Unbiased company Rethink has launched a design follow, bringing collectively its providers in model technique, visible identification, packaging, and design methods beneath a proper providing for shoppers. The follow 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 studies to Sean McDonald, Rethink’s associate and international chief technique officer.
“I noticed an unbelievable alternative,” Marquez stated of the job. “Rethink has a powerful legacy and popularity, and that was vital for me as a subsequent step in my profession.”
Whereas Rethink has carried out award-winning design work for shoppers comparable to Kraft Heinz, Molson Coors, and KitKat, design had by no means been packaged as a part of its providing on par with its promoting providers.
With this new follow, “design is not a subsidiary of promoting. It’s a peer of promoting,” stated McDonald.
She added {that a} design follow permits Rethink to learn from “the shopper relationships of an promoting company” whereas additionally “specializing in design and output.”
“We’re extremely conceptual and blend sturdy strategic considering with sturdy visible storytelling,” she stated. “That mixture may be very distinctive.”
Additionally becoming a member of Rethink Design’s management is govt inventive director of design Wealthy Greco, beforehand a design chief at JKR and Droga5; associate and govt inventive director Hans Thiessen, a longtime Rethink exec; and Rethink associate and group inventive director Alex Bakker.
McDonald stated the construction offers design leaders like Greco and Bakker a extra outlined management position on shopper accounts, with design handled as a standalone self-discipline fairly than a help operate.
Rethink Design’s groups embody a mixture of junior and senior expertise throughout North America, and the company is “very intentionally trying to rent expertise on the junior finish,” McDonald stated. The company is dwelling to expertise like Zoë Boudreau and Jesse Shaw, who lately gained 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 staff.
For Rethink Design’s first 12 months, McDonald stated the main focus shall be on integrating with the broader Rethink staff, creating high quality work, and rising momentum with shoppers.
“If we proceed to construct out case research and any quantity that represents the most effective work on the earth, that shall be nice,” he stated. “However the true alternative is to study and combine all of Larissa’s expertise with all the expertise that we have now.”
Marquez added: “For us, a very powerful factor is to set the usual actually excessive from the start.”
