My Story
I’m a creative production leader with over twenty years’ experience making multi-channel digital marketing content. I’m design-focused and strategically astute. I combine expertise in creative direction and production execution to make world-class content.
I’ve shot on location in five continents and worked on countless regional and global campaigns. I’ve led teams to win several awards and I’ve spoken at plenty of events.
I’m currently the UK Head of Creative and Production at Publicis Content, part of Publicis Groupe. We conceive and produce paid and owned multi-channel content at global and local scales, using a combination of manual craft and machine automation, leveraging both on-shore and off-shore talent. We work with clients of all agencies within Publicis Groupe, from local challenger brands to global category leaders. I’ve tripled annual revenue since starting in 2017.
In 2014 The Telegraph headhunted me to join as Creative Director of Video. I was responsible for creative leadership of all commercial and premium editorial video content. I rebuilt the team and transformed working practices to almost triple revenue whilst winning several awards.
In 2008 I became a freelance designer/director. I made B2C and B2B marketing content for agencies, brands, and publishers. I wrote creative, directed shoots, designed assets, and managed production. Clients included Time Inc., Manning Gottlieb OMD, Ogilvy, Topman, The Telegraph, Soho House, Paul Smith and Coca-Cola. I also made a lot of global marketing and pitch films for Omnicom Media Group and Dentsu Aegis Network.
During this time I also taught and lectured on the BA (Hons) Graphic Media Design, BA (Hons) Design for Advertising, and the MA Branding & Identity courses at London College of Communication.
I started my career in 2003 co-founding and co-running a design studio. I directed music videos and designed record sleeves for artists and labels such as Paul Weller, Manic Street Preachers, Bloc Party, Sony BMG, Universal, Rough Trade, and EMI.
My Work
Selecting and presenting the best work from a twenty-year career is a daunting task, so I trained a neural network to generate a visual summary instead.
Anyone can prompt Midjourney or OpenAI to generate almost any image. The images below, however, were made by a machine learning algorithm that I trained exclusively with examples of my work. Once trained, it was able to create original artwork based on the patterns of shape and colour — or visual trends — it identified in the training data.
This type of algorithm, StyleGAN2, is usually trained with consistent datasets such as human faces or cats. This leads to more predictable output like realistic faces or cats because the model is based on a narrow set of visual patterns.
Training it on a deliberately broad and inconsistent dataset like twenty years’ worth of content creation, however, leads to fantastically unpredictable and abstract output.
Is this a good demonstration of the visual and strategic craft that goes into my work? No. It’s weird and creepy.
It’s also a lot of fun.
My (2024) Reading List
Orbital, Samantha Harvey
Numbers Don't Lie, Vaclav Smil
Boulevard Wren and Other Stories, Blindboy Boatclub
Playground, Richard Powers
Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari
Becoming Earth, How Our Planet Came to Life, Ferris Jabor
Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Benvenuto Cellini
The Light Eaters, Zoë Schlanger
Shogun, James Clavell
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt
Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan
The Snakehead, Patrick Radden Keefe
The Vertigo Years, Philipp Blom
The Gutenberg Parenthesis, Jeff Jarvis
Otherlands, A World in the Making, Thomas Halliday
An Immense World, Ed Yong
The White Darkness, David Grann
Growth, Vaclav Smil
Invention & Innovation, Vaclav Smil
The Secret Race, Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France, Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle
The Gospel According to Blindboy, Blinboy Boatclub
Prisioners of Geography, Tim Marshal
Orfeo, Richard Powers
Grand Transitions, Vaclav Smil
The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan
The Wager, David Grann
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
Wild Houses Colin Barrett
I am Homeless if this is not my Home, Lorrie Moore
The Lost City of Z, David Grann
The Variations, Patrick Langley
The Coiled Serpent, Camilla Grudova
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez
Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann
My Contact Details
info@mattsimmonds.tv
