Tony Yang, Toronto-based Art Director with 12+ years’ experience, specializing in concept-to-execution campaign direction, brand storytelling, and design systems for agencies, global brands, and media.

About Me

I’m a multidisciplinary designer and creative lead with 12+ years of experience shaping brands, campaigns, merchandise, content systems, and e-commerce creative across sports, entertainment, automotive, retail, beauty, and consumer products.

My work combines creative strategy with hands-on execution. I’ve built brands from the ground up, launched product lines, developed visual identities, directed content, designed packaging, created social-first campaigns, and managed e-commerce experiences that connect creative ideas to measurable business outcomes.

Most recently, I’ve been building Bardo Craft, an independent creative studio focused on original sumo-inspired merchandise and social-first storytelling. The project brings new perspectives to a traditional Japanese sport through contemporary design, fan insight, humor, motion storytelling, and cultural context — generating 303K+ views, 106K+ accounts reached, 22K+ interactions, 5K+ profile visits, and +859 net followers within 90 days.

Previously, I co-founded and creatively led Light Moses, a top 10 Amazon automotive lighting brand that sold 50,000+ units across North America. I led brand identity, packaging, product storytelling, Amazon creative, social content, and video production, helping improve sales by 17% and ROAS by 33%.

I bring a mix of creative instinct, commercial thinking, and global perspective to every project.

Ontario themed poster prints from Tony Yang - Brain Damage Creative, including "Ontario, Yours to discover" "Markham Fair" "Open range wild horses" "Oakville" "Toronto Blue Jays" "Canadian christmas"

With AI, the technical part of design is going to mean less and less. The only advantage that human creatives have left, is our perspectives. Each one of us is a unique outcome of the sum of low possibility events, accumulated through time. As creatives, the mission is to champion those perspectives, tell real stories, and evoke real emotions. In the end of the day, we humans are emotional animals.

There are 3 types of people that does creative work: technician, entertainer and creative.‍ ‍

A technician is a master of crafts, most of our favorite artists and designers fall in this category. It is such a joy to watch them, because they are perfecting something so unique. Since they are so good at it, and all this attention can be profitable, they usually stick to that.

A entertainer is a showman(person), a Conor McGregor type. You either love or hate them, they make the big bucks, even if you think Balloon Dogs are shit. We hate them because we can’t be them, they have something you can’t learn, the power to bring people together.

Lastly, creative.

A creative is a Swiss army knife, it doesn’t look pretty, but it has enough tools to handle most of the day. If necessary, you can even make new tools with it. Creatives are problem solvers, a bank manager might just be as great of a creative as an agency CCO, they just express their creativity differently.

I think it also come from experience, becoming a creative. Once you eat enough shit in life, there is no choice but to look for new ways. Eventually, it becomes the creative process that can be applied to anything. And with that, comes freedom.