I build brands, and the creative teams behind them
From a startup’s Series A to a tech company’s growth past $1B to a multi-billion-dollar industry leader, I’ve led brand and digital at every stage.
Who is Jim?
Jim MacLeod is a creative and brand leader who has spent more than 20 years building brands and the teams behind them in B2B tech and higher education. He currently leads creative at a PE-backed enterprise SaaS company. Before that, he led digital experience at Northeastern University, served as VP, Marketing Digital Experience and Design at EBSCO with a 20-person team across 30+ countries, and built Extreme Networks’ brand team from scratch as the company grew from $300 million to more than $1 billion. He wrote The Visual Marketer (Tilt Publishing, 2025), a #1 Amazon bestseller in Design and Graphic Arts that made CMI’s 2026 Recommended Reading List, and publishes Marketing by Design, a weekly newsletter read by more than 1,000 marketers and designers.
The logo is usually the easy part of a rebrand. The hard part is getting every department and every agency to tell the same story on launch day, and still telling it a year later. That’s why I spend as much time on systems and team structure as I do on the brand itself. Consistency is more important than creativity.
30+ countries
One brand across EBSCO’s 15 localized sites
240%
conversion rate increase at Mobeus
$300M → $1B+
Extreme Networks’ growth while I built its brand team
#1 bestseller
The Visual Marketer, Amazon Design and Graphic Arts
What I Lead
Most of my work sits where brand strategy meets the operations that make it stick
Brand Strategy & Positioning
Deciding how a company shows up in its market, then building the message and visual language that make it recognizable. I’ve done it through multiple mergers, a startup’s first big fundraise, and a global university brand.
Creative Teams That Scale
Hiring, structuring, and mentoring creative teams, and designing the intake, review, and agency models that let good work move fast. I built Extreme Networks’ team from nothing and led a 20-person global team at EBSCO.
Design Systems for Big, Distributed Brands
Guidelines, templates, and component systems that keep hundreds of sites and contributors consistent without a designer reviewing every page.
AI in the Creative Workflow
Putting AI where it speeds up production without flattening the brand. I write about this every week, and I build my own tools, including Aeto and AEO-visibility tools, to test what actually works.
“A creative genius”
– Huffington Post
The Visual Marketer
I wrote The Visual Marketer for marketers who make visuals without a design background. It became a #1 Amazon bestseller in Design and Graphic Arts and made CMI’s 2026 Recommended Reading List.
Writing it meant explaining 20 years of creative judgment to people who never went to art school. That turns out to be most of the job when you lead creative inside a marketing team.
This book is not for designers, it’s for marketers. This book is an excellent resource … to break down what works, what didn’t, and why.
Joe Pulizzi, Bestselling author of Content Inc. and Epic Content Marketing
I wouldn’t hire a marketer without making this required reading. He does a great job at connecting marketing knowledge with the visual aspects we need to understand to market effectively.
A. Lee Judge
Founder, Content Monsta
It’s a great read. I’m Halfway through but has changed the way I look at my one pagers and pitch decks already!
Tyler Stambaugh
Co-founder, Magnetiq
It’s enough information to be insanely helpful, but you don’t drown people in theory they’ll never get through/apply. Highly recommend.
Bill Schick
Agency founder, FCMO
This is just breathtaking in its usefulness. This book is almost encyclopedic in its scope. Highly recommended, and I don’t do that a lot.
Mark Schaefer
Keynote speaker, marketing strategist, bestselling author
Marketing by Design
A weekly newsletter on AI, design, and marketing for more than 1,000 marketers and creative leaders. One email with the news worth your time and my take on what it means for your team.
Let’s Chat
I’m always up for a good conversation about brand and creative leadership. Reach out about speaking, podcasts, or the newsletter, or just to compare notes.