Brand Designer + Director

❋

Designing brands built to work everywhere.

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Connecting Strategy, Culture,
and Brand Design Systems.

I’m a designer + director who specializes in turning these complex elements into clear, scalable reality. I focus on finding the path forward in projects where the stakes are high and the details matter. Throughout my career, I have built brand identities and systems for everything from global tech and healthcare to finance and consumer goods. I’m a hands on leader who believes that the best work comes from a mix of cultural insight and human-centered design. From the first strategy session to the final launch, I collaborate closely with teams to ensure the work stays true to the vision and creates a real connection across every platform, from digital to physical environments.

Core Competencies

Integrated Design
Practice

  • “Haig’s human-centered approach and systems-thinking mindset helped bring our Johnson & Johnson brand expression to life across a myriad of digital and physical touchpoints. His expansive knowledge and care for how ecosystems worked led to an enterprise-wide brand asset management system, bringing consistency and accessibility to a fragmented portfolio.”

    — Ernesto Quinteros, ex-Chief Design Officer at J&J and Belkin, CXO at Korrus

  • “Haig is a standout Design Director who is a master at creating efficiencies in complex systems. He is a great systems thinker who not only considers the final output but also the management and implementation needed to sustain it.”

    — Ashley Stevens, Kenvue, Global Brand Design Director

  • “Haig is a stellar example of a brand champion and design advocate who can manage exacting details of craft across multiple channels while collaborating with a broad array of internal and external partners, from executives to implementors and agencies.”

    — Somi Kim, Design Leader for Culture and Experience Transformation

  • “Haig knows things. Brand things, design things, brand design things. The consummate guardian and protector of systems. A purposeful leader and creative spark, who balances calm and rigor with delightful surprises.”

    — Paul Owen, Head of Design at Kenvue

I built a structured brand logic expander.

SIGNAL is a strategic intelligence engine designed to expand your mind and spark ideas for strategists and designers. It replaces AI guessing with structural rigor. The first module is the Quadrupler—a system rooted in Greimas’s Semiotic Square. By calibrating these structural parameters, you uncover emergent whitespaces and the visual/verbal codes needed to own them. It is the shortest path between deep theory and actionable craft.

Strategic Intelligence R&D
Career Synthesis

Input/Outputs

Mentored by Cranbrook and Ulm School of Design alumni at OCAD, I built a foundation in disciplined experimentalism. I further specialized this at the graduate level in England, earning an MBA in Design Management that integrated the business of design with RISD semiotic studies. This allows me to leverage culture and strategy to move beyond the known into truly innovative territory.

The Era

The Input (The Signal)

The Output (The Synthesis)

Design school with Bauhaus discipline + Cranbrook post-modernism. Building the TTC subway typography from tracings.

Foundation

A mastery of "comfortable discomfort." Fonts that preserve history and build identity.

Branding television channels. Making Super 8 films, motion graphics for MTV, and launching TV channels Oxygen, 13th Street. 

The Early Days

Narrative-driven identities that cross cultural borders. Guest lectures at Harvard on media studies. My work featured in books.

Early-days at Razorfish. Translating Ford, Fila consumer brands, high-trust banking into digital products.
Mastering CSS, .js and CMS.

Digital Frontier

UI/UX systems that proved "dry" industries could be premium, intuitive, and human. Ability to code to make interactivity.

MBA Design Mgmt + RISD semiotics. Bridging intuition and business logic.

The Strategic Pivot

Frameworks that translate features into meaning, turning cultural signals into validated growth.

Running Creative:Mint (NY) wearing every hat. Deep into branding dozens of finance firms, hotels, and tech. Also See Fidelity. 

Agency Grit

Radical empathy for team synergy. The realization that "fun" is the secret ingredient to world-class work.

Leading Global Brand for J&J. Building AI apps for engagement. Fighting for "Magenta" in a world of corporate gray.

Corporate Scale

Scalable design systems that maintain a "soul" across thousands of global touchpoints.

Big Law growth at Ropes & Gray through engagement. Building AI design engines for aggressive growth.

Strategic Engine

High-performance design systems that treat brand as a driver of business trajectory.

Coding AI-powered semiotic tools for lateral thinking. Crafting speculative futures through design fiction. A conscious return to the primacy of intuition over corporate consensus.

Return to Intuition

The transmutation of cold data into poetic resonance. AI as a partner in meaning-making, proving that the future of design is a subversive act of cultural inquiry.

“Problems are just old answers that have drifted in effectiveness.

My job is to find the new answer that resonates today.”


— Me

Under the hood

But who is Haig, really?

❋ The Radio Shack Kid

My career started in elementary school, when I used a microprocessor and a handful of electronic components to build a sound synthesizer. I’ve always been obsessed with taking things apart: whether it was hardware or learning to code, I had to see how they work. I learned early on how signals were made.

❋ Taste over Trends

In the kitchen, I’m a cook, not a baker. I prefer the spontaneity of a new ingredient over the rigidness of a recipe. I bring that same philosophy to design—prioritizing "taste" and soul over trends.

❋ The Underground Musician

When I’m not building design systems, I’m building worlds. Classically trained through the Royal Conservatory, I now release electronic music: cold wave, ambient, and electro-beats. I use synthesis to create sonic textures, but I also make art, painting, and film.

❋ The "Rock" in the Chaos

People who work with me find me grounded. I’m an observer. I read a room like a film, decoding the subtext and non-verbal language that others miss. I filter out the noise so we can focus on the reality, or dreams.

❋ The Type Nerd

I once spent my days tracing the fading, vintage lettering in the Toronto Subway (TTC) to preserve its history. I turned those forms into fonts that are now protected by the TTC. I believe the soul of a system is in its smallest details.

❋ The Analog/Digital Bridge

I am tech-agnostic. You’ll find me building computational semiotic engines with AI one hour, and writing in a leather-bound notebook with a fountain pen the next. I just love tools that are brilliantly simple and incredibly effective.

Clients Engagements

Diverse Experiences

Consumer & Retail
Analon
Bakehouse
Brookstone
Butterfield Bank
CustomCool
Da Rosario Organics
Dermasav
Duracell
ETQ
Fila
Ford
Giordano
Grand Central Station
Interparfums
Seed Body Care
Tastevin

Hotel & Hospitality
Axiom
Claremont Hotels
Fairmont Hotels
Kimpton Hotels
Larkspur Hotels
Orchard Hotels
Ocean Prime
Rosewood Hotels

Healthcare Life Sciences
Actielion
AccentHealth
Cinicade
Evra
Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Johnson & Johnson
KasierPermanente
OneTouch
Ortho-McNeil-Janssen
Plivensia
Stelara
Teligen
Velys robotics
Vxnaid

Law & Accounting
Hanson Bridgett
Manatt
Ropes & Gray
Untracht Early

Technology
Aerohive Networks
Consentry
Extreme Networks
iCIMS
Laufer Wind
Nuix
Ops Check
PlaceIQ
Recommind
Redaptive
Samsung
Skyward Mobile
Synechron
Twilio
Vocera

Transportation & Infra.
Amtrak
Conway Freight
Flat Rate Movers
JETEX
Laufer Wind
Ops Check
Regus
Solairus

Financial
Alerus
Alpine Capital Bank
Alexandra & James
Appleton Partners
Architype Advisors
ARIS
Bain Capital
Balasa Dinverno Foltz
BBR Partners
Belle Haven
Benchmark Capital
BNY Mellon
Boston Advisors
Brookstone Capital
CAIS
Conway Wealth Group
Crestwood Advisors
Dignitas Wealth
Dimension Capital
Fidelity Investments
Focus Financial
Global Trust
Greystone Capital
Heck Capital Advisors
Heritage Financial
Highmount
Hovde
KKR
Litvak & Co
Legacy Wealth
Weatherbie Capital
Modera
Monarch Capital
Pathstone
Pershing BNY Pershing
PIMCO
RR Advisory Group
RTD Financial
RZH Financial
Shenkman Capital
Spire Wealth
Sun Life Financial
State Street Global Advisors
Stillwater Capital
TCP Financial
Warburg Pincus
Zuckerman Financial

Media & Entertainment
AMC Networks
BET Television
Bravo!
CBS
CityTV
CNN
Columbia Pictures
Dezember Productions
Lifetime
MSNBC
Nick @ Nite
Oxygen
Powderhouse Productions
Providence Pictures
Raising Cain
Ringling Bros. Circus
Sky Television
TV Land
Universal Television
Warner Bros. Television

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