Hello! 👋

Hello. I'm Stuart Wilson.

I grew up in Bradford, West Yorkshire, the son of a working-class family with a dad who worked in insurance and a head full of drawings. At 16, when my father's career took the family to a village called Milnthorpe in the South Lakeland fells, I had three GCSEs and a clear idea that I wanted to make things. I left school, started a YTS programme, worked at a sign maker in Hawkshead, moved into the marketing team at Dyke Brothers, then landed a junior design role at Gallagher Mullin Associates, all while studying Art A-Level at Kendal College in the evenings. In 1992 I was accepted into the University of Westminster's Graphic Information Design course. I graduated with First Class Honours and flew to Apple HQ in Cupertino, California, to present in the Apple Design Project 1996 finals.

That is the shape of how I work. Not the most obvious route, but a direct one.

Over 25 years since that first AKQA brief, three things still fire me up every single day. Strategic conceptual thought. Seeing connections that others do not. Creating solutions so targeted that the results blow everybody's mind. Those three things have taken me through digital design, copywriting, brand strategy and creative leadership, working for clients including Nike, Audi, Microsoft, Shell and New Balance, through agencies including AKQA, JWT London, McCann, Havas and Grey. They have contributed to a 66% pitch win rate across more than 50 career pitches. I have led teams ranging from five to 78 people. The brief changes. The drive does not.

In late 2022, those same instincts pointed me somewhere new.

I was an early adopter of generative AI, starting with Midjourney in November 2022 when most of the creative industry was still watching from a distance. That early commitment gave me something rare at senior creative level: over three years of consistent, daily, commercial AI use across a multi-modal stack.

For strategic reasoning, long-form analysis and complex problem solving I work primarily with Claude. ChatGPT is my secondary text tool. Grok, Gemini and Meta AI serve as supplementary models depending on the brief. For visual ideation and concept development I work with Ideogram, Adobe Firefly and Nano Banana, having moved on from Midjourney to platforms that give me faster and more precise output during early-stage creative development. I am currently integrating Vibe Coding into my workflow, extending my capability into AI-assisted code generation.

I do not use these tools for shortcuts. I use them to think better and build better. Football Mind Coach, my cognitive performance system for young players, was built from the ground up with AI as co-pilot: name, positioning, visual identity, messaging architecture, curriculum structure, content strategy and SaaS product roadmap. My consultancy DosTwo operates the same way. AI is structural in how I work, not decorative.

Three years of daily practice has built one specific skill most people at my level do not yet have: knowing how to direct these systems precisely. The output of a generative AI model is proportional to the quality of thinking behind it. I bring a 25-year creative and strategic brain to that task. The result is work that neither human nor machine could reach alone. After all that, I now think of myself as an exceptional curator.

My mates describe me as warm, unflappable and ingenious. A safe pair of hands, which they say as a compliment. Someone with no ego in an industry that lacks nice guys. I will take all of that.

Outside the work I am a father to two teenagers and a lifelong Bradford City & England supporter who followed the team to Germany for the 2006 World Cup. I still play five-a-side for a mental health charity called Talking Football. I am an avid reader. I founded Football Mind Coach after watching my son Oscar go through the Tottenham Hotspur academy system and come out with a visible gap in his psychological preparation. It brings together performance psychology, structured coaching and real-world thinking, the same foundations that run through everything I do professionally. Visit footballmindcoach.co.uk for more.

If you are working through a complex challenge and need clarity, direction or a fresh perspective, I am always open to a conversation.