Working With a Graphic Designer
Our culture is integral to how we work with our clients, and it represents the highest level of value we have to offer.
For starters, our designers are the best-educated artists you’re going to find in town. They all have earned Bachelor’s Degrees in either Digital Design or Visual Design — and some have both. They also have knowledge of “old school” and “modern” tools of design. After all, computers aren’t replacements for a good designer but are used as tools by excellent designers.
Our artists know how to pick up a pencil and paper to illustrate ideas before reaching for the mouse, which means they don’t use the computer as a crutch. Too often, bad designers mask their lack of skill or attention by clinging to the bells-and-whistles of digital design, so we work hard not to use technology to supplant our own wits. Digital design is not a substitute for talent or skill — it’s just one of the many disciplines our artists use to create graphic solutions for our clients.
Next, you’ll often find that our clients rarely work with a single designer. Our wide-open office studio encourages and enables group collaboration and team efforts. It’s not uncommon for your point person to bring in additional brains and hands on your project because the best ideas don’t always originate in the shower — sometimes, we find they show up as we’re talking about the project with other professionals on the team.
We’ve also been around for 20 years, and over that time, we’ve developed a set of practices and matched them with the best tools and technologies available in the graphic arts. We never come across an obstacle and think “If only we could afford an upgrade on our software or our tools.” We have them all and continue to outfit our team with the best artistic resources in the trade.
Finally, we rely the most on building a relationship with you and your team. It’s not enough for us to get a creative punch-list from a marketing director or sales executive, we want to understand what our clients want and why they want it. This is important because most of our clients approach us to fix bad creative jobs performed by previous vendors.
When we encounter those projects, we know the difference between putting a band-aid on it and figuring out why it went wrong. If we can understand the choices that were made, and why they were made, we can also figure out how to do more than fix the problem. Instead, we can use our insight and ingenuity to craft a new solution that more accurately resembles what the client initially wanted.
In that sense, our designers aren’t merely vendors hired to make commercial art. Our team’s strength is in finding graphic arts solutions for our clients, to help them get attention, stand out from the competition and build a brand that is both recognized and respected.