Johnny Por Taing – Creative Director & Designer

Johnny Por Taing

Creative Director & Designer

I’m a Creative Director and Designer based in Brooklyn, New York. I've had the honor of working alongside some of the best at some of the best. Over the past 15+ years, I've teamed up with Compass, Harry's, Collins, Teachable, Interbrand, Huge, and Pentagram just to name a few.

I help brands build and expand their marketing and creative ecosystem with design scalability as the focal point and tangible business results as the core outcome. I am the true sum of many parts and a believer that collaboration is key to the greatest creative solutions.

Get in touch if you think I can help your organization in a meaningful way.

Selected Works

① Compass

② Harry's

③ Teachable

④ Target

⑤ Flamingo

⑥ Past Work

Selected Works ↓

Compass:

Design Scalability for an End-to-End Real Estate Platform

As Creative Director, I was responsible for the Compass brand on a National level and all of its regional manifestation across the Compass creative ecosystem.

I established brand guidelines, systems, and frameworks to empower our designers and to create high brand standards and integrity for our channels.

I helped craft a brand architecture system for our ever-growing portfolio of internal and external sub-brands to create order across our business units.

We supported an ever-growing number of agents with bespoke brands to uniquely position their businesses. I provided creative direction to our 100+ design team to craft one-of-a-kind marks for our agents at a high quality, expediently. We created over 2000 logos for our agents.

We developed a tool that collected all of our logos – used and unused – so we could document our work as well as make unused logos available to other designers to leverage. All logos were tagged upon upload to create a clear and simple search capability.

We also developed a logo workbook, a swipe-questionnaire tool that helped us capture our agent's desired aesthetics and information in order to kick the work off.

Our agents loved the gamification of the tool. It saved our designers thousands of hours of face-to-face meetings and further simplified our process.

To further work efficiency, we created a real estate sign builder tool that consolidated a fragmented and broken process across 20+ states into one seamless centralized process. It saved agents money and made Compass millions in additional revenue.

We tried reinventing the real estate sign by making it smart and connected. We worked with Aruliden to bring it to life.

Credits: Special thanks to the team that contributed to bringing this work to life: Jeff Lai, Paul Vlachou, Matt Spangler, Gabe Benzur, Amy Wiggins, Jessica Roberts, Meeta Panesar, Andrew Rutledge, Jen Yuan, Sam Stevens, and anyone I might've missed.

Harry's:

Expanding Shaving to Grooming and Beyond

As Head of Brand Design at Harry's, I led the visual brand's manifestation across every touch point and channel. I helped create rules and systems for the Harry's brand to function in the present and scale into the future.

I led design efforts across all packaging SKUs for Harry's shaving and grooming products.

I created a product architecture that helped Harry's evolve and scale from shaving to many categories within grooming.

I helped launch the first new category expansion from shaving into body. The product architecture system worked out well.

For Pride Month, we created an iridescent handle through a non-finish coloring method. The iridescent coloring of the handle was one-of-a-kind. We worked with illustrators Karl and Craig for the exterior box packaging.

For college back to school, we created a set of razors that conjured the idea of travel and adventure, of leaving home and venturing out on your own.

I worked hand-in-hand with our Industrial Design and Production Teams to bring to life retail structures, in-store merchandising, and in-aisle displays to help bring our narrative to life in stores nationwide.

When we moved into our new 88,000 sq ft office, it needed some love. I worked with our senior creative team to bring to life an office space that people wanted to come to work in… pre-2020.

We commissioned an illustrator to help add some color to our office walls with life-size murals.

The office was so big, people often got lost. So I created some way-finding signage to get everyone where they needed to be.

Credits: Special thanks to the team that contributed to bringing this work to life: Garrett Morin, Frank Zaremba, Scott Newlin, Ryan Dougherty, Julian Green, Dan Carroll, Jeffery Raider, Adrian Johnson, and anyone I might've missed.

Teachable:

Creative Ecosystem for the Creator Economy

I joined Teachable to help them build out a best-in-class internal design department. But first, I had to help them scale out their creative ecosystem. The foundation of any brand is their system of rules and single source of truth – the ever-evolving brand guidelines.

As we flushed out a new visual design, it required us to expand our visual language to function across all of our verticals.

I helped bring to life our first ever brand awareness video spot and we ran it across streaming platforms.

For new campaigns, we crafted new visual devices to anchor different events and challenges we hosted. We applied it to various touch points and channels.

I led the regular maintenance and support of our marketing site in collaboration with our development partners. I also led a whole site CMS migration to new and more robust platform and partner.

Credits: Special thanks to the team that contributed to bringing this work to life: Matt Haggerty, Bethany Cantor, Chloe Curran, and Jacqueline McCollough.

Room Essentials for Target:

Reimagining an Outdated Private Label

Target approached our team at Collins to help them reimagine their biggest, most out-dated private label, Room Essentials. It was their first major private label modernization effort.

We crafted a simple, clean identity for them. The whimsy and playfulness are carefully baked into the nuances of the wordmark.

Our packaging solution leveraged a design system that utilized a clean Swiss grid with dramatic pops of color in the product photography style. This system was created to flex across a suite of products and packaging forms in the thousands.

We were eager to help Target attract design savvy young adults who craved the sensibility of designer furniture and decor but were more budget conscious.

Our reimagination of Room Essential led Target to modernize a suite of private labels across their business units.

Credits: Special thanks to the team that contributed to bringing this work to life: Ben Crick, Brian Collins, and Leland Maschmeyer.

Flamingo:

Leveraging Harry's to Expand into Women's Shaving

We created Flamingo to modernize an aging category with a breath of fresh air. We wanted to create a brand that would resonate with women in the most inclusive way. We leveraged our experience with Harry's to bring this to life.

We aimed to create a playful and whimsical brand that was neither too youthful or too serious. But it had to have a strong presence in DTC and on the retail shelf.

Credits: Special thanks to the team that contributed to bringing this work to life: Rebecca Lim, Alizée Freudenthal, and Garrett Morin.

Past Work: The Formative Years

It was an honor to be able to bring to life a monograph of Keith Haring's work in collaboration with Rizzoli and Jeffrey Deitch. Dream project is an understatement.

I spent a good deal of my early career crafting brand identities and their respective design ecosystems. It set me up to better understand the brand landscape and how this foundational work trickles into every channel, vertical, and touch point.

These are examples of some of the identities I've helped bring to life over the years. They range from fashion to real estate, hospitality to home decor, and more.