About James Hurst

Short bio About 50 words

James Hurst is currently VP & Global Executive Creative Director at HelloFresh, based in London. A creative director, author and speaker with more than 20 years’ experience, he previously led creative and brand design at Pinterest, Google and Tinder. He is the author of Use Design To Design Change and co-founder of Rogue School.

Medium bio About 150 words

James Hurst is currently VP & Global Executive Creative Director at HelloFresh, based in London. He is a creative director, author and speaker with more than 20 years’ experience building brands, creative teams and design systems at global scale. Previously, James was Global Creative Director at Pinterest, Head of Brand Design at Google and Creative Director at Tinder. Earlier in his career, his work at DesignStudio included collaborations with brands such as Airbnb, Deliveroo and Typeform. James is the author of Use Design To Design Change and Weird the Normal / Normal the Weird. He co-founded Rogue School, an independent platform for practical creative education, and creates community projects including First Things Club and Assembly Sessions. Alongside his design practice, he writes, speaks about creativity and leadership, and releases electronic music. His work explores how clear ideas, distinctive craft and strong creative cultures can help organisations make meaningful change.

Full bio About 500 words

James Hurst is currently VP & Global Executive Creative Director at HelloFresh, based in London. He is a creative director, author and speaker whose work spans brand transformation, creative leadership, design systems, education, publishing and music.

Across more than 20 years in the creative industry, James has helped organisations clarify what they stand for and turn that thinking into distinctive work. Before joining HelloFresh, he was Global Creative Director at Pinterest, where he led creative work for a platform used by people around the world to imagine and plan what comes next. He was previously Head of Brand Design at Google and Creative Director at Tinder, working at the intersection of product, culture and brand. Earlier, at DesignStudio, he contributed to identity and creative work for businesses including Airbnb, Deliveroo and Typeform.

In leadership roles, James brings strategy, design and storytelling into the same conversation. He works with teams to connect an organisation’s purpose to the everyday decisions that shape its voice, identity and experience. That means building the conditions for strong work as well as making the work itself: a shared direction, useful principles, honest critique and enough trust for talented people to take creative risks. His perspective comes from working inside technology companies, alongside growing businesses and with multidisciplinary teams operating across markets and cultures.

James’s practice is grounded in the belief that design can do more than make change visible: it can help make change possible. His book Use Design To Design Change turns that belief into a practical approach for people building brands and creative organisations. His later two-sided book, Weird the Normal / Normal the Weird, explores a complementary creative tension: making familiar things feel newly strange, and making unfamiliar ideas feel clear enough to enter everyday life.

Education and shared learning are a continuing part of his work. James co-founded Rogue School as an independent home for practical creative education, tools and experiments. He also creates and supports satellite projects including First Things Club, a community built around putting important things first, and Assembly Sessions, a platform for conversations about creative work and culture. He speaks at industry events and with creative teams about brand, leadership, technology, aesthetic intelligence and the conditions that help original work happen.

Away from client and organisational work, James writes and makes electronic music. His releases include the albums Weather Report, Human, Machine and Story, alongside two earlier EPs. These projects are not separate from his design practice so much as another expression of the same curiosity: how atmosphere, systems, language and emotion can combine to make an idea felt.

James is available for selected speaking, interviews and conversations about creative direction, brand transformation, design leadership, creative culture, artificial intelligence and education. For press, event and collaboration enquiries, contact hello@hurst.world.