10 Questions with Dom Baker
From designer to director; brand campaigns to behaviour change.
This week we’ve been talking all things portfolios, and one of the most varied ones we know is Dom Baker’s. He started his career in events, then became a designer, and is now an Innovation Director (don’t worry - we get into what that actually is).
From nudging over a million commuters to be kinder, to helping 450,000 people register to vote, Dom’s work sits at the intersection of creativity and real-world change.
From understanding the evolution of designer to director, the impact of AI on design, and the power of listening and sketchbooks - we’ve got it all covered. Get into it.
1. Dom. Your background is in design and now you call yourself an Innovation Director. What’s been your career trajectory so far — and seriously, what is an Innovation Director?
I started by getting kicked out of school at 15 - so it’s been very DIY, with a lot of trial and error. But I basically started out in events, then moved into design and eventually got into strategy. I had some mates who’d started designing at The Guardian, and when I was in between gigs and still a bit lost, I thought what they were doing was amazing. So when my grandad died, I bought myself a Mac, which came with some basic tools - Quark, Photoshop, etc - and I locked myself in a room for a month with a bunch of books and taught myself as much as I could.
I started working in design agencies, worked on really exciting projects like Vodafone’s very first online brand guidelines, and then I landed a job at Poke and it changed the way I thought about everything. I’ve always liked being able to work on a whole project - from being the designer, art director, filmmaker. And the type of stuff we were producing really called for it. But ultimately it led me to leaving Poke as an innovation director.
Then I joined Saatchi as Head of Innovation, but eventually I got sick of working for consumer brands. I tried to bring more purpose and “good” into each project, and then about four years ago I moved into the public sector space and haven’t really left. It’s really wonderful, but by god it’s difficult. It’s digging really deep into the social challenges of today and actually figuring out how we solve them.
To explain the title “Innovation Director”, though, it’s a funny one. It’s very ambiguous. But ultimately it’s about guiding teams through things that haven’t been done before. Taking a big, messy problem and helping everyone make sense of it. My job is to bring people together, get the right conversations happening, and make sure we’re creating something that actually works in the real world.
2. From nudging a million+ commuters to mobilising 450k new voters, you’ve worked on huge, behaviour-changing campaigns. From your POV, how can design shape behaviour changes in consumers?
For me, design is communication. I’m always a bit wary of saying design can “change” behaviour, because you can’t really. You can inspire people, you can show them alternatives, you can make it easier for them to make a different choice. But behaviour change always comes from the individual.
I think of it like leading a horse to water. Design can guide people there - but it’s their choice to drink.
3. Do you have a formula for designing things that don’t just look good but work at scale?
The first step is always to sit down and listen - properly listen - and work out what’s really going on.
If something already exists, I start by looking for the problem areas. What’s working? What isn’t? Then I map out the process and help people see the workflow clearly. That becomes the “source of truth”, and everything - comms, branding, design - wraps around that.
If it’s something new, it’s about listening to every stakeholder, even the ones people don’t think to include. I’ll build a framework, validate it, test it, and think about where it might break. These projects tend to live for years, not months, so you have to plan for the long term. Refinement is everything.
4. You’ve said the most important tool in your kit is common sense. What else should designers be using more of?
Common sense really does go a long way! But honestly, you can’t go wrong with a sketchbook.
My advice to designers is learn to draw. It’s still the quickest way to get an idea across. We’ve overcomplicated the creative process in some ways. Sketching gets you back to communicating fast and freely.
And don’t forget to experiment. It matters so much. You have to be able to see the journey of an idea, not just the end result. That’s how you build intuition and stay curious, which are immensely valuable traits, especially in strategy.
5. You’ve worked with everyone from the Royal Navy to TfL to pre-schoolers. How do you adapt your approach across such wildly different audiences?
I always start by finding the source of truth - talking to the people who actually live and breathe the thing you’re working on.
You have to understand the system you’re designing for. That means consulting everyone from juniors to the C-suite, and looking at primary, secondary and tertiary users. If I’m designing for students, I’ll spend the most time with them, but I’ll also talk to parents, teachers, schools - anyone who influences their experience.
When you start to see the common threads in what people say, that’s where the design direction reveals itself.
6. Taking your career to the NXT LVL often means going from execution roles to directing roles. How did you approach that transition, coming from being a designer to a director?
Being a director isn’t what I thought it would be. I used to think it was about being the person with the answers, but actually it’s probably the opposite.
Now I see my role as a facilitator. I’m there to support, to open up space for other people’s ideas, to help them find new ways of thinking. You stop being the one doing the work and start being the one who helps everyone else do it better. It’s about creating the conditions for creativity to happen.
7. You’ve talked about collaboration being at the heart of innovation. What have you learned about getting teams to work together creatively, especially when everyone’s coming from different disciplines?
Collaboration is everything. The best projects are when you’ve got designers, strategists and developers all solving the same problem from different angles. The push-pull from everyone’s ideas and expertise really helps deliver something of real value.
What I’ve learned is that you need a shared language. “Design” means something completely different to each of those people, so my job is often to translate to make sure everyone’s actually hearing each other.
Once people understand what others bring to the table, it stops being a competition and becomes co-creation. That’s where the magic happens.
8. Sometimes the most useful work never makes headlines. What’s a project that meant a lot to you - not because of the brand or the scale, but the impact it had?
I’m lucky enough now to only take on projects I believe in, but one that really stuck with me was the TfL “Be Nice To Each Other” campaign. The goal was to encourage commuters to be kinder, and it started just with posters, but we pushed it way beyond that. It was beautiful, but honestly quite scary at times. It felt like a lot of responsibility because it was a campaign reaching so many people, but it was a privilege.
9. AI is changing the way products are imagined, built and iterated. Where do you think human-centred design still has the edge? And where do we need to let go?
AI is the best toy ever. I’ve been working with it for more than ten years, but ChatGPT changed everything. It made people comfortable talking to a machine - and that’s an incredible piece of design in itself.
I use it as my “first draft machine”. It’s great for getting things moving, but it also creates a lot of sludge. You’ve got to take moral responsibility for how you use it.
Everyone should be trained in ethical AI. Not just the technical side, but the awareness of consequences. The more conscious we are, the better the outcomes will be.
10. Final thought — what’s your hot take on the design industry right now?
Stop imitating stuff.
We’re stuck in a loop of copying what’s already out there, and that kills originality. The best ideas come from different cultures, from unexpected places, from people who aren’t following trends.
If everything looks the same, nothing stands out.
Connect with Dom over on LinkedIn.