Newsletter
Rachel LeBlanc
Location • Title
Toronto • Art Director
Portfolio
One-sentence bio
An art director in training whose brain has been compared to that of a caffeinated squirrel. True story.
Creative philosophy or approach
I approach a project usually from a digital angle, eyeing some weird tech feature on the corner of the user interface and asking myself, “How could we fuck with THAT?” I search for ideas that are objectively true, wicked smart, and that come from an authentic place. My creative philosophy is rooted in the assumption that everyone hates ads, but loves ideas. And overall, the goal will always be to make the world a better place via ideation—advertising is just the means to that end.
Recent work I’m proud of
Six Brick Kit is my proudest campaign to date. It was a spec piece for a 2020 D&AD New Blood brief that asked us to make Lego relevant for teens again. We discovered that overconsumption is the major contributor to our environmental footprint – the cause teens care about most. But six Lego bricks can be combined in over 915 million ways, which meant they could also replace a lot of single-purpose products. So to help teens fight overconsumption, we got them to build products instead of buying them, all by using what we called a Six Brick Kit.
Link to campaign: https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/the-lego-group/3580/lego-six-brick-kit/
Recent work I admired
Another D&AD New Blood entry called Am (i) Normal. This stunningly smart spec piece is cemented in such a true insight – how penises are normalized (on every bathroom wall imaginable), whereas vulvas aren’t. Kinda one of those insights you nod your head along to. But the best part, in my opinion, was how they utilized literally two brackets symbols and the letter “i” to normalize vulvas and open the conversation about female pleasure. Breathtakingly simple, smart design that left me envious as hell that I didn’t think of it.
