A decade of solving different kinds of design problems.

One of the best things about spending nine and a half years at a services company was never knowing exactly what kind of problem was coming next.

At Fairway, I led creative work across healthcare, technology, hospitality, utilities, biotech, education and media. The work was just as varied: digital products, UX and UI, websites, brand, marketing, sales materials, presentations, events and, yes, even the signs on the building.

As Creative Director, my role was to understand what the business or client was trying to accomplish, figure out where design could make a difference, and set the direction for the work. Sometimes that meant shaping a digital experience. Sometimes it meant helping a client clarify how they presented themselves. And sometimes it meant making sure every piece of the Fairway brand, from a sales deck to the building itself, felt like it came from the same company.

I started as the sole designer and eventually built and led a team of four. As the team grew, my job became a mix of creative direction, client strategy, team leadership and hands-on design. I could be helping define the approach for one project, reviewing another with the team, meeting with a client on a third and still getting into the design work myself.

How we worked

We didn’t treat design as the step that happened after the business decisions had already been made. We worked to understand the goal, the audience and the problem first, then used that to determine what we should actually make.

Our team was intentionally collaborative. Someone might lead a project, but we regularly brought the rest of the team in to challenge the thinking, find holes and push ideas further. The goal wasn’t to defend your design. It was to make the work better.

For digital projects, we established UI and UX best practices that gave us a consistent way to approach very different businesses and users. Business goals were always part of the equation, but so were the people on the other side of the experience. Our job was to make the two work together.

What I took with me

Fairway taught me how to move comfortably between the big picture and the details.

Nine and a half years of different industries, clients, business problems and design challenges made me a much more strategic designer, but also reinforced something I still believe: strategy is a lot more useful when you’re close enough to the work to know whether it actually works.