About

Friendly yet direct. Caring yet serious. Welcoming yet uncompromising.

I’ve spent the better part of 15 years working across design and tech, building products, brand systems, and design systems for companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s. Whether leading a remote team or navigating C‑suite politics for a global rebrand, I bring a fierce commitment to execution and a total refusal to compromise on quality.

Philosophy in action

I don’t just state my values, my career is built on them.

Friendly yet direct.
I cut through corporate fluff to solve hard problems. At Monks, this directness earned the trust of the C‑suite, leading from a divisional rebrand of Formula.Monks straight into spearheading the global consolidation and master rebrand of Media.Monks into Monks.
Caring yet serious.
I advocate deeply for the end-user while respecting massive technical constraints. On the CoreUX team at United Airlines, I designed product experiences, customer journey strategies, and evolved the ATMOS design system for an app used by 16 million people, optimizing for Apple's Liquid Glass, in-flight entertainment systems, and the Starlink connectivity onboarding.
Welcoming yet uncompromising.
I hold an incredibly high bar for craftsmanship and expect the same from those around me. As an agency founder, I grew a remote consultancy to $1M to $3M in annual revenue, leading teams to deliver high-stakes design work for world-class brands including Nike, Adidas, McLaren Racing, Nasdaq, Apple, and Google.

Beyond design

I live in Chicago with my partner, our dog, and a lawn I obsess over entirely too much. My pursuit of high-fidelity experiences bleeds into my personal life.

Music: I am a long-time electronic music fixture who ran a record label, toured internationally as a DJ, and earned a Grammy nomination (aka not winning).

Motorsports: I am deep into Formula 1 racing. You can find me most weekends waking up at offensively early hours to watch the sessions live.

Chris Allen, collectible action figure edition, with his dog

Client index

Clients. Friends. Client-Friends.

Full case studies where available, contribution and role otherwise.

Personal projects

Custom movie and TV poster artwork2025–present

I’ve been building out a media library for decades, and I like to customize the artwork to match a theme. When I started uploading my posters to ThePosterDB, I quickly started getting requests for more. Within a few months I’d become one of the most downloaded users on the platform, and now my artwork auto-populates in apps like Letterboxd, Plex, Kodi, and Jellyfin through the TMDB API.

Most recent uploads, updating automatically. View the full high-resolution collection at TPDb.

Open to new roles