Elmwood appoints Colin Burns as ‘director of stuff’

Burns (pictured), who also teaches at the University of Dundee and Glasgow School of Art, has been non-executive chairman at Elmwood for the past 12 months.

His new role will see him driving Elmwood’s ’Creative Eloquence’ programme, which aims to improve communication skills among staff, and growing the consultancy’s digital offer, as well as mentoring Elmwood staff. Based in Scotland, he will also work from Elmwood’s Leeds and London offices. He starts his new role on 1 November.

Also taking new roles from that date will be group client services director Sarah Dear and senior design director Jon Stubley, who have been appointed as joint managing partners of Elmwood’s Leeds office.

Jonathan Sands, chairman of Elmwood, says, ’Although Elmwood is a limited company it has always been run more like a partnership in that everyone in the business has some kind of equity stake. As a result, we felt the time was right to officially run our home office as a partnership.’

Last week it was announced that Coley Porter Bell design director Adam Ellis is joining Elmwood in the newly created role of creative director in the London office (DW 14 October).