Creative director based in Greater Los Angeles. Say hello.

BIO

I’ve spent my design career helping build and improve services that exist for the public good, and businesses that innovate by putting people at the center of what they do. I get involved in a wide capacity from defining brand and service strategy, to designing products and experiences that bring them to life, along with systems necessary to scale.

During the aughts I was in senior roles at a small succession of world-class London design agencies, solving complex challenges for government and household names in financial services, telcoms, and transport. The 2010s saw me relocate to Southeast Asia, where I joined in at IDEO Singapore over the course of three years, before returning to the UK to lead design at Tandem, a new customer-focused digital bank—while pursuing a move stateside. Post-pandemic and until now, design has been in the sidecar while I reinvested myself in the arts and community, building up a practice as a cultural producer.

SKILLSET

Naming, Purpose & Values, Brand Strategy
Brand Identity, Guidelines and Design Systems
UX/UI, Lean Prototyping, Product & Service Design
Information Design, Simplification

Read more on LinkedIn

THEY SAY

John is an exceptional design leader who was instrumental from the start at Tandem in developing our values, digital products, brand, communications and customer community ahead of the bank’s launch.

Ricky Knox
Co-Founder & CEO, Tandem


John’s curiosity and passion for design really draw you into conversations, and you leave feeling inspired. He’s very people first, rallying hard both for end users and for his team. The design team he built whilst at Tandem embodied the values he holds; purpose-driven, creative, respectful and hard working. He’s a rare breed of design leadership that I hope to encounter again.

Rebecca Reynolds
Product Design Lead, Fluidly


From a pure skill perspective John is an outstanding communication designer and storyteller—with phenomenal hands-on maker-prototyper powers to boot. I’d work with him again in a heartbeat.

Teddy Zmrhal
Director, IDEO


John is strongly capable in visual and information design, user experience and systems thinking, and can go from high-level strategy to detailed design execution with ease. He’s at home developing principles and applications for major design programmes, and directing complementary disciplines with exceptionally clear and effective guidance.

Geoff Holliday
Head of Wayfinding Design, London 2012 Olympics

SAY HELLO

john@johnalderson.me
+1 (310) 994-4178