Zoe Thatcher

Short biography

Zoe Thatcher is a young designer on the rise with an impressive arsenal of skills. From character design and storyboards to costume design and aerial perspectives, Zoe has the ability to move swiftly from designing a corporate lobby for FM Global to illustrating a new theme park in Abu Dhabi for Miral. Most importantly, she’s able to inject personality and emotion into her designs. In fact, her design philosophy is to simply spread a little joy.  She’s most comfortable sitting on her favorite chair, Apple Pencil in one hand and an iPad with Procreate in the other. This is where Zoe dreams up everything from a new vision for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum to storyboards for the grand opening of SeaWorld Abu Dhabi. Even before graduating from college, Zoe was working professionally on projects for Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, Under Armour and the Quest indoor theme park in Doha. This work led to her first job as a costume designer at Weissman, one of the largest dancewear companies in the United States. More than 160 of her ballet and tap costume designs for 4 to 8-year-olds have been in the company’s catalogs from 2020 to 2024. This love of costume design can also be seen at DragonCon, Comic-Con, DragonSteel or the streets of Savannah where you can find Zoe doing cosplay as characters as diverse as Elizabeth Swan and Jasnah Kolin. In August 2019, Zoe joined Creative Principals as a designer and illustrator. Working side-by-side with her father Geoff Thatcher, Zoe has worked on projects literally from A to Z—ranging from the Al Ain Zoo in the UAE to the Zippo-Case Museum in Bradford, Pennsylvania. She’s worked on brand experiences for Animax, FM Global and Yokogawa; educational and cultural projects at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the J. Kruse Education Center and Ozark Mill in Missouri; and themed entertainment projects for Real Madrid, Qiddiya, Mercedes-AMG and Miral. In fact, Zoe has worked on more than 15 projects with Miral with some of her most recent renderings brought to life in the Manar Abu Dhabi Public Art initiative showcasing a light exhibition on Samaliyah Island. As a designer still in her 20s, Zoe has been on the leading edge of translating AI design to experience design and is an expert in Midjourney. She has defended the use of AI against critics and spoken about how AI design is transforming the experience industry at the 2022 Themed Entertainment Association’s SATE Conference in Las Vegas, the 2023 SATE Europe conference in 2023 and at the 7X Summit in Auckland New Zealand in December 2023. She also co-authored an article on the subject of AI in Blooloop in 2023. When COVID-19 hit, Zoe created 43 illustrations for the new book The CEO’s Time Machine. The book went from her iPad to Amazon in less than five weeks, showing that Zoe also knows how to work fast. Reviewers and readers have called her illustrations “stunning,” “imaginative,” “bold,” “powerful,” “mysterious,” “mesmerizing,” “expressive” and “fantastic.”  Zoe graduated summa cum laude from Auburn University in 2018 with a major in apparel design and minor in studio art. While at Auburn, Zoe swam for the Tigers and was named its 2018 female student athlete of the year. She competed at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships three times, the USA Swimming National Championships six times and the 2016 USA Olympic Trials. Still active in the water, she credits swimming for keeping her both disciplined and creative. Apparently, there’s a lot of time to brainstorm while looking at the black line on the bottom of a pool.