Deconstruct founder Fred Flade joins Poke

Flade’s arrival follows his departure from Deconstruct in September 2009 and the exit of Poke co-founders Simon Waterfall last September and Iain Tait in February this year.

His permanent appointment comes after he worked on a Virgin project for Poke. Poke creative director and co-founder Nicolas Roope says Flade will have ’an overarching responsibility for standards of design and innovation’.

Roope says Flade is not replacing either Waterfall or Tait, and that he sees the change of personnel as ’an opportunity to build the business in a way that lets us respond positively to markets, and follow our own ideas’. The consultancy will continue to work on campaigns, but concentrate more on ’communications as products’ delivered through ’the highly networked side of the Internet’, Roope says.

Roope indicates that Poke is moving toward focusing on strategy with long-standing clients, rather than on project work. ’We’re increasing our engagements in the strategic dimension,’ he says.

’Where we used to work lower down the organisation, now we’re talking at a higher level on serious strategic engagement, which sometimes leads into design campaign work.’