Rob Helsby

Booking Q1 2027 engagements

Rob Helsby is a Strategy & Experience Director focused on brand and product decision-making.

I help leadership teams get the big calls right. That can mean choosing optimisation over change, leading the project that matters, or building the team that can do it without me.

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  • British Army
  • Lexus
  • Echodyne
  • BMA
  • Frasers Group
  • RIBA
  • British Council
  • Everlast
  • Co-op
  • British Cycling
  • United Nations
  • Morrisons
  • CIM
  • Pizza Hut
  • Youth Sport Trust
  • Sports Direct
  • Classic Football Shirts
  • The University of Manchester

What to hire me for

Independent engagements for marketing and digital leaders at established brands.

Decision Audit

Before you commit spend, prove it’s the right decision.

A new website, rebrand or digital product launch is a major investment. Getting it wrong is the kind of call people lose jobs over. Before you commit, I help you understand the problem, test the options and establish what the project really needs to achieve.

What you’ll know

  • If you’re starting the right project
  • What should change, and what shouldn’t
  • What the investment will really involve
  • What doing nothing could cost you
  • What return you can realistically expect
  • What action to take

Usually delivered in under 30 days.

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Fractional Design Leadership

Senior design leadership, without the permanent hire.

When you need direction, challenge and leadership, but not another full-time executive. I can work alongside your team as a fractional Design Director. I’ll bring senior oversight across the work, the people and the wider business; from strategic planning and stakeholder management to creative direction and delivery.

I can help with

  • Strategic Planning
  • Creative Direction
  • Team Leadership
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Senior Design Craft
  • Brand and Commercial Direction

Typically 4–6 days a month, depending on what you need.

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Capability Building

Deliver the project and build expertise to maintain it.

If you’re sick of endless strategy decks and zero progress, then hire me to deliver the brand, website or digital experience your customers need while building the knowledge, systems and confidence your team needs to manage it afterwards. I’ll lead the work with your team, embed the right practices as we go, then hand over the capability rather than creating a budget-bleeding dependency on outsiders.

  1. Fix

    Deliver the solution to your biggest customer experience headache.

  2. Embed

    Build the knowledge, processes and tools to manage it.

  3. Hand over

    Leave your team equipped to evolve it without me.

A fixed-term engagement of 3+ months that delivers years of value.

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Who I’ve worked with

British Army

Research wall pinned with the three guiding principles: Modernity, Excitement and Unity
Wireframes and page designs for the British Army website pinned to a wall
British Army website page for the Second Lieutenant rank, with its rank insignia
British Army website screens showing statistics, a news spotlight and careers content
Soldier Magazine archive on the British Army website, with covers from the 1940s

Aligned stakeholders to deliver an award-winning website, on time and on budget

The DecisionAlign every stakeholder to three guiding principles before designing anything.

The British Army website serves millions of people a year, from the families of serving soldiers to a new generation discovering military history. Stakeholders from Brand, Comms and Military Leadership all wanted different things. I aligned them around three guiding principles (Unity, Modernity, Excitement) and measured every decision against them.

Drawing on a century of history, I proposed an archive-led experience for the client’s globally distributed Soldier Magazine. The website received the Award of Excellence from the International Communicator Awards.

RIBA

RIBA design system components, including buttons, icons and colour palettes
riba.org homepage with a lakeside house and the headline Make the future a better place
RIBA Journal homepage featuring an Edwardian house extension
The RIBA website on a laptop
User journey maps and flow diagrams for the RIBA website

Reduced development and design costs by 50%

The DecisionOne design system for every RIBA product, built to outlast any agency.

I led the translation of a new visual identity into a single design system for riba.org, the RIBA Journal and the brand’s wider product portfolio. It was built to outlast any agency relationship, and the engagement grew into strategy, planning and scoping for their multi-year digital transformation.

The value compounded with each project, allowing us to first assess what problems can be solved with existing elements, and only invest in new functionality where essential.

Frasers Group

Flannels app screens for onboarding and account registration
App screens across Frasers Group brands, including Sports Direct, House of Fraser and Flannels
Sports Direct product page for football boots on a tablet

A 400% increase in sign-ups in the first week of launch

The DecisionMove account registration into the app’s onboarding flow.

One app scaled across 15 brands, from Sports Direct to Flannels, each with its own audience and identity. I led the UX and brand decisions for a rebuilt m-commerce experience.

Moving registration into onboarding drove that uplift. Investing in one adaptable design system also saved Frasers Group significant time and resource, with many of the brands rolled out without requiring agency assistance.

Echodyne

Echodyne news story on a phone held over a laptop
Echodyne website pages arranged around the project brief
Webflow localisation settings beside the French version of the Echodyne website
Echodyne radar product pages and imagery

A site that scaled with the team, with 13 locales launched in year 1 to support expansion into new markets

The DecisionMove to Webflow instead of rebranding.

A defence-tech market leader that still looked like a startup. A rebrand was logical, but not the answer. After learning how the content team couldn’t move at the speed the business needed on their CMS, I made the case for moving to Webflow. This was a much lighter and more adaptable platform than Umbraco, enabling a rapid 3-month delivery so the team could attack the market during a key sales period.

How I work

Rob Helsby

It’s never been easier or cheaper to launch and ship, so let taste, quality and decisiveness be your unfair advantage.

The most expensive brand and product mistakes are made before a brief is written. Sixteen years of agency and client-side work taught me that the best outcomes come from better decisions, not more expensive projects. It’s what I teach design students at three Universities, and what I talk about on stage at industry events.

My independent practice works to three goals.

  1. Help leadership teams avoid expensive mistakes
  2. Make design an investment rather than a line item
  3. Build internal capability so brands become independent

“Rob’s dedication to fostering a happy, thriving team is second to none. He ensured we had enough time to improve as designers, and his attitude remained calm and positive whilst he juggled numerous responsibilities.”

Claudia Federico Former team member Now Senior Director of AI Transformation at Avalere Health

Questions

What kind of brands do you work with?

Established brands heading into their next phase of growth. You’ll usually have a solid visual identity and a working website in place already, run by an agency or your own marketing team. That’s where my work makes the biggest difference.

Do you work with startups?

Yes, when the timing’s right. I love helping startups reach their goals, and the right moment to bring me in is when you’re approaching, or have just closed, Series A funding.

We’re not sure which service we need.

Start with a Decision Audit. It’s a bespoke engagement that helps leaders work out their next move. That might confirm what you were already planning, redirect resource to a different project altogether, or save you time and money by improving what you already have.

Won’t a Decision Audit just give us another strategy deck?

No. It ends in a decision: what to do, what not to do, and what it will realistically cost and return. You get a clear recommendation you can act on and defend to your board, not a document to file.

What is your pricing?

Hidden pricing is one of the most frustrating parts of finding a partner, so here’s mine. You’ll always know the cost before we start.

  • Decision Audit From £6,000. A fixed fee, usually delivered in under 30 days.
  • Fractional Design Leadership From £4,000 a month. 4–6 days a month, with a three-month minimum.
  • Capability Building Typically from £30,000 over 3+ months. A fixed fee for each phase, agreed upfront.

All prices exclude VAT. Every engagement is scoped to your situation, so if you’re not sure what fits, start a conversation and I’ll give you my honest advice. Sometimes the right answer is a smaller piece of work first.

Do you offer ongoing support or retainers?

Not open-ended ones. You’ll work with me for exactly as long as you need me, and no longer. Fractional Design Leadership is the one ongoing arrangement, and even then the aim is to leave your team with the tools, knowledge and confidence to manage without me.

We’re not based in the UK. Can we still work together?

Absolutely. I’m based in the UK, but most of my work is delivered remotely. As long as you’re happy to work in English and collaborate online, we’re good to go.

What happens when we get in touch?

Email me with what you need help with, or book a 30-minute call and we’ll say hello properly. Before we speak, I’ll ask for a few key details, so neither of us wastes any time.

Get in touch

Tell me what you need and when. I’ll respond within 24 hours.

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Or book a 30-minute call

Based in Manchester, UK, and working with teams worldwide.