Fjord, the leading digital design agency that has offices in the UK, USA, Germany, Spain and Finland, has appointed Curt Collinsworth as its new Managing Director in Helsinki. Iñaki Amate, the previous MD, has been promoted to Regional Managing Director. In addition, Fjord has appointed Norbert Kurz as Service Design Director, Eberhard Frank as Business Development Director in Berlin, and Scott Ewings as Business Development Director in London. The changes reflect Fjord’s continued growth and investment in its strong management team.
With over 15 years experience in digital design, branding and leadership, Curt Collinsworth is joining Fjord Helsinki at an exciting time with plans to build on a period of uninterrupted growth and expand both locally and regionally into Sweden, the Baltic states and Russia. With previous global experience from San Francisco to Moscow (where he learned to speak Russian), Curt has seen through the dot com explosion, run his own design company, and worked with leading brand such as T-Mobile, Yello Strom and Nero at top agencies frog and Publicis (see full biography in Notes to Editors). In line with Fjord’s specialism in innovative design and digital transformation, Curt’s focus is on developing highly usable, branded and unique experiences across multiple platforms including desktop, mobile and web.
Scott Ewings has a 20 year track record in creativity, innovation and graphic design. Scott works to align business propositions and operations around customer-centric concepts to drive specific business transformation and associated benefits. Prior to joining Fjord, Scott was a Consulting Director for Amdocs Consulting. Before Amdocs, Scott was General Manager Strategy and Planning for Vodafone Australia in Sydney, and has founded, developed and managed a number of boutique consulting and development practices.
Eberhard Frank, Business Development Director at Fjord Berlin, brings strong sales and account management expertise. His focus will be on delivering business value, maintaining relationships with local and multi-national accounts, and offering clients insight, inspiration, adding value and control over new initiatives. Prior to Fjord, Eberhard worked in marketing and consulting services across several big infrastructure and services projects before moving into sales at Daimler where he had global P&L responsibility for the IT services business. Most recently, Eberhard was Business Development Director at frog design.
Norbert Kurz, Service Design Director at Fjord Berlin, has over 9 years experience in product development and user experience design. Norbert will lead the Fjord Berlin team through the conceptual and design stages of innovative new products and services. Prior to Fjord, Norbert was Associate Creative Director at frog design, working in numerous studios around the globe.
Olof Schybergson, Fjord CEO, said,
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“It’s with pleasure that we welcome Curt to the management team in Helsinki – where his experience in digital design and innovation will prove invaluable, and we very much look forward to working with him to further grow the office locally and into the region. Fjord continues to deliver transformational digital services for its clients, and with the further support of Norbert, Eberhard and Scott in our Berlin and London offices, I believe we are on course for another strong year.”
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Curt Collinsworth, Fjord Helsinki Managing Director, said,
““I’m really excited to be joining Fjord and in particular to be focusing on Finland and this exciting region. Fjord is the hottest company in Helsinki, well known for genuinely understanding the importance of digital media and design – and indeed where competitors are being forced to cut staff in this difficult economic climate, we are looking to recruit the best and the brightest to join us. I look forward to learning Finnish, brushing up on my Russian, and getting going.”
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Fjord is a leading digital design agency with long standing experience in the telecommunications and media sectors. Fjord works with visionary clients to create transformational services that are driven by one guiding principle: elegant simplicity.
Fjord was founded in 2001 and is led by Mike Beeston (Chairman), Olof Schybergson (CEO) and Mark Curtis (Member of the Board). Christian Lindholm joined the founders in 2007 as Managing Partner. Mike is a veteran of the advertising industry and founder of what became Razorfish London, while Olof is a design guru and former Creative Director at Razorfish. An internationally recognised visionary in the mobile industry, Christian’s previous experience includes management positions at Yahoo! and Nokia. Together, the Fjord team has a deep understanding of the context behind working different screens and the dynamic of mobile.
Fjord has worked on flagship projects providing strategic direction and design for major brands, including Nokia, Ericsson, Telefonica and Yahoo!. Fjord was also instrumental in bringing the hugely successful award-winning BBC iPlayer to mobile.
The agency has consistently experienced over 50% profit growth year-on-year for the past four years. In December 2008, Beringea Limited, the international private equity firm, made a growth capital investment in Fjord.
Fjord has offices in Berlin, Helsinki, London, Madrid and New York.
For more information visit us at fjordnet.com
Curt started his career in Moscow, Russia in 1993 working for BBDO and McCann-Erickson. After several years there he moved back to the states and San Francisco and started his focus on digital design during the peaks and valleys of the dotcom explosion, during which time he worked for numerous agencies and had his own design company, Morphology. Curt then moved to Seattle to start a digital department within Publicis in the West focusing on business with T-Mobile. Curt then moved to frog design in Stuttgart, Germany as Creative Director and worked with clients such as Yello Strom and Nero developing highly usable, branded and unique experiences across multiple platforms including desktop, mobile and web. As Managing Director of Fjord's Helsinki office, he looks forward to bringing all this experience together, learning Finnish and getting to speak Russian again with our neighbors to the East.
Eberhard Frank is the Business Development Director at Fjord Berlin. With his sales background and account management expertise his focus is on delivering business value, and maintaining relationships with local and multi-national accounts. Eberhard’s role at Fjord is about insights, inspirations, adding value and putting clients in control of new initiatives.
Having started his professional life in marketing, he then worked in Consulting and Services, driving programs forward. After several big infrastructure and services projects, Eberhard moved into sales, and was assigned global P&L responsibility for the IT services business with Daimler – and driving new propositions and business models for the company. Following an assignment with a corporate telecommunications account he then started developing new business for global creative agency, frog design.
Previously, Eberhard worked at HP as Global Account Principal, at IBM as Executive Services Principal and at frog design as Business Development Director.
Eberhard holds a premium engineering degree in aerodynamics and aeronautics by the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany. He likes cooking, cycling, dancing, fast cars and motor cycles.
With over 9 years of experience in product development and user experience design, Norbert Kurz is Service Design Director at Fjord’s Berlin studio. Norbert uses his background to identify market opportunities and develop new products and services - basing the process on human factors, business insights and a deep interest in creating human, relevant solutions. At Fjord, he leads teams through the conceptual and design stages of innovative new products and services.
Having started his professional life as a carpenter, Norbert then became a designer and creative lead in the digital and product domain. He conceptualises and visualises life, processes and initiatives for clients and the design team, driving them to a common understanding and thereby enabling concepts and energising the design workflow.
Prior to Fjord, Norbert was Associate Creative Director at frog design, working in numerous studios around the globe.
Norbert holds a degree with distinction in MultiMediaArt from the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria.
Scott has a long track record in creativity and innovation. From a background in graphic design, Scott’s primary experience is aligning business propositions and operations around customer-centric concepts to drive specific business transformation and associated benefits.
Prior to joining Fjord, Scott was a Consulting Director for Amdocs Consulting, leading the practice Customer Experience Management proposition with clients such as Vodafone, T Mobile, Virgin Media and BT. Before Amdocs, Scott was General Manager Strategy and Planning for Vodafone Australia in Sydney, where he was responsible for defining and executing a 3 year transformation strategy for Customer Experience, across both Consumer and Business segments, and covering all customer touchpoints – Internet , Retail Store, Account Management, Contact Centre (Onshore, Outsourced and Offshore), and Voice Recognition.
Prior to Vodafone Scott built a significant track record in initiating and managing innovative technology and consulting programmes, and in application development/integration, having founded, developed and managed a number of boutique consulting and development practices.
For further information, please contact:
Cordelia Meacher, cordelia at if-communications.com +44 (0) 7961 311080
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