DEVIL MAY CARE

Client

Devil May Care  //  Founder / Creative Consutant

History

After the successful acquisition of my design company (Aspect) to Gyro in 2000, I spent a few years as their creative director. Gyro was Europe's largest design consultancy at the time with offices all over the world. They specialized in large tech companies and the Enterprise. It's where I cut my teeth in the industry working with clients like Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Palm, and many more.

I had wanted to grow my skillset and do more web design so I made the decision to branch out and set up a small creative freelance agency called 'Devil may Care'. The concept was simple, I would study web design and coding whilst diversifying my portfolio. Using my network to bring in bespoke teams to provide design solutions, no matter what the challenge. This gave me the opportunity to work with some of the largest digital design agencies in the UK.

Over my ten years as a creative consultant I worked on everything from brand development, print design, advertising, digital and tv campaigns, to games and coffee table books.

Below you will find a small selection of some of favorites.

Identities

Over the years I have had the pleasure to develop many brand identities and evolve a few well known ones. 

Typography

I love typefaces and have designed or supported the development of four complete typefaces for clients. The following example is the most intricate and unique of them, its called '40four' and is available under license. I developed 1208+ characters in total, it is available in a single weight, using the shift key switches the direction of the character from right facing to left facing.

Packaging & Print

I spent the first half of my career working in print and packaging design. I specialized in the tactile nature of design through special finishes, cardboard engineering and beautiful stock. Sadly this is becoming a lost art form with screen, foil, emboss and paper merchants falling wayside to digital printing and most brand activities happening online. 

Coffee table books

I had the great honor of working with the globally renowned architectural engineers 'Atelier One' on their 20th anniversary coffee table book.

Portfolios

I love photography and snapped at the chance to build out the portfolios for some of my favorites artists and reportage photographers at Magnum Photos - the oldest co-operative photo agency in the world.

Advertising

I've worked on some of the largest advertising accounts in the world. This is a campaign I am particularly proud of as an example of thinking differently, being brave and creating something that has a real legacy.

Proctor and Gamble is best known for its household products. Which at the time were not particularly friendly to the environment. They created an initiative called Future Friendly to address this with the mission to improve lives in a way that preserves and protects the planet.

I was part of a core ideation team working at Proximity and M&C Saatchi. We initially looked at re-developing products to concentrated liquids which could be repackaged. This was when you started seeing all those concentrated versions of your favourite washing up liquids appear. We also looked at improving packaging techniques to reduce air and provide efficient stacking. This meant the transportation and display costs could be reduced by two-thirds, massively reducing the carbon footprint.

As we were deep in the research phase we hit on something interesting. Ariel is known (in Europe at least) as the "housewives'" favourite washing powder. It is very effective but has been known to leave a white residue. The researchers at P&G discovered that this is due to impurities in the water so they looked into purifying the water during the wash cycle and re-formulated the product. They discovered a way to do this which would require the machine manufacturers developing a way to extract the impurities during the wash cycle. This proved to be either a dead end or a long term plan. However it sparked an idea in my mind. If they have the technology to purify water why not offer it as a solution to benefit people. Provide clean drinking water where it's needed.

I created a hero visual and presented it to the team. A simple offering to send packets of their formula to Africa for every packet of Ariel sold. To increase the sales of Ariel and the success of the campaign through a worthy cause and compelling campaign. They loved the idea and the P&G Waterwise campaign was born.

The campaign launched in 2006 with through the line advertising and celebrity endorsements worldwide. We packaged the formula into sachets and performed a bunch of stunts in cities. We started with the launch in London where we had a senior member of P&G perform the demonstration. Taking dirty water, adding the sachet and then drinking the purified water in front of a crowd. This stunt was then replicated all over the world with celebrities including the Clintons.

The campaign was originally tied to sales of Ariel washing powder by donating 10 litres of purified water to Africa per packet sold. The campaign has since evolved way beyond and now has a life of it’s own. It is now connected to most of P&Gs product sales and has been going for 10+ years. In that time it has managed to create over 10 billion litres of clean drinking water in 75 countries. This has conservatively saved the lives of 55,000 people and has a goal of saving 1 live an hour by 2020.

Interactive Data

Interactive data-visualizations are something I really enjoy. Here's an example of some data visualizations I created for Ernst & Young to illustrate smart grid city development and global energy consumption.