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Michael Brookman-Aikins

Michael
Brookman-Aikins

Most brand work dies between the deck and the build. Eighteen years in the craft, ten running creative organisations at global scale, and a product of my own shipped end to end. I still make the work when the work needs making.

Amsterdam +31 6 34 21 06 00 mbrookmanaikins@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/mricreate
Leadershipclick a role to open it

Led the company's global creative transformation across brand, product, digital and AI. Directed the rebrand, helped shape Audrai, the AI-powered OOH planning platform, and built a multidisciplinary team of 20+ across Europe, India and the US.

Reported to the founder, then to the Chief of Strategy, and pitched to the full executive board as part of the leadership team. Design became a board-level argument rather than a downstream request.

Owned the global design and studio budget of €300k, covering headcount, company design software, and the agency and freelance network that carried the peaks. Several of the people I hired moved into management, from studio leads to design and product leads, with the training and progression built around them.

Led a team of six across five concurrent brand and experience programmes for global sport and entertainment clients, including F1 live brand activation and Adidas Champions League. Owned creative quality and client-facing strategy at pitch and delivery.

Set the first-year marketing strategy and led a full rebrand, then took the MVP to investors. Scaled a team past ten and was promoted into the managing role inside twelve months.

Held budgets over €600k across brand, marketing and the virtual reality build, and ran the partner agencies delivering against them.

Led the bunq rebrand and product rebuild with a small senior team, and sat on the founding team of the Green Card product. In parallel, consulted on FIFA's forward design direction, setting a blueprint the internal team built against.

Buildingcurrent
mygp.world ↗

A healthtech platform connecting patients, GPs and municipalities, designed and coded in my own time. Ten years of following machine learning, pointed at something that has to hold up in a regulated market rather than a deck.

Proof that I can hold the creative vision and the technical one at once.

Selected workopen a case to read it

A good deal of my work sits under NDA or client confidentiality and cannot be shown publicly. What is here is what I have clearance to share. There is more, and I am happy to walk through it in conversation.

Earlier2011 to 2019
2017 to 2019
Art Director and Design Lead, Design Affairs, Munich. Brand vision with the CEO, cross-disciplinary team of three.
2016 to 2017
Marketing Art Director, Lifeworks, London. Rebrand across product and marketing, design team scale-up.
2015 to 2016
Senior Creative Designer, Siga, Lucerne. Digital presence and marketing systems overhaul.
2013 to 2015
Art Director, EF Education First, Lucerne. Revitalisation of Cultural Care Au Pair across global markets.
2011 to 2013
Visual Designer, EQ2 Architectural, London. Corporate rebrand, client presentation and specification work.
How I leadfour things

Organisation

Building and scaling global creative teams. Hiring, structure and studio capability across regions, budgets up to €600k, and a promotion path for the people I bring in.

Brand and product

Rebrands, design systems and product design. I own the brand thesis and the interface it ships in.

Executive partnership

Reporting into founders and chiefs of strategy, and pitching to the full executive board. Putting creative direction into business terms.

Strategy, then hands on

I set the direction first and go hands on when the work needs it. A decade of interest in machine learning, and I build in the tools I direct.

Achievementsselected
What I operate acrossfive areas

Creative organisations

Team design, hiring, budgets, capability and studio operations across regions.

Brand

Strategy, identity, positioning, campaigns and live experience.

Product

Product strategy, UX, design systems, prototyping and AI.

Business

Executive partnership, transformation, commercial strategy and pitches.

Making

Creative direction, design and code. Figma, Adobe, Webflow, and the AI tooling I build in.

Alsowriting and advisory
The Traffic Light Method for Communication. Debut non-fiction, 2026. thetrafficlightmethod.com
Brand advisor, High Society. Sober lifestyle and community brand, Amsterdam.
Strategic consultant, STEWWW. Afro cultural events collective.
Guest speaker, Amsterdam Fashion Academy. AMFA, four years.
Cultural sector advisory, Amsterdam. 809 Platform, Showroom Amsterdam.
Education and references

University of Birmingham

MA, Electronic Engineering and Visual Communication. 2008.

References

  • Benjamin BillupsFounder, billups
  • Lonneke BertensExecutive Producer, Tag Collective Arts Michael's grasp of design strategy is exceptional. He understands aligning design with business objectives, and his work raised both the quality of our projects and their business performance. Without reservation, I recommend him.
  • Dan BaileySenior Designer and Design Lead He was driven and focused on exceptional solutions, mindful of the challenges but never losing sight of the brief. He trusted me to make key decisions, which is not always given to freelancers.
  • Cornelius BrunsSuccess Factory, formerly The View

Happy to put you in touch with any of them.

Currently talking to teams about design leadership roles.

Thank you.

mbrookmanaikins@gmail.com +31 6 34 21 06 00 linkedin.com/in/mricreate
billups, 2023 to 2026

Turning design from a service desk into a driver of the business

Role
Global Head of Design and Product Studio
Team
20+ across Europe, India and the US
Scope
Brand, product, digital, AI
Budget
€300k global design and studio

The problem

Design at billups worked as a request queue. Sales asked, design delivered, and nobody upstream treated creative as a lever on the business. The company was scaling globally at the same time, which meant the queue was about to break.

What I did

Three years, one brand, rebuilt end to end.

Outcome

Design moved from a request queue to a standing seat in executive planning, with a budget of its own and a line to the board. The rebrand shipped across identity, web and go to market as one system. Audrai carried that system from proposition into a live interface. The studio went from nothing to twenty-plus people across three regions.

The rebrand in application

billups brand in application

Brand guidelines

The full identity manual. Logotype and clearspace, Manrope and the CutOutManrope headline face, the colour system and gradients, the shape, imagery direction and the do-not-use rules.

billups brand guidelines page 1 billups brand guidelines page 2 billups brand guidelines page 3 billups brand guidelines page 4 billups brand guidelines page 5 billups brand guidelines page 6 billups brand guidelines page 7 billups brand guidelines page 8 billups brand guidelines page 9 billups brand guidelines page 10 billups brand guidelines page 11 billups brand guidelines page 12 billups brand guidelines page 13 billups brand guidelines page 14 billups brand guidelines page 15 billups brand guidelines page 16 billups brand guidelines page 17 billups brand guidelines page 18 billups brand guidelines page 19 billups brand guidelines page 20 billups brand guidelines page 21 billups brand guidelines page 22 billups brand guidelines page 23 billups brand guidelines page 24 billups brand guidelines page 25 billups brand guidelines page 26 billups brand guidelines page 27 billups brand guidelines page 28 billups brand guidelines page 29 billups brand guidelines page 30 billups brand guidelines page 31 billups brand guidelines page 32 billups brand guidelines page 33 billups brand guidelines page 34 billups brand guidelines page 35 billups brand guidelines page 36 billups brand guidelines page 37 billups brand guidelines page 38 billups brand guidelines page 39 billups brand guidelines page 40 billups brand guidelines page 41 billups brand guidelines page 42 billups brand guidelines page 43 billups brand guidelines page 44 billups brand guidelines page 45 billups brand guidelines page 46 billups brand guidelines page 47 billups brand guidelines page 48 billups brand guidelines page 49 billups brand guidelines page 50 billups brand guidelines page 51 billups brand guidelines page 52 billups brand guidelines page 53 billups brand guidelines page 54 billups brand guidelines page 55 billups brand guidelines page 56 billups brand guidelines page 57 billups brand guidelines page 58 billups brand guidelines page 59 billups brand guidelines page 60 billups brand guidelines page 61
61 pages, scroll to read Full-resolution PDF on request
Wasserman, 2022 to 2023

Five concurrent brand programmes for global sport and entertainment

Role
Head of Design, EMEA
Team
Six, Amsterdam and London
Scope
Brand, live experience, pitch

The problem

Five client programmes running at once, each with its own stakeholders and none willing to be the one that slipped. The job was holding creative quality across all of them while staying credible in the room at pitch.

What I did

Outcome

Five programmes ran concurrently, each with its own stakeholders, and creative quality held across all of them. The F1 FanZone identity went from concept through client feedback to production artwork, one master graphic covering five zones rather than five separate builds. A team of six was the constant.

F1 FanZone identity

Identity development through client feedback, then the production artwork. A single master graphic, a hero lap built from iconic corners with five neon racing lines for five zones, cropped at different points so each activation reads as its own place while staying part of one system.

F1 FanZone identity, 1 F1 FanZone identity, 2 F1 FanZone identity, 3 F1 FanZone identity, 4 F1 FanZone identity, 5 F1 FanZone identity, 6 F1 FanZone identity, 7 F1 FanZone identity, 8 F1 FanZone identity, 9 F1 FanZone identity, 10 F1 FanZone identity, 11 F1 FanZone identity, 12 F1 FanZone identity, 13

F1 FanZone work only.
The View, 2021 to 2022

A rebrand, a virtual world, and a promotion inside twelve months

Role
Creative Marketing Director, then Managing Director
Team
Scaled past ten
Scope
Brand, marketing, product, VR
Budget
€600k+

The problem

A young company with no coherent brand and no marketing strategy, needing both at once, and needing something in front of investors at the end of it.

What I did

Outcome

Promoted from Marketing Director to Managing Director inside twelve months.

Work from this period is not publicly shareable. Happy to walk through it in conversation.
bunq and FIFA, 2019 to 2021

Rebuilding a challenger bank's brand and product with a small senior team

Role
Head of Design and Product Lead
Team
Small and senior
Scope
Brand, product, new propositions

The problem

A bank whose brand and product had drifted apart, with a design team too small to fix both by force. The only route was a tight senior team and ruthless sequencing.

What I did

Outcome

Brand and product stopped drifting apart. The rebrand and the product rebuild shipped as one system rather than two workstreams. Onboarding was rebuilt around continuation prompts and A/B tested against the existing checkpoint flow, measured on completion rate. Green Card went from founding team to shipped product.

Work

The rebranded system in application, and the headline rules underneath it. Montserrat headline blocks over the spectrum card, a subhead locked to half the heading size, and a colour bar that carries across every format.

bunq Travelcard out-of-home bunq headline and layout system

Onboarding, product

The product rebuild started at signup. We replaced checkpoint screens that auto-advanced with continuation prompts the user has to answer, on the argument that conversation builds trust and a checkpoint builds nothing. Every prompt was set up as an A/B test against the existing flow, measured on completion rate through Mixpanel.

bunq onboarding, introduction bunq onboarding, step one user flow bunq onboarding, benchmark against the new experience bunq onboarding, tips and notifications compared bunq onboarding, benefit-based tips

Selected bunq work.
aiko, ongoing

A healthtech platform designed, written and shipped solo

Role
Founder
Team
One, so far
Scope
Product, architecture, brand, regulation

The problem

Patients cannot reach a GP when it matters, GPs are buried in work that never needed a doctor, and municipalities carry population health accountability with no live view of either. Every existing product solves one of those three in isolation.

What I did

Outcome

Working product, built without outside capital.

mygp.world