About Catlips Creative

I work with museums, galleries, dance companies, theatre producers and cultural organisations of every size to create design that looks brilliant and communicates clearly. My focus is on clarity, craft and collaboration - making things that not only look good but actually work for the people using them.

Over the past decade I’ve designed campaigns, identities and motion graphics for organisations including the Science Museum Group, the National Gallery, the British Museum, Dance Umbrella, and the Museums + Heritage Awards. I understand the realities of arts marketing, tight budgets, small teams, short deadlines, and how to make design pull its weight in that world.

The name Catlips comes from my cat, Audrey, who has unusually expressive lips for a cat. When I registered my company, it felt right to build a brand that reflected both her personality and my own: curious, adaptable and just a bit cheeky.

Catlips Creative exists to make arts and culture look as exciting as it feels - whether that’s a bold rebrand, a festival campaign, a 3D animation or a quick turnaround for a last-minute event.

Catlips Creative works with kindness, inclusion and curiosity at its core - values we hold ourselves and our collaborators to.

If you’d like to collaborate, I’d love to hear about your project. For larger arts marketing projects, Matt also often collaborates with his wife, Lucy White.

This site is set in Caslips, a typeface designed by Matt White, inspired by Caslon c.1785.

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How I work

Before I went freelance, I spent years inside cultural organisations. One project from that time still says more about how I work than almost anything else.

In 2016, the Science Museum needed a poster for Power UP, a hands-on gaming event. The brief had already defeated two designers. There was no remaining budget for design, so as marketing manager I took it on myself.

The problem was this: a gaming event with no rights to use any recognisable video game characters. No Mario, no Sonic, no Lara Croft. The poster had to say 'gaming' to a family audience without showing a single piece of imagery people would actually recognise. And it needed to work at large format for in-venue and outdoor display, on a tight deadline, with the limited rendering technology I had available.

My solution drew on two things. The 3D isometric style was becoming popular in mobile gaming at the time, which gave me a visual language that felt current and appealing to a younger audience without referencing any specific franchise. And I paired it with lovingly rendered versions of old-school controllers: N64, Dreamcast, the kind of hardware that parents visiting the museum would recognise instantly. The concept was original IP that still triggered nostalgia. It said 'gaming' without borrowing anyone else's characters to do it.

Power UP was originally a two-week event. In 2017, the Science Museum went through a major rebrand led by North, a large design agency. They updated the poster: new brand typeface, new gradient backgrounds. But the concept, the isometric controllers, the layout, the core idea, stayed. It's now a permanent exhibition at the Science Museum, still using the same creative I designed in a marketing office with no design budget.

I think about that project a lot. Not because of the outcome, though that's satisfying. But because it's a clean example of what happens when the person solving the communication problem actually understands the organisation's constraints from the inside. I knew there was no money. I knew the rights situation. I knew the audience. I knew the deadline. And I knew that a poster which looked like every other gaming poster but with the characters removed wouldn't work. The solution had to come from the thinking, not from the assets.

That's what working in-house teaches you. And it's what I bring to every Catlips project.

Values

• Kindness and Clarity – Good design starts with good communication.
• Craft and Curiosity – Every project deserves time, care and exploration.
• Honesty and Flexibility – I value clear expectations and fair working relationships.