Luke Jordan Potts

Brand, product design and build for a funeral Order of Service platform, taken from nothing to live payments and print fulfilment on my own. A public marketing site, a guided builder that turns plain questions into a finished booklet, six original template designs, a funeral director portal for review and approval, and an internal admin covering leads, sales outreach, finance and SEO. Every order gives 1% to a death-prevention charity, paid by June rather than added to the bill, with each of the six designs tied to a cause, structured to stay the right side of the Charities Act rules on commercial participation.

The harder half is invisible. A calibrated pagination engine decides how an Order of Service breaks across pages and reflows it live as a family types. Uploaded photographs are face-detected and cropped to eye level so nobody has to frame them. Headless Chromium renders the result to exact print dimensions and sends it straight to Gelato for fulfilment. Roughly 32,000 lines, 70 API routes, 21 database migrations and three scheduled jobs, with live Stripe, Gelato, Resend and Google Search Console integrations. I built and run the cold outreach system that sells it, too, on top of a standing audience research habit: connecting with funeral directors directly and building their posts into a working psychographic profile that drives the copy and the product decisions. Designed, written and shipped end to end, with AI-assisted development.

• Nothing to live payments, solo
• Custom pagination and typesetting engine
• Face-detected photo cropping
• Print-ready PDF to Gelato fulfilment
• ~32,000 lines, 70 API routes
• Stripe, Gelato, Resend, Search Console
• Built and run the sales pipeline
• 1% to charity, Charities Act compliant
• Ongoing audience research with funeral directors

The most senior designer on the team, though not the lead, recognised as a top performer on several occasions. Designed across social media, email, website, brand and product. Not afraid to get hands dirty outside the role, down to admin work migrating several hundred customers to a new website as part of a dedicated support team. Worked everything from urgent, monotonous tasks up to senior leadership involvement, and nurtured my own manager in areas he needed to develop where I already had the experience. Handed UX design lead responsibilities towards the end, without an official title change. Wrote a two year brand development plan with departments across the business, then built a Campaign Planner with the Marketing Campaigns Manager and a new file organisation system that cut wasted time across the design team. Built detailed Photoshop template files so junior designers could ship without me in the room. Sat in senior-level discussions with the Brand Manager, Business Development Manager, Marketing Campaigns Manager, Head of R&D, Head of Product & Delivery and Head of People & Culture. Pushed to move the team off Adobe XD onto Figma before XD was discontinued; overruled at the time. Pride campaign lead, one of the most successful email marketing campaigns that year, and worked with the Head of People and Culture on formats that were easier for neurodivergent colleagues to use.

• Most senior designer, not the lead
• Top performer, multiple times
• Handed UX design lead duties, no title change
• Pride campaign: best email performance that year

Strategy, naming, identity, messaging and guidelines for SheHeThey Ltd, a marketplace spotlighting Queer-, Trans-, Black-, POC-, neurodivergent-, disabled-, woman- and ally-owned businesses. Publicly launched June 2022 and went on to list more than 100 vendor businesses. Designed, built and maintained the site myself in WordPress with plugins and basic CSS adjustments, led all business and marketing collateral, and ran the partner and customer relationships while tracking competitors and market trends. Grew SheHeThey's own following past 2,000 with roughly 10% average engagement per post; one LinkedIn post reached approximately 2 million people.

• Launched June 2022
• 100+ vendor businesses
• Built and maintained in WordPress
• ~2,000 followers, ~10% engagement
• One post reached ~2m on LinkedIn

Grew out of the Brand Starter Kit, my own DIY brand-profile product, developed into four workshops and selected by Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Department for Education for the £10m EnterprisingYou programme. Delivered 1:1 and group sessions monthly to more than 100 founders, three curricula written and delivered, rated 9.6 out of 10. First ever participant before becoming a trainer, giving a side interview at the 2020 launch event, the same event Andy Burnham, then Mayor of Greater Manchester and now Prime Minister, went right before me.

• £10m DfE programme
• Selected by GMCA and DfE
• 100+ founders trained
• Rated 9.6 out of 10

Promoted to Brand Designer and Strategist as one of the studio's top performers. Solely responsible for 5 client accounts daily, rising to 8 at times, around 30 businesses across luxury, food and drink, eco-friendly products, and marketing, PR and communications agencies, guiding brand system evolution with little or no client direction. Trusted with the more challenging clients, retaining accounts that would otherwise have left, and supported junior designers with their own accounts on top of my own workload. Daily output across logo design, identity systems, brand guidelines, pitch decks, brochures, flyers, social campaigns, content design, lead magnets, video and animation, packaging, infographics and image manipulation. Led market and competitor research, developed to support the studio's brand positioning going forward.

• Promoted, one of the top performers
• 5 to 8 client accounts daily
• ~30 businesses across 5 sectors

Naming, identity and brand systems for UK and EU clients, B2B and B2C, including a six month project for a tech consultancy in the Czech Republic and creative lead on a social value campaign for Middlesbrough FC. Named and branded WeDiscover, now a fifty-person agency. Ran business development, pitching, pricing and contract negotiation myself, alongside paid and organic social campaigns, content creation, and web and social traffic analysis. Built and maintained an e-commerce website.

• Named WeDiscover, now 50 people
• UK and EU clients, B2B and B2C

Full-time on the design team, part of the full identity process from concept through to completion, including work for London's Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing. Earlier placements at Creativehill, VIA Creative, Middlesbrough Printing and Squire & Partners London alongside college, from age 16.

• Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing
• Working from age 16