2013 saw a large niché in the market as the major consoles were upgrading to PS4 and XBOX One. The majority of the marketing work was coming out of the US and the big agencies seemed to see games as ‘for kids’.

The door was left open for a new player to stroll in. Within the first year we’d secured Ubisoft, Sony and Square Enix as major clients and in year two we had to increase our office space.

In the new social world a rebrand is a risky business. Get it right and it almost becomes part of history. But get it wrong and you’re vilified on Twitter for destroying an icon. Now, hopefully we all know that a logo, typeface and palette ‘do not a brand make’. 

With EIS I got it right whilst also getting it wrong. Hailed by the client as being a unique and fantastic refresh it was eventually dismissed after months of discussion. The marketing department were split down the middle like a very British referendum. Why was that exactly?

I admit, I had to go to the comic shop to find out who Iron Man was when the brief came in from Paramount (yes, not Disney back then). Who was I to know he’d become the face of a multi-billion dollar cinematic universe.

That’s the thing with movie and game advertising. You never know what the big hitters are going to be or if your creations will become future collectors pieces. I guess you just aim for something iconic that would look good in a frame in your house.

I’ve worked for two financial services companies over the years: Accucard and Lloyds TSB. On both occasions I was asked to brand a wholly new fintech offering. From vision to internet banking. To cards that offered the user the chance to manage their own APR, Fees and Interest Rate.

The irony being I was a Digital Creative Director at the time. I’d never done full branding before. And yet, as with most of my positions, you evolve and learn by diving into things you haven’t done before. After all, I firmly believe a creative solution is a creative solution. 

This whole project requires an incredible amount of explanation probably best left for any interview. Simply put I had to come up with a plausible way for North Korea to invade and occupy America. So, I rewrote history, from 1953 to 2029.

Flash is dead. We all know that. Steve Jobs put that fateful nail in the coffin and we digital natives watched an industry die. But for all its failings, the lessons learnt educated the senior creatives of today. It was the backbone of the internet for many years. Removing it completely from a portfolio denies it the influence it had in getting us to where we are today. Of course we don’t use it now as HTML5 and CSS animation can replicate most of it.  Let’s not forget however, an entire multi-million dollar banner ad industry was built on the back of Flash. I built thousands of banners, a multitude of websites and a vast array of online games. 

Since 1995, I’ve probably designed, managed and built over 900 websites. Give or take. I actually started out as an HTML coder after University and worked my way through Flash, Actionscript and Javascript but always preferred the design side.

It’s a shame that the web has started to all look the same. While I’m a big advocate of accessibilty and usability I’m not such a big fan of what I like to call “colouring in the wireframes”. After all, you don’t need a designer for that – you’d save a packet.

All joking aside, boxes do make responsive sites a lot easier to both visualise and structure. Especially when it comes to ecommerce and corporate websites. Content on these sites is often constantly changing and having to spend time making images into fancy circles and planning layout isn’t very speedy or cost effective.

While I wouldn’t consider myself as a UX or IA designer there are times when visual planning is required, especially before I commit resources to design and build. Perhaps it’s the ergonomically trained Mechanical Engineer in me, but taking the content down to basic structure is incredibly cathartic.

I spent 4 years building mobile sites in WML and WAP, all the while thinking, “surely this is interim technology”. Sure enough, years later, out popped the iPhone with its rich html browser and WAP all but died. Those 75+ mobile sites I created for the likes of the DfES, DirectGov, Number 10 and many UK Councils became obsolute overnight.

Games are made in 360 degrees inside a virtual world so you’d think translating it to VR would be easy. Sadly no. On screen Games are designed to render only what’s in front of you when it’s needed. Why waste textures and processing on things you can’t immediately see, right?

As campaigns go, inventing a fake company to sell a game, fully branding it, pretending it was 50 years old and then sending phones to 50 top journalists had to be the most gutsy. Operating system fully skinned? Check. Fully boxed, cellophane wrapped, receipt included and everything branded APEX, North Korea? Absolutely hell yes.

I’ve had a million different types of brief sent my way over the years. While many had complex problems to solve, more often the solution was a eureka moment that was easier to execute. However, when I was asked to create UI and UX for a 2020 game release I was left scratching my head. This was the exact opposite: the problem being simple, the execution highly complex. Everything I had learned from web and mobile UX wasn’t really relevant or helpful. Apps were better but still missing something.

Landor, for over two years, did the heavy lifting on redefining this global brand. Once that was complete someone had to take those guidelines and make them a reality across the world-wide digital space.

However being quite early in the days of the web, the digital guidelines were sparse if not missing. So, I set about building a digital department for brand and software applications. When I’d finished we had 56 people across London and Houston.

I started writing copy by accident rather than by design. The company copywriter was in hospital and there were a few pressing deadlines. I started typing and the client approved. Since then I’ve learnt to speak fluent Italian which dramatically improved my written English.

When I began to put together more live action and behind the camera work, I originally made the cardinal sin of thinking I could do it all in my head. This can routinely work on smaller self-shoots but rarely on a larger production. Mainly as what’s in your head isn’t actually in anyones elses.

Imagine having to make a model stand on a rotating platform to take snaps of them at 8 different angles. Multiply that with 10 different outfits – male and female. Then have them lie on a rocky beach in Devon, splash them with water and ask them to pretend it’s sunny because the budget wouldn’t allow for the Bahamas. Don’t worry, Photoshop can fix anything.

The trailers I’ve worked on have had approximately 130,313,970,000 total views. Give or take an average viewership. The 6 above had something unique about them. It may have been stop-motion animation composited with created game footage or 1000s of painted Games Workshop miniature figures on a vast set.

Strategy is one of those things that creatives either want to do or won’t touch with a barge pole. A lot of strategy writes itself with a solid brief but the bulk of it is careful thought through planning. A plan of action designed to achieve an overall aim.

I thought long and hard about how, and even if, I wanted to put social media in here. I believe that many brands don’t benefit from social media, either because they do it incorrectly or because the socialsphere simply does not care. When you’re pushing the media on people and not the social participation it just becomes sales.

Motion graphics are probably one of the most creative things you can do and are often the ones that are remembered the most. It doesn’t matter if you do it with one piece of software or combine Nuke, Maya, Cinema4D or After Effects. Today you can almost create anything you can think of.

When I assemble and create a pitch I like it to be the benchmark after I’ve left the room. I’ve been pitched to by agencies who show a powerpoint with pictures and have a fantastic orator waxing lyrical while it plays. They’re great in the moment. Once they’ve left the room and I’ve seen another 5 pitches, I cannot for the life of me remember what they said on slide 12. The one with the picture of the boy holding a balloon.

You know, it was only when putting together this site that I realised I had worked for enough clients over the years to cover the entire alphabet multiple times. I could not, however, find one client beginning with the letter Y. Youtube, yes, but that’s been my media channel.