Creative Director
Pink Entropy
Total years of experience :23 years, 4 Months
Pink Entropy, a digital advertising agency startup in Dubai, delivers innovative marketing strategies, engaging interactive experiences, digital advertising and social media community management, and complex enterprise platforms (UI/UX).
As their Creative Director my responsibilities include:
developing multiple design concepts for campaigns or projects that meet the business objectives of the organization, advancing the brand strategy, establishing creative direction for the entire line of on and offline services and programs, supervising and inspiring the creative team, working with the strategy team and project managers to develop concepts, working with internal teams to generate ideas for pitching and proposals, managing team members and providing quality control over concepts and projects. Clients: Max Factor, BRP Can-Am, UAB Bank, Line Messenger, Al Serkal.
Besides being the publisher and brand promoter of Rolling Stone Magazine Middle East, HGW Media was a boutique advertising agency that produced promotional material in a variety of media, including viral video, radio and print, as well as commercials created for outdoor, the internet, social media websites and mobile devices. My main task included finding new ways to transform the Rolling Stone print edition to the online, digital world. This with the initiation of new brand extensions like 'Street To Stage' and in combination with on-ground experiences to engage the Middle-East audience.
Apart from digital campaigns and social media rollouts for Rolling Stone, HGW Media also produced promotional material and branding for a number of regional clients such as Toshiba, Palmer’s, Hyundai
A second part of my job was to support HGW’s business objectives in conceptualizing pitch documents and presentations for regional and international business development projects (X-games).
From revamping the old website of the ADNOC sponsored engineering university to setting up a dynamic database-driven website structure for the whole university my tasks are mostly Web related: deployment of conference websites & department sites with web features, maintenance and updates of all current pages. Secondary Graphic Design tasks involve: restyling the institute’s branding, creation of logos, artwork and print jobs like brochures, handbooks, advertising, annual reports, newsletters and much more. Report directly to the Head of Institutional Research and the President.
Recruitment of an Assistant Webmaster and management of the small in-house graphic & web design team.
Starting up ‘the Black Flame’, a freelance collective of designers and developers based in Dubai. Working for national and international clients. Jamal Al Hai (FNC), Muslim Heritage, Panasonic ME
As Senior Designer my tasks were pointed at creating user friendly and eye catching visuals for websites and online advertising: email shots, revealers, banners, teasers and landing pages. Project management as key role between the account managers and the international team of designers and developers. Working with Arabic web content.
Working on different projects, a selection:
CD-ROMs: “L’art du moyen age” - Magic Media/Gallimard multimédia; “Le Violon, des hommes des oeuvres” - Editions Montparnasse; “Cyberpub, The first virtual museum of publicity with Jacques Séguéla”
ADVERTISEMENTS: The Belgian Wine Exchange: All advertisements for the national belgian press
WEBSITES: Monthly maintenance and creation of mini-sites for DENG Magazine; numerous websites for Belgian Jazz, Rock and Pop Bands
Responsible as Senior Web Designer and Project Manager for all international and national ‘web’ related projects. Working together with freelance programmers and designers. Managing international website jobs over a distance via email, FTP and telephone.
Websites for The Concentra Award (BE-EU); Troika Lusa Magazine (RU-PT); Servaustral/Sonangol (Angola); ID for Nach Stil, an association for immigrants from Eastern Europe. Learning the Portuguese language.
Creating the company house style based on the philosophy of “open-mindedness”, “lightness” and “professionalism” and to work on web and identity design for several High Tech, IT, Communication and Media companies from both the U.S. and Europe: TCNS, Saddletree Research, Final Sound (NL), Ultra-Scan (FBI, NASA, ...), KUL (the Catholic University of Leuven), Halo Europe (Coca- Cola, Volvo, Ford, ...), DENG magazine.
Project based Web Design for an On-line Magazine, which had as first intention to offer critical and humoristic journalism to a young On- and Off-line community. Worked and managed event-driven projects in cooperation with companies such as Universal (Björk contest) and Studio Brussels (national radio).
“Internet platform for promotion and distribution of independent record labels/Dotcom/E-commerce selling music”
A. During the company start-up my main responsibilities (as a co-founder and member of the -small- management team) were directed towards the development of the company “look and feel” and the creation of a website that could offer all the commercial, marketing and artistic aims to the project:
Prototype design of the Atrecordings website.
On- and Off-line branding (logo, banners, stickers, flyers and posters).
Streaming media development (audio, video and Live Webcast)
Key role in the dynamic process of creating and developing the Atrecordings web site as a coordinator for the different parties included.
Acting as producer between the commercial team, designers, programmers and external technical partners. At the same time taking a crucial part in the (lively!) discussions and evaluations of issues concerning web architecture, content, navigation.
People Management: Building a strong team by attracting and recruiting highly creative and skilled professionals using my relational network, and continuously making efforts to maintain and further enhance team spirit by sporting a supportive and listening attitude whilst being a tutor for junior team members.
B. Later on I was responsible for the coordination & planning of the multidisciplinary web production - team as Art Director / Producer.
On-line events: live web casts, live chat sessions, contests, games... together with companies such as Levi’s Engineered Jeans, Ninja Tune Records, The Wire Magazine, The Residents-event with Ralph records, the Brussels based ‘Ancien Belgique’ venue.
Non stop re-thinking and re-designing the website by creating new strong community tools (‘Mail this song to a friend’, the ‘Tracko- matic’...).
photo lab - digital graphics
First steps into the world of multimedia by creating communication graphics and interactive presentations for companies such as Orafti, Raychem and Henkel Ecolab.
BA in Graphic Design (Meester in de Beeldende Kunst), Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design