A little about me
I'm Taylor Shute, a Creative Director and graphic designer based in Toronto. A diverse career has taken me from magazine spreads to healthcare startups. Different contexts with similar goals: bring focus to the message, make it resonate, make it work for the humans you’re designing for.
Outside of work, I’m usually taking photos, recording music, slowly building a pub in my backyard, and travelling to look at old things in new places. I also have strong opinions about a good, dry, very cold gin martini 🍸.
A few of the newsrooms, agencies, and tech companies I've worked in:
Reason One Agency
Design Lead
2019 — 2022
YBIMC Agency
Art & Content Director
2017 — 2019
Toronto Star
Art Director, Digital
2015 — 2017
Cottage Life Media
Senior Designer
2013 — 2015
Maclean's Magazine
Senior Designer
2010 — 2013
View my full work experience on LinkedIn.
Creative Leadership
I aim to create the conditions for good work to happen consistently. Building teams with complementary strengths, providing a vision to orient around (and space to discover that vision), then trusting them to execute. A team that understands why they're making decisions—not just what to make, by when—produces better work, and grows stronger and more aligned.
I love cross-discipline collaboration. Years of working closely with commercial leadership, editors, product owners, marketers, strategists, and engineers has taught me how to translate between creative instinct and business intent, and how to advocate for design in rooms where it isn't the first priority.
Editorial Design Background
My design career started in print, art directing editorial content at Eye Weekly, then Maclean's, then Cottage Life. Regular cycles of photoshoots, illustration commissions, layout design, and visual storytelling.
The pivot came at the Toronto Star, where joining as Art Director, Digital meant a jump in scale, pace, and team size, right as digital editorial was finding its footing.
From there: agency work creating digital content for brands like Warner Bros., Audi, and Forty Creek, then UI/UX and web design at Reason One for healthcare and non-profit clients. This range is what prepared me to lead an in-house brand design team at League.
AI and Creativity
AI is a powerful creative tool, but it’s not a full-stop replacement for taste, craft, or original thinking. Used carelessly, it can easily erode what makes a brand distinctive. People are getting better at spotting generic, obviously AI-generated work, and once something starts to feel inauthentic, trust can disappear pretty quickly.
I use AI more deliberately: to expand early exploration, pressure-test ideas and strategy, speed up research, and give my team better material to work from—while keeping authorship, judgment, and final creative expression firmly human.
I also build AI-assisted workflows that streamline repetitive production work and make complex systems easier to scale, improving consistency and efficiency without automating away the qualities that make the work feel considered, specific, and real.
Photography and Illustration
I've directed photographers on set and on location, and briefed and collaborated with illustrators throughout my career and I also practice both. Illustration was part of my formal training. Photography is something I've always loved and continue to explore.
These days I shoot mostly while travelling.