Michelle Carnes, MFA
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 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, original artwork, an installation, or an entire branded environment.

My background as both a creative director and practicing artist shapes how I work. I bring strategic clarity and creative judgment to complex challenges, but also intuition, cultural awareness, emotion, and a strong visual point of view. I see those qualities not as decoration, but as part of the intelligence behind the work.

I’m most interested in the places where disciplines overlap — where brand becomes atmosphere, art introduces human presence, and space begins to express the character of the people or organization behind it.

Through Carnes Creative, I lead work directly from early thinking through creative direction and implementation, bringing in trusted specialists when fabrication, production, 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

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, feel and remember.

Integrated thinking

4

Bringing brand, art, environment, culture, and audience into one coherent idea.

Hands-on leadership

5

Comfortable in the executive conversation — and equally comfortable in 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
Founder-led creative practice working across brand identity, campaigns, experiential and environmental design, cultural programming, and site-specific art — leading work from strategy and concept through creative direction and implementation.

Sebastopol Center for the Arts — Visual Communications + Marketing Director
Held a dual leadership role spanning brand and marketing for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization — creating its first unified visual identity system and leading creative direction, integrated marketing, digital experience, exhibitions, environmental design, fundraising communications, and audience development.

CIG Public Relations — Creative Director + Founding Creative Lead
Built and led the agency’s creative function across civic, transportation, hospitality, consumer, and experiential work, including RTD FasTracks, the City of Wheat Ridge, Qdoba, and the Westin / Denver International Airport expansion. Led identity systems, campaigns, environmental communications, public-facing design, and major RFP creative.

Earlier Creative Leadership
Art direction and senior creative roles spanning technology, entertainment, hospitality, retail, consumer brands, and cultural organizations, including Octopi Commerce, Stortz Design, and FlowerSong — with work across branding, campaigns, digital, packaging, environments, and customer experience.

Selected Recognition

3CMA Savvy Award — City of Wheat Ridge Brand Redesign
Governor’s Award — Longmont Downtown Development Authority
3CMA Award — Longmont Downtown Development Authority
Colorado Press Association Awards — Best Page Design + Best Use of Color in an Ad, Broomfield Enterprise

Creative and fine-art work has also received national visibility through projects, exhibitions, and cultural events connected 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

"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

"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

case studies