designing desireable futures

Design leader, maker and erstwhile educator focusing on systems, storytelling and strategic innovations for desirable futures across brand, product and customer experience. 

Holding a variety of design leadership positions Ali has worked at Deloitte Digital, Razorfish, Chaotic Moon (acquired by Accenture), Rockwell Group, XIX Entertainment, Ogilvy & Mather's Brand Integration Group and Honest Dollar (acquired by Goldman Sachs). He is currently a Creative Director at Havas Worldwide. Ali has deep experience working cross-functionally with leadership, engineering, research and development, and product development teams in a matrixed organization. 

The recent relaunch of the iconic ADP rebrand included a machine learning style transfer model that outputs uniquely visually branded imagery for their photography. Earlier his seminal rebrand work for The Coca-Cola Company culminated in the Happiness in a Bottle campaign from Ogilvy & Mather. For their flagship Coca-Cola brand Ali created a proof of concept for the Design Machine, a decentralized brand and asset creation system that allowed bottlers and vendors to dynamically generate branded assets for deployment. 

For Google Motorola, Ali concepted and prototyped a first-of-its-kind Interactive Print Ad using conductive ink for the December issue of WIRED—one of PSFK's Most Innovative Ad Campaigns of 2013. And subsequently led development of Moto Match, an innovative interactive kiosk for the launch of the Moto X phone at NY Fashion Week. Previously his work helped elevate Samsung Mobile USA to Mashable’s Breakthrough Brand of the Year and Ad Age’s Viral Brand of the Year. This work included NFC touchless kiosks that dispensed exclusive music, book and video content.

Over the years Ali has been charged with building or rebuilding teams to achieve internal alignment and peak performance. Not only as a leader, but as a mentor, Ali brings his experience from academia to the teams and companies he partners with. Over the years Ali has held various teaching appointments at Pratt Institute, University of Texas at Austin, and Cooper Union.

While at Chaotic Moon, Ali rebooted a shuttered R&D group, resulting in a handful of innovative products and services showcased at SXSW Interactive 2015: Fitcoin, the world's first blockchain fitness tracker; Tyrone Drone, an unmanned aerial vandal; Orchard, a 20' huggable interactive tree. These projects were conceived and launched within a two month period, which is a not only a testament to vision and execution, but flouts conventional approaches to protracted product incubation.

An occasional writer on design and design theory, Ali is published in Graphic Design: A New History, Graphic Design Referenced, Design Institute, How Magazine, Sugo, and Étapes, et al. He has exhibited his art and design works at Smithy Pioneer Gallery, 7444 Gallery, Pratt Institute, Ball State University and Cranbrook Academy of Art. Ali earned his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was the first graduate in New Media Design from Rochester Institute of Technology.

With deep experience working cross-functionally with leadership, engineering, research and development, and product development teams in a matrixed organization. Holding a variety of design leadership positions Ali has worked at Deloitte Digital, Razorfish, Chaotic Moon (acquired by Accenture), Rockwell Group, XIX Entertainment, Ogilvy & Mather's Brand Integration Group and Honest Dollar (acquired by Goldman Sachs). He is currently a Creative Director at Havas Worldwide.

The recent relaunch of the iconic ADP rebrand included a machine learning style transfer model that outputs uniquely visually branded imagery for their photography. Earlier his seminal rebrand work for The Coca-Cola Company culminated in the Happiness in a Bottle campaign from Ogilvy & Mather. For their flagship Coca-Cola brand Ali created a proof of concept for the Design Machine, a decentralized brand and asset creation system that allowed bottlers and vendors to dynamically generate branded assets for deployment. 

For Google Motorola, Ali concepted and prototyped a first-of-its-kind Interactive Print Ad using conductive ink for the December issue of WIRED—one of PSFK's Most Innovative Ad Campaigns of 2013. And subsequently led development of Moto Match, an innovative interactive kiosk for the launch of the Moto X phone at NY Fashion Week. Previously his work helped elevate Samsung Mobile USA to Mashable’s Breakthrough Brand of the Year and Ad Age’s Viral Brand of the Year. This work included NFC touchless kiosks that dispensed exclusive music, book and video content.

Over the years Ali has been charged with building or rebuilding teams to achieve internal alignment and peak performance. Not only as a leader, but as a mentor, Ali brings his experience from academia to the teams and companies he partners with. Over the years Ali has held various teaching appointments at Pratt Institute, University of Texas at Austin, and Cooper Union.

While at Chaotic Moon, Ali rebooted a shuttered R&D group, resulting in a handful of innovative products and services showcased at SXSW Interactive 2015: Fitcoin, the world's first blockchain fitness tracker; Tyrone Drone, an unmanned aerial vandal; Orchard, a 20' huggable interactive tree. These projects were conceived and launched within a two month period, which is a not only a testament to vision and execution, but flouts conventional approaches to protracted product incubation.

An occasional writer on design and design theory, Ali is published in Graphic Design: A New History, Graphic Design Referenced, Design Institute, How Magazine, Sugo, and Étapes, et al. He has exhibited his art and design works at Smithy Pioneer Gallery, 7444 Gallery, Pratt Institute, Ball State University and Cranbrook Academy of Art. Ali earned his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was the first graduate in New Media Design from Rochester Institute of Technology.