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TBWA\Media Arts Lab names James Taylor as Global Chief Design Officer
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Taylor brings the principles of brand identity and a commitment to exceptional craft to the agency’s creative work for Apple.
TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL), Apple’s dedicated global creative agency, has promoted James Taylor from Global Head of Design to its first-ever Global Chief Design Officer.
The appointment recognises his role in building creative teams and establishing design as an integral part of how the agency develops ideas across campaigns, identities and experiences.
The promotion follows a series of Apple efforts under Taylor’s design leadership, including the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning Apple TV rebrand and the recently launched Apple Music identity.
Taylor joined MAL in 2021 as Head of Design and became Global Head of Design in 2023. Since joining, he has expanded the agency’s design capabilities and helped broaden its creative partnerships. Designers work with writers, art directors and other designers to originate and develop ideas, alongside the traditional writer–art director partnership, with shared ownership of the work from the outset.
He also conceived of and continues to lead MAL’s São Paulo creative team, which operates as an integral part of the Los Angeles office. Bringing together exceptional talent across disciplines, the team helps originate ideas and shape the work for Apple from concept through to execution.
Taylor’s approach draws on his background in brand identity, combining foundational design thinking with exceptional craft. It centers on finding a clear, recognizable visual idea and giving it a distinctive expression that can work across formats, languages and cultures.
“James has fundamentally evolved and elevated the ideas we create. Design at MAL is neither an afterthought nor a finishing touch. Ideas and design are inseparable,” said Brent Anderson, Global Chief Creative Officer at TBWA\Media Arts Lab.
“James has built a truly remarkable team that lives this principle day in and day out. And this appointment recognizes both his leadership and the contribution that team makes for Apple, as well as his vision to expand that contribution across the globe.”
“Design is a way of finding the idea as much as expressing it. Designers bring an instinct for distilling complexity into something clear and distinctive. Put that thinking together with writers and art directors from the beginning and it opens up different creative possibilities. For Apple, the ambition is always a simple idea, made with extraordinary care. Pragmatic, but artful,” said Taylor.
Experimentation is central to that approach. For Taylor, making is part of thinking: an experiment with a material, movement or sound can reveal a creative possibility that a sketch or presentation cannot. For Apple TV, glass and light brought the identity to life in camera. For Apple Music, sound moved liquid to generate the visuals, making music the means of creating the identity itself. In both projects, exploring the behaviour of real materials helped shape the final expression.
Taylor’s work with MAL’s teams also includes the bespoke gold artifacts created for Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums, the relaunches of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, and a new interpretation of the AirPods silhouette campaign featuring Harry Styles to showcase Spatial Audio.
As Global Chief Design Officer, Taylor will continue to report to Brent Anderson and work closely with MAL’s creative leadership across Los Angeles, London, Miami, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo. His focus will include developing design talent across the agency and creating more opportunities for designers, writers and art directors to shape work together.
“There’s a relentlessness across the team at MAL that I love. Some ideas are easy to dismiss before you’ve had a chance to show what they could become. We keep asking questions, making tests and finding ways forward. Apple Music came from that attitude. The idea was simple; making it possible took curiosity, conviction and a lot of collective ingenuity,” said Taylor.
Before joining MAL, Taylor was a Creative Director at Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR), where he led work for brands including Dunkin’, Foot Locker, Jack Daniel’s, School of Visual Arts and UNICEF. Earlier in his career, he helped develop the first cohesive brand identity for Zaha Hadid Architects.
Over a career spanning more than 20 years, his work has been recognized by D&AD, Cannes Lions, The One Show, the Clios, the Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club and the One Screen Film Festival. He has shared his approach to design and creativity at D&AD Festival, SXSW, the Fast Company Innovation Festival and other industry forums.
“I could not be more excited for the future of every MAL office around the world,” said Anderson. “James and his team are all obsessively focused on designing ideas that have massive impact all over the world.”
