About Us
Carbon Project is a strategic and customer experience based boutique creative agency offering an approach to design and business, grounded in inductive investigation, curiosity and empathy. Offering brand / product strategy, perception development and visual strategy, along with the experience to implement the strategies into product design, transportation design, environmental design and communication design.
Our Approach
We engage with our clients at every moment of growth. Whether at the genesis of a new idea, at a moment of stagnation, looking for a new growth opportunity or to look further into the future for a new north star.
We start by being great listeners and observers with the right amount of inquiry to reveal the hidden gems that become the building blocks for innovation. We immerse ourselves into our client's and their customer's world to witness possible opportunities and unmet needs.
With our diverse backgrounds, experiences and tireless curiosity, we connect the dots and turn what was the abstract, into the tangible and successful business solutions.
Our Team
Angelika Schubert-Belle
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
CO-FOUNDER
As a brand strategist and design consultant Angelika has helped fortune 50 companies to bring brand communications, products and brand experiences successfully to market.
Angelika is a German native and brings her European experiences to an international client base. She has a passion for design with purpose and likes to create meaningful experiences which change the way people think, feel and act.
She co-founded Carbon Project Inc. in 2001, a strategic and experience based design agency in Southern California offering a holistic approach to design and business with emotional connections reaching all consumer touch points from micro to macro.
Before starting Carbon Project she was a Brand Strategist for the Brand Imaging Group of Ford Motor Company in Irvine, California. While at Ford she was responsible for building verbal and visual brand alignment for the Ford Motor Company portfolio of brands with respect to image consistency and brand differentiation. She was in charge of projects, such as designing five branded corporate airplanes, the visual alignment and design of corporate dealerships and tradeshows as well as developing verbal and visual brand and design guidelines for Aston Martin, Jaguar, Volvo, Lincoln, Landrover, Ford, Mazda and Mercury.
Prior to working for Ford Motor Company, Angelika worked as a lead footwear designer for the women’s category at Nike in Beaverton, Oregon where she assisted the company to strengthen the public image of the current Nike women’s business. Some of her footwear products have won public recognition as receiving the Walking Magazine’s ‘Product of the Year’ Award.
Angelika also worked for several years prior as a product designer at Ziba Design in Portland Oregon, an internationally renown design consultancy. She was closely involved with the product research process and has designed award winning products for clients, such as Black & Decker, Microtek, Wacom Technologies, Rival, Whirlpool, Proctor & Gamble, Gerry Baby Products and Hyundai Cellular Phones.
She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honors from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. She has received over 12 international design excellence awards from competitions, such as IDSA, IF Awards and Design Innovations and is a holder of 12 international design patents. Her product design work has been exhibited at the Design Museum Westfalen in Germany. Angelika also has taught Visual Brand Strategy Classes at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. She is currently on the Design Council at Laguna College of Art and Design. She has lived in the US since 1993 and is fluent in the English and German language.
M. Todd Belle
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER
CO-FOUNDER
Todd co-founded Carbon Project Inc., a creative agency in Southern California, to provide strategic and experience based design for brands such as Nike, The Walt Disney Company, Ford Motor Company, and the Johnson & Johnson Medical Device Companies. Carbon Project also assists start-ups with innovation mapping and brand development.
For over 25 years as a creative director, Todd has synthesized his experiences, inquiry and curiosity to create unique solutions for a wide range of companies. Whether global brands or startup ventures, Todd’s focus is to understand the big picture thinking in order to construct strategies for his clients. These strategies impact business growth, brand awareness and customer experiences. He believes design is where business and empathy meet to create a dialog with the audience. As an Industrial Designer and persistent polymath, his passion is to connect the abstract through observation and investigation, along with a healthy dose of humor, to arrive with an innovative solution.
Todd has been part of the most creative in-house teams as a designer and as an executive. He has built and nurtured strategies, products and experiences for Fortune 50 brands. He has collaborated with talented people in varied disciplines and in different industries. This cross-pollination of expertise provides opportunities that organizations look for and elevates the brand bar to new levels.
Besides his experiences within Carbon Project, Todd worked as the Global Director, Brand Image for Global Creative and Fashion and Home at The Walt Disney Company. He led global teams of graphic and environmental designers, coordinated with film property releases as well as evergreen franchises to create compelling communications, packaging and retail experiences. He worked closely with Disney’s licensees across all product categories to ensure accurate character and story guidelines were followed. Todd served as Global Creative Liaison to the Disney Consumer Products (DCP), Brand Council, networking with and directing internal and external Creative/Product Design stakeholders.
Prior to Disney he joined a marketing/design think tank for Ford Motor Company in Southern California, focusing brand strategies for their portfolio of car brands. Having a collective view of all the brands, the team developed strategies that differentiate and delineate based on their attributes and personality qualities. Being a small team of 9, with 9 different disciplines, the strategies were able to be executed at every opportunity. He was part of creating brand statements that included concept cars, corporate aircraft, showrooms, international show stands, branded immersions and corporate architecture.
Before joining Ford Motor Company Todd was recruited to Nike’s Image Design group, where brand storytelling was interlaced in every detail and at every touchpoint. He was lead designer on many projects and created experiences at every scale, including: communications, X-Games, Super Show. He was lead designer for Niketown, which established innovative 70,000 square foot retail destinations across the globe that immersed guests into the athlete’s story and technological advancements in product design. He helped bring Nike’s Digital Sizing technology to the athlete and customer with Nike’s Advanced Technology Exploration group (ATE). Always inspired by Nike, Todd continues to collaborate with the company.
Todd is a graduate from the Industrial Design program at Art Center College of Design. He returned to the Art Center to teach Graduate and Undergraduate classes. Through Art Center, he was asked to be a visiting Professor at INSEAD Business School for the World in Singapore, blending Industrial Design and MBA students in a cross discipline curriculum.