George Holness
Product Designer
georgeholness.com
People-first Product Designer with a strong foundation in UX, UI and motion. Ready to step up to Head of Product Design, focusing on coaching, embedding human-centred and inclusive practices, and creating the conditions for designers to do their best work. Trusted by senior leaders and experienced collaborating across Partnerships, Product, Engineering, Delivery, Email, Brand and Marketing.
2.2M
YouTube views
75–90%
image reduction
+2.01%
session-to-search
1500+
AI shots
Vision
Build a confident, empowered design team embedded in squads, making evidence-led decisions, holding a consistent quality bar, and championing accessibility by default.
People leadership
- Facilitate discovery workshops and critiques in a cross-functional environment; created simple rituals that speed delivery while protecting quality.
- Coach designers using a people-first approach, ensuring clear rationale, structured feedback and calm decision-making; ready to formalise this via capability expectations and regular growth sessions.
- Embed inclusive, human-centred practice through evidence-based design; stand up lightweight research-ops (insight repo, interview templates, quick-test playbook).
- Strengthen consistency and quality at scale through design-system governance, contribution rules and high-impact fix backlogs.
- Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders to align on problems, outcomes and ownership.
Skills
- Mentoring, coaching, capability frameworks, feedback culture
- Human-centred, evidence-led design, accessibility (WCAG)
- Cross-functional discovery, facilitation, stakeholder alignment
- Design systems, component libraries and governance
- Interaction and motion design, micro-interactions, animated prototypes
Tools
FigmaStorybookAdobe Creative CloudLottieBlenderMayaAnalytics & experimentation tooling
Experience
Digital Product Designer
Holiday Extras · Folkestone, Kent
- Lead cross-functional workshops (e.g. 23+ attendee Add-ons workshop) to align stakeholders and produce prioritised quick wins and longer-term opportunities.
- Partner with senior leaders to embed human-centred and inclusive design across squads and platforms.
- Develop and maintain scalable component libraries in Figma; introduce contribution rules and quality gates to reduce one-offs.
- Deliver partner-facing UI for high-profile integrations, balancing accessibility, brand and feasibility.
- Champion motion and micro-interactions; run internal sessions and integrate Lottie where appropriate to improve clarity and engagement.
- Improved key funnel metrics with live-tested UI experiments (e.g. measurable lifts to session-to-search from simplified forms and layout updates).
CRM Marketing Executive (Maternity Cover)
Gatwick Airport · Gatwick
- Independently planned and delivered high-volume targeted evidence-based campaigns in Marketing Cloud; reported performance insights to guide next steps.
- Maintained loyalty programme content and supported platform unification to improve UX and streamline operations.
- Collaborated across multiple teams to prioritise changes to improve the customer journey.
Trust Marketing & Communications
Turner Schools Trust · Kent
- Managed and maintained the Trust's web estate; ensured accessibility compliance and content quality. Also produced animation-led content.
- Led redesigns of website to improve navigation, usability and clarity, coordinating different trusts to ensure the mission and vision of the trust was upheld.
- Coached staff on CMS and Adobe products to raise capability and consistency across the trust.
Community leadership
Producer — Tower Theatre / FHODS
Ongoing
- End-to-end production ownership: schedules, budgets, vendor and venue coordination.
- Responsibility for ensuring license agreement is upheld, involving liaising with multiple teams across the production.
- Bridge creative and business needs; secured late approval to add an intermission to Come From Away, aligning license with exec requirements and adapting blocking at pace.
- Foster a supportive culture; facilitated a whole-team reset to resolve a conflict that caused a cast member to walk out, restoring morale and momentum.
- Ensure accessible audience experiences and consistent show branding under tight timelines.
Education
MA, International Marketing(TBC)
Sussex Business University
BA, Arts & Humanities
Canterbury Christ Church University / Open University
BTEC Level 3 Extended Diplomas
Music Technology (DDD*) and Music (DDD*)
Get in touch
Let’s build something worth talking about.
References available on request.