Davide Filippini, Direct Response Designer
I started out as a graphic designer. Then I became a copywriter. Direct Response Design is where the two meet.
This is how I got here, and how I work now. I am telling you because if you are going to hand me a piece that has to sell, you should know who is on the other end.
Where I come from
I started out as a traditional graphic designer.
I studied design and worked like everyone else. A polished portfolio, projects that looked good. I thought my job was to make things beautiful.
That worked fine, until someone asked how many customers a flyer or a brochure had actually brought in. The truth is I did not know. Nobody was measuring it.
The turning point
Then I ran into direct response marketing.
I threw myself into it until I became a copywriter. I joined the staff of one of the most respected direct response copywriting schools in the country at the time.
Reading the old masters there, I noticed something almost nobody talked about: they did not just write well. They laid the page out a specific way, design built to make you read and make you respond. It has a name: direct response design.
The craft
So I stopped talking about it and started doing it.
At first it was teaching. I wrote and published about how design can sell instead of just please, back when almost nobody in my market was making that case.
Then it became a full craft. I opened my own studio and put the principles to work on real client materials: the kind that get printed, mailed, and measured.
In the field
Three years inside one of Italy's biggest sales machines.
From 2021 to 2024 I was Chief Design Officer at Metodo Merenda, one of the largest direct response marketing companies in Italy.
In three years I designed or supervised more than 400 campaigns: magalogs, sales letters, brochures, covers, landing pages, ads. Real materials, mailed and published, measured in sales. Not portfolio exercises.
"I stopped asking whether I liked a piece. I started asking whether it worked."
Who I learned from
A discipline more than a century old.
Scientific Advertising
Ogilvy & Mather
Direct response designer
I did not invent direct response design. It has been around for over a hundred years, from Claude Hopkins and David Ogilvy on. Its best-known voice today is Lori Haller, the direct response designer everyone in the United States points to.
I completed her program, and she recognized me as her first Italian student. That school gave me the method: every design choice field-tested and measured in sales, not likes.
How I work
Everything goes through my hands.
My name is on it.
I run the diagnosis on your material myself. If it goes out with my name on it, I looked at it.
I respect your copy.
I do not rewrite it to suit my taste. My job is to amplify it and carry the reader's eye all the way to the action. But if I see something that is not working, I will tell you. Every time.
I explain every choice.
No "trust me, I'm the creative." I tell you why each element sits where it does, and what it is there to do.
And if the message is in your head but not on paper yet? That is fine too. Pulling it out is part of the job: I came up through copy before design.
Why Keryx
This is where Keryx comes from.
Most direct response marketing shouts. It rushes you, plays on fear, raises its voice to get heard. It works once, then it burns the trust.
I wanted the opposite. In ancient Greek, keryx is the herald: the messenger who delivers with authority, without shouting. The materials I design speak to your customer with respect. They guide, and they build a relationship that lasts. They do not scare someone into a yes.
"There's no such thing as good design or bad design. There's design that sells and design that doesn't. I didn't learn that in school. I learned it by shipping materials and measuring what happened next."
A few results
Numbers, not adjectives.
11.14%
response rate on a folded mailer, for a cafe
37
qualified leads from one redesigned trifold
50%
QR scan rate on a single brochure
600
copies sold in days, for one book
Real businesses, real materials delivered. The full cases, with every number in its context, are here.
Work together?
I work with a limited number of clients.
I take on a few projects at a time, because I run each one from start to finish myself. That is why I do not work with everyone: I choose the projects where I can actually move the needle. If I am not the right fit for you, I will say so right away.
If you think we are built to work together, apply. Tell me what you are working on, and I will reply myself.
Not ready yet? Watch the free video on the 13 mistakes first .