Matthew
Bowden

Designer, creative leader and photographer. Near Farnham.

Three countries

I was born in the United States and left at nine, when my family moved to England. At twenty-three I went to South Africa and spent the rest of my twenties there, first at a web design agency and then at Discovery Health Insurance. I came back to the UK at thirty-one.

Discovery is the reason I ended up at PruHealth in 2007, and PruHealth is the reason I have spent every year since on a single brand.

The brand

That brand is now Vitality, where I lead branding and creative. I hand-drew the wordmark in 2014, moved the brand to pink, and built the roundel that now sits on everything from parkrun bibs to TV ads.

Brand work is slow work. You make a mark, then spend a decade earning it. Most people meet a brand as a logo, and a logo is really the accumulation of every decision ever made in its name.

Leading a team

I lead designers, writers and film-makers. Most of the job is building the conditions where good ideas survive contact with a business: clear briefs, honest feedback, enough time to make something properly. I want the people making the work to be able to see their own fingerprints on it.

Craft and machines

I am interested in what happens to design as AI gets genuinely good at it. My view is that the value shifts towards the things you can only do yourself: judgement, taste, knowing which problem is worth solving.

So I spend a lot of my time building the bridge between craft and capability, working out where the human decisions sit and how to keep them load-bearing.

Photographs

Everything on this site is mine. I shoot mostly in London, usually people who have not noticed, and occasionally roses, stars and very large skies. It began with a fresh box of Derwent pencils and a Canon 110 ED, and it is still the part of the work with no brief attached, which is exactly why I keep doing it.

Away from the desk

I live near Farnham in a cottage built around 1830, with my family and its ongoing list of things that need fixing. I am learning guitar, somewhere between Tracy Chapman and the Chili Peppers. I run, play squash and row indoors, and there is an Ironman in the background that I mention about as often as you would expect.