Profile
Before entering academia, Antonius worked in the design industry for 10 years in various design firms across Europe and the US, gaining first-hand experience of how creative businesses operate, grow and respond to change. This professional background continues to inform his teaching, where he helps students connect creative thinking with strategy, branding and organisational decision making.
Antonius holds an MSc in Design Management from the University of Salford and completed his PhD at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) in collaboration with Westminster Business School. His doctoral research explored how business strategy develops inside a leading global design business, offering insight into the relationship between creativity, management and commercial practice.
His current research focuses on the organisation and management of design led businesses. He is particularly interested in how design, visual aesthetics and creative practice can connect different areas of knowledge and help people to make sense of complex ideas. Antonius is also investigating how Artificial Intelligence is changing the professional identity of designers and reshaping the future of creative work.
In his teaching, Antonius takes an interdisciplinary approach and draws on ideas from design, sociology, psychology, organisation studies and management to help students understand the wider role of design in society and business. He currently leads the MA Design and Branding programme and teaches across branding, identity and strategy.
Research
Antonius is currently working on the following research projects:
- Aesthetic legitimacy
- The role of aesthetics in hybridizing in design businesses
- Strategy as aesthetic experiences
- Reinventing a creative identity: The role of Artificial Intelligence in shaping creative professional identities
Current PhD / research supervisions
- Willem Heesbeen: Optimism in Design
- Bingqing Tian: Strategic positioning in design agencies: Achieving optimal distinctiveness through portfolios
- Qing Zeng: Women Designers’ Entrepreneurial Approaches in Chinese Heritage Crafts
Completed PhDs
- Stephen Cho: Enabling, forcing and impeding resource integration: the impact of institutional logics on resource integration practice in creative projects
- Maria Talvinko (with Aalto University, Finland): Flavors of ventures, layers of context: Actions of small Finnish food and beverage ventures
Interests and activities
Antonius is co-founder of the Academy for Design Innovation Management organising conferences and workshops around the topic of design innovation management.
He is founder of strategize.app, a visual strategy development digital platform that helps creative entrepreneurs make their strategy development process iterative and accessible for a wider audience.
He is member of the Design Research Society, Academy of Management, European Group for Organization Studies, British Society of Aesthetics.