Impartial company Rethink has launched a design apply, bringing collectively its providers in model technique, visible identification, packaging, and design techniques below a proper providing for purchasers. The apply will function throughout its North American places of work 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. Based mostly in New York, she reviews to Sean McDonald, Rethink’s associate and world chief technique officer.
“I noticed an unimaginable alternative,” Marquez stated of the job. “Rethink has a robust legacy and repute, and that was necessary for me as a subsequent step in my profession.”
Whereas Rethink has executed award-winning design work for purchasers corresponding 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 apply, “design is not a subsidiary of promoting. It’s a peer of promoting,” stated McDonald.
She added {that a} design apply permits Rethink to profit from “the shopper relationships of an promoting company” whereas additionally “specializing in design and output.”
“We’re extremely conceptual and blend sturdy strategic pondering with sturdy visible storytelling,” she stated. “That mixture could 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 function on shopper accounts, with design handled as a standalone self-discipline somewhat than a help operate.
Rethink Design’s groups embrace 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 stated. The company is dwelling to expertise like Zoë Boudreau and Jesse Shaw, who not too long ago 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 group.
For Rethink Design’s first yr, McDonald stated the main target can 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 the very best work on this planet, that can be nice,” he stated. “However the true alternative is to study and combine all of Larissa’s expertise with the entire expertise that we now have.”
Marquez added: “For us, crucial factor is to set the usual actually excessive from the start.”
