Art Director & UX/UI Design Lead — Cairo, Egypt

A lifetime of
craft. Every
pixel, earned.

20+ years designing digital experiences — from fine art and set design to leading cross-functional teams across the Middle East. I don't just make things beautiful. I make things work beautifully.

20+
Years experience
200+
Websites designed
15+
Years leading teams
Open to senior design leadership roles
01 — About

Before pixels, I built worlds with paint and light.

I grew up in a family where art wasn't a hobby — it was the air we breathed. I played violin professionally (classical, Arabic, Oriental). Music taught me that precision and emotion are not opposites. They are the same thing, performed at the same time.

I studied Fine Art at Helwan University — specializing in Decoration, Theater & Film Set Design. I learned to make people feel something the moment they walk into a room. Then I built 200+ websites. Then I became the person who leads the people who build.

Different disciplines. Different decades. The same obsession: craft that moves people.

"Design is not what you add. It's what you have the courage to remove."

02 — Selected Work

Design confidence must be grounded in user reality.

A selection of work spanning fintech, sports, hospitality, and corporate identity. Each project started not with a screen, but with five questions: requirement, competitors, users, trends, and numbers.

↗
01 — Fintech

Fawry Pay App

"The direction that didn't ship. And what I learned from it."

Art Direction UI Design Mobile Egypt
↗
02 — Sports

CAF Dashboard

"Redesigning the backbone of African football."

UX Research UI Design Dashboard
↗
03 — Hospitality

Vivida

"Building a luxury brand from nothing."

Website Luxury Brand
↗
04 — Corporate

S3 KSA

"Same brand. New market. Different story."

Web Design Corporate Saudi Arabia
↗
05 — Archive 2003–2013

The Web Era — When Websites Had a Soul

"200+ websites built from scratch, with intention. FUN, Chocolateness, Waferly, Slider Station & more."

Web Design Branding Art Direction E-commerce
↗
06 — Social Platform

FUN Network

"A social platform for university youth — before social platforms were everywhere."

Illustration Editorial Web
03 — My Process

Seven steps.
No shortcuts.

"I don't start with screens. I start with questions." Before I open Figma, I need to understand who the user is, what the business needs, and where the gap between them lives.

01
Brief
Understand what's really being asked, not just what's written down.
02
Research
Users, competitors, trends, numbers. No assumptions.
03
Wireframe
Structure before style. Logic before aesthetics.
04
Prototype
Make it real enough to test. Fail fast, learn faster.
05
Test
Real users. Real feedback. No guessing.
06
Iterate
The first solution is never the final solution.
07
Deliver
Ship with intention. Measure what matters.
04 — Skills

Four layers.
Built over
decades.

Each layer was built on the one before it. None of it was accidental — from the artistic foundation that no tool can teach, to the leadership edge developed across 15 years.

"20+ years of skills don't fit in a list. But here's how they layer."

Layer 1 — Design Tools

Figma
Adobe XD
Photoshop
Illustrator
After Effects
InDesign

Layer 2 — UX Methods

UX Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
User Personas
Journey Mapping
Usability Testing
Design Systems
Atomic Design

Layer 3 — Digital & Analytical

HTML5
CSS3
Responsive Design
Google Analytics
Data-driven Design
SaaS Products

Layer 4 — Leadership & Workflow

Creative Direction
Team Mentoring
Stakeholder Comms
Jira
Slack
Miro
Cross-cultural Teams
05 — Experience
Feb 2025 – Present
Assistant Professor (by experience)
Egypt University of Informatics — New Capital
Cairo, Egypt
Jan 2022 – Aug 2024
UX Manager / Art Director
Argaam Media
Cairo, Egypt
Jun 2021 – Jan 2022
UX / UI Instructor
Global Knowledge — Ministry of Communication, Saudi Arabia
Remote
Aug 2018 – Dec 2018
Creative Director / Senior Art Director
InterMark Network
Cairo, Egypt
Mar 2019 – Apr 2020
UI Lead
Webkeyz
Cairo, Egypt
Sep 2015 – Mar 2018
Web Design Lead
Connect Ads
Cairo, Egypt
Jul 2013 – Aug 2015
Web Design Manager — The Body Shop & La Senza
M. H. Alshaya Co.
Kuwait
Oct 2011 – Jul 2013
Art Director
Memac Ogilvy
Kuwait
Nov 2008 – Oct 2011
Web Design Manager
KuwaitNET
Kuwait
Teaching & Mentoring
Passing design on — not just practicing it.

I teach UX/UI to Year 2 and Year 4 game design students at Egypt University of Informatics, and have delivered courses for the Saudi Ministry of Communication. The moment a junior designer stops asking "how do I do this?" and starts asking "why does this matter?" — that's the moment I live for.

"I don't just practice design. I pass it on."
Education
Bachelor of Fine Arts

Helwan University — Faculty of Fine Arts
Major in Decoration (Theater & Film Set Design)
Graduated: August 1998

EF SET English Certificate — C1 Advanced
Issued: June 2025

"Before design, I learned to see."
06 — Contact
Amr Darwish

Let's build something
worth designing.

I'm currently open to senior design leadership roles where craft, strategy, and people come together. If you're building something that deserves to be designed with intention — let's connect.

info@amrdarwish.com →
Phone
+20 106 065 1000
→
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/amrdarwish
↗
Portfolio / Behance
behance.net/dotamr
↗
GitHub
github.com/dotamr
↗