Art & Creative Direction
Hands-on art direction, creative direction, key visual development, photography direction, motion and video direction, and 3D creative direction.
Joshua Chao Professional Biography
Joshua Hua-Chun Chao is an Art Director, Creative Director, and APAC Brand & Campaign Lead with 10+ years of experience leading hands-on art direction, integrated campaigns, and brand systems across consumer, enterprise, and corporate audiences.
From June 2016 to July 2025, he led creative work across KKTV, KKFARM, KKBOX Group, KKCompany, and KKCulture. His scope spans brand identity, print, digital and social campaigns, UI/UX, websites, retail, events, photography, 3D, motion, video, and AI-assisted creative workflows.
Joshua managed concurrent creative operations across five business units, led and mentored 5+ direct reports, and coordinated multidisciplinary teams of 30+ professionals. He partnered with CEOs, general managers, business-unit leaders, marketing leads, and product leadership from strategy and concept through approval, production, quality control, and delivery.
Since August 2023, he has served as Co-Founder & Coach of Applied Creativity Engine, delivering 6+ AI and creativity programs for 200+ participants across Taiwan and Japan. Since September 2018, he has also served as Adjunct Instructor, Specialist Rank, in Communications Design at Shih Chien University.
Earlier roles include Design Director at JC&D, Multimedia Director at Saosis Communications in Beijing, Game Designer at Fludot Co., and Animation Designer at Modern Media Group in Shanghai. This work included the ICBC H-CLUB digital ecosystem and China-market launch communications for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Joshua holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications Design from Shih Chien University. He is a native Mandarin speaker with excellent English communication skills. His recognition includes the Good Design Award, iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award, and ACM SIGGRAPH SpaceTime.
Key Creative Capabilities
Integrated Brand & Campaign Systems
Brand identity systems, integrated campaigns, consumer marketing, enterprise storytelling, corporate communications, and scalable creative guidelines.
Digital, Physical & Spatial Delivery
Digital and social campaigns, UI/UX and web direction, event and retail design, print, presentations, and end-to-end production across digital and physical outputs.
APAC & China-Market Localization
Creative work for Taiwan, China, Japan, and international markets, combining global brand direction with locally relevant audience and cultural insight.
Leadership & Creative Operations
Executive stakeholder management, cross-functional leadership, five-business-unit operations, 5+ direct reports, and multidisciplinary teams of 30+ professionals.
Generative AI Creative Workflows
AI-assisted research, ideation, visual exploration, storyboarding, image generation, video planning, prototyping, presentation development, and creative testing.
Featured Work
KKTV
An OTT streaming brand launch that integrated identity, product expression, motion, design guidelines, TVCs, landing pages, retail materials, and screen-based and printed assets into one recognizable brand.
KKFARM
Artist branding, music video direction and production, live and concert design, screen-based and printed assets, and campaign materials that built continuity across releases and performance contexts.
KKBOX Group
A holding-company branding and recruitment campaign that translated internal culture into a mini-episode series, a career website, and public-facing talent storytelling.
KKStream
A B2B technology brand storytelling system for BlendVision that made enterprise streaming infrastructure easier to understand through conceptual metaphors, video, a website, and sales-facing visuals.
KKCompany
A corporate identity and worldview system for a complex technology organization, integrating company narrative, public and career websites, motion assets, and shareholder-facing materials.
KKCulture
An animated visual system extended across company identity, motion assets, websites, screen-based and printed assets, office and workplace environments, and leadership communication.
NVIDIA x SCCD
An early-stage generative AI music video and showreel project exploring how AI-generated imagery, music, video editing, and creative direction can form a coherent cinematic language.
Applied Creativity Engine
An AI-powered creativity education, training, and workshop system for teachers, students, executives, entrepreneurs, and future leaders learning to use emerging tools with human-centered judgment.
Creative Methodology
Joshua’s creative methodology connects strategic thinking, narrative development, systemic design, and executional precision. His process is designed to turn complex business, cultural, and technological ideas into clear, scalable, and emotionally resonant communication systems.
1. Strategic Diagnosis
Every project begins with a clear understanding of the business challenge, audience behavior, cultural context, stakeholder priorities, and success criteria. This stage defines the real creative opportunity behind the brief and ensures that every decision is grounded in purpose.
2. Narrative Architecture
Joshua develops the strategic and emotional foundation of the work through creative territories, messaging logic, metaphors, references, and communication frameworks. This allows complex ideas to become accessible, memorable, and meaningful across different audiences.
3. Systemic Design Thinking
Concepts are translated into scalable brand and content systems across identity, typography, motion, image style, UI direction, spatial applications, and digital and physical touchpoints. The goal is not only to create individual assets, but to build systems that can grow, adapt, and remain coherent over time.
4. Cross-Functional Creative Direction
Joshua leads designers, editors, filmmakers, technologists, AI-assisted production workflows, and external partners from concept to execution. His role is to align strategy, craft, technology, and production so that teams can move with clarity, consistency, and creative ambition.
5. Executional Precision
Each output is refined through rhythm, hierarchy, consistency, format, versioning, and deployment details. Whether the work appears in a presentation, campaign, video, website, event, office space, or internal communication system, the focus remains on clarity, quality, and contextual performance.
6. Learning, Adaptation & Scale
After delivery, Joshua evaluates how creative work is received, adopted, and reused across audiences, organizations, and channels. Each project becomes a learning system, helping future creative work become sharper, more scalable, and more deeply connected to real-world use.
Creative Leadership in Practice
Joshua’s creative leadership is defined by his ability to turn complex business, cultural, and technological challenges into clear, scalable, and emotionally resonant creative systems. Across consumer brands, enterprise technology, corporate identity, and AI-powered education, his work connects strategy, storytelling, design, production, and organizational communication.
Brand Launch Leadership
Joshua led the creative development of a consumer streaming brand from its launch identity to full market expression. The work integrated brand strategy, visual identity, product storytelling, motion language, campaign materials, landing pages, retail applications, screen-based assets, printed materials, and design guidelines into one recognizable brand system.
Enterprise Storytelling
For enterprise technology, Joshua transformed complex streaming infrastructure into a cinematic B2B product narrative. Through conceptual metaphors, structured messaging, video, website, presentation systems, and sales-facing visuals, he helped make technical platforms more understandable, persuasive, and relevant to business audiences.
Corporate Identity Systems
Joshua created corporate identity systems for technology and culture organizations navigating growth, restructuring, and transformation. His work connected company narrative, visual identity, motion assets, websites, leadership communication, internal materials, shareholder-facing content, workplace environments, and everyday brand touchpoints into coherent organizational systems.
AI-Integrated Creative Production
Ahead of mainstream creative adoption, Joshua developed AI-assisted workflows across film, music video, visual experimentation, education, and creative training. His work explores how generative AI can accelerate ideation and production while preserving human-centered judgment, narrative clarity, and creative direction.
Five-Business-Unit Adoption
Creative systems and art direction were adopted across KKTV, KKFARM, KKBOX Group, KKCompany, and KKCulture, spanning consumer, enterprise, corporate, entertainment, and cultural contexts.
Internal Training & Mentoring
Joshua oversaw concurrent creative operations and delivered internal creative workshops for 30+ colleagues while coordinating project teams of 30+ professionals.
Multi-national Creative Context
Joshua’s work is shaped by creative leadership across APAC and international markets, including Taiwan, Japan, China, Shanghai, and Beijing. His projects span consumer, enterprise, and corporate audiences and require global-to-local adaptation across brand, technology, culture, entertainment, and education.
His multi-national experience is not only geographic, but also cultural and organizational. He brings sensitivity to how ideas need to be framed differently across different markets, how visual and verbal tone shifts across audiences, and how creative systems can remain coherent while adapting to local context.
Taiwan-Based Leadership
Creative leadership across Taiwan’s technology, enterprise, culture, entertainment, and education sectors, connecting brand strategy, identity systems, campaigns, company and product storytelling, corporate narrative, and organizational communication.
Multi-national Education
Education and creative training experience connected to Japan, with a focus on helping students, educators, and institutions understand creativity, design thinking, and AI-powered workflows through a human-centered lens.
Mandarin-Speaking Markets Sensitivity
Cultural and communication sensitivity across Mandarin-speaking contexts, shaped by long-term work in Taiwan and earlier professional experience in Shanghai and Beijing, with attention to language, tone, audience behavior, and local adaptation.
Stakeholder Translation
Partnered with CEOs, general managers, business-unit leaders, marketing leads, and product leadership to define creative strategy, translate business priorities into actionable briefs, present concepts, align stakeholders, and secure executive approval.
English-Language Global Collaboration
Long-term collaboration with UWC ISAK Japan through English-language meetings, planning, presentations, and workshops with international educators and participants.
China-Market Experience
Shanghai and Beijing assignments combined culturally informed event communication with research-led mobile and web product design for Bloomberg Businessweek and ICBC.
Tools & Production Fluency
Brand Systems & Visual Identity
Hands-on fluency across Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Figma, with experience building integrated brand systems, visual rules, and scalable design applications.
Integrated Campaign Assets
Experience creating campaign toolkits, presentation templates, digital assets, print materials, launch visuals, and communication systems across consumer, enterprise, and corporate contexts.
Motion & Video Direction
Creative direction and production through Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro across product narratives, showreels, social content, launch films, and recruitment campaigns.
Generative AI Creative Workflows
Applied ChatGPT, Codex, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney, and Suno to research, concept exploration, visual prototyping, story development, image generation, presentation production, and creative testing.
Figma, UI/UX & Google Workspace
Directed Figma-based UI/UX, responsive web design, executive presentations, and cross-functional collaboration through Google Workspace.
Production Direction & Technical Collaboration
Comfortable leading end-to-end creative workflows from strategy, concept, art direction, production planning, review, refinement, version control, and final delivery across digital, physical, social, event, and presentation outputs.
UI/UX & Web Direction
Figma-based UI/UX and responsive web direction across KKTV, the KKBOX Group career platform, BlendVision, KKCompany, KKCulture, and ICBC digital products.
Blender & 3D Creative Art Direction
Directed 3D visual development and used Blender for concept visualization and rapid prototyping, collaborating with 3D artists across product storytelling, campaign imagery, motion content, and event applications.