Simon Cohen

Expertise

Summary

I am a branding consultant and designer with over 30 years experience.

I am passionate about the potential for strategically relevant and well-crafted design to create not just stronger brands and businesses, but also to help to build stronger relationships and communities.

My strengths and skills which I use to help my clients include: 

• Strategy: I help clients to define their core brand purpose and position in the marketplace. I am able to understand complex issues and challenges faced by my clients’ businesses and to think laterally about how design can help to provide long terms solutions to them.

• Creativity: I have the ability to apply creative insight and the spark of imagination to articulate the unique position and personality of a brand or business as a distinctive and crafted visual language, which resonates with the target market and allows the brand to tell its story in a relevant and authentic tone of voice.

• Leadership: I have a track record of assembling and inspiring creative teams and nurturing and developing their strengths and talents. 
I have a long history of managing teams across often complex, long term projects from initial concept through to final delivery.

Experience

• Simon Inc Ltd

  Creative Director

  2007 - Current

  

  Branding consultancy which I started in 2007 in New Zealand before bringing it to London, working with a number of long-term clients across a range of sectors.

  I have developed a relationship-based design business, working very closely with our clients at board level and assembling creative teams on a project-by-project basis to deliver strategic design-based solutions to their business issues and goals.

  - Working with my core team of senior creatives I originate the creative direction for every project that we work on and cotinue to work on each project from initial concept through to final delivery.

  - I am responsible for overseeing all aspects of the business, from new business development and building client relationships, helping to define client strategy, setting creative and delivery standards, assembling and leading creative teams, hands-on design roles and management of all daily operations.

• SCG London

  Creative Director

  21 - 100 Employees 2010 - 2013

  - Working with the management and senior creative teams I set the graphic direction for all projects and ensured that the integrity of that direction and the standard of implementation was maintained throughout the duration of the project.

  - As well as retaining a hands-on approach and involvement in creating design and strategic solutions for our clients, I provided creative leadership and mentoring for all the 20-strong SCG team across all disciplines.

  - I worked closely with the managing director, finance director and project managers in resource planning and budgeting as well as writing proposals and representing the company in pitch and presentations both in the UK and overseas.

  - I was instrumental in raising the overall standard of output from the studio, increasing efficiency and profitability of the agency and generating new business and improved client loyalty.

• PublicisMojo Auckland

  Head of Design

  21 - 100 Employees 2004 - 2007

  My role as Head of Design for PublicisMojo was to provide design leadership and direction across all the above-the-line projects for the agency, bridging the gap between the traditional copywriter/art director roles and the inhouse studio.

  - I worked alongside creative directors Nick Worthington and Lachlan McPherson and the other creatives in the agency to translate loose concepts into fully crafted campaigns, and providing creative inspiration and mentoring to the team of 8 full-time designers and artworkers in the studio.

  - I helped them to expand their offer from being purely advertising-focused, to encompassing identity design and visual branding projects

Clubs and Associations

Email Simon Cohen