Fostering creativity through series of talks, podcasts and events
Playing a vital part in the cultural transformation at Lloyds Banking Group, I took the lead of the Visual Design Guild to foster creativity. My main insight was that I felt designers within large organizations such as banks were not connected with the wider creative community, so I started organizing monthly guild talks with external guest speakers (Jonathan Barnbrook and Yuri Suzuki being probably my personal highlights). The feedback has been tremendous, not only in the design team but across the entire bank.
VISUAL DESIGN GUILD LEAD
Jonathan Barnbrook Graphic Designer | Typographer
Lauren Currie OBE, Designer | Founder Upfront
Yuri Suzuki, Sound Designer | Pentagram Partner
Jourik Migom, Head of Strategy Acceleration, Endava
Thomas Thwaites, Artist | Critical Designer
Brett Scott, Author | Journalist | Economic explorer
John O’Shea, Artist | Curator at Science Gallery London
Louise Ashcroft, Performance Artist | Activist
Teun Voeten, Anthropologist | War Photographer | Author
Régine Debatty, Curator | Blogger at wemakemoneynotart.com
Ruairi Glynn, Artist | Director at Bartlett School of Architecture
Planning Unit, London Design Studio
Jeremy Hutchison, Conceptual artist
Sarah Gold, Founder & CEO of IF Design studio
In 2020, with remote working, feeling motivated and feeling part of a community was more important than ever. I have continued the organize the talks through series of podcasts and virtual lectures.
Finally, as part of the Guild, I also run series of design crits, a mentoring scheme and monthly visits to galleries and museums.
Bringing colleagues together through the power of design, art and personal stories
While at Lloyds Banking Group, I started publishing a quarterly Cultural Magazine to inspire colleagues and to write about topics we are passionate about: art, music, gaming, literature, film etc. Besides creating concept and layout for all issues, I also acted as the editor-in-chief and wrote many of its articles.
The magazine brought colleagues and communities from across the whole Group together, with issues around BLM (with BAME colleagues sharing their personal stories and sections celebrating black art, music, literature, film) or Pride (in collaboration with the Diversity and Inclusion community).
CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND EDITOR IN CHIEF
Designing for sustainability
A significant portion of the Internet’s total footprint occurs on the front end, the part created by designers. At the same time, the way digital products are collaboratively created generates a lot of waste and use of resources that are not always necessary. How can we, as responsible designers, react to these challenges?
PROJECT LEAD
Bringing design teams together under one brand
A modular brand identity for Lloyds Banking Group’s distributed design teams to help creatives feel more connected. We created series of posters about our Design Values and Design Principles, logos and a visual language for each of the 9 Design Guilds and sets of digital and print marketing collaterals to be used in communications with the Group and externally.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
We also looked at each of the main Lloyds Banking Group brand and created a Brand survival Guide booklets to help designers quickly grasp the essence of the brands and to connect with them emotionally.
