Design taught me how people feel what they see. Podcasting taught me how they see what they hear.
I take something complex and meaningful, help others find their clearest voice, and shape it
until the result feels obvious. Six years in narrative podcast production and two decades
in the design world. Based in Needham, MA. I'm looking for someone doing
something meaningful who needs a creative partner to help it land. If that's you, let's
talk.
I originated this project, assembled the team, and produced this podcast 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.
Big Emotions: Kids Listen Mashups About Feelings
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.
After two decades of design and creative direction, it was my kid who pulled me into audio. I said yes! Different medium, same creative mind. Everything I knew about making things: audience first, vision, process, collaboration. It all traveled beautifully into sound. That pivot led somewhere I never expected, including a New York Times feature and an invitation to join the Kids Listen board.
At Your Level: A Podcast for Kids, by Kids
A kids variety show co-created with my son Ari during the early days of the pandemic. What started as a creative adventure grew into a global collaboration, with kids from around the world contributing voices, segments, and ideas. It found its own co-hosts and listeners everywhere.
Additional projects across kids and family audio include Mashups, a cross-promotion format
for the Kids Listen network; Wanderous, a kid-hosted family travel podcast; and Kidcasters,
a teaching initiative growing out of classroom podcasting education in Needham. Full podcast
work available on Apple Podcasts.
Creative Direction
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.
Get in touch
If you're working on something meaningful
and need a creative partner who will care about it as much as you do...
reach out.
