PROFILE
Richard Pearce BA (Hons) MArch
Creative Director — Amsterdam
Richard Pearce is a Creative Director with a practice built around a consistent principle: design is most powerful when every element — product, brand, environment and experience — works as part of a coherent system.
His background spans architecture, spatial design, product design, digital design, and creative direction. Rather than treating these as separate disciplines, he draws on all of them simultaneously — holding design intelligence across every touchpoint of a project, from early research and strategic framing through to final execution.
Research and curiosity are central to the process. Every project begins with a genuine attempt to understand the problem before proposing a solution — whether that's the role of intelligent objects within complex urban environments, the identity system of an elite cycling team, or the spatial experience of a global brand flagship.
A Connected Design System
A single framework, applied consistently across every project.
Engineering → Product → Brand → Environment → Human
Alignment across all disciplines — from engineering to human experience. Performance led at every stage.
Selected Work
Projects span elite sport, emerging technology, automotive, and brand experience.
In sport, this has included a comprehensive performance design programme for Team Sky — developing a data-driven visual identity generated directly from the team's race results — and co-founding CHPT3 with professional cyclist David Millar, building a performance cycling brand across apparel, hardware, and cultural partnerships.
In automotive and mobility, work includes the Future Sense installation for Volvo in Gothenburg, automotive and interaction design for Ford, and leading the design team on hardware and UI/UX for an e-mobility technology company.
In brand experience, projects include the Burberry flagship takeover on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, and the Audi x Tom Dixon Light Light installation at Design Miami.
Further work across product, identity, and apparel has been developed for Nike, Cartier, Prada, and Castelli — alongside collaborations with leading creative agencies and studios including Imagination, Deepend, Poke, and United Visual Artists.
Cycling
Cycling has been part of Richard's life since childhood — coming from a professional cycling family, he raced across multiple disciplines before leaving the sport to embark upon a design education: typography, graphic design, and then architecture.
The design work within cycling grew naturally from deep connections to the sport, gradually drawing the two worlds together.
For a time, the two felt uncomfortable alongside each other. Postgraduate research at the Bartlett, UCL — one of the world's leading architecture schools — had instilled a deeply investigative approach to design: research-led, technologically rigorous, intellectually demanding. Designing vehicles for Ford or working with the top creative agencies in London felt like the natural expression of that training. Cycling kit did not obviously belong in the same conversation.
But the systems thinking that underpins all of the work is the same, whether applied to a car, a brand environment, or a race jersey. The cycling work is no less considered for being personal.
Confidentiality
Given the nature of the work, certain projects are either confidential, pre-launched, or subject to non-disclosure agreements. If you would like to discuss a specific area of the practice, please get in touch directly.
hello@r-ad.co
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