Hello! 👋

I'm Carlos Esparza

Creative direction and design leadership.

Whether building a new brand or rebuilding the process behind one, the goal is the same: make complex ideas feel inevitable.

About Me

Carlos Esparza is a creative director working across branding, publishing, product design, and design operations. His work ranges from visual identity systems and digital products to organizational design and creative leadership.

He is drawn to ambitious projects that need coherence—where strategy, storytelling, design, and execution have drifted apart and need to become one thing again.

The medium changes. The work doesn't.

Work

Brand & Creative Direction

Creative Leadership at Scale

Creative Direction at Scale

Experience

Broadleaf Books

Art Director · 2022–Present · Remote

  • Partner with the Publisher, Sales Director, and Marketing Director on every title to develop positioning, naming, subtitling, and visual direction as interconnected parts of product development.
  • Direct the creative for 70+ annual book launches, establishing the visual direction that informs marketing campaigns, sales materials, and downstream promotional assets.
  • Built centralized planning systems that reduced the time from strategy meeting to actionable creative brief from nine days to two.
  • Pioneered iterative cover testing using print-on-demand infrastructure, expanding experimentation within traditional publishing.

Callisto Media

Senior Art Director / Design Operations Lead · 2019–2022 · Remote

  • Expanded from Senior Art Director into Design Operations leadership during a period of 10× company growth, helping scale the design organization from roughly 15 to 55 designers.
  • Built onboarding, capacity planning, and workflow systems that increased organizational visibility and creative throughput.
  • Developed reusable layout systems and shared component libraries that reduced repetitive production work and improved design consistency.
  • Initiated iterative cover testing and creative experimentation programs that produced measurable sales improvements.

Verified Athletics

Brand & Product Design Consultant · 2025–2026 · Remote

  • Conducted independent discovery identifying brand and conversion challenges, presenting strategic recommendations that led to a comprehensive visual rebrand.
  • Redesigned the public website and customer experience to improve clarity and support sales conversion.
  • Built a component-based design system for the web application, unifying three previously disconnected dashboards into a coherent visual architecture.
  • Delivered production-ready UI code through Cursor and Next.js while collaborating directly with engineering through Git.

Field Studios

Co-Founder / Creative Director · 2015–2020 · Remote

  • Co-led film and digital ventures as producer, writer, creative director, and project manager.
  • Creative directed Since I Been Down and co-developed City Ciné.
  • Hired and coordinated freelance collaborators.

Pilchuck Glass School

Marketing & Communications Coordinator · 2014–2015 · Stanwood, WA

  • Sole marketing and creative lead for an internationally recognized arts institution.
  • Managed budget, contractors, copy, and art direction while collaborating with executive leadership.
  • Delivered 10% revenue growth and 15% enrollment increase.

Penguin Random House

Digital Product Designer & Developer · 2011–2013 · New York

  • Designed digital publishing products for flagship properties.
  • Performed competitor analysis and usability evaluation; coordinated day-and-date ebook releases with editorial and production teams.

Press & Recognition

  • Casual Optimist

    Notable Book Covers of 2023

  • LitHub

    Best Book Covers of November 2021

  • LitHub

    Best Book Covers of August 2020

  • Paste Magazine

    The Best Book Covers of January 2020

Education

BFA, Art — Cornish College of the Arts

BFA, Graphic Design — Art Institute of Colorado