Creative Director Berlin — Content Strategy for Musicians & Artists

Creative Director Berlin — Content Strategy for Musicians & Artists

There is a version of creative direction that is purely aesthetic — choose the font, approve the shot list, sign off on the layout. That's not what I do.

The version I practice is rooted in the belief that a musician, artist, or cultural brand's visual and content identity should be a direct extension of their actual practice — not a layer applied on top of it. It should be built with the same rigour as the work itself, and it should compound over time rather than reset with every release cycle.

I'm Aaron Jack, a creative director and photographer based in Berlin. My work spans editorial publishing (150+ global outlets including the New York Times, TIME, Vanity Fair, Forbes, CNN, BBC, and NPR), fine art (Gallery Art Nova Berlin, Chateau Orquevaux, FIT New York), and over a decade of sustained content strategy and creative direction for musicians and artists. I trained under Lois Greenfield in New York and hold a BFA in Industrial Design, Magna Cum Laude, from Rochester Institute of Technology — a background that shapes how I approach every project: systematically, with attention to structure, and with human behaviour as the starting point.

Ten years, one artist, one result that matters

The clearest case study for what long-term creative direction looks like in practice is my decade-plus partnership with jazz musician Richie Cole and the Pittsburgh Alto Madness Orchestra. Starting in 2015, I served as his media coordinator — building and managing the complete visual and content infrastructure of his public presence. Photography. Film. Graphic design. Album cover design. Social media strategy and platform management. Thousands of original media assets across a decade.

In 2018, working alongside Mark Perna Music, the album we built the visual campaign around charted at number three on the jazz charts. The photography and design were not decoration — they were part of a content strategy that made a working musician visible to audiences who increasingly require visual fluency before they'll commit to a listen.

That relationship is still active. It is what a decade of trust between a creative director and an artist actually produces.

Creative direction at scale

In 2021 I served as visual identity architect and creative director for a Clubhouse concert series with musician Christen Lien. Three three-hour concerts per week, five weeks, with audiences of 1,500 to 3,000 people per session — consistently ranking in the top ten rooms on the platform. Clubhouse was an audio-only platform, which meant the entire visual identity had to be built from the only visual element available: profile pictures. Working within that constraint, I created immersive experiences that functioned simultaneously as digital fashion, healing journey markers, and community belonging signals.

That project taught me something important: it's not about controlling every output. It's about establishing a vocabulary precise enough that every output — including live and spontaneous ones — still reads as coherent.

What I offer

Content strategy and creative direction for musicians, artists, and cultural brands — on a project basis or as a long-term retainer partnership.

This includes: visual identity development, photography and film, social media strategy and production, album and release campaign creative, editorial and press asset management, platform-specific content architecture, and the kind of long-term thinking that keeps a creative practice visible between releases and not just during them.

I work with artists at every career stage, from emerging Berlin-based musicians to internationally touring acts. The work is always grounded in the same question: what does this person's practice actually mean, and how do we make that legible to the people who need to encounter it?

Content strategy retainer partnerships start with a brief conversation. Commercial and brand creative direction is quoted per project. For ongoing artist and musician partnerships, I'm interested in long-term relationships, not one-off commissions.

To discuss a project or partnership — contact via this site with a brief description of what you're working on and where you are in the process.

Published in: The New York Times · TIME · Vanity Fair · Forbes · CNN · BBC · NPR · Bloomberg · Vice · Wired

Based in Berlin · Available across Europe and worldwide