Who is Desmond?
“We started so slowly. In the beginning, Dustin and I were coming up with all kinds of ideas about how we could build something new.
What we ended up with was simple and filled with good intent: a full service production and creative group dedicated to bringing clients any type of visual they need to build a brand or voice, all from one team. ”
— Sarah Mick, Founder & CEO
The Beginning
We get a lot of people asking us where we came up with our name. It’s pretty simple, it’s our founder’s middle name and her mother’s maiden name. When considering what to name the brand, and being known for her father’s family name for so long, she decided to add in the Desmond as a fresh start.
Desmond started as a tiny LLC at the very end of 2018, when Sarah met Dustin and Gunnar at a photoshoot. She had gotten to know many of the creatives at the Circles Conference in Texas, and after speaking in 2018 and 2019 she was approached to actually get some visual collateral together for whatever her next endeavor would be.
It was at the photoshoot for that collateral to gather her first advertising visuals, that Sarah spent the evening post-shoot-chatting with Dustin, who had coincidentally just left a corporate job, about what her next steps would be.
As a firm believer that many of life’s most unexpected moments happen in the push toward something bigger, it was still a surprise when Sarah hired her very first full time employee and business partner just a few weeks later. Dustin’s interview document notes simply read, “Yes.”
Two years and tons of deep thinking later, the Lead Team Members are:
Sarah Mick: Founder & CEO
Dustin Ratheal: Chief Brand Officer, Head of Company Culture & Film Director
Gunnar Widowski: Director of Photography & Head of Visual Media
Nikki Harada: Executive Assistant & Producer
“After the great success and wild ride that was my time at Tinder as VP of Design and Co-Creator of the very first “Swipe Right,” to my time creating the Bumble Branding, App Design & UX/UI, people had begun to expect that I’d go back to what I’d been doing for years and create another app.
I’m grateful beyond words for my experiences. I just knew that I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to create something different. That different approach is Desmond.”
— Sarah Mick, Founder & CEO
The Mission
The company is based in Austin, Texas but given the ability to travel for any project, it’s really a worldwide agency. We believe in the concept of the art department from the mid century modern design movement. If you’re not familiar with this concept, think: Mad Men (minus all of the gross gender and racial inequities).
Companies used to hire huge in-house creative teams, and when a company employee was in need of branding, commercial cinematography or even a marketing concept from napkin sketches to full rollout, the entire team to handle it was just on the art department floor a few feet away.
With the gap in technology and the average consumer widening and DIY attempts to allow small businesses to level up visually and massive commercial companies hiring out 4 agencies just to do one marketing push, the team agreed that there was a need for a “one stop shop” style for clients — a revisitation to the mid century approach of slow, thoughtful design, through simple and easy project managers, and the promise of research and commitment to excellence in the field of all art, film, creative and development.
At the end of every project, we want to feel that we’ve made a great impression on the client through our process and attention to detail. We want to feel collectively like we’ve changed the world for the better. We yearn to help give voice to the people and stories that aren’t traditionally heard