About - RLD

Brand builders. Story tellers. Product designers. Experience creators.

For more than 20 years, we’ve not only helped grow businesses, but also improved people’s lives. Whether preparing for their next funding event, an acquisition, or IPO, our client partners—while transforming their businesses into brands that are impossible to be ignored—have raised over $1B in funding and have seen as much as a 10x growth in their networth. We approach every engagement with the same guiding question: How can we accelerate your success, build trust, and create value?

As veterans of esteemed branding agencies, we believe that inside every great designer lurks an aspiring anthropologist.

Your brand is unique. And it’s our job to communicate how and why—to your customers and the world. But we can’t do any of that until we’ve done our due diligence. Strategy is fundamental to every successful outcome. So we ask questions. We observe. We engage. By digging into your world—your company, customers, and culture—we learn to fluently speak your language. So when it’s time to craft a compelling dialogue with your audience, it's both intelligent and compelling.

It’s how we’ve created meaningful brand experiences that keep customers engaged, enlisted and invested—whether they’re online, in-store or on-the-go.

Our talent resides everywhere—from Portland to Hälsingland.

As veterans of large, and dare we say, unwieldy agencies, we know their pitfalls: overpricing, junior staffing and unsustainable operating expenses. That's why we created RLD to be lean, nimble and highly experienced. We leverage expert talent from an extensive global network in a variety of disciplines ranging from digital to identity, and product to environmental design.

Instead of the traditional, overhead-heavy, layered agency—we take a different route. In the tradition of filmmaking, we assemble each project with an incredible team of world-class talent specifically assembled for the engagement. We are veterans. Most of us have worked together for more than 10 years. What binds us is a love for the work, and a love of doing the work. There are no layers between you and us, and from what we hear from our clients, they consider that a refreshing change.

Leadership

Rick Lowe, Executive Creative Director + Founder

Rick is passionate about what he does, which has led him to wearing many hats in the design world. Creative leader. Award-winning Designer. Speaker. And educator. He looks good in hats. Prior to founding RLD, he was partner, vice-president, and creative director at the international design agency, MetaDesign.

You may have already seen his work on brands we use, wear, eat, drink, and visit everyday. These include, Nike, the Exploratorium, Adobe, Sony, Apple, Netflix, the Getty Museum, Bank of America, Adidas, Rio Tinto Diamonds, Boudin, Silicon Valley Bank, and more.

Melding his obsession with design and a fascination with business, Rick followed his BFA in graphic design from RISD with an MBA in business management, entrepreneurship, and philosophy. His wide-ranging curiosity and fervor for sharing his passion have led him to speak at universities and industry conferences such as Carnegie Mellon, Arts Center, and the AIGA. His work has been featured in such publications as Communication Arts, Print, ID, and Graphis.

Katie Freathy, Digital Design

Katie brings over a decade’s worth of design experience to the quiver with the second half of her career focused on all things digital. She has strategically driven brand design projects from concept to execution.

Starting her career at Method SF and MetaDesign SF, she eventually found herself in London defining the art of juggling—working in-house and at agencies across the city by day—including SAS (now Publicis), Unilever UK, Adaptive Lab (now Idean), Merchant Cantos, and Code+Theory London—while at night she studied front-end web design and taught branding and interactive design to online students at Academy of Art University (her own alma mater). It makes us tired just typing that.

After a whirlwind couple of years, Katie found herself able to re-focus on a more regular schedule. Apparently that didn’t feel right, and she soon found herself traveling to Tel Aviv and Zürich for assignments with MetaDesign. She gave birth to her daughter and, a year later, relocated with her husband (and baby) to Portland, OR where (of course) she still found time to work on different projects for locally based clients such as Intel.

Having worked with Rick at MetaDesign, she has most recently led our own web redesigns for different clients, including Cority and the RLD site. Katie holds a BFA from Academy of Art University with front-end web instruction from General Assembly in London, not to forget (she reminds us) a perennial global view as a student of life.

Process

No two projects are identical

While no two projects are identical, we’ve found that most follow our four-phase process — seamlessly moving through our range of services — from strategy and design, to implementing customer touchpoints and producing brand tools for lasting success.

Develop Brand Strategy

Who, Why, What & How

Kick-Off
Employee Insight
Customers Insight
Audits and Reviews
Visioning Session
Strategic Exploration
Brand Platform
Brand/Product Architecture

Design & Refine Brand

Design Brand, Create
Look & Feel

Corporate Logotype
Product Suite Branding
Proprietary Brand Elements
Editorial Tone of Voice

Create Customer Touchpoints

Implement and Extend Brand

Website
Digital Marketing
Sales Deck
Product/Application UI
Marketing Collateral
Correspondence/LH+BC
Signage
Advertising
Environments
Ephemera

Champion Brand

Build Brand Tools

Build Brand Champions
Brand Inspiration Book
Standards + Guidelines
On-line Brand Toolkit
Reproduction Files
Launch Brand

I’ve worked with multiple creative and branding agencies over my career. Simply put, RLD is the best. The work speaks for itself and really sets us apart in the crowded enterprise B2B software space that we operate in. They quickly understood our highly niche market and our unique position in it, collaborated seamlessly in developing a strategy, offered outstanding creative options, helped us gain buy-in at the Board level, and provided highly responsive and professional support as we executed.

Michael Couture — Chief Product Officer, Cority

The RLD team has the unique ability to thread together our identity and deliver something amazing and compelling. They helped us articulate beautifully the intersection of our past, present and future. We are truly at a moment of transformation.

Bill Davis — CEO, ABC Fitness Solutions

We are thrilled to welcome a significant number of new customers across all products, reaffirming the diversity, value, and strength of our portfolio...the unwavering dedication of the Majesco team and our partners, along with the steadfast support of our customers, has positioned us as the most profitable company in the insurance software market.

Adam Elster — Chief Executive Officer, Majesco

You may already know us.

If you’ve worn, watched or worked with any of these brands, you may already know us. We’ve had the privilege to help shape some of the most important brands on the global stage.

See our Work