Impartial company Rethink has launched a design apply, bringing collectively its companies in model technique, visible identification, packaging, and design programs below a proper providing for purchasers. The apply will function throughout its North American workplaces in New York, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
Larissa Marquez, former govt director of operations at Brooklyn design studio Gretel, has joined Rethink as managing director of the brand new design group. Primarily based in New York, she stories to Sean McDonald, Rethink’s associate and international chief technique officer.
“I noticed an unimaginable alternative,” Marquez mentioned of the job. “Rethink has a robust legacy and status, and that was necessary for me as a subsequent step in my profession.”
Whereas Rethink has executed award-winning design work for purchasers reminiscent of Kraft Heinz, Molson Coors, and KitKat, design had by no means been packaged as a part of its providing on par with its promoting companies.
With this new apply, “design is now not a subsidiary of promoting. It’s a peer of promoting,” mentioned McDonald.
She added {that a} design apply permits Rethink to profit from “the consumer relationships of an promoting company” whereas additionally “specializing in design and output.”
“We’re extremely conceptual and blend robust strategic pondering with robust visible storytelling,” she mentioned. “That mixture could be very distinctive.”
Additionally becoming a member of Rethink Design’s management is govt artistic director of design Wealthy Greco, beforehand a design chief at JKR and Droga5; associate and govt artistic director Hans Thiessen, a longtime Rethink exec; and Rethink associate and group artistic director Alex Bakker.
McDonald mentioned the construction offers design leaders like Greco and Bakker a extra outlined management function on consumer accounts, with design handled as a standalone self-discipline quite than a assist perform.
Rethink Design’s groups embody a mixture of junior and senior expertise throughout North America, and the company is “very intentionally seeking to rent expertise on the junior finish,” McDonald mentioned. The company is residence to expertise like Zoë Boudreau and Jesse Shaw, who lately received gold on the Cannes Younger Lions Design competitors.
The company plans to “scale to the alternatives” it will get, however Marquez declined to touch upon whether or not it’s hiring for the group.
For Rethink Design’s first 12 months, McDonald mentioned the main focus will likely be on integrating with the broader Rethink group, creating high quality work, and rising momentum with purchasers.
“If we proceed to construct out case research and any quantity that represents one of the best work on the planet, that will likely be nice,” he mentioned. “However the true alternative is to study and combine all of Larissa’s expertise with all the expertise that now we have.”
Marquez added: “For us, an important factor is to set the usual actually excessive from the start.”
