Jarrod Riddle, new executive creative director at Space150, has returned to the Minneapolis ad agency to help brands "reinvent the future."
In his new role, Riddle, a senior designer and creative director at Space150 from 2004 to 2010, leads creative work at the agency's offices in Minneapolis, New York City and Venice, Calif.
Riddle is focusing on creative technology and products to build on Space150's offerings as an independent, full-service agency.
"It's an aspect of what we can do where a lot of our natural competitive set here in Minneapolis cannot," Riddle said. "We're refocusing our energy and where we're moving the agency. I'm super excited to be leading that charge."
Riddle has more than two decades of experience as a designer, strategist and entrepreneur, working to build brands, create products and launch companies.
He most recently led his own Minneapolis-based design consultancy, Hunt+Foster.
Riddle also has worked locally at Carmichael Lynch and Olson in addition to Space150.
In New York, Riddle was in creative and design director roles at R/GA and Big Spaceship, respectively. He also held creative roles at startups Zurvu and Ben Lido.
Space150, which has 120 employees at its three offices, works nationally and with local clients including 3M, Medtronic and Sun Country Airlines.
Space150 CEO Billy Jurewicz described Riddle as "an incredible creative talent and digital thinker."
"His expertise and point of view are core to the agency's culture and our value, as more and more brands — and the industry — are faced with how to be relevant today and build for tomorrow," Jurewicz said in a statement.
Q: What are you most looking forward to in your return to Space150?
A: Helping client partners build something new, pushing and changing conversations. All brands are at a point of reinvention. We're setting ourselves up to help our brand partners reinvent the future and, obviously, navigate it.
Q: What's your approach as executive creative director?
A: I've been a part of different entrepreneurial ventures as well as my own consultancy where I've helped young brands identify and figure out their natural road map. There's just a lot more focus put on the design, the experience and the marriage of design and technology and all of that creating more of where we are coming from, from a cultural perspective.
Q: How does this approach affect Space150 clients?
A: I'm sure you're familiar with our motto: Destroy convention and create demand. That's inherent in all the culture at Space. It definitely is part of us being independent. That drives every point of where we're trying to push things, push our relationships, push what we can do for folks. That passion, that constant pursuit and development of better, that's what we're trying to do with all of our relationships.
Q: What did you learn while you were away from Space150 and while working outside of Minneapolis?
A: There were a lot of things that I needed to learn by not being inside an agency's walls. You can only learn when you can actually put yourself inside building a product from the ground up. It's invaluable as far as what it takes to do that stuff and then be able to help other people understand the journey that it takes.
Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.
