simon rolland

Creative & Art Director · Brand Systems & Visual Architecture

SIMONROLLAND

Every satisfying visual system runs on invisible structure. Get the architecture right, and what remains is pure intention.

Brand System Design · Campaign Art Direction · Visual Production

DIRECTION · PRODUCTION · SYSTEM

— Operational Context

Creative & Art Direction

Visual Production

Systems

Brand systems, campaign strategy, visual identity architecture

Image & Motion Production

Light & Optical

Direction

Photography, video, motion design / Post-production pipeline / On-location to final grade

Enterprise Agency Infrastructure

Enterprise Agency

Infrastructure

Sid Lee / Multi-Stakeholder Governance
Six-Figure Budget Compliance (CAN/US)
Bilingual Legal Frameworks en/fr

Extreme Environment Practice

Raw light / Honest materials / High-altitude field work / No technical shortcuts

— The Discipline

Direction and Production. One practice.

Fifteen years directing and producing visual work across brand, agency, and enterprise contexts. Strategy, identity, production — always conceived and delivered as one system.

The direction is precise because the production knowledge is structural. Understanding the full chain — from brief to deliverable, light to legal — means creative decisions hold under real conditions.

Based in Western North Carolina. Available remotely and on-site.

— Featured Work

Featured Projects

2011 — Present

COGNaTIVE:

FULL-STACK CREATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE

Zero creative infrastructure to autonomous operation in ten months. Studio build, brand system, asset pipeline, and production SOPs — designed to run without me.

CIELE:

DIRECTED PERFORMANCE CAPTURE

Athletic movement against Montreal's brutalist geometry. A directed visual language where architecture, light, and kinetic energy serve one narrative.

Vuse:

High-Compliance Visual Strategy

Federal tobacco restrictions transformed into visual opportunity. Abstract narrative system deployed across all physical and digital touchpoints.

GO POTLUCK:

SYSTEMIC BRAND ARCHITECTURE

From kitchen-table recipe to multi-channel commercial system. Full-stack brand development: culinary R&D, digital architecture, and visual identity.

AUTEUR PRACTICE:

SYSTEMIC STUDY OF FORM

Stillness, motion, and raw light — three disciplines of observation. The human variable negotiating with governed environments. Observed, not manufactured.

BÙ ORGANIC WINE:

RAW MOMENTS // STILL PRODUCT

Classical portraits meet a real hand and a glass of wine. A raw, observational collision between art history and the present moment. No retouching. No commercial polish.

PROD. ARCHIVE

LEAD_PRODUCTION_INDEX

Production is the management of friction between the idea and the terrain . This archive documents the transition from full-scale commercial governance to agile, raw interventions . We prioritize the architecture of the frame over the polish of the ad.

Entre deux Feux

Curatorial Project

Built a gallery from nothing inside a raw industrial shell in Griffintown. Co-directed the spatial design, wrote the manifesto, and curated emerging multidisciplinary artists into a single cohesive exposition. The structure was designed to disappear — leaving only the work and the dialogue between pieces.

— Collaborative Field

Selected Collaborations

Brand partnerships, on-set direction, collaborative production, content direction.

Tangente Danse — Editorial photography

Royal Robin — Social content production

eBay — On-set production lead

BCIT — Didactical content, visual research, video production

We Are Sun Good — Social media photography

Osprey — Social media photography

Outdoor Industry Association — Photography, video campaign

Agence &CO Collaborateurs — Motion design

Varilux — Motion design, filming

Economax — Motion design

Hexagram UQAM — R&D in art and technology, full pipeline render implementation

GrupMov — Lead 3D artist, 3D mapping projection, mocap, traditional animation

Cane Creek Cycling Components — Photography campaign

MIND · MACHINE · MOMENT

— Three Theaters

One Mind, Three Theaters

01 — The Mind

Strategic Vision

I start with the constraint, not the canvas. Budget, legal framework, technical infrastructure, stakeholder logic — the architecture of the problem defines the work before any creative direction begins. I direct the intent first. Everything downstream inherits that clarity.

02 — The Machine

Production Architecture

The production is not separate from the direction. The same person who sets the frame understands the codec, the grade, the pipeline, and the legal clearance it has to survive. That structural range is not a list of skills — it is a single discipline, built across fifteen years of making the full chain hold.

03 — The Moment

Authentic Validation

The proof is not a single deliverable — it's the system holding under real conditions. A launch event where every touchpoint speaks the same language. A brand that survives legal review and still feels alive. A studio that runs long after I've left. From thesis to final grade, what ships is what was intended. The moment, intact.

AVAILABLE · REMOTE · ON-SITE

— The Practitioner

From Constraint to Proof.

Fifteen years inside visual systems — building them, running them, inventing new ones. Sid Lee. Hexagram R&CO. humanise., From agency R&D to production architecture, always with hands in the work: shooting, filming, coding, animating, curating. That range built a structural literacy: the ability to govern an entire chain because I've operated every link in it.

Operational Fluency

Creative Direction · Art Direction · Strategic Vision · Production Architecture · Multi-Medium Governance · Brand System Design · Enterprise Governance · Team & Talent Leadership · Research & Development

A musician doesn't fight the instrument. The constraint is where the voice comes from.

Western North Carolina · Available Remote · On-site Worldwide

Ready to Start

Let's Talk.

Tell me about your project. I read every message and respond directly — no auto-reply, no assistant.

Write me →

— Or write directly

Behance

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CREATIVE DIRECTION · VISUAL PRODUCTION

Available for Projects

Let's Build Something

Behance

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