About
I’m a product design leader and creative with 20 years of experience across product design, creative direction and digital transformation.
My work sits between strategy, UX, systems thinking and hands-on design. I help teams turn early ideas, business goals and technical possibilities into clearer products, workflows and digital experiences.
Most recently, I’ve worked as Design Director at Work & Co., and Principal Designer at McKinsey & Company , where I led product design for Kedro, an open-source Python framework for reproducible data science now part of the Linux Foundation AI & Data ecosystem and used by teams including NASA.
I’ve also served as a judge for The Webby Awards, The FWA and Awwwards, reviewing digital products, interactive work and technology-driven experiences through the lens of usability, craft, innovation and execution.
Earlier in my career, I worked as a designer, art director and creative with teams at TBWA\Media Arts Lab, Wieden+Kennedy, Google Creative Lab and others across advertising, product and creative technology.
Throughout my career, I’ve been influenced by modernism, the Swiss school of design, and the relationship between form and function. That still shapes how I approach digital products today: with clarity, restraint and attention to how people actually use things.
I’m currently based in Brazil and working globally. Outside work, I’m passionate about the sea, food, music, art, audio-visual culture and spending time with friends and family.
Selected experience
Design Director, Work & Co.
Principal Designer, WovenLight
Principal Designer, McKinsey / QuantumBlack
Lead Designer, TBWA\Media Arts Lab
Art Director, Google - The Zoo & Creative Lab
Lead Designer, Publicis Sapient
Lead Designer, WML
Lead Product Designer, Songkick
Lead Product Designer, Buzzbike
Senior Designer, R/GA
Senior Designer, Wieden + Kennedy
Senior Designer, Havas
Creative, Digitas
Interactive Art Director, Ogilvy One
Co-founder / Creative Director, Zign
Awards and recognition
AI Awards
Fast Company Innovation by Design Award
D&AD
Cannes Lions
Campaign Event Awards
Lovie Awards
FWA
Behance
Colunistas Awards
Brazilian Advertising Festival
Selected clients and users
NASA
Apple
Google
Microsoft
Samsung
Mercedes-Benz
Aston Martin
Opel
Volvo
Toyota
Red Bull
Unilever
GE
Santander
NatWest
HSBC
Barclays
Allianz
Emirates
McDonald’s
KFC
BBC
Education
MA Computational Arts - Goldsmiths University of London
London, London, UK
Interactive Art Direction - Hyper Island
Stockholm, Sweden
BA Industrial Design - UNESA
Rio, Brazil
Latest certifications
Machine Learning Specialization - DeepLearning.AI
IDEO U Human-Centered Strategy
LangChain for LLM Application Development
Multi AI Agent Systems with crewAI
Python for Beginners
What I’ve been listening to
Selected testimonials
"Gabriel has an incredible eye for detail and in the short period of time I worked with him at Google he brought that attention and precision in his style to a number of pitches and projects I was involved in."
Joe Fry
Partner Innovation @ Google
"Gabriel's work as a Lead Designer on Kedro has been nothing short of amazing!"
Ivan Danov
Group Engineering Lead @ PhysicsX. ex-Palantir
"Gabriel stands out as someone who tries to understand the business needs behind decisions."
Carlos Ferrão
Senior Program Manager @ Google
"As an engineer I've learnt a lot from Gabriel about design as well as how to think out of the box and build successful products."
Merel Theisen
Principal Software Engineer @ QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey
"He's a very talented designer and all round nice guy, the work he produced was high quality and the clients loved it! Can't recommend him enough!"
Leon Bayliss
Product Designer | Engineer @ Meta
"His cool and pixel perfect design style was extremely positively received and contributed to the positive and friendly relationship we have with this client."
Sibylle Tretera
Head of Creative Strategy @ Pinterest
Work
My approach to solving complex challenges.
