ChemArt Blog

Just when you think you know what you’re doing, EVERYTHING CHANGES!!!

In my first ChemArt blog I told you how nervous I was traveling with the President of ChemArt. I explained how we developed, over time,  a pretty good traveling rapport. Well as of March 1st ChemArt has a new President and now I have to go through this all over again!! Let’s face it, no matter how nice people are they all have different personalities.

Traveling with co-workers is not like taking a vacation. We really do work. How long did it take you to adjust to someone who spends a long amount of time with you? Having dinner every night and learning what they like. What do they do for enjoyment? Is it something you like to do, or do you just do it to make them happy?  What does Bill (ChemArt’s new President) like to do? Does he like American cuisine, or does he have a fancier palette? If there is down time, will he like to visit a museum?  This may all sound petty, but how do you travel with a new President? Like I said, I have to go through this all over again! Feel bad for me yet? Well it wasn’t as strange as I thought it would be.

Bill has been with ChemArt for a few years, just in a different capacity. So it wasn’t like I was traveling with a complete stranger. Our outgoing President, Dave Marquis, showed us just how classy he is. He went with us to visit all our key accounts. He introduced Bill and said good-bye to our customers with whom we’ve developed nice relationships.

This year’s travels were very busy, so we didn’t have much down time. Bill did tell me likes to visit museums. He likes good ol’ American cuisine. I think I’ll be all set, as will ChemArt. Our customers were sad to see Dave go, as I am, but they were very welcoming to Bill.

We’ll see if I have any kooky stories next year when Bill and I make these trips once again.

Sound familiar? I would guess most sales people understand what I just said. When they are asking that question it inevitably has us designers asking them the same question.

With the economy as it is and the cost of everything from brass to gold going through the roof, that has been a reoccurring question all year. I bet you would have thought my graphics challenge would have been about coming up with new and refreshing ideas day in and day out. I thought that was too obvious so I figured I would show how we deal with cost constraints.

This past year has brought a new set of challenges to us as designers. We always had to deal with costing as an assembly challenge. As you know, everything we design is hand-assembled at ChemArt. Our designers have a unique challenge in engineering a design that is cost affective when every piece is hand-assembled. This aspect has us working closely with the assembly department. We work together to come up with the most efficient way to put a collectible together without compromising the integrity of the design.

So this past year we have had the challenge of keeping our designs up to the bar we have previously set, but also dealing with the rising cost of materials. This is where our creativity gets heavily challenged. Some designs may be slightly smaller but have a more intricate look to them. We may have been constrained to 2 colors but we did some creative things with screen print layers to make it look like we used 3 or 4 colors. I would call this behind-the-scenes creativity.

It challenges us as designers to provide our clients with something they want and can afford. After all if they can’t afford it nobody wins. Judging by the success our clients had with their programs I would have to say we did an admiral job providing them with beautiful products for them to be successful.

Where do all those beautiful ornaments come from? Undoubtedly, from the talented artists at the ChemArt Company. We not only have a large group of artists, we have a very versatile group. Collectively this makes for a perfect recipe for a great department.

There are people from Texas, to Pennsylvania, to Massachusetts, to little Rhode Island. We have humorous personalities and very serious personalities. It makes for a well-rounded department. It also makes for a group of people with very different styles and strengths. You could say each artist has their own creative niche, just as ChemArt has it’s own niche.

There are artists that excel in 3 dimensional designs. They generally are very detailed, meticulous, and patient. There are artists who excel in production art. They are generally detail-oriented, and not so patient. But they are very good at time management. We have artists who excel in manipulating the way we use our screen print capabilities. They are generally creative in their thinking, patient, and always challenging the rules of our standards.

While each artist can have his or her own niche, we all benefit from everyone’s niche! We all like to be challenged and grow as artist. Having certain talents all combined in one department benefits us as individuals as well as benefits ChemArt as a leader in custom and retail collectibles.

Everyone’s perception of design is “they have all the fun!” I won’t say we don’t have fun, but the reality is sometimes it can be frustrating or even boring. Yes, I said boring. Being of a creative mindset we will do everything in our power to make it not boring.

We actually have 2 types of a design process. It starts with a training period that can be daunting. There are a lot of “rules” to learn. We work with tolerances in the thousandths. This will become second nature but you have to stick it out to get there. There is a reason for this, if you stick to the “rules”(and you will) you will design beautiful ornaments that we can actually manufacture.

Our first design process would be a customer who knows EXACTLY what they want. It is our job to help them achieve their vision. Our second design process would be a customer who is not sure what they want. In those cases we may do some research. This may be frustrating because we may find too much or not enough to create what they need. Business development will also help us with this. They will find out what is important to our customer. It may be a particular building, logo, scenery, or wording that has to be on the design. It may be all these things or just some of them. We will try to find out who their audience is. Once all this information is gathered we will design something to their budget. Hopefully we hit it the first time. Usually there is some tweaking once the customer sees their design. Once the tweaking is done we are off to production!

Now if you think we have all the fun because we love what we do then I have no argument. I would argue that anyone who does what they love has all the fun.

How many different ways can you design a traditional angel? I ask myself that every year. And every year we seem to come up with a new more beautiful design than last year. I wish there was a secret formula that helps us do this. It definitely helps that there are 11 designers in this department. Everyone has their own special style. If you walk around our colorful department and look at each work station you could probably figure out how their quirky minds work. And I mean quirky in the best possible way. On any given day you will see almost everyone with head phones on listening to their favorite music. Because I need to hear (usually the phone) I don’t wear head phones but I do get to hear 22 different feet beats! We do have a small library for reference in the department. We have large library on the web. Sometimes we have brainstorming meetings, or big pizza lunches together, or big donut and bagel breakfasts. Some of the guys play basketball once a week. That’s not my favorite since there has been some injuries that have occurred. MEN!

So as you can see. There is no secret formula to get the creative juices flowing. We all run dry at times. Then we take a breather, surf the web, talk to each other and then come up with the next beautiful traditional angel.

 We do welcome any ideas to help the creative juices flowing!