Building a Unified Design Culture for CreateFuture

Date:

January 2025

Client:

CreateFuture

Services:

Leadership

Over four years at CreateFuture, I led the Creative Studio and Product Design team, shaping the company's creative strategy, brand, and digital experiences. Managing a team of eight designers and supporting a business of 500+ employees, I built a high-performing design culture, introduced scalable design processes, and strengthened cross-functional collaboration across Product, Engineering, Marketing, HR, and Leadership. My work helped elevate design quality, improve delivery, and create more consistent customer and employee experiences.

see Project

Project Details

Walking into the hard stuff

CreateFuture was growing fast and design was struggling to keep up. There was no shared vision, no career structure, no real framework holding things together across brand, product and the wider organisation. Teams were working in silos, quality was inconsistent, and designers had no clear path for growth or progression.

I came in as UX & Design Manager with a mandate to fix that. Not just tidy things up, but build something that could actually scale. I started by getting close to the teams, understanding where the friction was, what was blocking good work and where the gaps in leadership and process were creating problems downstream.

From there I built the foundations. A team of 8 designers, hired, onboarded and developed. Two competency frameworks written from scratch, one for Product Designers and one for UX Researchers, giving the organisation a shared language for growth, progression and honest performance conversations for the first time. Design critique sessions, open drop-in diaries, coaching plans. The kind of unglamorous structural work that makes everything else possible.

100% retention through one of the most disruptive periods in the company's history. Multiple promotions. A team that grew in capability faster than it grew in headcount.

Leading a rebrand at scale

Then came the acquisition. xDesign became CreateFuture and suddenly the challenge wasn't just internal, it was existential. Clients knew us but not the new name. 500+ employees had to unlearn one brand and adopt another. And someone had to own that end to end.

I moved into the Creative Lead role and took full ownership of the rebrand and everything the brand touched externally. This wasn't a rebrand in the traditional sense, hand over a style guide and hope for the best. It was a full operational and creative challenge spanning discovery, system building, execution and embedding.

We started with a proper audit. Every asset, every client-facing touchpoint, every document. Then we built a system that could scale without the design team becoming a bottleneck. Master templates in Figma and PowerPoint. A brand governance process. Self-service libraries so non-designers could work within the brand confidently. AI tools introduced across the workflow to accelerate production without losing quality.

Over 1000 assets rebranded. Brand training sessions run across the organisation. Award-winning campaigns launched under the new identity. And a visual system that positioned CreateFuture as an AI-forward consultancy, not just a renamed version of what came before.

The hardest part wasn't the launch. It was the day after, making sure the brand could live without constant design team intervention. We built for that from the start.
‍

"Nek is able to combine clear strategic direction with trust and autonomy, empowering me to deliver my strongest work. Her ability to mentor, motivate and nurture creativity has had a huge influence on my development and confidence as a designer."

‍

"Nektaria is dependable, a great listener and always willing to go above and beyond to find solutions. Beyond her creative skills, Nek is a natural leader. She leads with kindness, empathy and understanding, all while maintaining high standards and bringing out the best in everyone around her."

‍

Building a Unified Design Culture for CreateFuture

Date:

Client:

Services:

Project Details

Walking into the hard stuff

100% retention through one of the most disruptive periods in the company's history. Multiple promotions. A team that grew in capability faster than it grew in headcount.

Leading a rebrand at scale

Then came the acquisition. xDesign became CreateFuture and suddenly the challenge wasn't just internal, it was existential. Clients knew us but not the new name. 500+ employees had to unlearn one brand and adopt another. And someone had to own that end to end.

Over 1000 assets rebranded. Brand training sessions run across the organisation. Award-winning campaigns launched under the new identity. And a visual system that positioned CreateFuture as an AI-forward consultancy, not just a renamed version of what came before.

The hardest part wasn't the launch. It was the day after, making sure the brand could live without constant design team intervention. We built for that from the start.‍

The hardest part wasn't the launch. It was the day after, making sure the brand could live without constant design team intervention. We built for that from the start.
‍