
Freelance
London, United Kingdom

Freelance
London, United Kingdom
As a creative director, art director and designer, I have altogether 14 years experience in strategic and visual brand building and product development on a world wide scale as well as developing and managing teams working on user experience, interaction design, creative design and I know how to build effective value propositions and consumer messages. In short: How stuff works, looks and talks.
Product and brand definitions and propositions, Identity design, User Experience design, Effective messaging to consumers, Strategic brand development.
(Privately Held; Entertainment industry)
October 2008 — Present (1 year 5 months)
(Design industry)
August 2008 — October 2008 (3 months)
I have stopped at Skype and am now looking for new (ad)ventures.
(Public Company; 201-500 employees; EBAY; Internet industry)
May 2004 — August 2008 (4 years 4 months)
Started as a freelance Lead Designer and moved on to Designer Manager and Creative Director.
Developed, built and maintained Skype brand from inception to 5 years old (from no users to 400 million registered and 100s of billions of talk-minutes).
Lead Designer in the early phase, designing key parts of the product, and then building design team and infrastructure from no one to 50 people strong team (which is around 10% of the total head count for entire company).
Oversaw three large-scale changes and expansions of the Skype brand and two big re-designs of Skype.com supporting and maintaining the explosive growth.
Numerous awards and recognition for Skype brand and websites, among these 3rd place behind only Google and Apple in a 2005 vote by Brand Channel.
(Design industry)
February 2004 — May 2004 (4 months)
Volunteer mission Art Director at Darya Design Agency in Kabul, Afghanistan. Everything from designing business cards, school books and annual reports.
Creative and production direction to Afghan designers.
Managed politically and organizationally complicated processes and projects.
(Design industry)
January 2003 — May 2004 (1 year 5 months)
Continued to work with Skype as well as smaller, Danish clients and new, Paris- and Geneva-based ones, including Cartier, Bouyges Telecom, Piaget and Mauboussin.
Part of successful pitching and concept team.
Designed and launched several small and large parts of Cartier and Bougyes Telecom main sites.
(Design industry)
December 2002 — May 2004 (1 year 6 months)
Lead (and only) Designer, working on brand, application and interaction, designing everything from the tiniest element on Skype.com to icons, graphics and workflows in the application itself.
Interaction design, graphic design, writing for launch version of Skype for Windows.
Art direction and design of first versions of Skype.com.
First iteration of graphic identity and tone of voice for Skype brand.
(Design industry)
July 2003 — August 2003 (2 months)
Freelance position with Framfab, Copenhagen, doing online advertising for NIKE as well as campaign website for new product launch.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; PUB; Marketing and Advertising industry)
August 2001 — January 2003 (1 year 6 months)
Conceiving, designing, structuring websites, mainly of campaign nature with short life but high impact. Leo Burnett is a large chain agency, owned by Publicis.
After Neo Ideo’s full acquisition, was part of small, digital creative team at Leo Burnett Copenhagen.
(Design industry)
March 2000 — August 2001 (1 year 6 months)
Conceiving, designing and structuring large scale and content-driven websites for major and medium sized corporations. Responsible for the Design and the Interface Development departments of Neo Ideo.
Managed team of designers and front-end developers.
Set design direction for the agency’s clients.
(Design industry)
July 1999 — March 2000 (9 months)
Conceiving, designing and structuring large-scale websites for major and medium-sized corporations. Neo Ideo was a small digital agency.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Design industry)
December 1997 — July 1999 (1 year 8 months)
Print design mainly for below the line activitites for medium and small sized companies. Managed client, contractor and supplier relationships.
(Design industry)
December 1994 — December 1997 (3 years 1 month)
An old-fashioned ‘apprentice’ position, where I followed and was taught by an experience art director/creative director in print design for posters, direct mail, press advertising etc. as well as picking up client management and many other aspects of managing an agency.