All about Ian
Biography
Coming from a strategic consulting and creative background Ian brings an uncommon perspective to the disciplines of design and communication, combing a deep understanding of brand, digital & business thinking to deliver work that connects with the intended audience and delivers return on investment.
He has worked with a number of major agencies in Sydney as well as Asia, London and the USA, including Grey, Ogilvy, M&C Saatchi, News Corp and Accenture.
With over twenty years of traditional and digital media experience in a wide cross section of creative disciplines, Ian’s skill set includes content creation, graphic design, art direction, interactive design, animation, UX/CX, social media, product design, video production and digital strategy.
Ian’s creative and strategic work has earned recognition in most major awards in Australia. Recent accolades include Winner, Gold Sabre Awards (Social Media Campaign) for #galaxyemojisalive; Winner: IN2SABRE Certificate of Excellence for PayPal Live Selects & Mumbrella Commscon Corporate Social Responsibility Winner for The KFC Youth Foundation.
“Creating great content and telling intriguing brand stories for a digital world gets me out of bed in the morning”
Ian has been chosen to judge international awards, been published in industry press and guest lectured at industry colleges. His personal work has also been chosen for international exhibitions and conferences, most recently his short animated film ‘We Never Learn’ premiered at TEDxSydney.
Timeline
2020 – Current
Ian and strategist Kate Star launched TomFoolery in response to a number of opportunities in branding, marketing and comms. The consultancy has since delivered campaigns, websites, digital strategies, branding, social media and marketing strategies for a number of smbs and partnered with other agencies on a broad range of larger scale projects including Salesforce, AWS and Zoom.
Ian and Kate are also passionate about the NFP sector, seeking to give back to the community where ever possible through organisations including Seniors Rights Service, Autism Camp Australia and The Children’s Hospital.
2015 – 2020
Ian led Edelman Australia’s visual design and user experience team across a broad spectrum of clients and projects. From idea driven campaigns through to large platform builds and content driven video programming. Clients include Audi, Samsung, Commonwealth Bank, PayPal, KFC & HP.
2012 – 2015
Looking for a new challenge outside of agencies, Ian joined News Corp to lead their digital product design and brand team. Projects included leading web sites, mobile and iPad apps such as Vogue Australia, Daily Telegraph, Fox Sports & The Australian.
2009 – 2012
Ian and business partner Laura Peck established E&L Consultancy after being offered the opportunity to pitch for a global World Vision initiative. They successfully won the pitch, beating several established international agencies to launch ‘Micro’, an innovative micro finance programme working to alleviate poverty in poor communities. The partnership went on to work with other clients including Fairfax, OPSM, Wacom, Toyota and MCN Network.
2007 – 2009
As Creative Director at One Digital, now Isobar, he led winning pitches for major clients including Coca Cola, Adidas and Warner Music, adding to existing clients including HSBC, Tourism Australia, Hyundai and Pizza Hut.
2003 – 2007
At Profero he was part of the management team that grew the agency from a start up team of 6 to an established regional hub with a client roster including Apple, Daimler Chrysler and Macquarie Bank.
2000 – 2003
In 2000 Ian established the Sydney office of Beyond Interactive, one of the first digital advertising specialists to bring creative and media under one roof. In a challenging climate the team secured clients such as Vodafone, Holden, World Vision and Oracle. The agency was later acquired by the Grey group.
Previously
Ian studied Viscom at UTS and his first gig out of uni was for Cox & Partners Architects. Philip Cox is one of Australia’s foremost architects and working for him was terrifying and amazing.
At Ian’s final year of school he achieved 100% for both 2 & 3 unit art theory and practical.
As a kid a good friend of Ian’s dad, Jim, drove a Valiant Charger in shiny blue metal flake paint. Jim also seemed to be always with a pretty girl and had a conversation pit in his house with an arcade game machine in it. Jim was an art director and Ian knew then what he wanted to be when he grew up. Ian still doesn’t have the Charger.