imageMILL K.K. · Est. 2001 · Tokyo
boutique.
specialist.
deeply committed.
imageMILL K.K. is an independent boutique creative agency with over two decades of practice in Tokyo. We bring together a senior core team and an extended network of specialist collaborators — designers, filmmakers, strategists, and community practitioners — assembled for each engagement.
Based in Tokyo. Rooted in Fujino. Working globally.
Why we exist
structural change.
not surface signals.
imageMILL was founded in Tokyo in 2001 out of a specific frustration: the gap between what organisations said about sustainability and what they actually did. That gap hasn’t closed. The language has grown more sophisticated. The performance has grown more polished. The results have not kept pace.
We work with organisations ready to close that gap — not through better communications, but through structural redesign of how they operate, make decisions, and relate to the world around them. The communications follow from that. Not the other way around.
“We are not anti-business. We are anti-noise. Anti-greenwash. Anti-purpose theatre.”
This requires organisations to be honest about the distance between what they claim and what they do. We are experienced in that conversation — and in translating genuine ambition into brand systems, film, and campaigns that hold up to scrutiny.
25 years. B Corp certified. 1% for the Planet. Independently owned and operated throughout. The track record exists because the conviction has never changed.
Founder & Director
Rick
Grehan.
Founder · Creative Director · Environmental Storyteller
Rick Grehan grew up in Belfast in a family of peace activists, an early education in how ideas, language and culture can shape the way people understand the world. For more than thirty years, he has applied that insight to branding, marketing and creative communication, helping organisations clarify what they stand for and turn complex business problems into ideas people can understand, remember and act upon. He founded imageMILL in Tokyo in 2001 and has led the independent studio ever since. As principal director and brand strategist, Rick works across positioning, campaign development, film, design and multi-platform content. He moves comfortably between the strategic and the practical: questioning a brief, identifying the real problem behind it, finding the story inside an organisation and directing the work that takes that story into the world.
His career has taken him from boardrooms and research facilities to some of the planet’s most demanding environments. He has directed films from the Antarctic Peninsula for CITIZEN Watch, worked beside the Kīlauea volcano in Hawai‘i, documented rain forest protectors in the Amazon and created interactive climate installations in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park. Yet geography and spectacle are never the point by themselves. The work begins with understanding the client, the audience and the cultural moment, then finding a creative response that is both distinctive and useful.
Sustainability remains an important part of Rick’s practice, although never as a decorative layer placed around a brand. At a time when environmental language is increasingly met with fatigue, scepticism and political resistance, he helps organisations distinguish meaningful action from fashionable claims. His approach, which he calls brand journalism, looks inside the business for credible evidence: the decisions being made, the systems being changed, the expertise being applied and the people doing the work. Those realities can then become stories with substance, reducing the risk of greenwashing while giving audiences a reason to pay attention. This thinking extends well beyond environmental communication. Whether the problem concerns a product launch, a changing market, an unfamiliar technology or a brand that has lost clarity, Rick’s role is to uncover what matters and find the most compelling way to express it. Creativity is not an embellishment added at the end of the process. It is how imageMILL makes difficult problems visible, understandable and solvable.
Away from the studio, Rick maintains a daily Zen practice and grows potatoes and tea at The MILL in Fujino. He is currently producing YURIMARU, a documentary about Okinawa’s culture of mutual support. He also serves as vice president of the Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce, where he chairs its Sustainability Committee, and is a Climate Reality Leader trained under Al Gore.
In the field
Citizen Watch × History Channel
Shooting off the Antarctic peninsula — Save the Beyond series
Citizen Watch × History Channel
Tracking the Amazon with tropical ecologist Enrique Ortiz
Citizen Watch × History Channel
Maldives-born Ahmed ‘Lonu’ Nasheed saving a troubled whale shark
How we operate
boutique agency.
senior team.
specialist network.
imageMILL operates as a focused boutique agency built on 25 years of practice in Tokyo. Every engagement is led by senior creative and strategic direction — the same depth of expertise from first conversation through to final delivery.
We bring together a core team and an extended network of specialist collaborators — filmmakers, researchers, brand designers, community facilitators, and regenerative practitioners — assembled to match each project’s specific demands. Expertise at every level, built for the work at hand.
The operational base. Brand strategy, identity, film production, editorial, and client relationships. Tokyo-based, working globally.
Where the practice meets the ground. Workshops, residencies, community programmes, and the regenerative land project that anchors everything we do.
Essays, field notes, film, and the 24 Sekki haiku series. An independent editorial practice — not a content marketing operation.
A curated network of senior specialists — filmmakers, photographers, researchers, brand designers, community facilitators, and regenerative practitioners — built over 25 years of practice. The right expert, for the right project, every time.
Credentials
accountability
as discipline.
We have met the verified standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. B Corp is not a badge — it is a legal obligation and an annual audit. We take it seriously.
We commit 1% of annual revenue — not profit — to environmental causes. This is a structural commitment, not a discretionary donation. It holds regardless of how the year goes.
Founded in Tokyo in 2001. Independently owned and operated throughout. No investors, no holding company, no external pressures on editorial and creative integrity. This matters more than it sounds.
imageMILL K.K. is a registered Kabushiki Kaisha under Japanese law, with full compliance under Japanese corporate regulation. Tokyo-based, with Japanese and international clients and collaborators.
Let’s work together
if you’re serious
about change —
let’s talk.
We don’t take every project. We take the ones where the organisation is genuinely ready to close the gap between what they say and what they do. If that’s you, we’d like to hear from you.