Leo Burnett UK has evolved its design department to become POPDesign, a studio that will operate its own business proposition, strategy and open its doors to its own clients.
Led by Burnett’s creative director of design David Allen, POPDesign will continue to work with the agency's clients including McDonald’s, TUI, Morrisons, Škoda, as well as attracting new design briefs from prospective clients.
POPDesign will harness the agency’s strategic firepower to deliver distinctive assets for clients, providing the consistency and flexibility they need to pop at scale across all channels and platforms. POPDesign’s mission is to tap into popular culture and create work that connects with the widest audience.
The studio consists of 20 conceptual designers with expertise in social, branding, packaging, illustration and animation.
As well as creating brand worlds for clients such as Morrisons and TUI over the past year, POPDesign has been working with McDonald’s, Skoda and Morrisons to create social content.
POPDesign will continue to be based in Leo Burnett’s office in Chancery Lane.
Carly Avener, CEO at Leo Burnett, said, “Since Dave joined us two years ago, our design department has doubled in size: growing from just eight designers to 20. The department has pivoted to have a refined focus on social, digital and motion. Dave has helped supercharge our organic growth: most recently through extending our scope with Skoda and winning its social business. Now is the perfect time for us to launch POPDesign, allowing the studio to open its doors to clients of its own and continue growing.”
Allen said, “We provide populist brands with the tools they need to speak to the widest possible audience: our key aim with POPDesign is to make work that stands out as truly populist and accessible to the mainstream, embracing the challenge of giving brands a unique way to look, without alienating any demographic.”
The launch of POPDesign follows news including the agency recently won the Confused.com creative account and promoted Sam Houlston to Carly Avener’s previous role of managing director.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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