About

For someone who loves the sonic abrasions of Krallice and Throbbing Gristle, Dan sure does have a knack for clarity. Whether it’s in the boardroom, the workshop, or at home with his kids, Dan’s secret weapon is his ability to navigate chaos and pinpoint the heart of a matter. After five years at Base’s New York office, in 2019 Dan returned to his Australian hometown to establish the Base Melbourne office with his wife and creative partner Caroline Cox. As creative director, Dan’s role combines strategy, business development, general management and studio DJ duties. Thanks to a varied career as a designer, art director, pseudo-architect and university lecturer, Dan’s approach is characterised by a restless curiosity and an understanding of how to balance business goals with creativity. An avid writer, Dan has recently published articles in Fast Company and The Fashion Law.

Caroline’s approach to creative direction is anchored in alchemy: the magical process of transforming unexpected ingredients into something exceptional. When she joined Base as creative director in 2019, Caz brought with her a rich expertise in visual storytelling gained over the course of her career spanning Melbourne, Sydney, London and New York. Prior to Base, Caz was associate creative director at New York agency Lloyd&Co, where she led the Adidas account (working on global campaigns and product launches for Originals, Y3 and Pharrell Williams) and was the lead creative for Calvin Klein at the appointment of Raf Simons. In establishing the Base Melbourne office with her husband and creative partner Daniel Peterson, Caz has drawn on her unique ability to build and manage creative teams across a broad range of disciplines.

Never one to balk at an outlandish brief, Thomas is a developer and designer with a passion for investigating new modes of communication. Specialising in digital experiences and creative coding, Thomas works consciously across a wide range of sectors spanning arts and culture, corporate, property, hospitality, retail and more. Multidisciplinary in the truest sense of the word, Thomas’s work as a developer and designer is informed by art, computer science, literature and mathematics. Underpinning his practice is a love of building, both in the digital realm (software, websites, video games) and IRL (furniture, musical instruments and anything out of ply). He’s also the part-time owner of honorary Base team member Marlow the sausage dog.

Tal’s interest in creative problem-solving dates back to his early years spent tinkering with Lego and Knex in his hometown of San Francisco. Now based in Melbourne as a Senior Designer at Base, Tal is a naturally curious creative who enjoys working across a wide spectrum of art and design. Whether it’s crafting beautiful interfaces or collaborating with image-makers on art direction, what drives Tal is the point at which disparate elements converge to create something unexpected. Informed by his background as a musician, he approaches the often pixel-perfect realm of graphic design with an appreciation for the oddities and idiosyncrasies that ultimately make good design great.

Relocating from balmy Kuala Lumpur to ever-variable Melbourne more than a decade ago, Rachel's innate curiosity fuels her drive. From astrophysics to history to cinema, she mines the past for narratives that inform her approach to design and visual storytelling, coalescing creativity with empathy. Her appreciation for the human story has taken her through varied places—from sizzling bacon in the bustling kitchen of a soup kitchen to navigating the dynamic realms of start-ups and B-Corp entities. At Base, she brings typographic sensitivity to her work, combining the technical and emotive to create something tangible from the visceral. When not nose deep in design, she is usually reading, adding another book to her ever growing pile of unfinished books or contemplating the eternal question: what's for lunch?

For a guy who loves a dawn run, Samuel Bourke sure knows how to keep things moving in the studio. With a fashion marketing degree from RMIT and Parsons, Samuel brings a unique mix of creativity and strategy to his work, shaped by a passion for both the arts and athletics. He started in PR, managing top clients like Nike, before pivoting to project management in a creative agency, where he honed his eye for detail and his knack for guiding high-stakes projects to success. Known for his meticulous approach and commitment to excellence, Samuel fosters a high-performance, collaborative environment that puts the client at the heart of every project. Outside the studio, he’s either pounding the pavement or diving into new music, always chasing growth in every aspect of life.

Armed with a photography degree and an eye for style, Brigette thought she had found her path – until designing publications for her own work sparked a deeper passion for design. As the world shifted during COVID, she leaned into it, building a new creative foundation focused on brand and digital design. Over the next five years, Brigette honed her skills across brand identity, art direction, and digital platforms – developing a reputation for combining strategic thinking with strong visual storytelling. At Base, she brings a sharp eye for crafting ideas that move fluidly across brand worlds, from motion and digital experiences to print and campaign work.

Stella always thought she’d be a designer. But somewhere between studying design at RMIT and working in marketing for a not-for-profit, she realised what drove her passion for design projects.The magic wasn’t in the layouts or fonts, it was in the problem-solving. She loved the conversations, the puzzle of making creative work happen, and the satisfaction of looking back with that “we did it” feeling. So she crossed the line from design to project management and never looked back.

As a Project Manager at BaseMEL, Stella is the steady centre of a project: curious, clear-headed, and genuinely invested from kickoff to delivery. She cares about the process, the people, and the story each piece of work becomes. For her, project management isn’t just about organisation or planning; it’s an opportunity to cultivate teamwork and dedicate the care required to bring great work to life. She brings that same drive and curiosity to her life outside the studio, whether it is her pursuit of the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe or planning her next travel destination.