Client

News Corp Australia

Three years leading the art and design capability within News Corp Australia’s Commercial Content operation — supporting Art Directors, building stronger creative systems and helping some of Australia’s biggest commercial ideas come to life.

Role
Head of Art — Commercial Content Production
Period
2021 — 2024
Teams
Commercial Content Production · Suddenly · Roller
Disciplines
Creative Leadership · Art Direction · Creative Operations · Digital · Print · Motion

Commercial Content — 2023

The work we
were part of.

This 2023 showreel captures the breadth of work produced across News Corp Australia’s wider Commercial Content organisation.

It represents the collective contribution of Art Directors, designers, producers, writers, editors, video teams, strategists, commercial teams and many others across the business.

My responsibility sat within that larger ecosystem: leading the majority of the Art Directors and design capability across Commercial Content Production, Suddenly and Roller.

Hundreds of pitches.
Hundreds of campaigns.
Thousands of creative executions.

News Corp’s commercial operation worked across an extraordinary volume of pitches, partnerships and live campaigns — spanning publishing, branded content, digital, social, motion, video, audio and interactive experiences.

Within that environment, the Art Directors and designers I led were responsible for helping conceive, visualise and deliver the visual component of a significant volume of commercial work.

The clients

Some of Australia’s
biggest advertisers.

  • Google
  • Apple
  • Harvey Norman
  • JB Hi-Fi
  • Chemist Warehouse
  • Domayne
  • NRMA
  • Viking Cruises
  • Cunard
  • Qantas
  • Disney
  • Louis Vuitton
  • CPA
  • Vogue
  • Vogue Living
  • news.com.au
  • Taste
  • Delicious
  • The Australian
  • The Courier-Mail
  • Herald Sun
  • Daily Telegraph

My Art Directors and I regularly worked alongside News Corp’s commercial, strategy, editorial and production teams to develop pitches, mocks and creative responses for major brand partnerships.

Our role was often to help make an opportunity tangible — showing clients what an idea could look and feel like across News Corp’s publishing and digital ecosystem before it had been sold.

These opportunities ranged from individual campaigns to major national, multi-channel media partnerships.

My role

Within a much larger
creative organisation,
my role was to lead
the art function.

I led and supported the majority of the Art Directors and design capability across Commercial Content Production, Suddenly and Roller.

I partnered with — rather than managed — producers, writers, editors, strategists, commercial teams and specialists across the organisation.

Creative leadership

From disconnected teams
to one creative community.

I inherited an art function with talented people spread across different teams, disciplines and locations.

One of my priorities was simply bringing those people together.

I introduced quarterly workshares where Art Directors and designers could present the work they had been creating, share techniques, discuss challenges and learn from one another.

Day-to-day, I worked closely with the team — reviewing creative, supporting pitches, helping solve technical and production problems, mentoring individuals and being available when someone needed another creative perspective.

“Leadership wasn’t about adding another approval layer. It was about giving talented people the support, tools and confidence to do their best work.”

Hands-on leadership

Creative direction
without losing
the craft.

My role remained closely connected to the work itself.

Alongside leading the art function, I acted as a technical and creative resource for Art Directors and designers working across print, digital artwork, presentations, motion and web.

That meant moving between reviewing an idea, helping strengthen an execution, solving a production problem, advising on how something could be built and, when useful, building the solution myself.

My background across design, production and front-end development meant I could support the team beyond traditional visual direction — particularly when creative ideas crossed into technology or complex production.

Creative operations

Better creative needed
better systems.

At this scale, small inefficiencies become enormous ones.

Talented Art Directors and designers were repeatedly rebuilding presentations, mock-ups, animations and production assets that could instead become shared infrastructure.

I focused on removing that friction — creating tools and systems that helped the art team move faster while protecting the space needed for original creative thinking.

Presentation systems
Reusable Google Slides frameworks that improved the consistency and speed of major commercial pitches.
Mock-up systems
Reusable mock-up templates that allowed Art Directors to rapidly visualise ideas across News Corp formats and environments.
Motion systems
Animation templates and reusable approaches that accelerated motion development for pitches and digital creative.
Production guidance
Hands-on technical support across print, publishing and digital artwork.
Creative tooling
Shared resources designed to reduce repetitive production and give Art Directors more time for ideas and craft.

Design + technology

Sometimes a mock-up
wasn’t enough.

My technical background also allowed me to move beyond traditional Art Direction when an idea needed to become a working digital experience.

Alongside leading the art function, I designed and built web experiences, supported interactive commercial ideas and provided technical guidance to teams working across digital creative.

Commercial case-study site

newscorpaust.wixsite.com/news-corp-case-study ↗Designed and built to present commercial case studies to clients — my own design and development contribution.

Digital News Academy

Website — design & buildScreenshots to be supplied.

Selected work

A closer look.

The showreel represents the collective output of a much larger organisation. These individual case studies provide a closer look at selected projects where my own role can be described more specifically.

The art function

16–35
Creative staff ledAcross my News Corp tenure
100+
CampaignsSupported each year
Hundreds
Of pitches, mocksAnd creative responses
Thousands
Of creative executionsSupported by the function

These figures describe the scale of the creative environment and art function I was responsible for supporting and leading — not work personally designed or directed by me.

Creative leadership
isn’t about taking
credit for the work.
It’s about building
an environment where
great people can
do great work.

My contribution at News Corp was helping build that environment for the Art Directors and designers I led — connecting people, supporting their craft and creating systems that made an enormous creative operation easier to navigate.