Hytham Hassan is a freelance creative director based in Riyadh, working with brands and agencies across education, real estate, healthcare, sport, AI, Banking, and retail in Saudi Arabia. He leads campaigns, brand launches, and content systems from strategy to execution — written natively in Arabic and English, backed by a master’s degree in advertising from Academy of Art University, San Francisco.
What creative direction covers
Titles in this industry are elastic, so here is the concrete version:
- Campaign development. From brief to platform idea to full rollout — film, social, out-of-home, activation. Built as a system, not a hero ad with orphan adaptations.
- Brand launches. Positioning, naming and line development, the launch campaign, and the website that lands it. For KAIR Education this ran from strategy through the “Further, Every Day” platform to a three-month digital campaign and the site build itself.
- Content direction. Always-on systems that keep a brand’s voice consistent after the launch fireworks — editorial logic, formats, and the guardrails a social team can actually follow.
- Bilingual creative leadership. Concepts engineered to work in Arabic and English from the first line — not developed in English and adapted after the fact. This is the difference clients feel but cannot always name.
- Production oversight. Scripts, shoots, edits — and AI-assisted production where it genuinely earns its place rather than where it is fashionable.
How I work
Wide, then sharp. Early rounds are deliberately broad — multiple territories, each with its strategic rationale attached, so the decision is between real alternatives rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it route. Then we narrow together, and the chosen idea gets the obsessive part of the craft: the writing, the casting of every word in both languages, the details that separate work people remember from work that merely ran.
Strategy comes standard. Every creative recommendation arrives with the reasoning that produced it, because approved work is work the client understood, not work they were talked into.
Recent work this page stands on
- KAIR Education — full brand launch: strategy, the “Further, Every Day” platform, three-month digital campaign, and the website build.
- LensKart — “My Dream is Saudi” (حلمي سعودي), a Saudi National Day eyewear campaign written natively in Saudi Arabic.
- Real estate — brand and campaign work for developments including OSUS EYE and Livein Liwan, including multilingual web content for international buyers.
- Healthcare — Tayf Aziz Center: bilingual Arabic/English website, campaign copy, and the digital tools around them.
Ways to engage
- By project. A defined brief with a defined deliverable — a launch, a campaign, a website’s creative and content. Scoped and priced upfront.
- Monthly retainer. Ongoing creative direction for brands that need a senior hand on content and campaigns without a full-time hire.
- Embedded with agencies. White-label creative leadership inside your team for a pitch or a campaign sprint. Your client, your credit, my hours.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work with agencies or directly with clients?
Both. I take on direct client engagements end to end, and I work inside agency teams on a white-label basis when they need senior creative leadership on a pitch or campaign without adding permanent headcount.
Do you write in Arabic or translate into it?
I write in Arabic from the first line. Concepts are built to work in Arabic and English simultaneously — which is different from developing an idea in English and adapting it afterwards. Translated copy almost always reads translated.
Which sectors do you know best?
Education, real estate, healthcare, and retail — including full brand launches, national-day campaigns, and bilingual website builds. The portfolio is organized by sector so you can judge the closest precedent to your brief.
Are you based in Riyadh, and do you work beyond it?
Based in Riyadh, working across Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Most engagements mix in-person sessions in Riyadh with remote collaboration; fully remote projects are routine.
Start a conversation
The fastest way to find out whether this is a fit is a short call about the brief. Start here, or read more about me first.