My Name is Shay Grinstein, I’m the co-founder, along with my life partner - Keren, and creative officer at Yugo & Art.

I consider myself extremely lucky and grateful for being able to incorporate my two big passions in life, design & music into my career.

For the last 3 decades I’ve been providing visual solutions, branding services and art direction to companies all over the world.

I guess I always knew how to tell a story using both sounds and visuals and the fact that I‘ll make a terrible hairdresser or lawyer, just made my decision easier.

Basically, Yugo and Art is a multidisciplinary creative agency, we provide a wide-angle perspective on design meaning we help our clients tell their stories using visual solutions. My job as a creative director is to lead our team of designers find the right story before packing it with the visual wrapping.

I always thought of creativity as a muscle you need to nourish and develop. Something that we all have but just like professional athletes – we chose to empower.

I think it’s all a question of context and timing but for me, it’s always about giving a solution that looks so simple and easy that the first response to it will be – “Why didn’t I think of that?”.

Since we are a business-oriented studio and not just “please make it look nicer…” type of designers – we work in a very systematic almost academic way.

We understand that we need to help a client sell a product or a service so questions like “What does he, our client, get out of it?” or “Will it increase his sells?” are always in the background.

Our process always starts with a full background research. We like to create a timeline of our end user’s journey – Let’s say we are working on a project for a boutique hotel: the user’s journey starts sitting next to the computer, browsing through “tripAdvisor” or “booking.com” and ends at home, after his safe return. Only then we continue to the next step - mapping all points of interaction with the user.

In every successful project, there is a fraction of a second that you understand that you nailed it, that you were able to tie all the loose ends – that moment is priceless.

Clean, Minimal, Humoristic, Functional - Story Driven.

I think that the fact that my country is multicultural, one that combines rich history with modern living had a large impact on me as a creator, shaped me as a designer and helped assemble my studio’s heterogenic team of talented individuals.

It’s always nice to be appreciated especially when it comes from a professional, an outsider – someone who wasn’t part of the process that can judge with an un-biased eye.

Urban Playground is a brand-new entertainment concept of the competitive socializing global trend. Located in Manchester, UK and act as an indoor venue for young adults. Our studio was hired to create the brand strategy and visual communication through all visitors’ interactions, and to provide art direction for all visible interfaces and platforms.

This project, besides being so much fun to deal with – gave us a great opportunity to showcase all of our studio’s capabilities.

The combination of playground and adults, mini-golf and alcohol, not necessarily sounds like an exact match, so the biggest challenge was to create an adult visual language that will appeal to our users and position the brand as a leader in his field.

Any kind of award can spice-up your resume. Winning an international award, such as “the Muse” is like giving your team “a pat on the back” and the recognition for his hard work.

1. The freedom to experiment

2. The diversity of opportunities

3. The Globalization

I think that in general, we are very creative people. Our history and day-to-day life taught us to think fast and to adjust.

Since technology is allowing every freelance sitting next to a computer in a small coffee-shop, create amazing visuals; the storytelling, the idea behind the image is going to be way more important than its aesthetics – at least to my opinion.

Play with it, have fun.

Keep your eyes open, amazing design surround us everywhere we go.

I know it is kind of a cliché but go to museums, any kind, anywhere.

I had the same mousepad with me for 20 years! (Just for luck) It even travelled with me when I worked overseas – But now I retired him.

My parents had an enormous impact on me, as a person, as a father and as a creator.

It’s good to get jealous of other creators, the secret is to know your strengths and use them wisely.

Thanks for having me.