A New Chapter

Twenty-two years ago, Athletics started in an old, un-air-conditioned boxing gym in Brooklyn.

Matt Owens and Jason Gnewikow founded the studio there in 2004 with a certain set of values: grit, inventive agility, and a belief that a small, committed team could take on very big challenges. Malcolm Buick and Jameson Proctor joined them in 2011, beginning a partnership that has shaped Athletics for the past 15 years.

A lot has changed since then. The studio has grown. The work has evolved. Technology has transformed what it means to build a brand. And we’ve had the privilege of working alongside some of the most ambitious organizations in the world.
But the things we believe haven’t changed all that much.

Stay small around the problem. Keep senior people close to the work. Bring strategy, design and technology together. Make early. Bring clients into the process. Learn. React. Improve. Own the outcome.

It’s an approach that has allowed Athletics to punch above its weight for more than two decades—and today, it’s taking us somewhere new.

Athletics is joining Lippincott.

We’ve admired Lippincott for a long time: its creative legacy, the depth of its strategic thinking, and the ambition of the challenges it takes on. As we’ve gotten to know the team, we’ve also found a shared belief that strategy and creativity are strongest when they lead to something real in the world.

For our clients, this means more of what brought them to Athletics in the first place—not less. The same senior attention, closeness and hands-on collaboration, now backed by deeper expertise, new collaborators and a global platform that expands what we can imagine, make and deliver together.

And for us, the opportunity is bigger than simply adding scale.

We believe the best combinations change both sides. Athletics will learn from and be changed by Lippincott. And we hope the things that have made Athletics distinctive—our pace, craft, experimentation, multidisciplinary teams and instinct to think through making—will help shape what comes next at Lippincott, too.

That’s what makes this next chapter exciting.

Athletics has never just been the four of us. It has been shaped by every person who has worked here, every client who has trusted us with an important challenge, and every collaborator who has brought something new to the table. What Athletics is today belongs to all of them.

So, to everyone who has been part of the past 22 years: thank you. We’re enormously proud of what we’ve built together.

And we can’t wait to see what we build next. Now, back at it.

Matt, Jason, Malcolm, and Jameson