaigns that produce world-class content and storytelling. She has a passion for mentoring young creatives and has even won a Transform Award herself! Jules is honoured to work in-house at The Body Shop.

Andy is Global director of digital and brand at SGS, the world’s leading testing, inspection and certification company, with 97,000 employees across a network of 2,650 offices and laboratories around the world.

Andy has been at SGS since 2013. Since initially specialising in web, he moved through several different management positions, and his current role covers the whole spectrum of digital marketing and brand communications. He previously spent time working in the creative agency sector in a career spanning more than 15 years.

Jason Hesse is Head of Corporate Brand at Channel 4. He leads a team of corporate communications and brand professionals, delivering strategic messaging, assets and experiences that enhance Channel 4's reputation among corporate stakeholders. A former business journalist and editor, Jason is passionate about storytelling and how brands use their positive impact to build their reputations and to drive overall business strategy and performance.

Angus Hyland, Partner, is a graphic designer, author and creative director. He has been named one of the UK’s top ten graphic designers by the Independent, and has received over a hundred creative awards, including five D&AD silver awards.
In addition, Angus has worked with some of the world’s best known private and public sector brands. These include: Eurosport, an international television sports network; Penguin Random House, the world’s largest publishing house; Mulberry, a British luxury brand; Asprey, the royal jewellers; EAT, a chain of high street lunch spots; H&M, a multinational retail company; Marimekko, a textile, furniture and retail store; Maersk, the world’s latest shipping and logistics company; Rolls-Royce, the British multinational aircraft engine and power systems business; AkzoNobel, the multinational manufacturer, and Grant Thornton, a global financial services group.
For the past decade, Angus has been an external consultant and creative director at Cass Art, Laurence King Publishing, Thames & Hudson and Quarto. Angus has authored 12 books on design and art including Symbol, C/ID: Visual Identity and Branding for the Arts and The Maze: A Labyrinthine Compendium.

Helen has over 20 years' experience in the creative industry. From starting up ad agencies to working at the big hitters, her career has covered all areas of advertising, experiential, film and social content. More recently she has gone in-house to set up a creative agency for Shelter, where she leads a team of talented creatives, producing work that rivals the very best out-of-house agencies.

After training as a graphic designer and spending a few years in and out of London design agencies, Graham founded his own design company in 1990 specialising in Brand and Corporate Communications. Working with companies such as Vodafone, Hasbro, British Airways, BAT, Argyll Group, NATS, Graham built up experience and expertise across all aspects of branding with particular focus on strategy and the articulation of purpose and culture.

In 2010, Graham took the decision to go client side and the position of Global Brand Director at Informa PLC, an existing client, with responsibility for the origination, management and development of the Informa brand across all communications worldwide. Today, Informa is the largest event organiser in the world, a top 50 FTSE company with 11,000 colleagues and an annual turnover of over £3 billion GBP.

In his senior leadership role, Graham works with many design and brand agencies around the world and has spoken at many events, mentored young designers, been an external assessor for the Chartered Society of Designers, and a judge at the New York design festival.

Emily is responsible for managing the creative output of both The Championships and the year-round needs of the Club, Foundation and two community sport facilities. Emily joined Wimbledon in 2018, just 18 months after creative was brought in-house, and was tasked with building the creative ops function from the ground up. She has an integral role in operations across the estate, recently leading the redesign and implementation of all guest-facing wayfinding and maps, including the iconic Centre Centre. She has over 15 years of experience supporting in-house teams as well as working agency-side with leading brands across the sports and entertainment industries.

Kate has over 30 years experience in design and brand management for the education and children’s publishing sector, and has previously held design leadership roles at Pearson Education, Heinemann and the New Zealand Ministry of Education. She has worked both with her talented inhouse design teams and with key design and brand agencies to develop many leading global brands including MyMaths and Oxford Revise. Kate’s current area of focus is brand architecture, strategy and implementation, and embedding the design process across all aspects of content design. She is also passionate about design for learning and accessibility for all.

Matthew is a branding specialist. With a background in PR and sponsorship, he has extensive experience creating go-to-market brands for large and small businesses. He has led brand, CSR, PR and sponsorship teams for a number of blue chip companies, including British Gas, Centrica and Lexis Nexis (Part of RELX plc). He has also led global brand for the US tech giant, RingCentral Inc. Matthew is a non-executive director of the European Sponsorship Association – furthering the role of sponsorship across Europe.

Jamie Lillywhite, Group Brand Design Lead at HSBC. Jamie helps run the global design function at HSBC, running HSBC’s design system and supporting the all markets globally deliver their creative projects. Jamie is a Digitally focussed Creative Director and Art Director and during his career worked at agencies like WCRS, Nitro, Razorfish, AnaloFolk, Sapient and Wieden and Kennedy where he has developed his passion for design and human interaction, both on and offline. With his design background, he believes that every touch point must sing and have a purpose, for both the brand and its consumer. During his career he has always loved being part of and leading multi-disciplined teams, all collaborating to achieve the one goal of creating an amazing creative experience.

Lisa’s career spans over 20 years working in the design industry, with a specific focus on branding and packaging design within the FMCG and retail sector. Having worked in a retail environment for 8 years Lisa spent 3 years agency side leading the design strategy & client relationships with several category leading brands such as Knorr, Patak’s, Blue Dragon, Levi Roots and Colman’s. Lisa now leads the strategic design direction for the full portfolio of Kellogg’s & Pringle’s brands across all markets within Europe, with the ambition to protect legacy brands and ensure they remain relevant and salient in consumers hearts and minds.

Steve is a creative director with over 20 years experience in both the UK and US working across brand, design and advertising. Now at Sky working as a Brand Creative Director, Steve has previously founded and run multiple creative agencies as well as enjoying a stint as a commercials and music video director. Client work has ranged from global rebrand projects through movie titles to campaigns, for a huge range of clients big and small.

Kevin currently leads brand strategy across the Hotels.com and Vrbo brands at Expedia Group. With over a decade of experience, he has worked across a wide range of categories, developing creative campaigns and brand positionings for brands ranging from Nestlé and LEGO, to small start-ups. Prior to Expedia, Kevin worked at LEGO, where he led their inaugural Creative Effectiveness program, and achieved their first effectiveness award. Before working in-house, Kevin worked across a variety of global network agencies including McCann and JWT.

Michael R Misurell has 10 years of experience as a creative director building brands, designing 360 campaigns, and curating talent to build the right team for the job. With over a decade of experience working in-house in the Berlin tech sector (HelloFresh and MONOQI), Misurell drives decisions in direct relation to brand strategy and business objectives across various industries. With a strong background in studio art direction and hands-on skills in both digital design and artistic production, Misurell has led creative idiatation and production in global markets including Europe, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Oleg Nesterenko, born in Ukraine, has been recently appointed as a Chief Marketing Office at Storytel has a strong track record of delivering success in executive roles at prominent premium streaming services in Europe and MENA, and of amplifying brands and streaming services that have rapidly grown to become regional leaders with international relevance, such as Shahid by MBC Group, MEGOGO, STARZPLAY, Viasat, Volia, and Kyivstar by VEON.

Rich (ACIM, BA Hons, Cert. DDM) is currently Senior Brand Manager at Vodafone Group with a Global remit of supplying strategy, assets, guidance and governance to 30+ local markets. Prior to joining Vodafone Group, Rich held Brand Management & Marketing roles at Chelsea FC, NOW TV and Sky where he has established himself as a rebranding specialist. He has a track record of developing insight-driven repositioning strategies and visual identities across a range of Masterbrands and Sub-brands within the architectures of internationally recognised consumer brands. Particular high-profile projects have included the end-to-end rebrands of NOW TV, Chelsea FC and Junior Blues.

Mel has worked across a range of creative and marketing disciplines for over 25 years. Her career as junior art director/designer started at an ad agency in Oxford and she continued in advertising until the late 90s when she joined a London-based B2B media company as Design Manager, becoming Group Creative Director in 2004 and leading a large in-house agency team. In 2009, Mel started her own business working with SMEs to build and develop brand identities and strategies. From 2012-2020, she worked as creative and brand consultant primarily with two agencies, HPS Group (BMW, MINI, Roll Royce, BMI Healthcare, 3M) and TPN Retail, where she worked alongside the MD to develop the business via creative strategy pitching (Vodafone, Akzo Nobel, Tilda, Osram). Mel is now Head of Brand and Design at The Donkey Sanctuary and over the last two years has been instrumental in delivering new marketing operational process systems for the fundraising, commercial, digital and comms teams, building a talented creative team and leading an organisational brand refresh.

Dr. Cornelius Ringe studied business administration with a major on advertising
psychology and gained his PhD at the institute for Music and Media Science at the
Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2005 he has been working for international
brands as a brand sound consultant.

Since 2013 he is responsible for business development at the Berlin/Hamburg based
audio branding agency WESOUND and was appointed managing partner in 2017.
WESOUND advises, develops and designs brands, among them Covestro,
Targobank, Manner, Cornelsen, Duden, Seat, Ferrero, Aldi Suisse, EV Zug, DSM, DFL
Bundesliga und SCC Events by synchronizing their acoustic representation with the
company’s respective strategic objectives and sharpening the brand conception as a
whole.

As a guest lecturer at the Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Popular
Music and Music Business Mannheim, he introduced the study area Audio Branding
to the curriculum. In 2009 Cornelius founded the Audio Branding Academy, an
internationally acclaimed institution for audio brand development which holds
congresses in Hamburg, New York, Oxford, Moscow and Berlin. Since 2017 the ABA
hosts the International Sound Awards. As a mediator, Cornelius considerably
contributes to the growth and professionalization of the international audio
branding business.

Andrew is a marketing and comms veteran with over 30 years’ experience in brand development, marketing and advertising, working with some of the world’s biggest, best-known brands (including bp, BT, EY, Phillip Morris and Tesco). Following an agency career, Andrew joined Accenture where he held a number of marketing leadership roles, most recently Director in the newly formed Marketing + Communications Strategy function. In 2023 he joined Thoughtworks, a leading global technology consulting firm, to lead marketing and external communications for UK and Ireland. Having spent the last 10 years in the digital and technology space, he’s obsessed with insights-led, data-driven marketing and creativity.

Frances is a brand and marketing specialist with over 15 years’ experience in brand strategy, marketing communications, and creative campaign development. She has worked across the UK, Europe, China, USA and New Zealand, leading global brand transformation projects and creating world-class campaigns, for well-known brands such as Decathlon, Currys, Harrods and Subway. 

Yannis has a track record in the creative industry going back to the 90s. He founded and ran a boutique creative agency and an animation production studio and explored almost all aspects of visual communication. 

He’s been a comic artist, a screenwriter, a graphic designer, a director, an illustrator, a UX/UI, an exhibition designer, a data visualisation designer and a storyteller. He has worked as a free-lancer helping local brands, in tech start-ups building regional identities, TV networks dealing with nationwide and international campaigns and is currently in Unilever’s roster working closely with global brands and audiences.     

Ian has been designing and implementing award-winning wayfinding projects for almost 30 years. His experience spans all aspects of wayfinding; ethnographic study, environmental graphic design, product specification and implementation planning. Ian founded his wayfinding and graphic design agency, Whybrow Studio, in 2003.
In his capacity as a founding member of the UK based Sign Design Society and newly appointed London Chair for the global Society for Experiential Graphic Design, Ian has travelled internationally giving talks and being on panel discussions – he is renowned for his straight talking, no-nonsense approach.
Ian believes that good design is naturally inclusive, and as such he is proud that two of his projects are included in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) publication ‘Are you an inclusive designer?’ by Julie Fleck, OBE.