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| CRBJ Home > September 2006 | ||||||
Designing manInterviewed by Nathan Leaf
A. I was born to do this. I knew what I was going to do when I was in second grade. When my teacher at Odana Elementary School put my drawing out in the big glass case out in the hallway, I knew what I was going to do. I was an illustrator in college. I have been a visualist all of my life. So this is what I was supposed to do. Q. What was it about having your drawing in that glass case that was so exciting? A. I think it was the fact that other human beings experienced it. So I have been in the business of creating images for people to experience since I was in second grade. Q. Why did you decide to leave UW-Madison just one semester short of a degree? A. I realized that I wanted to practice design as a professional and that a bachelor's degree wasn't going to let me do anything other than teach. So I made a decision at that time to transfer to MATC and get an associate's degree in commercial art, which actually trained me to go and be a professional designer. It was with that degree that I got my first job in Denver, Colo. Q. What does ZD Studios do? A. We do visual brand design at the highest level, at the Web level and at the facility level. We work very closely with architects and designers every day, and owners. So we kind of take what has been defined as a brand identity program and we visualize it. We're working with the owner (of the company), with the developer, with the project managers, with the interior designers, with the food and beverage people. And what we do is create the visual thread that holds the entire experience together. Q. What's your work day like? A. Constant communication. From 6 in the morning until 7 at night I talk. I talk all day long. I talk and I write. Working with eight designers here, counseling them on the individual projects that they're working on, helping to guide the creative process to an end. I'm constantly communicating with clients all day long and other professional staff here in terms of our process. It can go from a coffee company to a credit union to a National Football League stadium to a Major League Baseball stadium in five minutes. It's unbelievably diverse. Q. Where do you go to unwind after those hectic days? A. Barriques is a place where I kind of hang out and drink red wine. I've got a fort over at Barriques -- it's just a private sanctuary. That's been my kind of place to think and write, kind of be away from work and family and everything else. But frankly, after work I go to work. Three kids in the summertime is a full-time job. So there's really no downtime of any kind. Q. What are your goals at ZD Studios? A. We expect to be in to the $5 million revenue range within the next three years. We've got a strategic plan that will carry us through more stadium work. We'll probably be focusing a lot more on a full stadium experience whether it's an arena in Boston or a professional baseball field in Washington, D.C., or a professional football stadium in Dallas or whatever it might be. We're really focusing hard on guest experiences. Q. Why have you made guest experience a focus? A. Because it involves all your senses. We are not an advertising agency. We are not a print design firm. We are sort of an experience design firm. Part of the experience is being in a facility. We really work very hard to work with the human emotion of connecting to a brand at the facility level. So you have interactive stuff. You've got kiosk design work. You've got signing. You've got training staff and wardrobe selections. It's very diverse, which is why we wanted to do stadium stuff. Q. Is that how the firm started out? A. No, absolutely not. We were purely a corporate identity firm. Logos, logos, logos. Millions of logos. Q. Why did you make the switch? A. After you design every logo in the state, you really got to figure out what else you're going to do. It's like anything. If you're not growing, you're dying. Q. Do you have any number in mind as far as how big you would like the firm to be? A. We'll be at $5 million in probably two to three years. We'll be at 25 people and that will be the end. My grandfather always said, "You'll only have one problem the rest of your life and it will be your staff." The more people you have, the more problems that you have that are not related to what you're supposed to be doing. Staff equals emotional pain. But they are all so dear to me and we're all such great friends and we all have such a great working routine together that we are as good as our people are. ... When you have a building full of creative souls, there's a lot of energy going on. Some days it's great and some days it's less than that. Q. What big project is ZD working on right now? A. I'll just say without saying names that we have two National Football League projects that we're working on right now. We'll release that soon. Q. What are the keys to your growth? A. The keys to that growth are people. Design and project management professionals that can expand their capabilities to deal with the size and scope of some of these projects. There are not a lot of people in the country that do this. There is no one (else) in the state of Wisconsin that is doing this right now. We are clearly unique at that level. We are able to expand based on the quality of professionals that work here. Q. What do you like about doing business in Madison? A. It's the greatest city in the world. The pace here is extremely comfortable. It's home to me so I feel natural here. I feel truthful here. If I had set up shop in Boulder, Colo., I wouldn't feel grounded. I feel very grounded in Madison. Q. What don't you like about working in Madison? A. There's connecting flights all the time. That's a pain. We need more direct flights. Q. What have been your greatest triumphs? A. The ability to change. The ability to grow. A lot of design agencies get specialized in something and they can't get out of it and grow. The fact that we've been around for (so long) is my greatest triumph. Q. Can you see the company evolving again? A. Oh, absolutely. Twenty-four months from now we'll be totally different from who we are today. We have to constantly reinvent our products and our service. The only thing that never changes is the absolute passion for what I do. Q. What have been your biggest mistakes? A. Being too passionate and sometimes not having the foresight to stop a train that's going down a track. Q. How has that hurt you? A. We give so much to projects that are perhaps being formed or developed and for many reasons, not having to do with us, they don't happen. So you invest so much time and money and emotion in a project that doesn't happen. That really, really hurts because we can't sustain that kind of loss. A company this size can't invest a lot of time in a lot of places without things actually turning into revenue. Q. Is there anything you would have done differently during your career as a manager? A. Probably having better organizational skills, more staff organizational skills. I would have liked to have learned that earlier that people do need management. People need to be accountable. We're in a world here where everyone is treated as an adult and they are responsible for their own product and process and sometimes that doesn't work as well as having a manager where you know this is due at this time. Q. What do you do when you're not working? A. Right now I'm training for my second marathon. I just ran my first one in December in Las Vegas and I'm training to run the Chicago Marathon at the end of October. I'm really focused on running lately. Golf is an extreme passion of mine so I play as often as I can. I'm a six-handicap right now. The family is real active in baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf and swimming and water ballet and everything in between. nleaf@madison.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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