The MVE Most Valuable Entainers platform is a Reward & Recognition initiative driven by the People team at Entain.
After the Recruitment Playbook project was so well received by the business, the People team were keen to build on that look and feel and approached me to create the MVE logo and design the platform assets.

The logo uses a combination of Entain brand colours and fonts, along with some custom script to give it a more personable touch.

The platform design has interchangeable tiles that can adapt to suit different needs; first focussing on recognition through e-cards, then can be switched out to put the company award nominations front and centre.

E-card designs highlight the company values as well as options for peer-to-peer recognition, along with a more formal set for the award nominations and winners.

I was also asked to design the promotional elements to launch the platform to the business. This included, posters, digital banners and screens, stickers and coffee cups.

The brief to the team was a big one... Something that our Marketing team would usually throw to an Advertising Agency and pay big $ for. Instead the in-house creative team and I were asked to refresh the Ladbrokes creative in line with the Brand’s revised strategic direction. We had to shake off the rigidity and serious vibes and embrace more fun!

Where we ended up was with 4 complementary creative territories which are to be used in conjunction with each other as a system that allows creative flexibility by channel, by segment or by message. This approach is quite a new way of thinking for the brand and helps to avoid repetition across all channels.

The journey to landing on the final 4 territories was a complex one, all condensed into 3 months, and all while tackling our BAU workload and navigating a legislation change.

After receiving the brief from our Brand Marketing team, I got the Creatives together to brainstorm. We dissected the brief, then researched other brands in different categories who were showing up in a fun way, checked out our competition and looked at where the Ladbrokes brand had been before. We also researched the Jester archetype and discovered we were going to struggle to lean fully into that space due to the heavily legislated arena our brand sat in. We put all our ideas in a Miro board and shared it back with the Brand Marketing team.

Armed with some feedbadk and direction, it was time to ideate. Each creative team member was tasked with coming back with 1 or 2 creative concepts, then we would give each other feedback and refine before again presenting to the Brand team.

This process continued, collaborating with the Creative and Brand teams until everyone was happy and ready for me to present to the CMO and the CEO. Once they were both happy with a few directions I had presented, we then took the creative concepts through to a research stage. Focus groups were brought in and guided through the concepts by an external facilitator, and what we learned was incredibly useful in helping shape our final direction.

This was very much a team project, with the basis for the final concept coming from one of my team members. I took the initial brief and brought the creative team together to kick off, then guided the porject through all the stages. I also contributed concepts, provided feedback and creative direction throughout the process and managed all the presentation and approval stages. I then helped execute the finalised creative direction.

Working with the Entain Australia Partnerships team, I was asked to design a new set of trophies for the 3-Leg Territory Treble run in Darwin. The existing trophy set had never been won, and were a very cumbersome modern art style that made it difficult to travel with them to each race included in the Territory Treble series.

After researching the types of trophies available from our supplier, I settled on a concept for a set of three silver plates. The simple shape of the trophy allowed for some more intricate design elements to be included in the engraving, so I looked for some symbols of the NT and decided on the Sturt’s Desert Rose.

After custom illustrating three versions of the Desert Rose, I worked them into a design that incorporated one, two and three roses on the first, second and third plates that make up the set.

The design is elegant and classic and will remain relevant and easy to travel with, while owners continue to compete for the set.

No small undertaking, but navigated as a creative team, the Neds Brand Book is a thorough dissection of the Neds brand.

With the Brand Marketing team wanting a document they could share internally and externally to give a thorough picture of the brand’s history and positioning, the creative team came through with this beautiful document.

Nearly 50 pages long, each spread balances bold visuals, data and relevant information togive the reader the full picture.

Taking both an art director role to keep the look and feel consistent and on-brand, the team and I divided and conquered the pages, sharing the load amongst the team.

2019 was Neds’ third Spring Carnival. The Marketing team knew we had to do something pretty spectacular to continue our rise within the category. We gave a selection of Brisbane creative agencies the chance to tender and found an amazing idea that fell short in execution. Enter BCM, who took the Neds Level idea and wrote an epic TVC. We shut down streets in Brisbane CBD for a couple of days to film with the fabulous crew from Finch, and for a cool million we ended up with an iconic race through the city to make it to the Neds Level.

I had the pleasure of being involved at every stage of the campaign. From casting and styling; designing a V8 car wrap; all the way through to attending the shoot with a stills photographer to capture imagery for the basis of the campaign on channels other than TV. I even had the challenge of developing a logo for Take it to the Neds Level that incorporated the existing Neds brand, and that logo is still being used across all aspects of the brand today.

It was up to me to find a way to extend the story of the TVC through static and animated channels. It wasn’t going to be easy, but the ad was so inspiring I was excited about the opportunity.

What followed was an incredibly labour-intensive image compositing/retouching session to develop the image that would be seen across every digital and print channel possible for the next couple of years.

Our Out-of-Home presence was super strong, and we cast our luminous orange glow over Australian cities all over Australia.

Shown here are some digital placements, an eDM, the final V8 and initial wrap design plus a stubby cooler.

Entain had a huge period of growth post-Covid, increasing employee numbers by around 200 team members in 2 years.

The Entain People team reached out to engage my team for the design, but since I had just finished multiple rounds of recruitment, I figured this was the perfect opportunity for me to combine that experience with my design skills to develop the resource myself.

What started off as a disconnected flow of information housed in a generic Canva template as the brief, evolved into an end-to-end process document, making it easy for everyone to recruit, even leaders that might be undertaking it for the first time.

As well as the overall layout and design, I had a lot of input into the flow of content to make sure everything made sense and was easy to use from an end-user point of view. I also sourced all the included quotes.

Th People team were so pleased with this overall creative look, that it has been adopted as the visual direction for the People team. Meaning all of their initiatives are now in this neon, fun space that is an extension of the overall Entain brand.

Innovation and fun are two of the key values of the neds brand, so when the idea to try something new in the First Scorer markets came up in a meeting, a new product was born and a challenge was coming my way. One of our traders had the idea of allowing customers to select 6 players that had the best chance of scoring the first try… and the 6-pack was born.

Armed with just a quick post-it-note sketch from one of our Marketing Execs, I was tasked with making it a reality.

I reached out to my favourite photographer and secured some studio time with him, then set about finding talent to create the 6-packs for multiple sports.

Once the talent was secured, I set about sourcing uniforms, and the stock image for the basis of the pack. Then planned the shot list and run schedule for the shoot day.

The shoot went smoothly, and the images were delivered, leaving me to composite the final image together for both NRL and AFL.

The image was then used to promote the product across social, digital, press, eDM and OOH placements. The product was extended again into a soccer and cricket 6-pack, although didn’t see the same business success.

The final iteration of the 6-pack creative used player imagery from our sponsored NRL clubs, West Tigers and Gold Coast Titans combined into our 6-pack concept. Again I was responsible for the image composite and the roll-out of assets.

In an industry with so much legislation, it can be difficult to get your brand message out. But Entain use the database to the fullest to plan intricate user journeys as part of the CRM.

Emails are segmented by different audience streams, so each week between 5-10 emails are sent out to Neds & Ladbrokes clients. Covering everything from horse racing, greyhounds, seasonal sport, major sporting events, product launches and a weekly newsletter for the regular promotions, the CRM team and myself produce a lot of work together.

I try to give plenty of variety in the images and design of the emails to keep them fresh for our audience, while still being true to the brand. Our CRM specialist and I work together to ensure every element looks as good as possible and all the information is correct at time of send.

With slick, responsive design (that for special events even fills a widescreen format!), our eDMs are dark-mode friendly, packed with content and use a lot of personalisation. Our UX thinking to link easily with customer accounts deliver great interaction rates, and countdown timers drive a sense of urgency, meaning our emails consistently achieve great open-rates. The design and functionality have also earned us a couple of features on Really Good Emails.

Sports Wagering companies seem to have developed a same-same approach to the type of content they post: memes, memes, memes!
And while the digital halls of Neds are certainly lined with many a poorly photoshopped meme worthy of a chuckle from a sports-lover (all thanks to a resident “Meme-Lord” in the content team) we did take an occasional foray down a different path.

Behold some of my favourite infographics developed for the Neds Content team. From the mind of the aforementioned Meme-Lord, to a crude sketch on a piece of torn paper, through to the fully realised, PSD-heavy, eye-catching visuals on the left, these pieces of content delivered some big impressions for the team.

Were you even a Graphic Designer working through a global pandemic if you didn’t produce something about clean hands?

If Entain had to have copious amounts of hand sanitiser arond the office, it was always going to be done with some humour. I custom illustrated and designed 3 labels to suit different aesthetics, but all using the Entain brand colours and fonts.

One is even a tribute to our QLD Office Manager, with a riff on The Simpsons classic Mr. Sparkle.

At Entain they describe themselves first and foremost as a technology company that specialises in entertainment. So it makes sense that the majority of our design work is across digital platforms.

In my time at Entain, i have designed thousands of digital executions, across standard digital and CPI banner placements, animated HTML5 banners, dynamic / feed based banners and screens, rich media executions, home pages takeovers and more.

I have experience with Adobe Animate and Google Web Designer, as well as some more bespoke platforms like Bonzai and Playground XYZ.

An example of some of my digital design work for Neds and Ladbrokes is shown here.

Working with a talented writer/producer duo, I was asked to develop visuals for promotion of their upcoming audio drama.

The request was for specific elements from the story to be included, so this multi-layered piece is a blend of my illustration, photography and digital painting skills, and resulted in a spooky poster that has been used for print, digital and textile promotion of The Camping Trip.

Check it out for yourself and purchase your copy of the terrifying tale here: 

tsdjaproductions.bandcamp.com/album/the-camping-trip

A significant part of my role at Master Builders Queensland was the design and production of Master Builder magazine. Usually around 80 pages of every issue and currently a quarterly publication (previously bi-monthly until the end of 2016), the production of the magazine was a true 2-man show, just myself and an editor, with only 9 days from the initial creative brief until the print production deadline. The entire process had to run like a well-oiled machine.

After undergoing a re-brand at the end of 2015, the Marketing and Communications team were keen to develop a look for the magazine that was bright, fresh and modern, that ultimately reflected the new 'mate to mate' approach of the Association. I took on board some member research that had been done and feedback on previous issues to develop both the look and the style guide for the magazine, and it was well received by employees and members alike.

My responsibilities covered everything from the visual direction of the features and issue theming; typesetting, image selection and ad placement; making all the alterations from our editor, along with all of the pre-press work for the images.

The last issue I designed and produced can be found here.
Another couple of my favourite issues are here and here.

The biggest event series on the Master Builders Queensland calendar, the Housing & Construction Awards celebrate the best in building in Queensland.

With 9 regional events throughout the state, leading to the industry's night of nights, the Queensland awards night, the design for this project was no small feat.

I developed the visual concepts for both the regional and state events, and then carried that across every piece of collateral, taking it all from brief to finished art.

The design suite included: entry forms; invites; programs; pull-up banners; certificates; table numbers; place cards; photo sleeves; photo skins; table seating charts; digital screens; web banners; eDM templates and even visual support for the production team on the event nights.

The brief for the 2017 annual report was to deliver the document in a way that balanced the ‘mate-to-mate’ tone of the refreshed brand with the corporate nature of the document.

Using images from the recent photo-shoot that I organised and art directed to give both texture and a sense of reality, combined with the angles and clean style I developed for many of the communication pieces, the annual report successfully reflects the transition the brand has undergone.

It sits comfortably within the suite of reports the Master Builders brand regularly produces, while being unique enough to make it’s own statement. It was received very well by both the board and members alike.

As a not-for-profit association, Master Builders Queensland rely on sponsors getting come on board to support events held throughout their nine regions. This means the sponsorship prospectus needs to be effective, eye-catching and easy to read.

Tasked with an open brief, I worked collaboratively with a copywriter to develop the 'spotlight' theme, which flows throughout the prospectus adding visual interest without detracting from the sponsorship proposition.

The relaunch of Master Builders telecommunications arm was another chance for me to re-enforce the benefits of having an internal creative resource. 

After being underwhelmed with an external agency's response to the creative brief for the launch of MB Connect's latest mobile and data deals, I was given the opportunity to pitch a concept of my own.

Given a tight timeframe and with the names of the mobile and data plans set in place, I came up with the "Revved-Up" name to tie in with the motoring theme of the mobile plans, and then developed an initial creative concept for some posters, flyers and adverts to present to the Executive team.

The concept was very well received by the stakeholders, with them requesting only minor adjustments before the concept was approved to roll out across the whole campaign.

This campaign is now in market across press, point of sale and merchandise, and has been well-received by all the businesses involved as well as the members.

Another personal project, this time for a Greenpeace competition.

What better way to raise awareness of Genetic Engineering that with a sassy visual pun.

My concept, photography and image work came together to create a strikingly simple design.

This poster image took out one of the prizes in the competition, and my design was produced on a posters and reusable bags throughout the USA.

Originally the St Vincent de Paul Society contacted me to help produce some material for their CEO Sleepout event, however the relationship blossomed from there.

I produced creative for both their Winter Appeal and Christmas Appeal using their existing style guide, but when it came to designing their new Case for Support prospectus, they asked me to bring a whole new creative direction.

As the brief was to deviate from the somber blue direction developed by their agency, yet not leave it behind completely. With this in mind, I decided to embrace their corporate yellow and inject it like a ray of hope throughout the document.

The result is a clean design aesthetic that visually re-enforces the Good Works that Vinnies does within the community.

During my contract position with Ipswich City council, I was tasked with a few varied projects to work through, including the Christmas and New Year's Eve celebration concepts; the Mayor's Christmas card design and logo concepts for the Fire Station 101 innovation hub.

With a notoriously challenging approval process, I produced a selection of concepts for Christmas and New Year's Eve, which was fairly easily whittled down to the chosen versions pictured. The feedback from Councillors about the bright and less-traditional take was very positive.

This Mr. Men Little Miss promotional material was developed as part of a wider campaign, during my time at News Corp Australia. 

Given the brief of wanting to produce a height chart to tie-into the Mr. Men/Little Miss promo, I came up with the "Are you as tall as Mr. Tall" concept.

Using basic character elements supplied by the licensee, I was able to create the pile of fun characters you see here, and then re-draw Mr. Tall to fit.  With such a well known brand I had to closely follow the associated style guides.

The height chart was originally designed and produced for the Herald Sun. After not only passing the rigorous licensing approvals with flying colours, and drawing praise from the licensee, 5 other major newspapers decided to use this piece during the campaign.

Flyers and a micro-site as well as web banners and in-paper promotion were also part of this project.

When News Corp Australia launched their first paywall subscription model, the ads that had been designed by the agency on retainer didn't have a lot of cut-through with readers.

Wanting to cut back on the confusion for the audience, the Marketing team approached me to redesign the press components for the digital subscriptions.

I started with some targeted ads based around the Ashes coverage, which spurred the "Get more" phrasing that would became the basis of the subscription offering advertising.

A test comparing the agency-built version to the "Get More" version went ahead with the ads running on consecutive days for a few weeks in The Courier-Mail. The results proved so successful that the concept I designed was rolled out nationally to help promote the digital subscriptions.

The Great Hair Handbook was a new concept in hair care catalogues for Price Attack.

A cross between a magazine and a catalogue, it offered consumers advice on how best to care for their hair, with tips and tutorials along side the usual products. 

A handy pocket-sized catalogue with a softer retail edge than usual, I developed the look and feel of the handbook to try and blur the lines between catalogue and magazine.

I also photographed all of the products featured and retouched all the images that appear in the Hair Handbook.

This project gave me the opportunity to devise a complete concept for the corporate identity for The Property People on the peninsula of the NSW Central Coast.

In an area with nearly more real estate agents than houses to sell, my client wanted bold colours, but something that also reflected the beach-side feel of the community.

Shying away from the popular blues and yellows used in real estate throughout the area, the red and orange colour scheme set this business apart from the rest, while the simple, wave-like graphic gave a nod to the beachside locations. 

This design was applied to the whole corporate identity, including logo, stationery, signage and the entire shop-fit.

When TopGear Australia magazine launched in Australia, I jumped at the chance to take on the marketing design for the brand.

I was given a blank canvas, with the only direction being the style needed to reflect the strong yet quirky style that had become synonymous with the TV show , rather than the corporate look of the other press-based subscription drives.

The style I developed was carried across all consumer marketing pieces for the brand and I even took on some copywriting to ensure the everything tied together.

Based on the success of the collateral for the Australian magazine, I was asked to take on the visual marketing when the magazine launched in NZ as well.

These billboard concepts were a personal project that I undertook for a competition to promote TV Turn-Off week.

I combined some clever wordplay, bright colours and simple imagery to produce what ended up being a bright and bold creative concept.

30 Days of Fashion was an annual event at ACP Magazines (now Bauer Media) and I had the pleasure of working on it for two years in a row.

Glamorous and vibrant, while needing to include a large amount of info, including a subscription-driven competition, I worked with our internal client to achieve a solution that met every requirement.

The campaign included Direct Mail to select target markets (pictured), flags down George St in Sydney's CBD (pictured) Point of Sale (poster pictured), a feature ad in most ACP mastheads plus a host of online elements.

A selection of the Valentines Day ads developed for Best & Less.

I was hands-on with every aspect of these campaigns, directing the photo-shoots, selecting shots, putting together the concept and compositing/retouching the image.

These ads ran in Cosmopolitan Australia and were quite a different approach for Best & Less – a far cry from their usual family-friendly approach to suit the younger target market.