Daniel Knowles
Senior Art Director & Designer · Serta Simmons Bedding, LLC
Seattle, WA
In My Own Words
I studied Fine Art at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design—class of 2008. And for the next decade, held various positions within New York City's gallery and academic institutions. In a commercial setting, I take pride in ownership of work from concept to execution. Finding inspiration within the worlds of business strategy and meaningful, human aesthetic development, alike. Building, inspiring, and sustaining effective creative teams to bring a distinct, lasting voice to a brand and their story.
Independently, I'm a voracious shutterbug, rarely without a sketchbook, and often cooking. Now residing on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, I spend my time building my home and nurturing connection with my community through artmaking, food, and service.
Work Experience
Senior Art Director
Serta Simmons Bedding, LLC2023 – 2023
Concepting and executing creative across all consumer and business-facing touchpoints. These include product launch photo planning and art direction, partner-retailer marketing toolkits (campaign guide decks), visual merchandising activations, film + TV, digital and social content. In conjunction with the operations team, assuring projects are held within their scope, budget, and spec. Mentoring and managing the workloads of junior creative to see they are best utilized and career goals given opportunities to develop.
Senior Interactive Designer
Columbia Sportswear Company2020 – 2023
Co-led a team of designers and writers to develop digital-first campaign content that both met growing business needs and maintained the brand’s heritage voice and authority within outdoor apparel. This included on-site a thorough UX review of the DTC experience. As well as email campaigns, social content strategy, and digital editorial content (feature-rich landing pages). Leveraging the storytelling opportunities unique to the Columbia.com experience (and streamlining that experience from the wireframe up) eComm sales rose over 400% between 2021 and 2022.
Freelance Creative Director
DHVANI2019 – 2020
Development and creation of comprehensive brand guidelines and typographic standards, packaging, web design and coding via Shopify, and lifestyle photo art direction.
Senior Brand Designer
NARS Cosmetics2017 – 2019
In-house creative department tasked in bringing international campaigns to life through stylized and on-model photography, out-of-home takeovers, visual merchandising, branded events, influencer packaging and engagement, press files, and photo books. Maintaining the brand's luxury prestige and founding narrative through rapid quarter-by-quarter growth in new global markets.
Art Director
Exhibit-e/ Dan Miller Design2015 – 2017
Providing design solutions for artists, foundations, institutions and luxury brands including identities, advertising campaigns, publications, custom, high-end print, and exhibition design. Managing a small team of designers, photographers, copy editors. Art directing, retouching, color proofing, and photo-comping of all exhibition, editorial, plate, product, and pitch photography. Ensuring quality and approval of all outgoing deliverables. Structuring and managing production milestones of all studio work from pitch to comp, mechanical to delivery, to billing. Writing RFP's, keeping clients within their scope, brand guidelines, and budgets. Primary point of contact for client and external vendors, approvals and edits. Designing, implementing project workflows, file management, collaboration between print and web teams via Asana, Harvest, among others.
Communications Director
Peter Freeman, Inc.2014 – 2015
Headed redesign of all internal documents, checklists, tearsheets, exhibition graphics, announcements, and other collateral. Design and implementation of image and press archiving system for artist and gallery history. Worked with scholars, publishers, and artists for the design of several catalogue raisonné. Handling all incoming/ outgoing image processing and requests. Liason for all advertising, print, and communications vendors. Worked with directors to further PFI social media, increase web presence, and maintain gallery presence and brand across networks.
Design Director
David Lachapelle Studio, Fred Torres Collaborations2011 – 2014
Design and administration for gallery's exhibition materials including artist contracts, shipment of works, 3D curation and exhibition planning, primary point of contact for advertisers and PR, writing for press releases and internal documents, social media management, SEO, email campaigns and announcements, printed banner and invitation design, catalog design and pre-press, eCatalogs, digital archive and retouching assistance, and working with artists to maximize their own online presence and content.
Web Producer
CPA2Biz2009 – 2011
Product and site management for high-traffic corporate e-commerce through Blue Martini CMS and Microsoft Sharepoint, working with individual business owners’ landing pages and press content, internal web design revisions & wireframes, managing, producing, and deploying email marketing campaigns.
Education
Projects
Personal Portfolio
http://danielellsworthknowles.com/Selection of recent commercial work, as well as my personal photo practice.