Design taught me how people feel what they see.
Podcasting taught me how they see what they hear.

Vision without execution is just an idea. I do both. Concept to launch. Big Emotions is what that looks like: I originated the project, assembled the team, and produced it from concept to launch. Alongside a renowned psychologist, TED speaker, and talented writer, we developed an evergreen SEL tool built entirely around the listener's experience. For me, audience always comes first, and that includes the collaborators themselves. Working with more than forty independent teams, I held the editorial vision, creating a platform where dozens of acclaimed shows could find common ground and reach a wider audience together. The series earned coverage from Podnews and Podcast Movement, a featured spot on Apple Podcasts and Yoto, and continues to find new audiences as an evergreen SEL resource.

Big Emotions: Kids Listen Mashups About Feelings

Reached No. 1 Apple Podcasts on Kids & Family

A seven-part audio adventure exploring feelings in all their shapes and sizes. Each episode pairs two related emotions through original clips, reflections, and widely recognized hosts, bringing together original audio from the Kids Listen community.

300K+Listeners

40+Contributing shows

14Episodes

Embarrassment & Pride

Host: Molly Bloom (Brains On! & Smash Boom Best)

Part 1

Love & Sadness

Host: Jerry Kolber (Who Smarted?)

Part 1

7 themes. 14 episodes. All of them on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Complexity is my favorite material.
I shape it until clarity appears.

The journey from the first conversation to the last detail is the part I love most. The more layers there are to hold together, the more exciting. Vision, problem solving, momentum, people. I keep the engine running, the collaborators aligned, and every part moving, from start to finish.

This is what a total environment looks like. A visual identity that traveled from a downloadable app to an animated keynote screen to the printed materials greeting Swiss diplomats and Harvard luminaries, all of it pulled from a single founding idea.

From the flags lining the paths of Harvard's campus to the finest detail in every page of the booklet, the same identity traveled without losing the thread. One idea, multiplied across every scale, every surface, every gesture.

Audience comes first, second, and last.
Every collaborator and partner included.

The best creative work disappears. The audience never sees the decisions. They pick up a program or press play and something happens to them, a sense of being welcomed, of mattering, of having arrived somewhere worth being. That is the goal in every medium I work in. For this conference that feeling lived in the weight of the paper, in the portrait of every speaker given a full page, in the intention woven into every detail. Everyone in attendance, like every listener to a podcast, arrives somewhere that was made just for them.

The program, in someone's hands. Fine paper, intentional typography, every speaker and topic selected and arranged. A guest examining it with the same intensity as Louis Pasteur gazes from the poster beside him. That moment was not staged. That is what happens when the work is made for the person holding it.

The Harvard Medical School building on Avenue Louis Pasteur became part of the story. A visual declaration of scientific innovation that traveled from the printed program to the 26-foot LED screen to the large format posters filling that stunning glass atrium. The environment, the design, and the people inside it became one.

Collaboration is iterative by nature.
The process and what emerges are what I love most.

The best creative work I've done came from making space for someone else to be brilliant. A writer's instinct, a photographer's eye, a researcher's depth, an executive's conviction. I translate them all into one. The trying and returning and refining, the generous back and forth of building something together, until many voices become a clear thing that belongs to all of them.

A full day conference for Harvard Business School alumni, designed from the ground up. A single identity carried across LED screens, brochures, folders, programs, posters, and a custom-dyed three-dimensional portfolio. Between the striking speaker photography and a beautiful hotel at peak New England foliage, every page was a collaboration made visible.

Mass Innovation Labs houses some of today's leading pharma unicorns. Starting with brand strategy and MIL's own self-perception, I built their branding guidelines across in-house and freelance partners. Directing photoshoots of their research environment gave their visual language shape, which then extended across a website, marketing collateral, and a full video library.

The full design portfolio, including additional projects, is at talkellydesigns.com. Best viewed on desktop.

When my ten-year-old decided he wanted a podcast and I said yes, over two decades of creative instincts came along for the ride. At Your Level grew from a pandemic project into a global collaboration. Kids and fascinating guests from around the world, a New York Times feature, an invitation to join the Kids Listen board. My son eventually moved on. I was just getting started. I had seen what podcasting does for young people, and I could not stop following that conviction. I noticed the gap between kids podcasting and education. I started building the bridge. On the board I initiated Mashups, a cross-promotion format that grew the Kids Listen ecosystem and eventually became the foundation for Big Emotions. I convened and led public panels bringing together creators, educators, and families. I took a teaching practice into Needham, working to connect student voices with their community through the school system. I advocated within Kids Listen until their Education Committee took root. This is what I do, and have always done: find what wants to be expressed, make it exist, and bring people in.

New York Times Featured

After over two decades of design and creative direction, my kid pulled me into audio. Different medium, same creative mind. Audience first, vision, process, collaboration. Everything I knew about making things traveled beautifully into sound, and it led somewhere I never expected: a New York Times feature, a four-page spread in Podcast Magazine, and an invitation to join the Kids Listen board.

Bridging Podcasting & Education

Mashups began as a cross-promotion format I initiated on the Kids Listen board, a way to connect independent creators and grow the community together. It became the blueprint for Big Emotions. The same creative instincts I brought to Harvard and Pfizer, now building a different kind of institution, one rooted in community, education, and the conviction that every voice, given the right platform, can reach the people who need it.