MIHAI BADIC

Start in film, theatre & photography

I started my career at age 16, creating official localised graphical artwork and interactive DVD menus for dozens of Romanian releases of cult films (including “In The Mood for Love” by Wong Kar-wai, “Spider” by David Cronenberg and “Mulholland Drive” by David Lynch) at Independenta Music & Film, a Bucharest-based film and music distribution and production company, between 2003 and 2006. During my time there I also worked on original key art for Romanian film productions, working directly with directors such as Florin Piersic Jr.

I was also involved in theatre, and was a founding member of an English youth theatre groupe called Brainstorming, associated with the George Cosbuc Bilingual High School in Bucharest, that exists to this day. Our original productions in English travelled to local festivals and through my multimedia work for our plays I also got other commercial motion graphics and video work, such as working with theatre director Radu Nica on his adaptation of Rodrigo Garcia’s play Agammemnon, staged at the Metropolis Theatre in Bucharest in 2007.

I left Romania for Belgium after high school and in 2007 I had a solo photography exhibition at a (now defunct) central Brussels gallery called “Art en Vue”, which received positive press reviews, including the daily newspaper “L’Echo”.

The UK, advertising & ILLUSTRATION DEGREE

In 2008 I moved to the UK and worked as a Junior Art Director at Langland, a top 50 UK ad agency specialising in healthcare. My clients included the NHS and Pfizer (for which I co-wrote the winning pitch for a hard-hitting national campaign aiming to curb the sale of illegal drugs online, called “Get Real, Get a Prescription”).

I relocated to Brighton in 2009 to finish my studies and got a BA in Illustration from the University of Brighton in 2012. My final major projects were 2 live action short films which I wrote, produced, shot, directed and post-produced (“I was there, you know” and “One Bite”).

During my studies I kept working commercially, as an animator and illustrator for Brighton & Hove City Council projects on youth advocacy (under my pseudonym Many Artists Who Do One Thing), creating album artwork and photography for local bands and designing merchandise for the likes of legendary music label Tru Thoughts. I was also a finalist in a London Transport Museum illustration competition in 2010 aimed at promoting cycling.

Running a creative studio

After finishing university I co-founded a multidisciplinary design studio called Sensery, which operated out of Brighton between 2012 and 2013. It moved from a living room to an office in months and over just a short year of operations we were producing mixed media work for Pepsi, DHL, TEDx, and the National Autistic Society, and we were featured in BuzzFeed for our self initiated campaign to give pubs custom designed coasters that helped promote the work of local illustrators.

As a side project while running Sensery, I was the lead animator of a popular mini documentary called PostHuman: An Introduction to Transhumanism, which went viral on Reddit and garnered over 350k views.

My work on the documentary took me to California in 2014, where I worked on branding the first ever Effective Altruism Summit, an event which still happens and is now called Effective Altruism Global.

tech, mental health & philanthropy

Returning to London, where, after initially being contracted to work on a corporate innovation video, I got a full time job as a UX designer for food delivery tech behemoth Just Eat. I was a crucial part of the transformation of it’s growing international team to be organised in self contained “pod teams” rather than keep antequated departmental structures.

I left Just Eat to work on launching the first version of nootropics.com, which at the time was a major nootropic supplement store. I created the brand, designed all of the packaging and the e-commerce website (please note the domain has since been sold to a separate entity and the supplement platform was taken down).

Between 2015 and 2016 I was the Creative & UX Lead of the Effective Altruism Foundation, where I designed, prototyped and coded improvements to their various websites and brand touch points as well as refreshing their core branding and producing a brand manual for online and print.

I later joined the charitable sports startup Funder Inc, setting up a US-inspired 50/50 raffle system at sports games in the UK, and was a key part in winning major contracts with the likes of football clubs Chelsea FC (for which I also produced this short advert) and Brentford. During my time as Head of Creative and UX there, I managed a team of designers, created the online platform and physical media branding in-stadium, and produced videos showing the impact of the sports clubs’ charity arms as well as animating content for social media.

Then, in 2018, I worked as a motion graphics contractor on the initial branding of the large cryptocurrency project Reserve stablecoin. Later that year, I took a full time role, creatively heading mental health tech startup Mind Ease for 5 years, pushing through Covid to win a 1 million pound investment round, managing and mentoring a team of designers and leaving the company under a change of management that saw it pivot to a panic attack app.

I’ve been freelancing since, primarily in the NGO and philanthropy space. Notable clients since 2023 include the Bloom Wellbeing Fund, for which I’ve created the main brand, designed and coded the front and back end of their website, quarterly reports and physical media, the Alpha Epsilon fund, for which I’ve also created the main brand and the web infrastructure, and routine building app Thought Saver, for whic I’ve done a product design and brand overhaul.

Musical side quests

Pre-Covid lockdown, I ran a London-based listening party events series called 7-11 musical discoveries, and DJ-ed at various London venues and small festivals.

I also hosted a monthly radio show on London’s Netil Radio for 5 years, between 2020 and summer 2025, most of which is documented on my Soundcloud.

I released music under my name and still guest DJ here and there.

2026

I am currently completing post-production on “The park with the stones“, my writer-producer-director debut film. As part of this project I also set up production company studio areal, to facilitate distributing the film and to develop future narrative and commercial projects.

I am financing my personal work by continuing to do contract design work in the philanthropy and tech space.