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 Blake Neale
is an award-winning motion/graphic designer, art director, copywriter, poet, and novelist based in Bromley, London. He’s available for hire. And he loves biscuits.
  Would you like to know more?
↓ Blake’s fresh out of a 16.5-year stint art directing and designing a wide range of projects for 2 television networks that both still broadcast the hit 90’s show Friends. But now he’ll be there for you, as he’s jumped head-first into the choppy waters of the freelance sea, ready to take on all of your exciting creative projects — and maybe some of the boring ones too.
His career in television is extensive, having joined the industry when playout graphics were still being delivered on floppy disks, and he quite literally “wrote the book” for a number of brands recognised the world over. So there’s a good chance that you’ve already seen his handiwork without realising it. In fact (deep breath) Blake’s helped launch 8 new TV channels, 4 SVOD platforms and 2 BVOD platforms; he’s overseen 12 rebrands; he’s directed over 250 idents; he’s art directed a comedy festival; he’s art co-directed 5 experiential events; he’s designed multiple TV title sequences; he’s designed and/or art directed far too many promo campaigns and key art packages to actually count; he’s won a shelf-load of shiny metal awards; and he’s mentored 7 budding designers along the way. (Phewey.)
Blake also served as Design Consultant for Channel 5’s 2020 rebrand (which remained on air, untouched, for over five years) including pitching his own ident concepts to the creative director — which won the pitch — despite Blake not actually working for Channel 5 at the time. The new-look channel also went on to win Channel of the Year accolades from the Royal Television Society and the Broadcast Awards, no doubt bolstered by the brand’s strong offerings of traffic-cops docs and royal-related retrospectives. Nevertheless, Blake was officially then handed the job of heading up all day-to-day graphics across the entire Channel 5 portfolio, evolving and maintaining the visual identity of all 6 of their channels — as well as managing and art directing his own team of designers — all the while still overseeing and art directing all of Comedy Central’s UK design output and his design team there too. Blake’s also art directed and/or led rebrand design for: That’s right, folks, he’s overseen 5 separate rebrands for Comedy Central over the course of a decade, which means that he’s either really rather good at Comedy Central rebrands or astonishingly bad at them. Thankfully, winning big at the Broadcast Digital Awards in 2019 suggests it’s the former (phew) with Comedy Central crowned Best Entertainment Channel and praised specifically for its “360-degree confidence” and “fantastic” rebrand. So he must’ve been doing something right. Blake’s also crafted pro-bono creative work to help various charities including HOur Bank, Samaritans, Staying Alive, and the Terrence Higgins Trust; he’s art directed and designed brand assets for public events run by the London Borough of Bromley; he’s designed artwork for staff events run by the City of London; he’s designed intranet portals and public-facing websites for multiple UK schools; he’s devised branding for independent film studios; and he once even designed a rather spiffing logo for UEFA despite his abject disinterest in games involving competitive foot-based ball manipulation. He’s highly proficient in the Adobe Creative suite — to the point that he’s even taught After Effects, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Premiere to big rooms of people — as well as being highly proficient in Blender, Mocha Pro, and Tetris. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty with good’ol fashioned plain-text HTML and CSS either, which still comes in handy far more than you might think. And he’s even been known to build applets in Visual Basic to improve workflows — because he’s that kinda guy. As well as having a firm grasp of the visual and technical side of things, Blake’s also written reams of questions for press junkets; he’s scripted TV channel continuity; he’s written taglines for TV shows; he’s written a moderately successful non-fiction ebook under a pseudonym; and he’s script-edited two sitcom pilots, one of which scored so well with test audiences that it was commissioned for a full-blown series in America, albeit sadly without Blake on board — which is perhaps why it flopped. His debut novel is on the cusp of being released; he’s just waiting for the ink to dry. But rest assured that it features brand-spanking-new jokes about Shakespeare (William), egg & cress (sandwiches), and sudoku (the tedious numbers game). You know, all of the hard-hitting comedy material that everyone else is too scared to tackle right now. And if that’s not enough, he’s also got a book of poems and a couple of board games coming out soon-ish because, well, why the hell not? That’s just how he rolls. His self-initiated creative projects have previously featured on the front page of Metro.co.uk, been twice tweeted by the BBC, been covered by NME online, been screened at fan conventions, made it onto the front page of The Poke (the UK’s biggest humour site), and even shown in cinemas as part of film festivals. So fingers crossed that his novel doesn’t die on its arse either.... As a quick personal overview of his character, Blake is a lifelong aficionado of bygone TV-and-radio shows — from The Flintstones to Red Dwarf — with a comprehensive knowledge of more series than the average person probably owns individual socks. He is similarly well-acquainted with a wide range of films, which at least comes in handy far more than his sitcom savviness when he’s downing pints (of fruit cordials) during pub quizzes with his fine fellow fellows, but otherwise yields no real-world benefits beyond being mentioned in blurb like this. When he’s not busy crafting, laughing, or pub-quizzing, Blake has a gay old time savouring afternoon teas, entertaining at his many candlelight suppers, and playing lightweight "German style" board games with the local community. He also enjoys long dog walks (as in long walks for dogs; not walks with long dogs), Pilates (it’s good for your core), and roller discos. And while we’re at it, he was once an accomplished gymnast and track-and-field athlete too — which even he finds hard to believe — so he’s not your standard sit-down nerd, though he still draws the line at parties. You won’t find Blake on the likes of Fakebook, Twatter/X or PrickTok, so avoid cheap imitations by experiencing the genuine cheap article exclusively here. |
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