Creative Director · AI systems & production · Bolzano, working internationally
Carmelo Ferreri is a Creative Director who builds AI into how brands produce. Ten years directing brands in Shanghai, now based in Italy. He helps teams make more, faster, without the work starting to look like everyone else's.
Systems, taste and production
AI makes more possible. Direction decides what should exist, how it should behave, and what still needs a human hand.
Brands I've worked with, across Europe and China
AI gave your team a speed problem and a sameness problem at the same time.
Your team can produce more in a week now than they used to in a month. Good. The catch is that most of it comes out looking like everyone else's, and the brand slowly drifts from what the guidelines promised. People already learned to scroll past the generic AI look.
So the real work isn't producing more. Your team can do that already. It's producing more while still looking like you. That needs someone above the tools, deciding what to make, what to kill, and what should stay human. That part is the job, and it's the part I do.
Four ways I help, depending on where it hurts.
AI Brand Systems
The problem: your team rebuilds the same deck, document and key visual from scratch every week, and half of it lands off-brand. I turn your guidelines into something the tools can actually read, so the team produces on-brand work in hours and you still sign off on it.
Creative Direction
The problem: AI campaigns that look fast and cheap. I direct the campaign and the key visual so the speed is yours and the taste is still in the room.
Creative Team Enablement
The problem: one person on the team is good with AI and nobody else is. I set up the workflow and train the team, so the speed stays after I leave.
Original IP & Storytelling
The problem: every brand is starting to sound the same. I build characters, worlds and animated stories you own, as the artist Kaji 卡机.
Brands have trusted this across very different markets.
I've done this across roles (co-founder, art director, senior designer), independently and through agencies and employers, for brands that share almost no audience in common: Huawei, LEGO, Porsche, SIASUN Robotics, Teekanne, Kawneer, the European Union (with Ogilvy), Athesia Group, Roma Marina Yachting, Cascina Biblioteca.
Recognition. Gold for Best Brand Experience at the Transform Awards Asia-Pacific (2015). Finalist for the Samsung Young Design Award. Shown at Shanghai Design Week and Tongji University Design Week.
A logo that works in Milan can fall flat in Shanghai.
Ten years there taught me what to change so the idea survives the move. I directed international brands across markets that share almost none of the same assumptions, learned to read a room in three languages, and got used to shipping at a pace most studios still find uncomfortable.
I run Melo & Yan Design remotely from Italy now. The instinct came back with me. Most European creative directors are working without it.
Tell me what you're trying to make, and what keeps going wrong.
Whether you're hiring a creative director or just trying to get AI to behave inside your brand, it starts the same way. No deck required.