Garrett takes AIG consultant role

Design guru Malcolm Garrett is back and collaborating with a number of consultancies via a new role as associate creative director of Applied Information Group.

Garrett’s UK return was kickstarted at the beginning of the month, when he formally joined the London design consultancy founded by Tim Fendley in 2003.

In his new position Garrett will act as a fairly independent creative director and he has already taken on consulting roles with Cognitive Applications of Brighton on the Government’s Culture Online initiative (DW 7 April), and with X Communications from Dublin on digital media design for the Anglo-Irish Bank.

He is also back working for Assorted Images, the group he co-founded with Kasper de Graaf, on a project for technology company Psychosis.

In these posts, Garrett assumes the role of creative director, though he will officially invoice his time as being billable to AIG. The design consultancies already collaborate, he explains.

Garrett says his role now will be to ‘stand alongside’ Fendley and ‘help him increase his capability’ at AIG, though Fendley estimates that Garrett will spend no more than half of his time at AIG’s London office.

‘We’re really lucky to have Malcolm joining us. He adds another dimension to our offer at AIG and we have the right team and right skills to support him,’ Fendley says.

Garrett’s previous job was creative director of Toronto design group Immersion, where he consulted on a number of projects, including the design of Canada’s pavilion for this year’s World Expo in Aichi, Japan. Before that he co-founded AMX Studios in London with Alistair Scott, which became Arnold Interactive, after being acquired by Havas of France.