Ryan Downie – Art Director & Designer

Not just an average heavy-weight

Creative

Driven, forward-thinking, Art Director/Designer/photographer with over 12 years of industry experience. Versed in a number of disciplines but specialities include interactive design, print, photography, retouching, and composite work.
High profile placements include Sports Illustrated, MLB Stadiums, Bellator MMA,
and EvanWilliams.com.

My Story,

I started out as a designer in 2007 while living in a small village in Cumbria, England. I had my first role at a small local design studio.

Over the years I have gained lots of different skills but wasn’t until I joined an Advertisement Agency in New York (Xenospi Media) as an Art Director that I started to put them all together.

While working there as an Art Director for Heaven Hill Distillery Brands (Evan Williams Bourbon, Burnett’s Vodka, Elijah Craig, Blackheart Rum, Lunazul Tequila, et al). I would work on all customer touchpoints for digital and print. I left the agency last year due to company restructuring and been helping brands and medium businesses over the last couple of months.

I am advanced in all Adobe Creative Suite apps apart from After Effects (I would class as intermediate), as well as being able to use Sketch and Figma.

Look At Some of my work
INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME?

Add Your Heading Text Here

What Makes me Unique

1. My thirst for learning, I am always learning new things and new disciplines to add to my arsenal. I find if I am not continuously learning
I feel a little down.

2. Ability to pick up on peoples signals and body language to know what they think, tie that with empathy (who they are, who I am and the relationship between us).

3. Being able to switch up disciplines, one day I can be working on retouching for a magazine cover then I can be working on variable subscriptions in WooCommerce to then working on brand discovery
while all in line with the business and brand goals.

I had the pleasure (and pain) of directing Ryan for nearly 4 years. In that time, I watched his expertise grow from that of solely interactive design to expand into fantastic composite imagery, flawless retouching, and beautiful photography. Ryan is fearless in the face of new opportunities and unstoppable in the exploration of new approaches. To this day I follow his work closely and am constantly impressed by his innate talent to capture the emotion of any environment. I look forward to working with him again in future and, without hesitation, I recommend collaborating with him.
Shaun Samson - Former Creative Director Xenopsi

My Work History

BF Internet 2008-2009

Website Designer & Front End Developer

Designing and developing small and medium-sized websites for
various clients, both locally and internationally.

Carrot Media 2009

Website Designer & Front End Developer

Designing and developing websites for an agency in Newcastle.

Armitage Online 2010

Website Designer & Front End Developer

Senior designer for a small size agency specializing in bespoke
standard based websites and applications for small & medium
businesses across Northern England.

Unit Interactive 2010

Visual Designer

Working with the US-based design agency. I worked there on a
short term remote contract for a period of six months.
I was responsible for working on visual designs and websites for
in-house projects and client-based projects

Freelance 2010-2013

Visual Designer

Interactive design and branding for clients ranging from local businesses to large multinationals. I designed everything from logos to iOS apps to full-blown website content management systems.

Xenopsi Media 2013-2018

Art Director

Working as an Art Director specialising in retouching I helped create content for a range of brands from Heaven Hill Distillery. Work ranged from all forms of digital campaigns (Landing pages, Social Content, Email Newsletter Designs, Advertisements,) and print (Magazine Advertisements, Bar Carts, Stadium Wrappers). I also did most of the retouching for the social posts for their brands, digital artwork and photography).

I also got to work on cross-brand promotions for clients such as Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Bellator MMA and CBS.

Brands I have worked with

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with some great brands. These are a mix of agency, in-house and freelance clients. These include cross promotions between brands. This is to show that I can work with multiple brand guidelines while delivering results.

INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME?
portfolio_02
portfolio_03
portfolio_04
portfolio_05
portfolio_07
portfolio_08
portfolio_09
portfolio_10
portfolio_11
portfolio_12
portfolio_13
portfolio_14
portfolio_15
portfolio_16
portfolio_17
portfolio_18

My Side Hobby

I am one of the creatives who feel that every good creative should have a hobby or side hustle to create have a break from work. Mine is Photography, I came to the realization in 2016 that I wanted to have a try at photography because I was spending most of my day retouching. I understand light, composition and colour to create the mood.

I am starting to get published as a photographer and will have a full photography site with prints and youtube videos showing how I edit my images (as I get asked quite a bit).

So practising photography gets me out of the apartment to shoot locally (I am located near the Lake District) and further abroad.

Instagram
Bright, full of ideas, and with an incredible work ethic, Ryan brings it all to the table on every project he touches. His energy, passion for craft across a range of creative disciplines, and ability to take direction while still contributing to the larger project vision make him an indispensable part of any creative team. I’ve enjoyed collaborating with him on a number of projects in the past and look forward to working together on many more in the future
Tyler Dunn - Former Associate Creative Director Xenopsi