Schipper Design touches local, national businesses
In a white adobe building on Muckelemi Street in San Juan
Bautista, it’s easy to miss Schipper Design. The small graphic
design firm
– which boasts just five employees – has only a small, simple
logo on the glass door leading to their office.
Schipper Design touches local, national businesses
In a white adobe building on Muckelemi Street in San Juan Bautista, it’s easy to miss Schipper Design. The small graphic design firm – which boasts just five employees – has only a small, simple logo on the glass door leading to their office.
But Schipper Design has quite a presence around San Benito and Monterey counties with the logos, posters and product packaging they’ve designed for clients. And they’ve even had a hand in design for people and places farther afield – such as a line of produce packages for Emeril Lagasse, of Food Network fame.
Kathy Schipper started her graphic design firm three years ago when she and her husband moved from the Central Valley to San Juan Bautista for his work with Granite Rock Co.
“It’s a great location,” Schipper said. “But in a business like this location doesn’t factor in as much. I have clients on the East Coast, Southern California, in Colorado and Washington.”
Some of the projects Schipper Design staff has worked on have been much closer to home, though. In December, the San Benito Chamber of Commerce launched a buy local campaign and Schipper’s firm pitched in to design the logo and marketing.
Rita Garcia, a June 2006 graphic design graduate from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, took photographs of downtown Hollister and San Juan Bautista. She used the photos to create an illustration of the downtowns in a snow globe with the tagline “Ho Ho Holidays.”
Garcia, who is from Salinas, landed her job at Schipper Design just a month after she graduated from college.
“I feel like I lucked out,” Garcia said. “I have a classmate and he got a job he doesn’t enjoy. Most [graduates] are just doing ad resizing.”
Garcia had a hand in another local design project recently. She created the illustrations for the Downtown Hollister Directory, which lists all the members of the downtown association, with a map of their locations. The brochure is one of her favorite projects so far.
“The artwork in it is more modern,” she said. “It’s really lively.”
Schipper agreed.
“We wanted to give it a much more contemporary feel – fun,” Schipper said. “Bring a little bit more energy to the images.”
When the staff works on a project it is always a collaborative effort, though they each have their specialties. Garcia is good at drawing by hand. Markus Lewtschuk creates logos and illustrations on computers. Other staff members include Lisa Vradenburg, as a project director, and Diane Segawa, a graphic and Web designer.
The office has an open floor plan – no cubicle walls separate the desks – and it allows for conversation and comments on projects.
“We always bounce ideas off each other,” Lewtschuk said as he worked on a blue-and-black logo for a new sports bar opening in Hollister.
Schipper has a degree in communication and her background in graphic design comes from working in the publishing industry. Her communication degree has proven handy as the head of her own firm.
When a client approaches her for help on a project, whether it is the city manager of San Juan Bautista wanting a logo for a new event, or an employee of Lagasse’s looking for product packaging designs, the first step is always the same.
“We listen. Listen, listen, listen,” Schipper said. “People think we are artists, but design is truly about communication.”
After an initial conversation when they decipher what a client wants, the designers go to work on mock-ups.
When Jan McClintock, San Juan’s city manager, hired Schipper Design to create fliers for new city events, the staff did everything from make a logo to naming the event.
One of the events is a Wild West arts festival.
“We did a lot of brainstorming,” Schipper said. “We came up with 30 names and boiled it down to three based on criteria to eliminate them.”
The final name for the event, which is April 21 and 22, is “San Juan Bautista’s Rootin’, Tootin’, Boot Scootin’, Wild Wild West Show.”
“We didn’t’ want stuff that had been done in the past,” Schipper said. “We wanted something that would make people smile.”
The poster evokes an old Wild West wanted poster, with a peachy brown textured background and bullet hole puckers. Small yellow flowers adorned part of the poster, as well, because the event is in spring, Schipper said. McClintock was happy with the design.
“The best compliment is when people say, ‘You read my mind,'” Schipper said.
Illustrations are started in a variety of ways. Garcia has a notebook of pencil sketches, while Lewtschuk creates his sketches on a computer.
“The best clients are the ones who say, ‘You’re the designer. We trust you,'” Schipper said. “The opposite is, ‘I know exactly what I want.'”
Schipper’s firm has had a share of clients from both extremes. She acknowledged that it can be hard for some people to express what they want for a logo design or brochure. A lot of times Schipper and her staff are able to bring ideas to clients that they haven’t considered.
“One thing that makes it beneficial is that we work with all kinds of places,” Schipper said. “We can bring things with a lot more confidence … a fresh, new approach to selling a product.”
In addition to their print work – which includes brochures, logo designs and product packaging from wine labels to chocolate boxes – Schipper Design does plenty of Web site design. Web site work makes up about a third of the projects done.
They’ve worked on sites for Ranchers Feed in Hollister, Fernwood Cellars in Gilroy, and are currently working on a redesign for Hazel Hawkins Hospital.
“We really need to understand what their goals are,” Schipper said. “We need to know what they want to get back and what they want people to get.”
One standard for their Web design is that visitors should only need three clicks to get the information they want.
“We try to make it as logical as possible,” Schipper said. “We think like a visitor.”
One of the biggest challenges in the business is time.
“A lot of clients think they can give us something and get it at the end of the week,” Schipper said. “It takes a couple of months or weeks to go through the process right.”
Despite deadline challenges, the job remains rewarding.
“I’m an idea person. That’s what I bring to most tables,” Shipper said.
Visit Shipper Design at www.schipperdesign.com.
Melissa Flores can be reached at [email protected].
