Esther Li is a New York-based, Boston-bred award-winning Creative Director, leading the creative team at Beardwood&Co. Over the past 15 years, Esther has specialized in brand identity design for clients such as Etsy, Major League Soccer (MLS), Target, AICP, Chobani, Dunkin’, and UNICEF. Esther’s expertise is rooted in her experience at world-class agencies such as SYLVAIN, Jones Knowles Ritchie, and Collins.
She has been a featured speaker at AIGA NY, served as a jury member for Dieline and Print Awards, and been recognized by D&AD, ADC, and The One Show, among others. In her spare time, she is a hardcore basketball fan and enjoys exploring the outdoors with her family.
For over 20 years, Beardwood&Co has created brave brand ideas and given them the confidence to win in boardrooms, markets, and culture. What’s more, they have produced DBA Design Effectiveness and Designalytics Award-winning work for brands including Yankee Candle, Corona, and Colgate, proving smarter doesn’t mean safer.day, pursue what’s next, work as one team, and celebrate wins.
What principles guide your design decisions?
My design philosophy is driven by a continual balance of what is known and what is yet to be discovered. I start by deeply understanding the challenge at hand. I dig into the brief, the brand, the problem they’re facing, and the clients themselves: their teams, how they work, where their struggles are, what matters to them. That sets the stage for what to solve and how to sell it. From there, I embrace the unknown and unexpected. There’s always that frantic moment of “oh god, am I going to figure it out?” I follow that fear instead of rushing to an answer just to relieve the anxiety. That allows me to lean into bravery and let the creative sparks fly.
How do you stay relevant in an industry that changes so quickly?
I focus on the briefs and the challenges rather than the execution. When you focus on the problem you’re solving, you can meaningfully leverage creativity to build a solution. If you focus on the execution you want or new techniques you want to try, you lose the timelessness in your creative solution. I also can’t emphasize enough the importance of collaboration and leaning on talented people around you. That means bringing in the right balance of experts and unexpected fresh perspectives for any given project. Building and surrounding yourself with the right team of people with diverse backgrounds, levels, superpowers, and points of view will lead to an explosion of ideas that break through and resonate with people.
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