Available for executive roles · Berlin · 2026

Design & Product
at the frontier
of intelligence.

25 years at the intersection of design, product, and narrative — from IBM and Ogilvy to founding an acquired AI company. Now looking to bring taste, clarity, and craft to the teams shaping what AI becomes.

Get in touch See full background

Thesis

"In the AI era, taste is the only moat."

Features ship in weeks. Your competitors use the same models. What remains is who you are — not what you build.

The companies that will matter are the ones with a clear point of view: on design, on language, on what it means to build something worth trusting. That clarity doesn't emerge from roadmaps. It's a creative and strategic act.

This is the work I've done across two decades — and what I want to bring to the organizations defining the next era of intelligence.

$25B
BCG grew from $12B to $25B after the global rebrand I co-led
6M
players for one Adidas game, built in 4 weeks
18M
users scaled at EyeEm as CDO — from 1M
80%
success rate across 5 startups as founding designer

Selected Work

2021 – 2025
Together (Acquired by recoupling)
Founder & CPO
Voice-first AI couple counseling platform. 4 years shipping production AI in one of the hardest use cases. Acquired 2025.
  • Built brand and product from scratch for an AI-native platform
  • Tested Claude, ChatGPT, ElevenLabs against each other in production — systematic comparison of capabilities in high-stakes contexts where mistakes matter
  • Designed complete user experience for relationship dynamics, emotional nuance, real-time empathy
2017 – 2021
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Global Creative Director
BCG grew from $12B to $25B after the global rebrand I co-led. Established and scaled a global experiential creative function from scratch.
  • Corporate rebrand: purpose, brand architecture, and visual identity scaling globally across 90+ countries
  • Davos activations 2018–2021 — flagship conference presence strategy
  • Built trade show and event design methodology maintaining craft at scale
  • TED@BCG installation: "Circular Escape", electronic sound installation (Watch TED Talk)
  • Vendor and agency management frameworks enabling distributed creative teams
2019 – 2022
Attitude Incubator
Founder & Partner
Tailor-made incubator program building brand infrastructure and event strategies across portfolio companies. Created frameworks that worked across multiple contexts and growth stages.
  • Founded/co-founded 5 companies with 80% success rate: PAMONO, DECOVRY, Tweek, EAT
  • Learned patterns of brand building from pre-seed through growth
2019 – 2022
CODE University of Applied Sciences
Lecturer
Taught brand strategy and experiential design for 3 years. Systematized frameworks others could execute.
2013 – 2016
EyeEm
Chief Design Officer
EyeEm grew from 1M to 18M users during my time as CDO. Led brand strategy and product design through the company's most critical growth phase.
  • Brand architecture and design systems scaling with company velocity
  • Experiential activations and community events building loyalty beyond the digital product
  • Physical brand presence and partnerships amplifying platform growth
2007 – 2013
Agency & Corporate Career
Art Director → Creative Director
WPP, BBDO, Razorfish, OgilvyOne, Deutsche Telekom. Built the foundation in creative direction, brand strategy, and interactive design.
  • Adidas Asia "The Rook" (via Ogilvy, 2007) — interactive game reaching 6M players in 4 weeks
  • Deutsche Telekom: Led innovation department designing future-facing brand experiences
  • 15+ international awards including D&AD, One Show, Asia Pacific Creative Awards
Product Strategy Brand Architecture Design Systems AI Product Design Narrative & Positioning Experiential Design Creative Direction CPO CDO Game Design Startup Leadership
TED Talk — "Circular Escape"
Published: "A Touch of Code" — Gestalten Verlag
15+ Awards — D&AD · One Show · Asia Pacific
Berlin · location-flexible

Why frontier AI

I've already built in AI

Together wasn't an experiment — it was a four-year product built on conversational AI, shipped to real users in one of the hardest use cases imaginable. I've tested Claude, ChatGPT, and ElevenLabs against each other in production. I know what it means to make AI feel human, useful, and trustworthy.

Design at this scale is rare

Few people have led design at both a global consulting firm growing to $25B and an 18M-user consumer product. That range — enterprise rigor and consumer intuition — matters when AI products need to earn trust from everyone.

I care about the question, not just the answer

The most important design work in AI isn't the interface. It's the values embedded in how systems communicate, what they surface, and what they don't. I've spent years thinking about exactly this.

I bring taste as infrastructure

At BCG I built taste into a global system across 90 countries. At EyeEm it became a growth engine. At Together it was the product people wanted to acquire. Taste isn't decoration — it's a strategic asset, and I know how to operationalize it.

Let's talk

Ready to bring
taste to the frontier.

Berlin-based, equally comfortable in
San Francisco or New York.

frank@thisisobvious.com ↗ LinkedIn ↗ thisisobvious.com ↗ Substack ↗