Carl Leek
Creative Director
The first time he designed a web site (back when such things had only just begun) it won ‘World’s Best Website’ 6 times and confirmed his reputation as a bit of dilettante with unfair amounts of beginner’s luck. The same thing had happened with his first beer can design – Scottish design awards, just like that. When he first had a go at a calendar, the Leek luck held and it picked up a national calendar award.
Which was almost as spooky as the Roses award that one of his earliest corporate identities won, and the D&AD listing given to his first notebook. Since those heady early days, things have naturally gone downhill a bit. Brands like Smirnoff and Baileys rely on him for international displays and core brand communications, of course, and his first on-pack promotion for Gordon’s Gin broke records, but there’s not too much of the shock horror that marked out his early career.
Oh, apart from the fact that he’s the joint inventor of a new approach to advertising and mailing that has helped persuade Fujitsu, the world’s no. 3 IT company, to award 100% of their advertising and design work to The Chase. What an amazing stroke of luck!