Siegel & Gale Adds Two Creative Executives - Richard Smith, Creative Director & Ben Hermel, Design Director

Business Wire, Nov 18, 1999

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 1999--

Siegel & Gale, the market-leading builder of businesses and brands in the information economy, today announced the appointments of Richard Smith as creative director and Ben Hermel as design director at its New York headquarters.

Mr. Smith will be responsible for design and creative strategy on a wide range of projects. Mr. Hermel will oversee the effectiveness and quality for a variety of creative assignments.

"Richard and Ben both possess unusually extensive experience in creating high-quality creative work across a broad spectrum of business and creative disciplines," commented Kenneth Cooke, Siegel & Gale's chief creative officer.

Mr. Smith's career began at Peter Saville Associates in London as senior designer on projects for clients such as Yohji Yamamoto, SCP Limited, Joseph, and Nick Knight. Concurrently, he was design director for the Whitechapel Art Gallery corporate identity program. In 1989, he co-founded design studio Area, while continuing to collaborate with PSA on projects for Estee Lauder, Joy Division, and The Photographers Gallery, London. At Area, he was creative director on projects for John Galliano, De Beers, American Express, Habitat UK, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Beck's Beer, and HSagen Dazs.

Mr. Smith has developed corporate identity programs for organizations including the Oberoi Hotel Group, India; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and Telepiu Telecommunications, Milan. In music, he worked for Depeche Mode, Virgin Records, and Phonogram Records.

Most recently, Mr. Smith worked on book projects for publishers Schirmer Mosel, Munich, including an anthology of the work of photographer Herbert List.

Mr. Smith's work has been widely recognized. His honors include a Design and Art Directors' association nomination; a Creative Review European Award; Best Illustrated Book at the British Book Design Awards; and a D&AD silver award for graphic design. He holds an MA in Typo/Graphics from London College of Printing.

Ben Hermel was associate creative director at Enterprise IG in New York prior to joining Siegel & Gale, overseeing projects for clients including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and Ford Motor Company. As senior designer at Landor Associates in San Francisco, he directed development of a number of projects in the corporate identity, packaging, interactive, and branded environment groups. He worked in Landor's New York, London, and Paris offices for Lucent Technologies, Philips Electronics, Federal Express, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Canadian Airlines.

Mr. Hermel was a graphic designer at Blue Sky Design in Sydney, Australia, managing projects for Philips Electronics and SC Johnson. After completing his bachelor of design degree from the University of South Australia, he established Detour Design Studio with two fellow graduates.

Siegel & Gale (www.siegelgale.com) is an international professional services firm that helps established and emerging companies create new businesses, brands, products, and services in the information economy. The firm combines a 30-year heritage as one of the world's leading brand identity, strategic marketing and information architecture firms with a customer-centered approach to Internet business strategy, design and research.

With this integrated approach, Siegel & Gale has helped hundreds of clients, including American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ernst & Young, Kodak, Girl Scouts of the USA, Citibank, Bayer Corporation, Medtronic, Scholastic, T. Rowe Price, Reciprocal and Lycos leverage the power of simple and powerful ideas, brilliantly expressed in every action and communication.