Emily

 Creative Director | Design Maven | Full-Spectrum Creative | Social & Brand Visionary —

Defining the Future of Style in the Social Feed. Leading With Love.

I am a joyful, rebellious Creative Director and hands-on visual leader with over 10 years of experience defining, driving, and scaling social-first creative vision for global brands across the fashion, beauty, and home verticals. My career is built on the unique combination of strategic foresight and ground-level execution, specializing in translating complex brand goals into cohesive, culturally relevant, and high-performing content that sparks conversation and drives conversion.

My Strategic Focus—

• Creative Leadership: I inspire multidisciplinary teams (Art Directors, Copywriters, Photographers, Motion Artists) to operate at peak efficiency, fostering a collaborative culture where experimentation leads to polished, strategic deliverables. I am adept at mentoring talent and providing structured feedback that aligns execution with the big-picture brand strategy.

• Social & Brand Strategy: With a deep understanding of platform trends (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) and user behavior, ensuring that every asset is optimized for engagement and conversion across multi-channel campaigns.

• Cross-Functional Partnership: I confidently pitch creative strategies and negotiate complex concepts with senior stakeholders, ensuring the creative vision is strategically aligned with Marketing, Merchandising, and PR goals.

My Constellation—The Hands-On Edge

While my focus is leadership, my background is rooted in the production cosmos. I effortlessly bring meticulous visual storytelling to set design, art direction, and styling. This means I don't just manage a vision; I understand the tangible steps needed to execute it flawlessly—from the perfect lighting setup to the subtle, stellar prop choice. My aesthetic approach—often blending modern futurism with a deep reverence for natural elements—delivers highly distinctive and aspirational imagery that cuts through the noise of the social feed.

Collaborating With My Love Of Nature—

My early career—pivoting from environmental horticulturist, folk herbalist, jewelry designer, and indie boutique owner—catapulted me quickly into leading teams for the art department as a production designer, art director, photographer, and prop stylist in Los Angeles starting in 2014. My sets were never without at least 10 thriving plants or more.

From 2018–2023, I helmed Flowers In Space, a feminist-owned, full-service art department serving the film and photo production world. We provided skilled photography, intriguing sets, and lush interiors for powerful projects, rooted in compassion and delivering unique perspectives while reframing tired power dynamics in production.

Friends, Colleagues, and Her Dad Say—

"Emily has a Midas touch—She can transform a refrigerator box into a marble castle with a line down the block. An aesthete of the highest order, she employs not only her charmed seven-dimensional perception of human environments and talismans, but her carefully gathered orbit of collaborators as well, to create spaces, places and objects beyond compare. I pity the fool who doesn't get to work with her." — Valentine Freeman, Executive Creative, Creative Artists Agency; Key Social Marketing Magician, Atelier Ace/ @acehotel

"Emily Baker is a vibrant, energizer-bunny who leads her projects, personally and professionally, with love. She can design, make, and style. A 'plant whisperer' and a 'psychic rock witch'. Her hands get dirty, and she gently harnesses controlled chaos."

“A True Artist”.

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

-Audre Lorde 

Origin Story: A Life of Co-Creation, Deep Curiosity, & Self-Realization

My creative path is fundamentally influenced by my love of nature. Early career paths—including environmental horticulturist, medicinal herbalist, and residential landscape designer—honed my eye for detail, composition, and the vastness of our environment. I bring a deep, reverent love of the earth and the healing energy of the natural world to every space and project I create. This background, combined with a degree in Photography and Landscape Design, built the polymath skill set necessary to transition into the Creative Direction realm.

My commitment to conscious creation extends to my side projects: I am the former jewelry designer behind the moniker Sword+Fern, creating handmade, sustainable collections (often using cast-off car parts and vintage findings) for Free People, Anthropologie, Levi’s, and Alternative Apparel.

I have been taught by some of the finest philosophers how to stay grounded when the going gets rough —and it will —as an advanced practitioner of Yoga and a student of Ayurveda, with certification through Southern California University of Health Sciences and California College of Ayurveda. Explore more on my journey as a holistic healer and wellness counselor here.

My love of creating started wild, growing up near the Puget Sound in the majestic Pacific Northwest. My past professional highlights include roadside paleontologist, driftwood fort builder, huckleberry harvester, trainhopping, pinhole camera making, medicinal plant hunting, full moon ceremonies, and emceeing a weekly punk poetry slam night. I schlepped my silver oyster shell 1964 Ludwig drum kit all over the West Coast, playing in bands of many genres--from feminist folk to shoegaze to metal to new age pop. After owning 3 small businesses, I knew my favorite hours were spent meticulously figuring out how to make things look oddly natural-the bunch of dogwood branches deep in the background, the crystallization in the Carrara marble up front and center, or the copper-ringed ballpoint pen from 1944 for the villain's office desk.  In 2014, I figured it was time to leap into a more collaborative path, believing that the best work comes from being in "the togetherness". 

Some Favorite Clients—

ACE Hotel, Alternative Apparel, Amazon, American Airlines, Anthropologie, ATT, Beautycounter, Bed Bath and Beyond, Blue Bottle Coffee, California Avocado Commission, California Pizza Kitchen, Chambord, Chapstick, Cover Girl, Dacor, Daily Harvest, Design Within Reach, Dole Latino, E! Entertainment, Elizabeth Arden, FADER magazine, Facebook, Four Sigmatic, Free People, Frye Boots, Genius, Google, GoldenVoice, H&M, Happy Dance, Hard Rock Cafe, Herman Miller, Hollywood Reporter, Josie Maran, Joybird Furniture, Kinfolk magazine, Kinlo by Naomi Osaka, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Levi's, Liquid IV, L'Oreal, LG Electronics, Lonny magazine, Louis Vuitton, Men’s Wearhouse, Meta, Nissan, NBCUniversal, Otterbox, PAIGE denim, Parks Project, PopSugar, Samsung, Smashbox, Smirnoff, Sonos, Skittles, Syng, The Home Depot, Tidal magazine, TJ Maxx, Udi's Gluten Free, Viacom, Verizon, Warner Brothers Stage13, Weiden+Kennedy, WildFang. As seen on Grimm, Leverage, YACHT’s 'Psychic City' 

Photographers, Directors + Stylists I’ve Shared Sets With—

Todd Selby, Wolfie Zac and Claudia Delpin, Dabito, Justina Blakeney, Frank Frances, Kat Borchart, Pia Ulin, Andre Perry, Piers Hanmer, We Are The Rhoads, Lindsey Byrnes, Nicki Sebastian, Andrew Trosmans, Collin Hughes, Justin Chung, Leslie Lessin, Paola Kudacki, Jeff Luker, Anja Charbonneau, Zoe Lister-Jones, Rachael Holder, Jardine Hammond, Julia Stotz.

Publications— My interior design and styling work is featured in Justina Blakeney’s The New Bohemians: Cool and Collected Homes, and The Kinfolk Home: Interiors for Slow Living.

Awards— "The Ultimate list of Sustainable Jewelry Designers, 2012"  

Based in Los Angeles. Contact me here to get in touch for your next project - I can’t wait to make magic with you!