Creative director, strategist, visual systems & UI designer
I design experiences that work better, make people happier. My work has always been focused on creating resonance between product and user, organization, and audience, in B2B & B2C, across all sectors.
I am a creative director, strategist and designer with demonstrable experience in building engaging cross-platform brand experiences for diverse audience groups. A complexity-buster and creative systems thinker, I love to draw out valuable data, look for connections, and design experiences that work better, make people happier. I never separate strategy from design or design from strategy and I view brands and digital experiences as interconnected ecosystems resonating with, and dependent upon, user engagement.
My work is focused on creating an authentic, seamless connection between product and user, organization, and audience. I focus on B2B, tech, telecoms and fintech brands and I have worked across all audience groups across all sectors, including healthcare, professional services, public sector, retail and FMCG.
After working for large agencies (SuperUnion, FCB) I founded an independent strategy and design studio, ID&B, focusing on brand strategy, brand identity and digital product design for brands in Europe, Middle East, Canada, USA and Africa. Over and above leading all strategy and creative work, I directed on-site and remote teams on large-scale complex projects and I managed client relationships while delivering world-class brand experiences within timeframes and budgets.
I ran ID&B for 15 years until 2020. I currently freelance for companies around the world where I can apply my expertise to collaboratively improving products, services and systems while entrenching audience/user connectivity and trust.
This website contains snapshots of a few projects, there are many more projects and there are in-depth case studies. Please contact me should you wish to chat.
About
Testimonials
“Working with Julie was an enjoyable, interesting and collaborative process. Julie’s ability to entrench herself in Acceleration and the space in which we operate was invaluable. This meant that she was able to challenge the thinking and these debates resulted in some extraordinarily insightful strategy. I would work with and recommend her agency ID&B at every turn, they will truly help you to develop a world class leadership brand.”
Juliet Mey, Global Marketing Director, Acceleration, WPP Group
“Julie took our team on an educational journey in search of the soul of the company by unpacking complex concepts and linking them in an ingenious way. She has a very calm disposition, listens actively, and is very articulate. I found her humble, accommodating and generous with her expertise. Her way of working is empowering as it is based on co-creation. It is worth noting that her input was invaluable and the project was a success.”
Nebu Phohlela, Project Manager, Group Management Framework Project, PetroSA (South African state owned entity)
"Julie's work for Kinektek has been phenomenal. She guided us through a comprehensive re-branding of the entire business from the ground up. Her extensive grasp of brand and design strategy has enabled our business to establish systems and frameworks to accommodate all of our design requirements across all of our platforms and solutions. Beyond her strategic and business acumen, her creative and aesthetic design skills are really first class."
Matthew Slaven, CEO, Kinektek
"Julie played an immense role to prepare and empower the Simera Group to launch onto the global stage. What impressed me most was her innate capability to rapidly understand our environment and moreover, decompose our initial business objectives into clearly articulated work breakdown structures with well-defined goals. She approached the work with a rather unique combination of out of the box creativity and well-structured execution, which resonated with our systems engineering foundations."
Johann Du Toit, CEO, Simera