chris bunker
Hey there! I’m a multi-hyphenated Creative Director, Design Director, and Swiss Army knife designer with years of experience across the creative pipeline. Over the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a variety of different clients, in diverse industries, with businesses and revenues large and small.
Whether it’s building brands, creating intuitive design systems, crafting innovative employee experiences, managing teams, or standing up creative studios, I’ve done a bit of everything.
My wife Erin and I live with our furry son Loubert (Louie) in Loma Linda, CA. We like to try new foods and explore our local community. I am obsessed with One Piece and sports (go Timberwolves!).
50% iTALIAN
100% CREATIVE
Professionally, I’ve spent the last 8 years at Accenture, growing my career as a left- and right-brain creative consultant, working with tech giants across a variety of industries. I’ve specialized in certain sectors, including people & talent, helping build out a scaled creative studio with over 40 different global resources, supporting Microsoft’s talent & people organizations.
Recently, I’ve served as Accenture Song’s Proposal Design Director, crafting a new brand identity and accompanying design system, managing a variety of creatives to support our CRM, Marketing Ops, and Creative proposals for clients like General Motors, Meta, Ray-Ban, Stellantis, Roku, Covered California, IHG, MetLife, Google, and more.
As a freelance creative, I’ve done a lot more video work, directing and producing marketing and ad content for small businesses, and helping SMB owners build their new brands from scratch.
I’m also a small business owner, after starting a small, moderately successful ($250K revenue) golf ball business with my friends in May 2023.
I love working with and managing creatives, and I’m excited to work together to create something cool!
WHO AM I?
CAPABILITIES WHAT I DO
I know this list is going to seem long and ridiculous, and I promise that I am listing these capabilities with all possible humility. As a multi-hyphenated creative, turned consultant, turned creative leader, turned small business owner, I have a lot of diverse skills that I have been forced to pick up quickly and develop (for myself, and my teams).
Having worked in a variety of different industries across my career, for clients large and small, these are all things that I’ve had to either know deeply (to sell and deliver work) or hack together (to keep and grow work). My portfolio is intended to demonstrate each of these individual skills, and how I leverage them across my work to deliver client value, and lead teams.
DESIGN
DESIGN SYSTEMS
BRAND DESIGN & STRATEGY
DESIGN STRATEGY
AI-FIRST DESIGN PROCESSES
UX/UI DESIGN
DESIGN STANDARDIZATION & TEMPLATES
POWERPOINT
DESIGN PROCESS
PRODUCT DESIGN & STRATEGY
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
DESIGN LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT
ACCESSIBLE & INCLUSIVE DESIGN
CREATIVE
CREATIVE DIRECTION
FILM/CONTENT DIRECTION
COPYWRITING
DIGITAL PRODUCTION
POST-PRODUCTION
MARKETING & ADVERTISING STRATEGY
CONTENT STRATEGY
STORYTELLING
CREATIVE CONCEPTING
CINEMATOGRAPHY
COLOR CORRECTION
PRODUCTION PLANNING & MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
ORGANIZATION DESIGN & OPERATING MODELS
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT (TEAMS OF 20+)
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
PROPOSAL STRATEGY & DESIGN
PROCESS DESIGN
STAFFING MODELS
VENDOR MANAGEMENT & CONTRACTING
CREATIVE STUDIO SET-UP & MANAGEMENT
OFFERING DEVELOPMENT & SALES
DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION STRATEGY
MENTORSHIP & LEADERSHIP
CAREER DEVELOPMENT & LEARNING
TOOLS &
TECHNOLOGY
Don’t tell anyone that I did this, but I started learning Adobe’s creative suite when I was 10 years old, and let’s just say I didn’t have the budget at the time to purchase the suite.
That said, I’ve been passionate about learning new tools since then, always with the goal of accelerating and inspiring creative ideation and to create something that’s pixel perfect. The tools below are the ones I use the most, but I’m always picking up new stuff depending on the challenge.
ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE
CREATIVE TOOLS
my values & principles
I think it’s critically important to be value-driven, and to uphold those values in everything I do. That means that I wear these principles on my sleeve, and they’re what I bring to the table every day at work.
COMPASSION & KINDNESS
I’m passionate about being kind, compassionate, empathetic and good to the people I work with. I like to foster an environment that’s positive and taps into the goodness of others.
There are three ways to manage people: the aggressive way, the passive aggressive way, and the kind way (the right way). Of those three, only the latter has ever been effective and inspired others to exceed themselves, while creating a cool and fun space for creativity to thrive.
COLLABORATION & TEAMWORK
There’s no I in team and there’s definitely no me in a team that doesn’t believe in teamwork.
I see a lot of teams that roll up their sleeves, but they do so independently. A lot of creative teams will go into their separate silo, removed from the work of strategy, development, sales, etc. This often leads to a disjointed solution, both creatively and strategically, and it makes a mess of the work environment.
Teamwork and collaboration are a foremost focus of mine whenever I’m working on a creative project, and I encourage my teams to be interactive and supportive of each other.
CREATIVITY & COOL S#$@
Creativity is about exploration, empowerment and ideas. I love and appreciate environments where creativity is allowed to thrive through cool ideas, improvisational approaches and creative-led processes.
That means exploring an idea and experimenting, and giving others the space and confidence to do the same. It means prioritizing users and their experience, rather than creativity for the sake of creativity. It means making cool, high quality stuff, even if it’s at the expense of speed.
COMMUNICATION & HONESTY
I’m passionate about communication that’s honest, direct, thoughtful and efficient. I have worked with teams large and small, and the teams that were always the most successful were the ones who understood that effective communication was a core element of collaboration and execution.
That means putting in place systems and processes where people have the space (and power) to communicate, to share their honest thoughts and to express their needs.
CULTURE & DIVERSITY
As a person from a multi-cultural background, I fully recognize how important culture and diverse opinions are in the creative process and creating teams that deliver exceptional results.
I am all about curiosity and culture in the workplace, and as someone who’s invested in building diverse and inclusive teams, I believe that diversity is essential to a successful business and organization.
COMEDY & HUMOR
I come from a comedic background, making sketch comedy and funny commercials with my friends in my spare time. I even started a stupid golf brand that’s entirely based on a joke.
In my opinion, you can’t have a beautiful life (or job) without humor. So, I like to keep things light and humorous. Whether that’s telling a stupid joke that isn’t funny to loosen the vibes, or sending GIFs and just trying to be funny in the Teams chat, for me there’s nothing like a good sense of humor to make work more enjoyable, creative and effective.