Yotam Solomon, Founder and CEO of Revoterial featured by Brilliant Collective (Jennie McGuirk/Betsy Winchell)
From the UK to L.A., creative director Jennie McGuirk has been at the cutting-edge of design, fashion and advertising trends for more than a decade. From the cultural mecca of London, she was a much sought-after figure in the field, and is now based in Los Angeles, helping to reshape the fashion industry.
“I began the new millennium in London, where I immersed myself in the international creative community and spent the following decade carving a unique career path that exposed me to a full spectrum of the commercial creative industry.”
In 2005, when McGuirk was running the creative research department of Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world, she single-handedly created “Showcase,” a quarterly magazine and showreel. She assembled a talented team of collaborators from internal design and film editing departments, and founded a special publishing relationship with multi-media agency, Complete Ltd.
“Through my unique positioning at the agency, I was exposed to the most incredible work from the international creative community, on a daily basis. I was successfully matching talent and concepts with creative briefs from upper management, 30+ creative teams and the wider agency, but was accumulating content at such a rate that I saw the need to create a fitting depository. Drawing on my publishing experience, and my love of high-quality fashion glossies, I edited the content into a quarterly publication and showreel. The goal was to create something with wow-factor, that would do justice to the content and importantly be something that my colleagues would collect, reference and treasure.”
“During the same period, I curated a varied program of Ogilvy art exhibitions featuring artists who have shown collections at high-profile galleries such as the National Portrait Gallery and Dazed and Confused Gallery,” McGuirk said. “I also organized regular photography & illustration portfolio gatherings, showreel screenings and interactive demonstrations for the Ogilvy creative departments.”
Offering up an overview of the current international creative talents and innovations occurring across various industries at that time, McGuirk’s work served as integral informational resource for Ogilvy.
The importance of McGuirk’s unmatched contributions through these various mediums becomes painstakingly clear when considering the fact that, at that point in history, the current iterations of modern Internet design and content aggregation were still in a relatively early state of development.
Over the last few years McGuirk has once again proven that she is ahead of the game; studying the inaugural UX Design course at General Assembly in Los Angeles, she was an early adopter of a practice that is becoming increasingly more in demand.
User Experience blends a complex understanding of the psychology of the consumer’s relationship with a product and infuses it into the way a product is designed and communicated to audiences.
“I’ve helped Sunrise Brands transition into the digital retail market; designing websites and performing usability testing on internal and third party apps. Digital products are integral to the brand experience, so I am mindful of how the brand message translates through the design and related content,” McGuirk said. “I’ve also been monitoring and reporting on industry innovations such as big data/tend forecasting and denim fit technologies.
“I am excited to be a leader in LA’s burgeoning digital tech industry and have thoroughly enjoyed working with boutique consulting firm, Iteration Group on various UX Design projects as well.”
Iteration Group helps companies design their products in an intuitive fashion that speaks to their consumers’ needs and wants; working with clients in fields ranging from healthcare to education, and e-commerce to food service.
“UX is a great complement to the research and creative direction skills I have been crafting over the years. I have a natural tendency to place the human experience at the heart of my creations and I work comfortably at the intersection of art and science.”
As one of the early pioneers of digital publishing at the turn of the millennium and having proven her talents as a creative director and consultant for various brands and agencies including Sunrise Brands, Ogilvy & Mather, Sectorlight Strategic Design, M&C Saatchi and others, McGuirk’s reputation is not limited to any specific brand or market. However, like anyone who excels in a field that by nature involves a vast range of industries, there is one specific area of interest that she feels most passionate about; and for McGuirk, that area of focus lies in the world of conscious fashion.
In 2011 she assumed the role of West Coast Correspondent for Ethical Fashion Forum, the industry body for sustainable fashion, and in 2014, she co-founded Brilliant Collective, a revolutionary new player in the growing conscious fashion field. Jennie’s original contributions to the fashion industry through Brilliant Collective are proof of her ability to analyze the market and current trends, which if you haven’t noticed, are becoming more and more concerned with creating sustainable business practices in fashion. However, what makes her work in the field even more valuable is the way she has used her expertise to make conscious business practices in fashion a feasible method for bettering the world while also increasing business.
“Representing a forward-thinking mindset, Brilliant Collective celebrates the visionary people, crafts and technologies behind the conscious fashion industry. I am creative director, researcher, writer, UX designer and spokesperson for this project,” McGuirk said. “My vision is to create a platform that gives conscious fashion brands and designers enhanced visibility and better market access.”
Working as Creative Director with Sunrise Brands for the last six years in Los Angeles, she has applied her vast knowledge of consumer trends and market innovations to advise on ways of improving efficiency and reducing waste. Her work with the company earned her the prestigious 2013 AIGA (Re)design Award.
Aside from all the industry titles and jargon, at the heart of it all, Jennie McGuirk is truly passionate about using her expertise in the industry to help create a better world. She says plain and simply, “My aim is to use my accumulated skills and experience across multiple sectors and industries to help propel conscious-minded companies and forward-thinking business models.”