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[ September 15, 2003 ]
Stoltze Design was started on a whim - if you can call a pink slip and two-month severance package a whim. Designer Clif Stoltze is quick to point out that his decision to start his own business was not so much a courageous entrepreneurial leap as one of necessity. After graduating from UMass/Dartmouth with a B.F.A in visual design, Stewart Design Group was Stoltze's first full-time job. "That," he says, "lasted a couple of years until the entire graphics department was let go."
Stoltze quickly discovered that creatively fulfilling design jobs that paid the bills were few and far between. "Boston was a conservative city," he says. "I quickly found out you could scare corporate clients away if your portfolio contained arty pieces." So much for the necessity. Now comes the whim: "Since I had no plans of moving anywhere else, starting my own business seemed like the only choice at the time." It turned out to be a whim-win situation. Eighteen years later Stoltze Design has grown into a 12-person operation with a wide range of styles reflecting the client and audience. A love for typography, color and layered compositions are common threads that run through the work. A former band member, Stoltze has continued to find outlets for his various passions, especially music. In the late 80's he met musician Adam Buhler and illustrator Cynthia Von Buhler. Together they created Castle Von Buhler Record Label for which Stoltze Design provided the design services. The success of this endeavor is evidenced in clients such as Sony Music, Matador Records, Windham Hill, and Capitol Records. Additional clients include Fidelity Investments, Harvard Business School, MassArt, Houghton Mifflin, and Cakewalk Music Software.
Stoltze spoke to Altpick from his Boston studio. Sounds like getting let go was a lucky break? I think had there been a job where it was possible to do more creative, fun, on the edge work, I would have jumped at it. But there wasn't that kind of opportunity out there. It's really tough to say if there was any one lucky break because there have been many smaller breaks that have added up to our success. One of the important early projects was getting to design the Art Institute of Boston's print materials in the late 80's. Not only did it lead to other interesting work for colleges and universities, it's where I met and began working with Cynthia Von Buhler and Adam Buhler. Did you always want to be a designer? I actually started as a fine art major. I took a year off from UMass/Dartmouth because I was in a band and wanted to do that for a while. When I decided it was time to go back to college my interest in music made me think, well, I'm not going to be a musician - maybe I can design album covers. That's why I went into design and it fit me well. Once I made that decision I was a much more motivated student.
Was forming Castle von Buhler record label your first opportunity to combine music and design, and could you tell me a little bit about that? Yes. One project, Anon, was a double CD art and music compilation complete with 30 illustrated postcards - one for each of the 30 tracks. Illustrators and musicians were invited to submit music and art and contribute to the release's production cost. The money from the release parties completed the funding needed for the labels. Anon was really a multi-faceted project. First, it was used to promote mostly unsigned bands by sending copies out to radio stations and music publications. We also promoted the illustrators by sending copies to art directors at publishers and agencies. In addition, half the profits from the sale of Anon were donated to an Aids Action Committee artists' fund. The end result had the appearance of a very expensive package. But in fact the per-unit cost of all the printing was only about $2 apiece including the postcards.
I think design is valued a lot more these days than when I was starting to design. I use to think in the 80's that I had to have two portfolios. One for the corporate clients whose work paid the bills and another one more personal and arty for going after the projects that really offered A chance to do something more original or more experimental. At that time I felt that neither of these types of clients wanted to see the other kind of work. During the 90's, as the clients and audiences began to change, that division began to get blurred. Suddenly we had corporate clients calling us because they saw the cool CD covers we did and they wanted us to work on their software packaging or annual report. What do you attribute this to? I think when I first started the clients were generally older and a little more conservative. In Boston you were either old school advertising or Yale conservative. Anything other than that was considered trendy. Even if it was intelligent no one wanted to go out on a limb with anything. As I got more experience and got older the clients got younger. These are clients who had good doses of MTV in the 80's and by the 90's all that stuff seemed normal to them. Clients were willing to go out on a limb. I think it also goes along with economic success as you can take chances. How would you describe the personality of your firm? In general, our clients think we are an easy bunch to work with even though we can be very creative and push the limits of a project. I think we have a good balance of using unconventional solutions whenever it is appropriate. We take advantage of chances to push the limits but we don't dig our heels in if we realize it is not going over. We are not thought of as designers with an attitude or difficult to work with. As the company has grown I have come to realize that when it comes to design there isn't just one right answer. There are a number of different routes you can take to get to a really good solution. I think the willingness to be flexible in what path you take and still arrive at a really good solution is one of the keys to success.
We do that because it bothered me over the years that we would present three or four ideas and the client often say, "Did you try this"? There are always things you find out once you start presenting ideas. All of a sudden you find out, oh, I guess we can't do that after all. Overall, we have found it is a better process to share all of our ideas whether they are refined and flushed out or still in rougher stages. The creative exploration - whether they choose the idea or not - is the fun part of the project and the longer I extend the fun part the better. After that it turns more into production and execution How does that translate into profit? Taking the time and delivering that type of work has certainly had a positive effect on the repeat business and happy clients passing our name on. A lot of our business comes through word of mouth. As far as whether we are as profitable as we would be putting in less time, absolutely not. That has never been what it's about for us. We all like to get paid well. But if we were looking to get paid as much as we could we would have to choose to do something else. Where do you see yourself in five years? By then I hope that we will have grown to a staff of 13, but more importantly, continue to improve the quality of our projects and clients. - Contributed by Mary-Beth Holland >> See more work from Stoltze Design >> See other member spotlights on the member spotlight index >> Find out more on how to become an altpick.com member |
