Check Out Dane Howard’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dane Howard.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started my career as a designer, when interaction and software design was still emerging. I have evolved into a design leader & entrepreneur. As a creative generator, I design momentum for world class products, services and brands.

Over my 30 year career, I’ve had the pleasure to build, grow & lead teams for both start-ups and big companies. I co-founded a start-up which was acquired by eBay. I’ve learned how to build shareholder value, and mine the experience potential in companies. I’ve been told I’m a ‘humble leader driven by purpose’.

These days, I have a professional three-legged stool that I balance between design leadership, executive coaching, and a creative artist studio. In my current season of life, the balance between those three are critical to help me find my center for solving problems through Design, Coaching and helping others, and embarking on artistic collaborations and creations.

When I started Dane Howard Studio, I decided to re-emerge as an artist and continue a journey of creativity, design, and travel I started in 1995. I find myself now returning to my art and design with a perspective that has been shaped by a long career of creative decisions.

I’m now more diverse and interesting. My background as a husband, father, designer, executive advisor, and leader has shaped my perspective. I found myself returning to pursue my art and studio with more vigor and focus. I’m not (yet) ready to leave a corporate life as a product design executive, but I enjoy the balance I find between tech and art. I like the tension and the variance of both mediums and the speed by which they evolve. I live and work in my modern farmhouse in Tennessee. It is my creative haven and workspace, where I bring ideas to life. Some of those ideas find their way here.

My previous experiences leading globally diverse teams and building products, services, and brands have taught me the importance of storytelling in connecting people and creating a shared purpose. I have worked with top industry leaders and brands such as Microsoft, BMW, and Amazon, and have received recognition for my design and marketing efforts. It’s a peculiar foundation for a re-emerging artist.
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I am also a photographer, author, speaker, and executive advisor. My book, The Future of Memories, explores the role of photography and storytelling to help shape our lives and our growing families. I am also a proud advisor to Black Players for Change and standbeautiful.me, a movement that brings awareness to anti-bullying and promotes self-acceptance and acceptance of others.
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I am driven by my passion for art and the power it holds to transform perspective, and culture and inspire change. I am eager to continue this path and share my story with others.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
For me, resilience came from a desire as a very young child to create a body of work. I was born into a middle-age family, where we struggled for money, yet I found early on that I liked to create things.

I realized that I became better over time if I kept trying and visualizing the output. I became a hard worker, and learned through athletics to always join the best team I could. I realized it was true that you always rise to the occasion of the level of those around you. My resilience came from failures rather than successes, but the successes were small in the beginning, like stepping stones across a stream river on a long journey. I found that Design became a way for me to be a problem solver and my tenacity to solve problems took me into a creative realm to aspire to have a body of work that I could be proud of.

Having children shaped me as a father and husband. My wife, Lori, makes me better every day. Optimism isn’t always accessible, but it can be a force multiplier for starting things. Design helps me live in that hypothetical future, which requires pre visualization all the time. This is a muscle I have learned to build.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a multidisciplinary artist and design leader whose work exists at the convergence of fine art, emerging technology, and immersive storytelling. After 30 years of shaping digital experiences for global brands such as Microsoft, BMW, eBay, Amazon, and Samsung NEXT, I returned to my roots as a visual artist, embracing the dynamic interplay between traditional mediums and digital experimentation.

My practice explores the evolving relationship between human creativity and machine intelligence, leveraging generative AI, interactive media, and tactile processes to create work that challenges perception and narrative. My years in Silicon Valley—leading globally distributed teams, pioneering design research, and driving innovation in consumer and healthcare technology—inform his artistic sensibility, one that is deeply attuned to the intersection of design, culture, and the human experience.

Dane Howard Studio pushes the boundaries of what it means to create in a digital age, working across fashion, sports, exhibit design, and immersive environments. My art is a reflection of a career spent navigating the edge of possibility—an exploration of memory, form, and the tension between intuition and algorithmic precision.

As a re-emerging artist, I approach my work with a renewed sense of purpose, a relentless curiosity, and an unwavering belief in the power of art to provoke, inspire, and transform.

I’ve been celebrating the Tennessee Sky, now in it’s 2nd edition. Since I first set foot in Tennessee in 2020, the sky has captivated me—vast, mercurial, almost theatrical in its shifting tones. But it wasn’t until I made this place my home in 2022 that I began to understand the deeper conversation between the landscape and the seasons. The land here isn’t static; it breathes, moves, transforms. Each turn of the weather, every subtle change in light, feels like a new chapter in an unfolding story. This series aims to capture those moments, where the sky and earth meet in a delicate, fleeting dialogue—where Tennessee speaks not just to the eye, but to my soul.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I have thought about Success and Effectiveness as interchangeable. I have learned from some of the dragons I have slayed in my career. Some were important life long goals, while others were fleeting. Being an effective leader, communicator, father, or husband are ongoing aspirations. I may never master them, but I hope to always improve upon them. My life is filled with learning, and there is a lot of satisfaction at becoming effective at something.

I define success by how much you get to control your own time, and how that time is spent in service of others. I am the type of person that is wired to constantly create. when I can point that creativity in a variety of directions, it has the opportunity to be a force multiplier for brands, user experiences, art, and ideally humanity.

One of my favorite analogies is found in the lesson of energy, effort, and science. It turns out that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to raise the temperature of a swimming pool just a few degrees. However, it takes just a few drops to change its pH. I have found that some of the most impactful acts I have witnessed behave like pH.

I try to live and work in such a way that others are attracted to, and want to learn from. When I have the opportunity to impact others, I find it a tremendous honor and responsibility. I can only hope that my legacy is left in those who are inspired by a life’s work and way of living that they can take forward to amplify their own impact.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.danehoward-studio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danehoward_studio
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danehoward/
• Other: https://danehoward.com/