1994 - Cognitive Science BSc at University of Exeter
1999 - Joined Tribal DDB as animator/developer
2004 - Co-founded Lean Mean Fighting Machine with; Tom Bazeley, Sam Ball and Dave Bedwood
10 Years as Technical Partner overseeing all tech, creative tech and production. Leaning more towards R+D/Innovation and creative tech in later years
We won lots of awards in that time including many D&ADs, One Shows, Webbies and Cannes Lions. We were Agency of the Year Cannes Lions 2008
2014 - Sold Lean Mean to M&C Saatchi - Appointed Chief Innovation Officer
2018 - Freelance Creative and Innovation work. Various agencies and brands
2019 - Freelance AR work
2019 - Launched Make it Donate. Giving platform that aims to make everything in the world donate to charity
2021 - Freelance experiential and creative tech.
2022 - Family Illness forced me to leave work. I logged some of our progress here
2023 - Back on the market
I freelanced at Seeper for a short time in late 2021 before my daughter became ill. I contributed creative concepts and design for the ambitious Sunderland Culture House architectural project. I created a conceptual theme onto which I developed immersive and experiential concepts and art direction for the giant screens and interactive surfaces within the building and surrounding public spaces. I also created top line designs for the accompanying AR experience app which included creative ways to promote events and an AR wayfinding tool to encourage people towards the space.
A short stint as a creative tech at Uncommon Creative Studio (CX) before my daughter became ill. I worked on experience ideas for British Airways and Formula E.
Make it Donate lets you trigger charity donations from anything connected to the internet.
Everything is connected these days. Apps, social networks, products, they are all designed to be able to talk to one another. You can connect your Fitbit to your Strava, “log in with Twitter”, listen to Spotify on your Alexa and so on.
This interconnectedness of everything presents enormous possibilities for fundraising.
Until now, charities have been outside this ecosystem looking in. You can set up a sponsorship page, add a donate button to your site, maybe do a virtual event, but the difference with Make it Donate is that it has been designed from the ground up to connect to things.
The Make it Donate API means we can trigger a donation with a single line of code. So it’s really easy to do things like:
Donate to the World Food Programme when you eat out by triggering from Monzo.
Donate to a homeless charity when it's cold by triggering from a weather service.
Donate to any charity when you go for a run by triggering from Strava.
We’re on IFTTT so can trigger donations from the hundreds of services on there.
We are developing a physical product soon to launch on Kickstarter
And we are on beta phase of a couple of big campaigns including:
Good Plays.
Part of the Unicef Vacinaid global vaccine rollout and a collaboration with Crowdfunder. 10 celebrities create a Spotify playlist each, every listen triggers a donation. (in closed beta)
Hope not Headlines.
Mosaic Education, is a charity that gets refugees into higher education. This campaign donates to them whenever a UK newspaper tweets a headline about refugees. (in closed beta)
Camera Donate.
The ultimate donate with your camera app.
Make it Donate lets you donate via an API. In an effort to get people to use donation as a game mechanic, we made this little WebGL demo to prove the concept of donating from a game in real time. We think it’s the world’s first game that donates directly from gameplay.
The World's first AI billboard. It writes it's own ads using a genetic algorithm that evolves towards what makes people stop and stare. It’s free to write its own copy, using a recursive grammar engine, choose its own images from a large image bank and make its own layout.
The PR coverage reached about 400million people worldwide. John Humphrys told me he didn't like it on the Today Programme.
Roles: Concept, Technical Director, R&D
At: M&C Saatchi
Spark AR experience for Coca-Cola for a Christmas Festival in LA for Nexus Studios
Role: Build
A giant pooing statue on the Mayor's lawn to raise awareness for bad sanitation in developing countries.
Users could upload a video of their face to be composited live onto the statue. A complex project with tricky UX, up-streaming, down-streaming videos, a giant mechanical sculpture full of Mac Minis and live interaction for a live global event, with an 8 week production window.
Role: Technical Partner, Creative Tech
At: Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Back Me Up was a new digitally based insurance product aimed at young people. After creating their launch advertising we quickly impressed with our ideas for the brand itself and were tasked with creating their brand and visual identity as well as designing the actual digital product itself.
Handy lets you control recipe videos by in your browser with gestures so you don't get cake all over your laptop.
We invented a new method of motion tracking using statistical computer vision techniques.
R+D project for Google to create a universal platform of wearable haptic devices.
A site that tracks your poo through the sewage system, tweeting its progress as it goes.
A big challenge as it incorporated a live simulation for every user including route finding through map apis whilst live tweeting, but also because we needed to find every sewage plant in about 10 countries.
This was for World Toilet Day to raise awareness for lack of sanitation in developing countries.
Roles: Technical Partner, Creative Tech
At: Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Working with legendary Director Tony Kaye we created a generative infinite advertising machine that continuously creates unique and beautiful pieces of film forever.
It generates live music and edits so it will never be the same twice.
Role: Technical Director, Creative Tech
At: Lean Mean Fighting Machine
The objective was to bypass mainstream media channels, which tended to ignore the Liberal Democrats, by creating a provocative piece of work lampooning the two other parties.
It was a smash hit. We had thousands of video uploads and millions of impressions.
Leave a message anywhere in the World for your loved one to collect. A GPS based message leaving service.
Role: Technical Partner
At: Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Sometimes you get led by the medium. GTA5 was trending massively so we knew we had to do something with it. This was the result £500 budget, coverage in the national press and TV including Rude Tube and Have I Got News for You on the BBC.
A weekend long public hackathon to generate new technology for Jaguar Land Rover Research and Development. It was a huge success and has become a yearly event.
Roles: Concept, Team Leader.
At: M&C Saatchi
This site won several design and technical awards and became seminal, in as much as it lead to articles about our design process. I didn’t build it or design it. I’m really just proud to have put the team together.
Roles: Technical Partner
At: Lean Mean Fighting Machine
The M&C Saatchi brand is very stark and kind of hard edged. To make a .com with a softer more relatable feeling we focused heavily on the tactility of the interactions. You can’t mess with how the brand looks, but you can mess with how it moves.
Sentiment analysis engine that turns social media chatter about Heineken brands into a tactile interface.
Put money in your child’s bank account by pressing Pigby on the nose.
Working prototype connects to the banking API via home wifi connection, and is configurable by phone via bluetooth or Wifi connection.
Roles: Concept, Creative Director, Technical Director
At: M&C Saatchi
A cheap cholesterol testing device that clips to a phone, replacing the usual expensive electronic device. Designed for a pack giveaway with Flora ProActiv. The basic device was invented by David Erickson at Cornell University. We did product design and the App ecosystem.
Roles: Concept, R&D, Creative Director.
At: M&C Saatchi
Proof of concept for data transmission using light pulses via standard webcam. Not network connection required. Will work with anything that can flash. TV, DOOH, Giant screen, table lamp etc.
Multi award winning Nonstopfernando.com - a 14 our 40 minute non stop conversation about Brazil to promote the Emirates non stop service from Dubai to Sao Paulo.
Mesh networking ecosystem concept. Designed through collaboration with Queen Mary university EECS department. Uses patented working prototype.
Creates Peer-To-Peer network that circumvents internet infrastructure. For disaster relief, large crowds and surveillance free communication.
Working prototype of AI EEG/mind reading system that learns what music helps you concentrate and finds and plays you new tracks accordingly. Collaboration with Queen Mary University.
A collaboration with Queen Mary university, this is a device for communicating via touch across the web.
We were invited to exhibit our device at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions academic conference in Barcelona 2014.
Machine Learning engine that learns how you Tweet, copies how you Tweet, then carries on when your dead.
Is this for real? Yes and no. The intent was mischievous and a bit satirical, but the system worked.
Roles: Technical Director, Creative Tech.
Project to create social network aware clothing. These t-shirts compare your social network profiles when you meet and change colour based on compatibility. Collaboration with Queen Mary University and published in 2 academic journals.
Daft satnav shoes and supporting app.
Secure mail delivery concept for Royal Mail that uses a biometric key fob and public private key encryption to ensure mail goes to the correct recipient.
Roles: Concept, R&D
At: M&C Saatchi
