brand. art. space.
Artist-led.
Spatial.
Human.
Rooted in identity + connection.
Identity Brought to Life.
Carnes Creative is an artist-led brand and creative direction practice shaping how organizations look, communicate, and connect across identity, campaigns, environments, and art-led experiences — creating work that feels distinct, vibrant, and human.
I approach a brand as something people feel — through imagery, language, atmosphere, movement, and design. My background as both a creative director and fine artist allows me to bring structure and clarity together with the visual character and emotional resonance that make a brand memorable, expressive, and alive.
brand.identify.
art.create.
space.become.
brand.
Strategy, identity,
campaigns, and creative direction.
art.
Original imagery, art direction, and site-specific artwork.
space.
Art-led placemaking, environmental graphics, wayfinding and design.
Featured Brand Work
Brand Identity + creative leadership
Sebastopol Center for the Arts
Built the organization’s first unified identity, marketing and brand strategy in four decades and carried it across exhibitions, programs, communications, signage, digital platforms, and physical spaces.
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National art-led brand campaign
Qdoba Mexican Eats
Developed an original brand persona collection of 50 artworks for a campaign implemented across restaurant environments nationwide.
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Brand experience + environmental design
Red Touch Media
Shaped a technology and entertainment brand across workplace design, campaigns, events, partnerships, and experiential environments.
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Municipal identity + citywide implementation
City of Wheat Ridge
Created an award-winning public-facing identity through community engagement and carried it across signage, vehicles, uniforms, publications, parks, and civic spaces.
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Artist. Creative Director. Brand Builder.
I’m Michelle Carnes, founder of Carnes Creative. For more than 20 years, I’ve shaped distinctive identities, campaigns, and environments through a practice grounded in both creative direction and fine art. I’m drawn to the singular quality within a brand, persona, or place — the character, history, tension, or point of view that cannot be replicated. From there, I build a visual language that feels specific, expressive, and lived in. What inspires me most is creating a sense of place around an identity — a world people can recognize, enter, and remember.
Selected Clients, Projects + Collaborators
Let’s reveal the story beneath the surface.
Brand. Art. Space.
This is where identity begins to take form.