Garrett Reil, design partner

Garrett has over twenty years industry experience creating identity and communication design solutions. He has worked with major international brands and businesses, as well as a variety of Irish organisations.

Since co‑founding Rain he has been strategic design consultant to Gabriel Scientific, Kleerex Group, PEI, Magnetic Solutions, Shannon Development, Trintech plc, Wexford Festival Opera and the new Wexford Opera House. His website design work for Trintech earned the Irish Design Effectiveness Award for web design.

He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Plymouth (UK) and external advisor to their MA in Communications Design.

Beginning his career in London, he led programmes with industry‑leading design groups Landor plc (The global branding business), Retail design group BCD (Butler Cornfield Dedman) and Banks & Miles; with work including retail branding & campaigns for Bass plc, literature for CME Media (Eastern Europe/TV), retail identity for Kiabi (France/Fashion retail), corporate identity for Delta Air Lines (US/International), and identity standards and typographic consultancy for London Transport.

Experience in Ireland before founding Rain

He returned to Ireland as Creative Director of The Identity Business (now The Brand Union). His work included branding and card design for Bank of Ireland, strategic brand review for Eircell, identity consultancy for ICS The Mortgage Store, and extensive brand audit & identity design work for Telecom Eireann in the path to becoming Eircom.

Education, awards & memberships

Garrett has an MA in Visual Communication from NCAD, having originally graduated, with distinction, from LSA&D in 1990. He was the National Design Graduate of the Year and an RSA bursary award winner for Information Design.

He is a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts), a member of the ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers) and ATYPI. He has won Irish and international awards for information design, web design, literature and corporate identity design and has been published in the UK, USA and Japan.

Research on information design

Garrett undertook a research project with the National Colllege of Art & Design (Dublin) into the design of Ireland's dual‑language road signs. This work was nominated for an IDI Award and exhibited at the best of Irish Design exhibition at the Crafts Council's National Crafts Gallery. He publishes some information and findings on the project at garrettreil.ie.
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