Rubén Llorach on building a creative engine

Rubén Llorach, head of creative at Lululemon, shares how his team stopped treating design as a service and started building a creative engine instead. The setup is simple but effective: a small group of designers who partner with product, marketing, and the rest of the company. They don't just take orders — they bring ideas and push back when the brief is wrong.

The engine has four parts. Designers are embedded in teams, which keeps them close to the work. They have a shared system — brand, patterns, components — so they can move fast without losing the look. They rotate through teams so one person doesn't become the bottleneck. And they have a clear decision-making process so work doesn't stall.

Rubén says the trick is balance. Too much structure and the work gets boring. Too little and everyone does their own thing. The creative engine is neither a factory nor a studio — it's something in between, where the team can ship fast and still make things people care about.

Why this matters for us: the same approach works for any small shop — a few people, one system, enough freedom to make good work, not enough rules to slow you down.