LE HAYE
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2022–2025
C3.0
Product Owner
UX/UI
Project Management
Digital Strategy
Creative Director
Virtual Exhibition Design
Campaign direction
Branding
I co-founded Christie's 3.0 and owned it as product lead, taking it from concept through to live sales.
I directed the platform across ideation, user research, design and technical build, keeping each phase tied to the commercial objective: move the entire buying and selling process on-chain, rather than bolting crypto payment onto a conventional auction.
That decision defined the work. Going fully on-chain meant rebuilding mechanisms the auction house had relied on for centuries, bidding, settlement, compliance, provenance as smart contracts, with the transparency and auditability that gives collectors and artists.
The design problem was fusing web2 familiarity with web3 capability so that a collector could bid without needing to understand what sat underneath.
Features I led:
→ Full on-chain bidding and smart contract-managed transactions
→ Real-time bidding with ETH–USD conversion
→ Automated compliance checks for digital wallets
→ On-chain sales tax calculation and payment facilitation
→ A layer-2 wallet system
→ Centralised auction management across a unified front-end and back-end infrastructure
I also led the design and operationalisation of the virtual gallery (shown below), giving artists a space of their own that carried Christie's heritage in a web3-native interface.
The platform launched with a sell-out inaugural exhibition of work by Diana Sinclair. Christie's 3.0 went on to receive Webby, Lovie and Cryptie awards.
I directed the platform across ideation, user research, design and technical build, keeping each phase tied to the commercial objective: move the entire buying and selling process on-chain, rather than bolting crypto payment onto a conventional auction.
That decision defined the work. Going fully on-chain meant rebuilding mechanisms the auction house had relied on for centuries, bidding, settlement, compliance, provenance as smart contracts, with the transparency and auditability that gives collectors and artists.
The design problem was fusing web2 familiarity with web3 capability so that a collector could bid without needing to understand what sat underneath.
Features I led:
→ Full on-chain bidding and smart contract-managed transactions
→ Real-time bidding with ETH–USD conversion
→ Automated compliance checks for digital wallets
→ On-chain sales tax calculation and payment facilitation
→ A layer-2 wallet system
→ Centralised auction management across a unified front-end and back-end infrastructure
I also led the design and operationalisation of the virtual gallery (shown below), giving artists a space of their own that carried Christie's heritage in a web3-native interface.
The platform launched with a sell-out inaugural exhibition of work by Diana Sinclair. Christie's 3.0 went on to receive Webby, Lovie and Cryptie awards.
2016–2026
Christie's
Product Owner
UX/UI
Digital Transformation
Digital Strategy
Design Systems
Creative Director
Branding
Campaigns
Exhibition Design
I joined Christie's as International Creative Director in 2016, leading a team of over 20 creatives producing exhibitions, digital campaigns and artist publications in collaboration with artists, gallerists and specialists.
I moved onto the digital leadership team in 2020, and now serve as Global Head of Digital Design & Innovation. My focus is the front end of Christie's digital presence. I lead a team of 12 UX product designers, creative technologists and engineers, working alongside external agencies on the website, the iOS app and Easel, our design system library.
The system work matters most to me: it holds a single visual standard across a 260-year-old brand operating in 190 countries, and gives the wider organisation something to build against.
In 2021 I founded the internal innovation lab, which took Christie's into AR/VR, a B2B SaaS platform for art fairs, luxury augmented reality applications, and transactional pop-up retail. I co-founded Christie's 3.0, our on-chain platform built around emerging artists and virtual galleries for their own work, recognised with Webby, Lovie and Cryptie awards.
I built online viewing rooms with 1-54, opening new routes into contemporary African art. My team also incubated our Shop platform and bespoke art fair services.I now co-run Christie's AI agent programme, building grounded agentic tooling and prompt frameworks that sit inside how the team works rather than beside it. The advantage is in the data, not the model, so the effort goes into retrieval, governance and standards.
I champion an in-house studio culture and stay hands-on in styling, campaign work and design, across digital strategy, seller pitches and agile delivery, in an environment where teamwork meets tight auction deadlines to produce over 380 auction creative solutions a year.
I moved onto the digital leadership team in 2020, and now serve as Global Head of Digital Design & Innovation. My focus is the front end of Christie's digital presence. I lead a team of 12 UX product designers, creative technologists and engineers, working alongside external agencies on the website, the iOS app and Easel, our design system library.
The system work matters most to me: it holds a single visual standard across a 260-year-old brand operating in 190 countries, and gives the wider organisation something to build against.
In 2021 I founded the internal innovation lab, which took Christie's into AR/VR, a B2B SaaS platform for art fairs, luxury augmented reality applications, and transactional pop-up retail. I co-founded Christie's 3.0, our on-chain platform built around emerging artists and virtual galleries for their own work, recognised with Webby, Lovie and Cryptie awards.
I built online viewing rooms with 1-54, opening new routes into contemporary African art. My team also incubated our Shop platform and bespoke art fair services.I now co-run Christie's AI agent programme, building grounded agentic tooling and prompt frameworks that sit inside how the team works rather than beside it. The advantage is in the data, not the model, so the effort goes into retrieval, governance and standards.
I champion an in-house studio culture and stay hands-on in styling, campaign work and design, across digital strategy, seller pitches and agile delivery, in an environment where teamwork meets tight auction deadlines to produce over 380 auction creative solutions a year.
2011–2016
Tate
Creative Director
Branding
Art Direction
Production Management
Exhibition Design
Poster Design
My role at Tate was hands-on across the full brand lifecycle: exhibition design, printed matter, the website and digital campaign material, working alongside artists and curators to bring their vision into physical and digital space.
In 2015 I worked with North on the refresh of Tate's brand identity, then led the in-house team through the rollout. The underlying problem was architecture: four galleries with distinct audiences and programmes that needed to read as one institution. The answer was an adaptable logo and typographic system rather than a redesign, a simplification that gave the brand more range across media while holding the essence people already recognised.
I also designed many notable exhibitions including the Damien Hirst retrospective in 2012, which drew 463,087 visitors and remains Tate Modern's most visited solo exhibition. And I was lead exhibition designer for Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs in 2014, which drew 562,622 visitors, Tate's most visited exhibition, and the first to pass half a million.
Both were collaborative builds, combining curatorial intent, design and fabrication into an environmental experience at scale, delivered against fixed opening dates.
On the editorial side, I redesigned the Annual Report into a magazine-led format with a flexible grid, pull quotes and project features, reframing Tate's expanding international reach as a story rather than a document.
In 2015 I worked on the wireframing and restructure of tate.org.uk with Charming Robot, developing a user-centred design from research and behavioural data: a stronger search experience, a full-width image and video homepage, and location-based navigation. The value was in carrying one brand system out of print and environmental work and into a product people use daily.
Tate taught me how to hold artistic ambition and institutional strategy in the same brief, and how to make each project serve both, the thinking I took with me to Christie's in 2016.
In 2015 I worked with North on the refresh of Tate's brand identity, then led the in-house team through the rollout. The underlying problem was architecture: four galleries with distinct audiences and programmes that needed to read as one institution. The answer was an adaptable logo and typographic system rather than a redesign, a simplification that gave the brand more range across media while holding the essence people already recognised.
I also designed many notable exhibitions including the Damien Hirst retrospective in 2012, which drew 463,087 visitors and remains Tate Modern's most visited solo exhibition. And I was lead exhibition designer for Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs in 2014, which drew 562,622 visitors, Tate's most visited exhibition, and the first to pass half a million.
Both were collaborative builds, combining curatorial intent, design and fabrication into an environmental experience at scale, delivered against fixed opening dates.
On the editorial side, I redesigned the Annual Report into a magazine-led format with a flexible grid, pull quotes and project features, reframing Tate's expanding international reach as a story rather than a document.
In 2015 I worked on the wireframing and restructure of tate.org.uk with Charming Robot, developing a user-centred design from research and behavioural data: a stronger search experience, a full-width image and video homepage, and location-based navigation. The value was in carrying one brand system out of print and environmental work and into a product people use daily.
Tate taught me how to hold artistic ambition and institutional strategy in the same brief, and how to make each project serve both, the thinking I took with me to Christie's in 2016.
2008–2011
Whitechapel
Head of Design
UX/UI
Design
Production
Content Management
As Design & Production Manager I led the gallery's visual transformation, in-gallery and online.
The context was expansion. The Whitechapel was doubling in size, taking over the former library next door and reopening as two buildings that needed to be read as one institution.
I was brought in to update the brand for the relaunch. The existing identity was competing with the art and lacked a coherent system, so I worked with Spin on the refresh and then led the in-house team through the rollout.
The idea we landed on was the plinth: a graphic device that holds the brand and all wayfinding information in a defined block, structurally separate from the image. It borrows its logic from the gallery itself, a plinth supports the work without being the work. That let us run full-bleed, tightly cropped imagery that meets you at close range and feels personal, while keeping the institutional voice legible and consistently placed. The brand had its own territory, so it stopped negotiating with the artwork for space.Once the device existed, it scaled without further invention.
Alongside the refreshed Whitechapel typeface and a defined approach to imagery, the in-house team carried it across signage, print, campaign and publishing, giving the gallery's materials an immediate recognisability that holds today.
With Holmes-Wood, the plinth became the physical information holder in a wayfinding scheme that stitched the two buildings into a single legible visitor journey, the same rule in signage as on a poster.
The piece I'm proudest of is the website. It wasn't on anyone's roadmap; I initiated it, made the case internally and co-led it end to end, because the site was working against everything we had just built in the physical space.
Translating the plinth into a fluid grid was the interesting constraint: a device designed around fixed print proportions had to hold its logic at any viewport, while preserving the separation between brand and artwork that justified it in the first place.
Getting that right is what proved the identity was a system rather than a look.
The context was expansion. The Whitechapel was doubling in size, taking over the former library next door and reopening as two buildings that needed to be read as one institution.
I was brought in to update the brand for the relaunch. The existing identity was competing with the art and lacked a coherent system, so I worked with Spin on the refresh and then led the in-house team through the rollout.
The idea we landed on was the plinth: a graphic device that holds the brand and all wayfinding information in a defined block, structurally separate from the image. It borrows its logic from the gallery itself, a plinth supports the work without being the work. That let us run full-bleed, tightly cropped imagery that meets you at close range and feels personal, while keeping the institutional voice legible and consistently placed. The brand had its own territory, so it stopped negotiating with the artwork for space.Once the device existed, it scaled without further invention.
Alongside the refreshed Whitechapel typeface and a defined approach to imagery, the in-house team carried it across signage, print, campaign and publishing, giving the gallery's materials an immediate recognisability that holds today.
With Holmes-Wood, the plinth became the physical information holder in a wayfinding scheme that stitched the two buildings into a single legible visitor journey, the same rule in signage as on a poster.
The piece I'm proudest of is the website. It wasn't on anyone's roadmap; I initiated it, made the case internally and co-led it end to end, because the site was working against everything we had just built in the physical space.
Translating the plinth into a fluid grid was the interesting constraint: a device designed around fixed print proportions had to hold its logic at any viewport, while preserving the separation between brand and artwork that justified it in the first place.
Getting that right is what proved the identity was a system rather than a look.
