My Work | Michaela Rietschel

Mars Made Marketing LLC

Mars Made Marketing is my own brand, a creative studio built to help small businesses find their voice. Starting it meant doing something I had never done before, betting on myself and my ability to build something real from scratch. The first project was the hardest one: designing the brand for the studio itself. I developed the full visual identity, messaging system, and creative direction for Mars Made, shaping a brand that reflects my approach to work. Warm, intentional, and human first.

Brand Strategy

The strategy behind Mars Made comes down to three things: human guidance, clarity first, and purposeful design. Human guidance means showing up as a real person, not a faceless service. Clarity first means making every part of the brand easy to understand and easy to trust. Purposeful design means nothing is decorative for its own sake. Every visual decision connects back to what the studio stands for and the people it serves. Together, these pillars shape a brand that feels as intentional as the work it produces.

The Challenge

Designing your own brand is one of the hardest creative challenges there is. The bar is high because everything you put out becomes a direct reflection of your taste and judgment. The brand needed to feel warm and approachable while still communicating the strategic depth behind the work. It also had to stretch across a wide range of services, from brand identity and social content to print materials and ongoing marketing support, without losing its coherence. The goal was a system that could grow with the studio and still feel like the same thing at every touchpoint.

Audience Insights

The people Mars Made is built for are small business owners who know they need a brand but feel overwhelmed by where to start. They are not looking for a big agency. They want someone who listens, communicates clearly, and makes the process feel manageable rather than intimidating. That understanding shaped every decision in the brand, from the tone of the copy to the warmth of the color palette. The brand needed to say: I get it, and I am here to help.

NCCO (National Checking Company)

In the summer of 2025, I interned at NCCO, a Minnesota-based B2B manufacturer specializing in food safety, labeling, and restaurant management solutions. I joined their marketing team and worked directly alongside the VP of Marketing, Product Manager, and Creative Team on projects spanning social media, email, trade show materials, and competitive research. It was my first real look at how a marketing team operates from the inside, and I came away from it knowing a lot more about what I am capable of.

My Role

My work at NCCO touched a lot of different areas, which I appreciated. I was not just doing one thing. I worked across strategy, design, and content development, contributing to projects that supported their product lines and marketing campaigns. The work required me to balance creativity within structure, which is something I genuinely enjoy. Understanding what the team needed and then figuring out how to execute it well was the challenge I showed up to every day.

Creative Campaigns

Wrote a creative brief and developed concepts for the RightBytes campaign, laying a strategic foundation for future marketing use.

Designed flyers and tradeshow materials used at the CENEXPO tradeshow, supporting product visibility and sales conversations on the floor.

Tradeshow Materials

Social Media Content

Created graphics and messaging for NCCO's platforms that strengthened brand storytelling and audience engagement.

Competitive Research

Organized and analyzed competitor data that directly informed product positioning and the broader marketing strategy.

What I Took Away

This internship showed me what it looks like to be a contributor on a real marketing team with real deadlines and real stakes. I learned how to move between projects quickly without losing the quality of the work, and I got better at understanding how design and strategy have to work together to actually move the needle. I left NCCO more confident in my abilities and with a clearer sense of the kind of environment I work best in.

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Legacy Works Staffing

Legacy Works Staffing is a real client project and one I am genuinely proud of. They are a community-focused staffing agency connecting dependable workers with employers who value reliability and long-term growth. My goal was to build them a brand identity that felt as trustworthy as the work they do every day. That meant creating a visual system with real clarity and warmth behind it, something that could hold up across digital and print without losing its character.

Audience Insights

Legacy Works serves two groups with different needs but one thing in common. They both want to feel like they can trust those they are working with. Job seekers needed simple steps, steady communication, and a partner who respected their goals. Employers needed reliable workers, a consistent process and support they could count on. Understanding both of those perspectives shaped the brand from the ground up. The visual identity needed to say the same thing to two very different people: we are here, we are dependable and we genuinely care.

The Challenge

Legacy Works had strong values and a clear sense of mission. What they were missing was a visual identity that matched it. Their brand did not yet reflect the level of care they actually bring to their clients. The challenge was designing something that felt confident and approachable at the same time, professional without being cold, and human without losing credibility. On top of that, the brand needed to work for two very different audiences and speak to both without feeling pulled in opposite directions.

Brand Identity

Pretty Things Can Get a Little Dirty

Pretty Things Can Get A Little Dirty is a self-initiated concept campaign I developed for Honest Beauty, a clean and affordable beauty brand with projected annual revenue of $380M. I created this project entirely on my own, from the initial research and strategy through the creative direction and final assets, to demonstrate what I can do when given the freedom to build something from scratch.

The campaign targets women in male-dominated or high-intensity fields who want makeup that actually holds up in their real lives. It ran as a conceptual campaign set during the Q1 slow season, mid-January through mid-February, specifically chosen to maximize impact during a period of lower competitive noise.

The Idea

Most beauty campaigns live in a world that does not look like most women's lives. They show full glam at events, on red carpets, in perfectly lit studios. This campaign goes somewhere different. It shows women in the middle of real work: farming, racing, training, building things with their hands. And it asks a simple question: why should beauty stop there?

Pretty Things Can Get A Little Dirty is a campaign about confidence that survives the day. It is not about looking perfect. It is about feeling like yourself, no matter what the day throws at you. The subtitle says it simply: beauty made for everyday.

Target Audience

The campaign speaks to women in their mid-20s living in rural or small-town areas. They earn between $40k and $70k a year, work hard, spend time outdoors and do not have much patience for beauty marketing that feels out of touch with their lives. They care about how they look but they want products that work as hard as they do.

The customer persona I built for this campaign is Emily. She might be a farmer, a mechanic, a fitness trainer or an aviation student. She takes pride in showing up in spaces where women are still the minority and she wants a beauty brand that actually sees her. Honest Beauty's positioning as a clean, affordable and performance-focused brand makes it the right fit for her in a way that luxury glam competitors simply are not.

Core Messaging Pillars

Strength and femininity can coexist. You do not have to choose between being capable and feeling beautiful.

Beauty that performs in the real world. Products that hold up through long days, unpredictable weather and physical work.

Authentic real-life moments. No studio setups or event backdrops. Just women doing what they actually do.

Confidence through chaos. The campaign celebrates women who keep showing up, no matter what the environment looks like.

What This Project Shows

This was not a class assignment or a client brief. I built it because I wanted to show what I am capable of when I am given a blank page and a real brand to work with. I did the competitor research, built the audience persona, wrote the strategy, developed the creative concept, and designed the assets myself.

It is the kind of work I want to keep doing. Finding the gap between what a brand is and what it could say, and then building the thing that bridges them.

Creative Direction

The visual language of this campaign contrasts beauty with grit. Every image features a confident woman in an outdoor or physically demanding environment with intentional imperfections: dirt, snow, wind, and grease. The aesthetic is modern and bold, sporty and active, with cool winter tones anchoring the palette and warm skin tones providing contrast. The result is a look that feels crisp and energetic rather than polished and untouchable.

The creative assets I developed include six social media ad formats covering different scenarios and product focuses, from adventure-proof essentials to cold-weather routines. Each one carries the campaign headline in a different context, so the idea scales across placements without repeating itself.

Living With Fire - Nature Exhibit

Living With Fire is a real exhibit currently installed at Hartley Nature Center in Duluth, Minnesota. I worked on this as part of a collaborative team project during my time at UMD, designing materials for an educational exhibit focused on forest fire ecology, wildfire prevention, and community stewardship.

The project was selected to be produced and displayed at Hartley Nature Center, which means the work we created is not just in a portfolio. It is actually in the world, being seen by real visitors.

My Role

I was one of five designers on this project and took on a significant leadership role from the very beginning. When the group was unsure of how to get started, I stepped in to move things forward. I led our initial brainstorm on color direction, guided most of our in-person conversations with the client at Hartley Nature Center, and helped break the project into manageable sections so everyone could contribute clearly.

My personal contribution included developing the color palette and visual direction for the exhibit, leading client meetings, doing early research to define our design focus, and creating a banner that was added to the final exhibit in later revisions.

The Deliverables

The final exhibit consisted of nine designed pieces built around a cohesive visual system. Our team developed everything from large-format print to interactive elements for younger visitors.

Exhibition Banner

Informational Panels

Floor Decals

Brochures

Social Media Posts

Interactive Kid Activity

Coloring Page

Word Search

Stickers

The Process

The project required us to visit Hartley Nature Center in person to understand the physical space and meet with their team about messaging requirements. From there, we developed a color palette, established typography, and defined the visual direction before anyone started designing individual pieces.

We presented our first round to the client, showing our font choices, color palette, and early sketches, and made revisions based on their feedback. The final versions went through additional rounds of critique before being produced for the actual space. Working through last-minute changes under a real deadline taught me a lot about staying calm when things get compressed and finding solutions quickly without compromising quality.

Icons designed by Bri Prow

What I Took Away

This project gave me hands-on experience working with a real client, designing for a physical space, and collaborating with a creative team under real constraints. Leading a group through ambiguity and keeping the project on track is something I had not done at this scale before, and it confirmed that I am comfortable stepping up when direction is needed.

Seeing the finished exhibit installed at Hartley Nature Center was also a reminder of why this work matters. Good design helps people understand things. That is what I want to keep doing.