20 years across brand, editorial, web, social, and book design. Co-author and art director on a 15-title series with Simon & Schuster. Adobe Creative Suite native. Easy to brief, fast to ship. Open to contract, project-based, and retainer work — direct or through agencies.
A practical short list of where I add the most value, fast. Happy to combine across an engagement, or focus on whichever piece you need.
Books, magazines, brand books, editorial layouts. Co-author, designer, and art director on a 15-title series with Simon & Schuster, plus an editorial practice going back to a photography editor seat at Quest.
Logos, visual systems, guidelines, and brand books. Built to scale across teams and surfaces, not just to look good in a deck.
Design and front-end for marketing sites, landing pages, and event pages. Plus HTML email templates that render right in every inbox — a real differentiator most designers don't touch.
Short-form social video, editing, captioning, and platform versioning. Built and monetized the ZooBorns social video presence from the ground up — real audience, real platforms.
Long-form pitch decks, annual reports, and investor-facing collateral. Brand-aligned, on-deadline, and built to be revised. The backbone of multi-year retainer work for real estate, civic, and luxury clients.
Classically trained in drawing and oil painting at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence. When a project needs something hand-rendered that doesn't look like everyone else's, I can help.
A cross-section across brand, editorial, web, social, and print — from solo client projects to multi-year publishing and retainer engagements.
I'm Chris Eastland — a Brooklyn-based designer and art director with 20 years across brand, editorial, web, social, and book design. I run Eastland Creative, a one-person studio serving freelance and retainer clients on brand, editorial, and campaign work. I'm also co-founder of ZooBorns — where I've co-authored, designed, and art-directed 15 titles with Simon & Schuster across a 17-year publishing partnership, and built the brand's social video presence from 2020 onward.
I'm hands-on in Adobe Creative Suite every day — Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects — with strong fluency in Figma and web. I move fast, I'm easy to brief, and I ship clean, organized files. My natural mode is "trusted operator inside a small team that needs to move quickly without losing polish."
Outside the digital practice I'm a classically-trained portraitist working in charcoal and oil — which is mostly relevant here as evidence that I care about craft, observation, and finishing what I start.
Full-time embedded with your team, on-site or hybrid in NYC, or fully remote.
Defined scope, fixed deliverables, agreed timeline. Good for campaigns and launches.
Ongoing weekly or monthly capacity for brands that need a reliable design partner.
Tell me what you need, when you need it, and what the budget looks like. I'll come back same-day with a yes, a no, or a sharper version of the question.
Project description.