I’m a Cardiff-based designer and consultant with 22 years’ experience helping organisations make better use of design to improve their brand and digital presence. I founded Design Tribe in 2008 to give clients direct access to experienced creative thinking, and I’m personally involved in every project we take on.
Today I work across brand strategy and identity, web and digital design, WordPress development and wider graphic design, with particular experience in energy and renewables, the public sector, charities and not-for-profits, and life sciences.
Design Tribe founded in Cardiff
Designing professionally since graduating in Cardiff in 2004
Supported across energy, public sector, charities and life sciences
My experience spans graphic design, brand and digital, combining creative and strategic thinking with an increasingly technical understanding of how modern websites work.
Alongside brand strategy, identity and graphic design, I work directly on website strategy, UX and information architecture, and WordPress design and development. I’ve also built up considerable practical knowledge of WordPress hosting, content and data migrations, third-party integrations and the technical decisions behind modern websites.
I might be discussing brand positioning in one meeting and information architecture, a data migration or an integration in the next. Understanding how those things connect usually leads to better, more practical design decisions.
Andrew Richards
Director, Energy Saving Grants
I grew up in Pembrokeshire and moved to Cardiff in 2001 to study Graphic Communication. I graduated in 2004 from what was then the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, now Cardiff Metropolitan University, and Cardiff has been home and the base for my work ever since.
Between 2009 and 2013 I worked as a Design Manager on the Welsh Government’s Business Innovation Design programme, consulting through the agency I worked for at the time. The role involved advising businesses across Wales on how design could be used more strategically and, where appropriate, helping them develop projects that could progress through the programme’s funding process. It helped shape how I work now, particularly the habit of understanding a problem properly before deciding what to design.
Since then I’ve worked with Welsh Government, National Museum Wales, Qualifications Wales, Health and Care Research Wales, public bodies, charities and businesses across Wales and the UK. A good proportion of that work has been bilingual, with Welsh and English considered together from the outset rather than retrofitted at the end, and accessibility treated as fundamental. The Am platform for Wales’ creative community is a recent example.
Rebecca Edmunds
Philanthropy and Special Events Manager, Tenovus Cancer Care
After graduating in Graphic Communication, I began working professionally across graphic design, digital, print and production. It gave me a practical grounding in understanding how the things we design actually get made, built and used.
I co-founded Carbon Studio with a fellow designer. It was my first experience of building a creative business and confirmed that I enjoyed developing client relationships and helping organisations work out what they needed as much as I enjoyed the design itself.
I established Design Tribe in 2008, initially alongside my agency career. Tribe is my surname, but the name also reflected the idea of bringing good creative people together around a project, which still describes how Design Tribe works today.
For ten years I worked at a Cardiff design agency across brand, digital and communications for organisations throughout Wales and the UK, with significant experience in life sciences and healthcare. During this time I also spent four years working on the Welsh Government’s Business Innovation Design programme.
In 2019 Design Tribe became my sole business focus. Since then I’ve taken on larger and more complex projects, developed longer-term client relationships and worked increasingly with established organisations across Wales and the UK.
Selected organisations I’ve worked with
BBC, Flexicare Medical, Frontier Medical Group, Renishaw, DTR Medical, Health Technology Wales, Jellagen, Magstim, Medilink UK, Save the Children, Children in Wales
Much of my career has involved organisations where understanding the subject, audience and environment is as important as making something look good. Today that experience is concentrated across four sectors, and familiarity with the organisations, terminology, audiences and constraints means less time explaining the basics and more time working out how design can improve things.
In energy and renewables, I’ve worked with organisations including Zing Energy, Net Zero Industry Wales and renewable energy projects such as Future Energy Llanwern, helping communicate technically complex propositions to businesses, communities and wider audiences.
My public sector experience spans Welsh Government, Qualifications Wales, Health and Care Research Wales and other organisations working in complex, often bilingual and accessibility-led environments.
For charities and nonprofits, my work ranges from national organisations to smaller specialist charities, including recent projects for Lamplight and Marauders Men’s Health. I’m also a trustee and joint treasurer of a registered charity, which gives me a useful first-hand understanding of budgets, governance and the practical realities smaller organisations work within.
Life sciences has been a thread throughout much of my career. I’ve worked across biotechnology, MedTech, healthcare and the wider life sciences ecosystem, from research bodies and instrument manufacturers to early-stage biotech companies. That includes longstanding sector experience through my agency career and more recent Design Tribe projects for Valogen, Alesi Sugical and Biophys.
Heather Graz
Director, Biophys
Design Tribe is built around direct involvement. I’m personally involved from discovery and strategy through creative direction, UX and WordPress development to technical problem-solving and support after launch. Where additional expertise is needed, I bring in trusted specialists while remaining your direct point of contact.
I’ll listen, ask questions and give you honest advice. If experience tells me there’s a better way forward, I’ll say so, and if I don’t think you need to spend money on something, I’ll tell you that too.
The process should fit the problem. Some projects need research and prototyping; others work better when design and development happen alongside one another. I’m a PRINCE2 Practitioner, bringing additional project management experience to larger public sector and multi-stakeholder projects.
You can see the results in our recent work, and what clients say in our testimonials and Google reviews.
Ben Rotheray
Director, The Value Engine
Most of the work starts with something that isn’t doing its job. That might mean creating a brand that better reflects the organisation behind it, replacing a difficult website with something clearer and easier to navigate, simplifying a complicated content structure, or making thousands of pieces of content easier to find and filter.
Sometimes the challenge is more technical, such as working out how systems can integrate, how content can be migrated or structured more intelligently, or how a website can create less work for the people running it.
Thousands of bilingual media listings made easy to find and filter in a WordPress website.
Branding and WordPress website for renewables planning develop consultancy
A brand evolution carried through into an accessible WordPress website.
If your brand, website or digital presence no longer reflects where your organisation is, or you’ve got a complicated design or digital problem that needs untangling, tell me about it.
