Rethink Taps Gretel Vet to Lead New Design Practice

Impartial company Rethink has launched a design apply, bringing collectively its companies in model technique, visible id, packaging, and design methods 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. Primarily based in New York, she stories to Sean McDonald, Rethink’s companion and international chief technique officer.“I noticed an unbelievable alternative,” Marquez stated of the job. “Rethink has a powerful legacy and repute, and that was necessary for me as a subsequent step in my profession.”Whereas Rethink has achieved 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 not a subsidiary of promoting. It’s a peer of promoting,” stated McDonald.She added {that a} design apply permits Rethink to learn from “the consumer relationships of an promoting company” whereas additionally “specializing in design and output.”“We’re extremely conceptual and blend robust strategic considering with robust visible storytelling,” she stated. “That mixture may 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; companion and govt artistic director Hans Thiessen, a longtime Rethink exec; and Rethink companion and group artistic director Alex Bakker.McDonald stated 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 somewhat than a help perform.Rethink Design’s groups embrace 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 residence to expertise like Zoë Boudreau and Jesse Shaw, who not too long ago 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 crew.For Rethink Design’s first yr, McDonald stated the main target will likely be on integrating with the broader Rethink crew, creating high quality work, and rising momentum with purchasers.“If we proceed to construct out case research and any quantity that represents the perfect work on the earth, that will likely be nice,” he stated. “However the actual alternative is to study and combine all of Larissa’s expertise with all the expertise that we have now.”Marquez added: “For us, an important factor is to set the usual actually excessive from the start.”