About

— As a Creative & Design Director, I develop brand identities and visual systems for international companies and clients – across branding, campaigns, digital and social, rolled out across markets and channels.

— As a strategic designer, I work at the point where design stops being surface and becomes position. That means understanding cultural context before shaping communication – because those who ignore deeper layers reproduce surfaces. Design, to me, is not a question of aesthetics. It's a question of attitude.

— As a Gen-AI Lead, I develop generative design workflows and image-based AI systems that keep brand visual language consistent at scale – across markets, teams and production pipelines.

— Always starting from a clear question, a precise strategic position, and the conviction that good design does not emerge from trends, tools, or templates – but from attitude.

I'm Jan-Kristof Lipp. Over 20 years, I've worked from record sleeves to global rebrands, from editorial culture to corporate identity – always with the same starting point: strategy before surface, attitude before aesthetics.

My work lives at the intersection of strategy and craft. Not strategy first, design second – but both, simultaneously, by someone who speaks both languages and stays close to the work.

My longest and most defining relationship has been with MINI. It began at KKLD* in Berlin, where as Senior Art Director I conceived the MINI Art Beat campaign – an interactive LED installation that turned a MINI Countryman into a live canvas, driven through the streets of London and customised in real time by users worldwide via social media.

From there it grew into something much larger: as Lead Designer of the global MINI brand relaunch, I helped shape the entire new identity from the very first concept to worldwide rollout – logo, typography, image language, digital and spatial design. The redesigned flat logo set a new standard not just for the brand, but for the industry. But beyond the visual identity, the work extended into MINI's strategic repositioning as a lifestyle and culture brand – what became known as "beyond car": A/D/O, the unbranded creative hub in New York; MINI Living, with its urban cabin concepts in cities worldwide; MINI Fashion; and URBAN-X, the startup accelerator for urban innovation. All of it developed and implemented as part of the same coherent brand vision.

The result: MINI's brand value increased by 18% – the highest rise of any automotive brand in the global top 100 that year.

Over more than 20 years I've worked with Amazon, Vodafone, Coca-Cola, A. Lange & Söhne, Beiersdorf, Bayer, BMW, Panasonic and others – in agencies, as creative lead, and in direct partnership with clients. Currently Creative & Design Director at VML Germany and Head of Design within WPP Open Door, leading the visual direction for Amazon globally.

Before all of that: Gestalten, the Berlin publishing house – where I worked on book design, record sleeve art and branding for artists including Peter Fox, Rainald Grebe and Seeed, and contributed to Los Logos, the influential series documenting the best in contemporary logo and identity design. And then Art Director of De:Bug – the magazine that for over a decade sat at the intersection of electronic music, internet culture, technology and digital life, and defined how a generation of German digital natives thought about the electronic aspects of existence.

Design has a new responsibility – to understand context, carry attitude, and create resonance. It is no longer enough to be beautiful, clear, or clever. The best work I've done has always lived at that harder intersection: where strategic thinking meets genuine craft, and where the result feels not just right, but inevitable. That's what I find most interesting about this work – and what keeps me as curious about design today as I was at the beginning. Not in spite of everything that is changing. Because of it.

Taste as a strategic resource, cultural depth as a prerequisite for relevant design, intuition as condensed craftsmanship – and the question of what artificial intelligence truly changes in design, and what it cannot. These are the conversations that drive me. Within projects. And beyond.