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Resume

Award winning Creative Director, designer, creative technologist.





Work experience


Working on various above the line, innovation and digital projects. Creatively led pitch to win NBA business.
Creatively led ptich to retain Standard Chartered Bank business.


Clients include NBA, Standard Chartered Bank, MasterCard, McDonalds.


Leading Innovation at Quirk, one of the most important digital agencies in South Africa, I spend most of my time conceptualising and building innovative prototypes, as well as consulting and pushing an agenda of innovation and driving change.

I also served as a bridge between the tech team and creative departments as well as consulting on technology from a creative viewpoint.

Member of “dream team” concept team.

Most recently I have worked on facial recognition, data visualisation, digital mirrors, working with the microsoft kinect and Leap Motion.

Clients included Internet Solutions, DSTV, Durex, PPC Cement, RAB.


Chosen out of 100s of applicants to participate in the Umbono Accelerator Programme
Co-founded, designed and programmed events listings startup Gigham, helping you find things to do based on your social profile and location.
Gigham grew out of another startup project I was developing while in Berlin - Walaa - a music search engine.
Launched in 6 cities - Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Nairobi.
Finalist in Demo Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.
Voted Top 40 new startups in Africa.
Massive learning curve both in business, internet psychology, user acquisition and coding.



It had always been a dream of mine to live in Berlin, where I spent my time furthering my experiments in light, and sound and motion reactive systems.
Invited to exhibit at Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
Held a number of other exhibitions, events and performances throughout the city.
Member of the Absolut Made consultative body
Held freelance Creative Director positions at Crumpler, Berlin and Ogilvy, Cape Town.
Built startup, music search engine Walaa, which eventually pivoted to become Gigham.



Mandated to serve as a bridge between ATL and Digital, though ended up working mainly on above the line projects.
Creative Director on the Jetstar Account, successfully launching the brand into the Tokyo market
Helped grow Jetstar business in Osaka and Nogoya by 400% in a year.
Jetstar team award as the best 360 Account at Ogilvy in Asia.
Directed Jetstar 2009 launch TV commercial.
Jetstar winner of 2008 Asian Integrated Marketing Awards.
Worked as ACD as part of Sokenbicha (Coca Cola's and Japan's biggest mixed tea brand) team. One of the biggest accounts in Japan.
Sokenbicha ads repeatedly scored the highest link test scores in the brand's history.



Built agency from the ground up.
Within a year of launch, rose to becoming one of the top 10 agencies in South Africa - and the only digital agency on the list. Leading the creative team at Radarboy we won a host of awards, with me becoming the most awarded new media creative in South Africa.
Website voted one of the top 10 flash sites in the World.
Showcased at Design Indaba as example of great South African design.
Developed a cult following for our quirky take on things, with many CDs citing Radarboy as inspiration to getting into the industry.
Focused quite heavily on applications, and content creation, many of our products, I believe, were way ahead of their time. IOLNewsSaver - pre-RSS days, an application that pulled live news stories to your desktop in a simple, clean, and extremely usable manner. SouthBooth - an in-store music listening kiosk. Scoreboard - live rugby union news and scoreboard desktop application/screensaver. Bannersport - world’s first banner ad sport games. NewsBanner - world’s first live news headline banner ads.
Worked on the Lucky Strike campaign for almost two years - that became the talk of the town and implemented a number of innovative and quirky solutions for them - including magazines, installations, registration sites, games and content. Work was ported to a number of other countries and presented to their global brand managers as great brand content and use of the brand.
Clients included Shell, Independent Newspapers, Minolta,, Ster Kinekor, Lucky Strike, MWeb, JWT, Jupiter Drawing Room, British American Tobacco, Rembrandt Group, Baker Street, K-TV.
Digital thinktank member at the Independent Newspaper Group.
Founding member of Boom Room technology forum.



Designed and developed websites and ground breaking multimedia projects for some of the biggest clients in South Africa.

Contributed significantly to Tinderbox being recognised as the top new media studio in South Africa.

Awarded a Loerie Grand Prix - still today the one of only two Grand Prix that has ever been awarded in the Digital - as well as a host of other awards.

Clients included MNet (TV station), MWeb (ISP), Internet Solutions (ISP), Roche, Dynajets, Tommy Hilfigger.

Cape Town, South Africa, 1997-1999




I have held freelance and contract positions at a number of esteemed organizations, working on diverse projects ranging from brand strategies, user interface design, web and application design, packaging and print design, touch screen kiosks, TV and video, events, exhibition design and product design.

I have worked on a number of high profile clients such as:
Lucky Strike, Onistuka Tiger, Yokugawa, Renault, Peugeot, Ponds, Disney, Tokyo Designers Block, Canon, Docomo, Tokyo American Club, Museum Tokyo, EcoDecor Brand (winner of Good Design Award 2007).

Before going into a career as an art director, I also worked as a journalist at the famous Daily Dispatch in East London South Africa (where I rose to being the youngest bereau chief in South Africa), Caxton Press and as parliamentary Correspondent for Capital Radio 604, and freelanced for South African Press Association, Reuters, Sunday Times, Cape Argus, 702, Style, Student Life and Enterprise Magazine.

 




Education


University of Cape Town, 1994 Accolades: Deans Merit List.
Top 10 students in class.
Majored in Political Studies.

Concept Interactive, 1996
Majored in Graphic Design and Multimedia.




Further Education/Conferences:



Demo Africa, Nairobi: 2013
UX Camp Europe, Berlin: 2012
Webinale, Berlin: 2012
UX Camp Europe, Berlin: 2011
Invision Future of Technology Conference, San Francisco: 2000
Design Indaba Cape Town: 1999, 2000 and 2001,2002
Concept Interactive database programming course
FlashForward, New York: 2001
Digital Underground Conference, Cape Town: 2001
IDN Fresh Conference, Hong Kong: 2001
Cape Town Documentary Film Festival Workshop, Cape Town, 2002
Damelin College C++ course, Cape Town, 1998



Tecnologies and skills:



I'm a designer, first and foremost. Highly skilled in the Adobe Suite of products. I love vector graphics and loved the aesthetics of Flash - where I spent most of my early career experimenting. As a Creative Director, you also get to (unfortunately) spend a lot of time in Powerpoint, but these days I try, and encourage my team, to build presentations only in HTML.

In coding, I'm most excited about Javascript and putting most of my learning time into this. But would say I have most experience in PHP, Processing and Actionscript.

Coding Languages:
PHP, Javascript, Java/Processing, Actionscript, Ruby.

Libraries and Frameworks:
CakePHP, Ruby on Rails, d3.js and most recently been dabbling in Meteor, OpenFrameworks and Cinder.

Technologies:
Data visualization, face tracking, motion reactive, sound reactive, kinect, light installations, arduino, LED, physical computing, sensors.