Most design portfolios are built from one-off projects: a logo here, a website there, a campaign that ran for a season and then ended. The work I’ve done for INEOS in Cologne is the opposite of that. It’s a single relationship that has now run for more than fifteen years, across dozens of pieces, through changes of format, personnel, and technology — and it says more about how I work than any single project could.
You may know the INEOS name from sport: the INEOS Grenadiers cycling team, a share of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team, the INEOS Britannia America’s Cup sailing challenge, a stake in Manchester United, the Grenadier 4x4. But the sport is the visible tip of an industrial giant — INEOS is one of the world’s largest chemical companies, and that is its real business. INEOS in Cologne, where I’ve worked for more than fifteen years, is one of those major chemical sites: part of the industrial core the famous name is built on, not a separate company that happens to share it.
This is the story of that relationship: how it started, what it actually covers, and why I think it lasted.
How it started
It began in 2009, and not with print. The first thing I produced was the online edition of Spektrum, the employee magazine of INEOS Cologne — a flipbook version that brought the printed publication onto the screen. INEOS Cologne is one of Germany’s largest chemical production sites, with roughly 2,500 employees, and Spektrum was the main channel between the company and its people.
That one digital job turned into an ongoing conversation with the communications department. Spektrum was later relaunched as IN.KÖLN, the corporate magazine I designed from 2014 — editions of twenty to forty-eight pages, appearing up to four times a year at first and later twice, covering company news, employee features, site updates, and community content. It ran until it was discontinued after the pandemic, and it’s still the piece I’m best known for inside the building.
→ See the work: IN.KÖLN corporate magazine
What the work actually covers
A long relationship widens. Once a communications team trusts you with the magazine, they start handing you everything else that needs to look considered and consistent. Over the years that has meant:
- IN.CARE sales brochures — a set of DIN A4 brochures for the site’s event-management department, covering venue hire, catering, and event logistics for internal and external audiences.
- Safety, Health & Environment materials — roll-ups, booklets, flyers and posters covering life-saving rules, health initiatives and emergency protocols, all designed for immediate legibility, because on a chemical site the information isn’t optional.
- Infographics — process flows, site maps, statistics and compliance graphics built to hold up in print, on screen, and in presentations without redrawing.
- Wayfinding for INEOS ONE — a colour-coded floor-plan and pictogram system for all three levels of the administrative headquarters, in daily use ever since.
- Sales publications for INEOS O&P Europe — a unified print system spanning twenty-eight products, from six-page pocket flyers to twenty-four-page technical booklets.
That last one matters beyond the site itself. The redesigned sales system won the IPRA Golden World Award 2019 in the Publications (Inhouse) category — one of the most respected recognitions in European corporate communications — and the entry presentation materials I designed for INEOS placed across four consecutive award cycles from 2018 to 2021.
This is the core of what I mean by media and print design: editorial and communications work with a clear job to do, produced to a professional standard, year after year.
Working inside a corporate brand system
I want to be precise about my role, because it’s easy to overstate this kind of relationship.
I did not create the INEOS brand. INEOS is a global group with its own brand guidelines, and my job is to apply that system well — keeping the magazine, the brochures, the signage and the campaigns coherent and high-quality within the rules that already exist. Nor was I ever the only designer in the picture: the communications department worked with more than one hand, and the group’s largest international, group-wide projects were handled by a dedicated agency. My ground has always been the Cologne site’s own communications — the work that reaches from Köln to other INEOS sites across Europe.
That precision is the point. A long relationship isn’t built on doing everything; it’s built on doing your part reliably, for a very long time.
Why it lasted
Fifteen years is a long time to keep being asked back, and I’ve thought about why. It comes down to a few unglamorous things:
Good work at a fair cost. The quality had to be consistent and the pricing had to make sense for an in-house communications budget, year after year.
Fast, dependable response. When a magazine deadline or a safety campaign lands, the value of a designer who answers quickly and delivers on time is hard to overstate.
An easy working relationship. Over fifteen years you become, in practice, an external extension of the team — someone who already knows the brand, the tone, the constraints and the people, so the work needs less explaining every time.
None of that is flashy. But it’s exactly what a serious organisation wants from a design partner: not a burst of brilliance, but a steady, trustworthy hand over the long run.
If you’re looking for that kind of design partner — someone who can carry your communications consistently over years, not just deliver a single project and disappear — that’s the work I do. You can see more of it under media and print, or get in touch and tell me what you’re working on.
