We help banks, insurers and fintechs hire top design leaders.

From Senior Designers to Creative Directors and Heads of Brand Design. We deliver the top 5% of lead design professionals - finding real design thinkers whose work moves the numbers you are measured on.

(Experience)0+

Years of digital design experience

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Design clients served over the past decade

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Professional connections made

Founder's worked for
Nest Pensions Aviva Monzo Revolut Direct Line BBC The Economist Trustpilot

What we do

(01)

Our focus is narrow and deliberate: senior and leadership design talent for banking, insurance and fintech. Brand and creative direction, digital and experience design, and motion. We take on only a small number of searches at a time, so every shortlist is built personally by our founder, Gabrielle - and every candidate on it has been assessed by someone who has done the work.

Examples of our design hires

How we solve your problems

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We work out what you're really hiring for

Most senior hires that fail matched the job description perfectly. What the description didn't capture was why the last person left, who else has to approve the hire, or whether design here leads the work or decorates it. We ask those questions before we start searching, so we're solving the actual problem rather than filling the vacancy.

Reaching people who aren't looking

The designers you want are employed, happy enough, and ignoring recruiters. They also assume a bank or an insurer means slow work and dead brand. We know how to change that impression, because we can talk about the work rather than the package - and because we came from their side of the table.

Judging craft you shouldn't have to judge alone

Most portfolios are team portfolios. Deciding who actually made the decisions, and whose craft holds up outside a beautiful case study, takes a practitioner. You get three to five people in two to three weeks, each with an honest read on strengths and gaps, so you spend interview time on candidates worth meeting.

Not losing them at the offer

Senior hires are lost at the end, not the beginning - a counter-offer, a wobble, a notice period handled badly. We prepare candidates for that moment before it arrives and stay close through it, then check in with both sides through the first three months while anything fixable is still fixable.

Who you'll work with

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Twelve years making the work, before a single day recruiting it.

Gabrielle Mockute spent twelve years as a Senior Designer before she recruited one - at Proximity London (BBDO), in-house at BBC World News, and through her own studio for Aviva, Monzo, Revolut, Direct Line, Nest Pensions and Trustpilot. Her work took Gold and Silver at the DMA, Caples and Echo awards. She has judged the work too - on the jury for the Motion Design Awards, mentoring rising creatives through ScreenSkills, and as an Associate Creative Director at Hoxby, the freelance collective of 500+ specialists across 40 countries.

"Most design recruiters have never made a piece of design. They can tell you a portfolio looks good - they can't tell you which decisions were actually the designer's, whether the craft survives a difficult brief, or who was carried by a strong team. I can, because for twelve years I was the one being judged on it."Gabrielle Mockute, Founder

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Why elle & alpha

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Without elle & alpha

  • Your role sits open for months
  • Thirty CVs, and you do the sifting
  • Portfolios judged on instinct
  • A junior takes over after the pitch
  • Your vacancy public within the hour
  • A bad hire, and the fee is spent

With elle & alpha

  • A shortlist in two to three weeks
  • Three to five people, all worth meeting
  • Every portfolio judged by a senior designer
  • One senior lead from brief to offer
  • Complete discretion on sensitive hires
  • 90 days, or we run the search again

The terms

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(Guarantee)

90 days, or we do it again

A senior appointment is a serious bet, and you shouldn't carry all of it. If a placement leaves or isn't the right fit within the first 90 days, we run the search again at no further fee.

Start a search
(For designers)

Not hiring - looking?

If you're a senior designer, motion designer or creative leader working in or around financial services, we'd rather know your work before the right role appears than scramble when it does. Send us your reel or portfolio and we'll have a proper conversation about it, with someone who has made the same kind of work.

Send us your work

FAQ

(06)
We've used design recruiters before. What's different here?
Most recruiters can tell you a portfolio looks impressive. They can't tell you which decisions were the designer's own, or whether that craft survives a legal review. Our founder spent twelve years making this work before recruiting it, and we only work in banking, insurance and fintech - so you get judgement on both the craft and your context, not a keyword match.
Will you cover the roles I actually need to fill?
Executive Creative Directors, Creative Directors, Heads of Brand Design and Design Directors, plus senior and lead brand, digital and motion designers. We deliberately don't cover junior roles, and we don't cover disciplines we can't assess properly - depth in a narrow band is the whole point.
Where are you based?
We're based in Cyprus, which sits in the middle of the markets we serve - two hours ahead of London and one to two behind Dubai, so a normal working day overlaps with all of them. The UK is our largest market and where most searches run. We also work in the Netherlands, the Nordics and Germany with teams that operate in English, and take leadership mandates in Dubai on a retained basis.
You're small. What happens if my search stalls?
Every brief is documented from the first call and mirrored with a named associate who can pick up a live process at short notice - so a holiday, an illness or a time zone never stalls your search. We also cap the number of live mandates at any one time, which is why searches move quickly rather than sitting in a queue behind forty others at a large agency.
Why should I use a specialist rather than a generalist?
Because a generalist has to learn your world on your time, and usually on your shortlist. We already know why your legal team pushes back, why a designer from a startup often struggles in a regulated business, and which people have done this successfully before. Banking, insurance and fintech also move in the same circles, so the network we build for one client keeps paying off for the next.
What will this cost me, and what if it goes wrong?
A straightforward percentage of first-year salary, agreed upfront and in writing, with no surprises later. If the hire isn't right within 90 days we run the search again at no further fee, so you aren't carrying the whole risk of a senior appointment. Leadership mandates and Dubai searches are retained. We'll share the full terms before you commit to anything.
I'm a designer, not a hiring manager. Should I get in touch?
Please do. If you've made strong brand, digital or motion work - particularly inside a business where nothing ships without three sign-offs - you're exactly who our clients struggle to find. Even if the timing isn't right today, we'd rather know your work early.
(Next step)

Hiring a creative leader? Talk to one first.

hello@elleandalpha.com