Michelle Carnes
Creative Director. Brand Builder. Unruly Artist.
For more than 25 years, I’ve worked across identity, campaigns, art, and environments — moving between strategy and making to turn ideas into something people can actually see, feel, enter, and remember.
At the center of my work is one skill expressed through different mediums: I uncover the character of something and give it form. Sometimes that becomes a visual identity. Sometimes a campaign, a collection of original art, an installation, or an entire branded environment.
My background as both a creative director and practicing artist shapes the way I approach that work. I bring strategic clarity and creative judgment to complex projects, but I also rely on intuition, emotion, cultural awareness, and a strong visual point of view — qualities I see not as decoration, but as creative intelligence.
I’m especially interested in the places where disciplines overlap: where brand becomes atmosphere, art introduces human presence, and a space begins to express the character of the people or organization behind it.
Through Carnes Creative, I lead projects directly from early thinking through creative direction and implementation, bringing in trusted specialists when additional production, fabrication, technology, or installation expertise is needed.
The medium changes. The purpose doesn’t: find what is genuinely distinctive and give it a form people can recognize, connect with, and remember.
EDUCATION
MFA — School of the Art Institute of Chicago
BA — Visual Communications, Colorado Institute of Art
“The best creative work doesn’t manufacture personality. It uncovers what is already singular — then gives it a form people can recognize, experience, and remember.”
What I Bring to the Room
Creative judgment
1
Knowing what belongs — and what doesn’t.
Strategic clarity
2
Finding the idea underneath the noise.
Visual storytelling
3
Turning abstract ideas into something people can see and feel.
Cross-disciplinary thinking
4
Connecting brand, art, environment, culture, and audience.
Hands-on leadership
5
Comfortable in the executive conversation — and equally comfortable getting into the work.
A distinct point of view
6
Artist-led, human, culturally aware, and unafraid of personality.
Selected Experience
Carnes Creative — Founder + Executive Creative Director
Independent creative practice spanning brand identity, campaigns, environmental storytelling, experiential design, and site-specific art.
Sebastopol Center for the Arts — Visual Communications Director
Led the organization’s first unified brand identity in its 40-year history, creative direction, environmental brand, and integrated communications.
CIG-PR — Creative Lead
Led identity, campaign, public-facing, and environmental work for major civic, transportation, hospitality, and consumer brands — including RTD FasTracks, the City of Wheat Ridge, Qdoba Mexican Eats, and the Westin / Denver International Airport expansion.
Earlier Creative Leadership
Art Director and senior design roles across publishing, technology, entertainment, consumer brands, and cultural organizations — including Denver Magazine, E.W. Scripps Company, Stortz Design, FloweSong, and Octopi Commerce.
Selected Recognition
3CMA Savvy Award — City of Wheat Ridge Brand Redesign
Colorado Press Association Awards — Best Page Design + Best Use of Color in an Ad, Broomfield Enterprise
Creative and fine-art work has also been featured nationally and presented in connection with NBC News, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, and Google Intersection.
Selected Clients + Collaborators across hospitality, culture, civic and public space, entertainment, retail, technology, and lifestyle brands
From the People I’ve Worked With
"An art campaign strategy for Qdoba® restaurants was to visually communicate an "art persona” for the restaurant chain. I worked with Michelle to help with the brand persona of “The Quentessa". Michelle created over fifty original works of art to be reproduced throughout their national restaurant locations. The Chief Marketing Officer and design team were thrilled that Michelle’s work captured the essence and persona of their brand quickly and intuitively. The work she did was rigorous, creative, on time and budget and the client was extremely pleased."
— KENDALL PETERSON, Founder,
THERE SQUARED, LLC"Michelle has provided us with something so valuable to us as a team. We look at the work every day and we are reminded of where we came from, who we are, and what we can achieve together. It is everything that we had hoped we would get. The works have become a centerpiece for our offices, our personalities are right there for all to see and we love it! Working with Michelle was so easy, it felt so effortless to get our thoughts out, the best bit is seeing those thoughts translated into art that we all identify with so easily. Inspiring work and a pleasure to collaborate with."
— WAYNE SCHOLES, Founder,
RED TOUCH MEDIA, INC."I have had the pleasure of working with Michelle through my agency in Denver for many years. Michelle is one of the most brilliant, creative professionals I know. She has a unique ability to understand what a person is trying to express and deliver the perfect approach to hit the mark and meet their artistic visual goals."
- KRISTI ESTES, Principal,
CIG PUBLIC RELATIONS, LLC