Over thirty years in the creative industry
Including time at some of the world's most respected brand consultancies, before choosing to work for myself. Here's how that happened.
About Leigh Evans, strategic creative and brand designer
2011
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My Story
Who I Am
I'm Leigh Evans, a strategic creative and designer working from a small market town in Northamptonshire, about as far removed from the world I mostly work in as you can get.
I qualified as a graphic designer in 1990 and started out as a photographer's assistant at Audi Volkswagen, followed by an in-house print department at a county council and a family run studio in Milton Keynes. Not glamorous, but that's where the real world experience comes from. You leave college with the basics and then find out how different it all is once you're actually doing it.
In 1996 I went to Dubai because I wanted a change and it sounded like fun, with no real idea what I was walking into. It was a different place back then. Four years at an independent branding studio, home again when we'd had enough, a spell freelancing in London including time at Landor, and then another offer took me straight back out. Dubai has a habit of doing that.
I stayed a lot longer the second time. A branding studio first, then a stretch at GSCS, which became Fitch while I was there, a spell as creative director at Turquoise Branding, and then Siegel+Gale, including nearly two years seconded into Qtel in Doha. That's where most of the relationships that still bring me work began.
In 2011 the Gulf's financial crisis caught up with the firm I was working for in Dubai, and I was one of the people let go. So I went freelance instead, working my way around the region for a couple of years, based in Dubai, regularly out in Doha, mostly building on relationships I already had rather than chasing anyone new.
One of those was a senior marketing consultant I'd worked with on previous projects, someone trusted enough to move between firms at director level, and we just kept working together for years, a retail brand, a run of theme park proposals, some of which you can actually walk through in Dubai today. None of it came from pitching. It came from the relationships being good and the people involved being senior enough to just say yes. That's still roughly how it happens now.
By 2013 I was back in the UK and the freelancing had turned into a proper business, which I ran under the name Brave Brands. The name's changed since. The work and the person doing it haven't.
I'm not an agency and I don't pretend to be one. What I am is a strategic creative who works alongside clients properly, getting inside their world, asking the questions that need asking, and bringing the thinking and the making to the same table.
The longer version, with the studios and the stories, is on my background page.
What I do
Brand strategy and positioning, working out what a business should actually stand for before anything gets designed. Logo and visual identity, built to work everywhere it needs to, not just on a screen. Naming, when a business or project needs one. Brand guidelines, so it stays consistent once I'm not the one making every decision. And further out from that, wayfinding, environmental work and digital brand assets, for projects that need a brand to show up properly in the real world. A few of those projects picked up recognition along the way too.
AWARDS
- International Advertising Association (IAA) Graphic Design Gold Award for the Zaman Corporate Brochure
- International Advertising Association (IAA) Graphic Design Runner Up for the Fairmont Dubai Bacchus and Cascades menus
- Arjo Wiggins Graphic Design Gold Award for the Fairmont Dubai Chaîne des Rôtisseurs event menu
- Arjo Wiggins Graphic Design Silver Award for the Fairmont Dubai Spectrum menu
- Arjo Wiggins Graphic Design Highly Commended for the Fairmont Dubai Festive Brochure
- British Healthcare Industry Advertising Award for Mölnlycke Health Care direct marketing
PUBLICATIONS
- Touch This: Graphic Design That Feels Good by Scott Witham, featuring the Hilton Dubai Chaîne des Rôtisseurs event menu
- Logo Lounge 3, featuring the Global Village identity
- Business Times, a press feature on the Pyramids of Giza brand transformation
How I do it
You get me directly, on every project, from the first conversation through to the finished thing out in the world. There's no handover to someone junior once the interesting part's done, because there isn't anyone else, and that's deliberate. I'd rather do fewer projects properly than grow into something that has to hand pieces of your brief to people who weren't in the room when we worked out what it actually needed.
Getting it right starts before any design work happens. Honest conversations, the right questions, sometimes pushing back on the brief itself if it needs it. You know your business better than I do, I bring the strategic thinking, and between us we find the right answer.
If something isn't working, I'll tell you. Not to be difficult, but because that's where good work actually starts, and the clients who've stuck around longest are usually the ones who appreciated the straight talking, even when it wasn't the easiest thing to hear at the time.
None of it counts unless the work is right, for both of us. Does it solve the brief. Does it add real value. Is it something we'd both be proud to put our names to. If not, it isn't finished yet.
Now you know who you'd be working with.
Let’s Chat
If any of that sounds like the thinking your brand needs, whether it's outgrown how it looks or you're starting from nothing, I'd rather hear about it than guess at it. The standard's the same whoever's asking.