About me

With a background as a printmaker and renowned street artist, John Glasgow is Co-Founder of Vault49, a global brand experience & packaging design agency with studios in New York and London.

John met his future business partner, Jonathan Kenyon, in the screenprint rooms at London College of Printing in 2002. The pair shared a love of creative collaboration, and spent their evenings flypostering the empty walls and derelict buildings of London to make it more beautiful. After catching the eye of Dazed & Confused magazine, they embarked on a journey that would see them evolve from street art duo into the unique, disruptive creative agency that Vault49 is today.

Leaning into these roots, John instills a crafted process throughout the Vault49 team, and leads the creative vision for the agency: integrating brand strategy with image-making and hands-on craft to deliver bold artistic solutions that disrupt everyday experiences and delight consumers.

Working with a broad range of clients over the years, John has worked on everything from global drinks and FMCG brands within the Diageo and PepsiCo portfolios, to tech giants and start-ups, and everything in-between.

One of only a handful of black people running a creative agency, John leads a series of initiatives at Vault49 to drive greater inclusivity and diversity in the industry, including heading up a mentoring group set up specifically to support people of color.

For the past 10 years, John has been collaborating with high-profile external partners, including The Obama Foundation's My Brother's Keeper Alliance and Jay-Z's Shawn Carter Foundation, developing a cultural exchange program for students and young people from black and low-income backgrounds. Often the first in their families to attend art school, this programme provides opportunities to travel between the USA & London to broaden their creative experience and, most importantly, show them that they deserve to be part of the creative industry.

Since 2020, John has driven Vault49's Black Lives Matter project, an on-going collaborative series of bold, typographic posters that support the BLM movement, all hand-printed at the agency's New York studio. This year, the project was recognized at D&AD, winning Vault49's first Pencil award, as well as being shortlisted at Design Week Awards and The Drum Awards for Design.

An active voice and advocate for greater diversity in the wider creative industry, most recently John has spoken about the topic at the Pentawards Festival and EPDA's (European Brand & Packaging Design Association) Design Conference 2022. John also joined the juries for this year's Pentawards and Design Week Awards, and has previously been a judge at The One Show and Brand Impact Awards.

This year, John and the rest of the Vault49 team will be marking 20 years of disruptive design. 20 years of doing things differently. 20 years of bravery, joy, creative excellence, and keeping it real.