creative director / design consultant
His goal is to provide clients with the most strategically creative solutions, while challenging them to appreciate and effectively market their attributes. His philosophy is to approach each problem independent of an applied style, while preserving the personal integrity of a company. Having the desire to develop artistic solutions without premise, has allowed him the discovery of a higher criterion for communication.
Educated at the Kansas City Art Institute, under the direction of the late internationally acclaimed designer, professor and critic, Victor Papanek, he committed his education to developing new definitions of excellence in industrial and graphic design.
As a multidisciplinary designer, he has developed and directed numerous identity, branding, communications and environmental programs engaging with business and consumer audiences alike for companies within the agency, architecture, automotive, film/video, financial, food, healthcare, performing arts, retail, service, technology and telecommunications industries.
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Beginning as a designer in 1981 for Vicom/FCB Healthcare, he contributed to the development of brand identity programs, marketing collateral and print advertising for Cetus, Genentech, Merck, and Syntex. In 1983, he joined Landor Associates, designing identity programs for Barclays, GE, Microsoft, Pacific Telesis, RCA/Columbia Pictures, and many others.
In 1986 he opened Darren Hanshaw Design in San Francisco, creating branding, naming, print collateral, packaging and environmental design for numerous clientele including Apple, Citicorp, Editel, Industrial Light & Magic/LucasArts and Levi Strauss, receiving industry awards along the way. With a new young family at home, he chose to close the firm at the end of 1992. Shortly there after, he joined Michelfelder Design Group in Palo Alto as Design Director and was responsible for the strategic positioning and creative development of branding programs for Autodesk, Motorola, Novell and Philips Semiconductors.
In late 1995, he became Design Director for Studio 77, an internal design arm for the award-winning advertising agency, Goldberg Moser O’Neill. While integrating with their advertising efforts, he directed a creative staff of art directors, designers, writers and production artists in the creation of numerous branding programs. Projects included identity programs, print collateral, packaging, point-of-sale, and print advertising. His teams’ efforts contributed to the overall success of the brand positioning for Beringer Wine Estates, Club Disney, Dell Computer, Kia Motors of America, Infoseek, Optiva, Quantum and Rollerblade.
USWeb/CKS (later marchFIRST) recruited him as a Creative Director in 1999 to establish branding programs for AltaVista, Centerbeam, Geocast, EsMas, Logitech, Miadora, Point.com, SeeBeyond and Zoomerang.
marchFIRSTs’ core creative group was acquired by SBI and Company in 2001 while he was directing the hospitality, retail and environmental programs for Visa’s 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games’ on-ground presence. All three programs required a diverse set of design disciplines from fashion to architecture. Over 250 unique deliverables were created ranging from simple counter cards to three-story tall sculptural banners for multiple retail malls throughout Salt Lake City and the various Olympic venues.
After a series of acquisitions, SBI.Razorfish was formed, and for the 4 years following, he was a primary design contributor to the core-team creating the corporate brand refresh for Microsoft. Branding and packaging programs were created for many of their most coveted brands, including the Office suite of products.
In July of 2004, Seattle based aQuantive, purchased the creative entity of SBI and formed Avenue A | Razorfish. As Senior Creative Director, he directed the corporate brand refresh for Sun Microsystems, as well as, their Java sub-brand. The overall visual identity, voice, photography, typographical style and its key web properties were all redesigned and included specific brand guideline booklets for each.
He later joined Propp+Guerin in July of 2006, where he created identity and/or environmental branding programs for Blue Cross Blue Shield, Brix 12, Herman Miller, Genentech, New Resource Bank, SPCA, Stanford Hospital and TRUSTe.
As an independent design consultant since 2008, he has designed environmental graphic programs for the Herman Miller furniture showrooms in Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as, a shared Dallas showroom for Swarovski and their subsidiary, Schonbek. He has rebranded the high-end Los Angeles carpet manufacturer, Bentley Mills, along with identity programs for RippleWorks, an organization helping entrepreneurs in developing countries, Opera Parallele, a San Francisco avant-garde opera company, and the Andlinger Center for Energy + the Environment at Princeton University.
Recent projects include, a brand identity extension program for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, an identity program for Revance Therapeutics, an architectural signage program for the Memphis Convention Center and a brand identity/packaging program for Intevac.