Today it’s my pleasure to interview Robert Frolich of Filtre Studio, a digital imaging company based in Chicago. Filtre’s client list reads like a Who’s Who of some of the world’s best known brands including AC Delco, Bayer, ExxonMobile, Kimberly-Clark, Sony, TAG Heuer and more. Frolich is the inspired force behind Filtre and also a dear friend of us here at Hile Design. We have admired his work for nearly two decades. Let’s meet the man behind the creative curtain to see what goes into running a cutting-edge photo imaging and retouching studio.

Hile Design: Hi, Robert. Can you tell us what Filtre Studio does for its clients?

Robert Frolich: Filtre Studio’s primary focus is high-end creative image retouching. We work with advertising agencies, design firms and photographers to artistically enhance images, or in some cases create them from scratch. Projects we work on range from simple color correction to complex multi-image composites, combining 10 or more images to create one extraordinary image.

Often, we work with a client to create a composition that would be impossible, or at least cost prohibitive, to create in camera. Or the task can be taking an ordinary photograph and increasing the drama through a carefully crafted color palette, creating an entirely new look and feel.

Sometimes, it’s about making an already beautiful photograph even more beautiful. We have had the pleasure of working with some very talented photographers. Recently, some of our retouched images for TYR Sport, shot by award-winning photographer Steve Bonini, have been featured in Lürzer’s Archive 200 Best Ad Photographers worldwide. Also, German Vanity Fair has featured some of our International Truck images, shot by Andy Goodwin.

HD: You came out of an ad agency background, before founding Filtre. Can you share a bit about your past positions and tell us how you ended up specializing in digital imaging?

RF: I come from a design and art direction background. I started out with a small agency in Ann Arbor, Michigan, working on General Motors assignments. I then moved on to a Raleigh, North Carolina, agency for 6 years before returning north to Chicago as a creative director for Bagby and Company. There I worked on Sony, International Truck and Miller Lite. I’ve always been with small to mid-size agencies, which gave me the opportunity to wear several hats. With the larger shops, everyone is more specialized—the creative director is often more of a manager, overseeing art director/writer teams who come up with the concepts that then get handed off to production. Being at smaller agencies gave me the opportunity to see a project through from start to finish. Especially in the early years, if I wanted to see one of my ideas produced, I would have to do the retouching myself. Often, the budget just wasn’t there to send it out to a studio. Creating an image from scratch, or making a photograph more beautiful than it was to begin with, is something I’ve always enjoyed doing. The post-production has always been the icing on the cake for me.

HD: If there is such a thing, what is a typical day like at Filtre Studio?

RF: Every day is different, but at Filtre the one common denominator is the morning routine. Coffee.  Lots of coffee. Then, on to the day’s business. I know many creatives like to use that early morning time to generate ideas. We generally prefer to use that time to answer emails, make phone calls, do invoicing, estimates, scheduling and any other administrative tasks that need to be done. Then we can focus on digging into an image. With the larger composite images, it’s good to block out several hours of uninterrupted time. Late morning through mid-afternoon is usually a good time to focus on that.

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I am a normal, red-blooded American male. I like contact sports, fishing, dissing politicians, and fast cars. Heck, I went skydiving once (almost). But I have a secret so dark, so disturbing, that for years I hid it within the confines of my own home. My secret? I care about our curtains!

Oh, I’ve tried not to care. Actually for a period of nearly 15 years, earlier in my life I stifled (as Archie Bunker used to scream at his wife, Edith) the urge to care. But it inevitably came right back out. And it’s lonely. At times I’ve screamed within the inner sanctum of my brain, “STOP caring about the curtains! For the love of all that’s sane, STOP caring!” but it doesn’t help. What’s worse, I have a major jones for modern furniture. If I get near furniture designed by people with names like Arad, Castiglioni, Eames, Jacobsen, Nelson and Noguchi, I begin to get lightheaded. And the list goes on and on! Don’t even get me started on Panton, Prove, Rashid and Saarinen. What’s worse is my major fixation with Phillippe Stark!  It’s a costly monkey on my back. Just go to Design Within Reach’s website and check out their pricing. (Thank goodness, there are less expensive knockoffs.)

My problem came to a head a decade ago when my wife and I bought a new home. Early on we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy drapes for the house. I was trying to act as though the patterned drapes we picked out together were fine. Yeah, that’s it… j-u-s-t  f-i-n-e. But once they were up in our home it became crystal clear to my inner designer that those patterns had to go! Couldn’t my wife see that the patterns screwed up the whole flow of the room? She protested. After that I can’t remember much except near the end of the incident, when she said that men weren’t suppose to care about “those kinds of things.” Ouch.

Hi, I’m Dave and I am an interior designer. There, I’ve said it. And you know what? I feel better. Yes, I care whether our curtains are patterned or not, and I am not going to hide in my house behind my (thankfully nonpatterned) curtains any longer! Do you hear me, world?

Today we are talking with Leighton Hubbell, a designer-illustrator based in Orange, California. He has a portfolio spanning multiple industries including automotive, entertainment, retail, technology and travel-tourism. Among his many clients you’ll find names such as Toyota, Warner Brothers, Starbucks, PepsiCo, Sprint and Hilton Hotels. Let’s find out what he’s been up to, and where he feels he’s headed.

Hile Design: Hi, Leighton. Many designers found 2008 challenging, due to the uncertain economy. You have a diverse client base and a wide range of creative services, which is helpful in an economic downturn. How’s it going for you and your clients?

Leighton Hubbell: Well, it hasn’t been easy. I have definitely seen a decline in the number of projects that have come my way. There have been a lot of submitted proposals, but unfortunately a good percentage have either been scaled back or put on hold. At the very least, they’re still calling.

It’s situations like these that make me glad I can participate in many different types of projects. When logo design is slow, then illustration might take its place for a while—and so on. It helps pay the bills.

Since everyone is really watching their pennies these days, clients and marketers have to be extra-savvy about how they spend their ad dollars. In my situation, I can help direct a client into an appropriate type of medium and still keep the work in-house.

HD: You’ve been in business 20 years. Back when you started your career, only a few creatives were using computers (the Mac Classic was released in 1984). Did you begin with a T-Square and parallel rule? And since we’re talking about your history, can you share the three biggest highlights of your career so far?

LH: I started out in the traditional sense, T-square and triangles, ink and illustration boards. Can you say “Haber rule”?

My first full-time job was a great introduction to that world. I was one of four art directors working in an in-house art department at a bicycle manufacturer.

Back then, you had a lot of different people you had to work with and trust to get the results you were envisioning. You had photographers, retouchers, typesetters, color separators and even proofreaders. You had to have a lot of good hand skills to communicate your ideas and make things happen. Rough layouts really were rough sketches. It truly was like opening a Christmas package when the work was printed. The client (owner) really had to make a leap of faith that the piece would turn out like the marker comp. Now, everything is very complete and refined before it ever gets to the printer.

I started using a Macintosh SE (with 3MB of RAM) in 1988, when my employer made the investment of three workstations. Businesses back then really thought they could get a Mac and start replacing designers with all the “productivity” the computer would provide them. Now of course, everyone realizes it’s just a very versatile tool.

I’d have to say that my biggest highlights would have more to do with my growth as a designer and business person, than anything else.

My first highlight would have to be seeing my first produced, 4-color print ad in a national magazine—an ad that I had created. I was beaming and really felt like I had finally arrived. I remember working out the headlines and concepts, then toiling over colors, working with the photographer and doing all the paste-up myself. It was a pretty cool feeling.

Someone once told me early on, that you haven’t really been in advertising until you’ve been laid off at least once. The first time I got laid off sticks in my mind as one of the lowest and most depressing moments of my then-career. You feel like you’ve just been dumped by your girlfriend. The fortunate, bright side comes from the word getting around town that you’re available, and the phone starts ringing! I had solid work two weeks after leaving the agency. That felt pretty good.

The last highlight that sticks in my memory is landing my first big client contract. I remember meeting with the client for the first time and being pretty nervous. We had been introduced by a former client of the agency I had recently left. She was now working as a marketing consultant and spoke very highly of my work to this new prospect. The company was in a category that I had very limited experience with, so I thought I didn’t have much of a chance.

Well, they were impressed and asked me to submit an estimate. So, I went back to my studio and put together some numbers. I thought I had a pretty fair and buttoned-up proposal. The marketing consultant took a look at it during our lunch meeting the next day. Then she said something I’ll never forget, “Double it, and we’ve got a deal.” I was in shock. Really?

When the deposit check showed up, it all of a sudden became reality. Here’s where the rubber hits the road. Don’t screw this up!

As it turned out, the work was some of my strongest at the time and produced several design awards. I thank them for giving me the opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve spoken with several people who admitted their websites aren’t representative of their company, or that they were hastily developed to get something (anything?) onto the web. They argue that it doesn’t matter that their site leaves something to be desired because according to them, their website is not key to their selling process. I beg to differ in a big way (and I suspect their potential customers would as well). My friends may never know how important their websites are to their sales because unbeknownst to them, many of their prospects have already sped off in search of another company to work with.

Of course, a website is always part of the sales equation. Just as we all make instantaneous judgments about new people we meet, so potential customers make sweeping and decisive judgments about a company and its products based on its website. According to web user research those judgments can be made at supersonic speed, so that doesn’t leave much time to make an impression. If we don’t put an awful lot of careful thought and effort into making our websites visually appealing, accessible and relevant to our customers, the site might do more harm than good.

In a recent discussion about website relevance, an industry colleague of mine used a helpful analogy: Imagine a high school student looking for a college to attend upon graduation. She may review six or seven different universities, and if those schools are too far away to visit, she will make her decision based solely on the experience she has on the colleges’ websites. For that potential freshman, the website is the college. Excuses such as, “Well, if she could just visit our campus, she’d see that our school is much better than our website portrays it,” are of no use. They’ll never get the chance to prove themselves. As business owners who want our websites to be an accurate representation of our company, we need to remember:  Our company’s website is the company to prospective customers.

I used the term “experience” because that is what a website should be. I define web experience in advertising as a succinct representation of a company’s (or in my example, a university’s) brand. For the web experience to be a positive one, the website has to be truthful, easy to navigate, eye-catching, informative and readable, audience-appropriate and current. If any of those elements are missing, the customer may go missing as well.

So, when designing (or redesigning) your website, sweat the details. Consider carefully who your customers are and what you want them to do on your site. Talk to them to find out what’s important to them. Scrutinize your written content, site design and navigation, which might seem intuitive to you, but may be confusing to your site visitors. Maybe even do some user testing (we did on our own recent site redesign, and it led to some meaningful navigational improvements). Lay aside your preferences and put the customer first. Invest in your website as if it’s your most important marketing asset, because it is. Then your website will be a sales tool, and not a frustrating diversion.

Hile Design LLC has been chosen by Illinois–based toymaker Aeromax Toys to redesign the packaging and establish a branded look for ride-on, inflatable toys for kids.

Hile has recently completed the signage design for CUcorp’s Livonia and Lansing locations. CUcorp is a credit union services company that is a subsidiary of the Michigan Credit Union League (MCUL), founded in 1964. Hile redesigned MCUL’s office space in 2006.

Based in Costa Mesa, California, Roger has illustrated for many leading companies including AT&T, Bell South, DirecTV, Euro Disney, McGraw-Hill, Sprint Cellular and others. We wanted to find out how this award-winning illustrator got into the business and what he sees as the future of his industry. We think you’ll be interested too, so read on.

Hile Design: Roger, can you share a bit of your background and how you became a commercial illustrator?

Roger Xavier: I’m going to summarize this as much as possible: My earliest recollection of drawing was when I was 4 and started off with crayons. Then came my love of comic book art. The line drawings I grew up on in those comics would be ingrained into my psyche. I’d tried almost every medium used to create art, but pen & ink drawings have always been something that stayed with me.

Skipping ahead to college, I received my formal education in illustration, art history and design. In my senior year at college, I won a contest to create a poster for Molson Golden Beer. My entry became part of an exhibit and ended up gaining the attention of a book publisher in New York who not only hired me to do a couple of book illustrations, but also opened up an opportunity to work on a movie for MGM just 3 months after graduation. After that, I wanted to pursue the movie poster industry and started working for several Hollywood firms that specialized in entertainment advertising. During those early years, I tried everything from biomedical rendering to editorial art for magazines and working on any advertising job I could get. That was a time of growth and I didn’t really hit my stride until 1990, when I was awarded a project by Emmett Morava of Morava Design to create the annual report illustrations for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power.  Emmett had great vision and instructed me to go bolder with my pen & ink drawings. He showed me how to design with ink and create something more than just a rendering.  The LADWP annual report went on to win many awards.  It was then that I started getting some recognition. Read the rest of this entry »

Building a great website involves more than memorable design and clever content. If a site doesn’t behave the way the user expects it to, if it loads slowly or puts obstacles between you and what you’re looking for, it’s going to sabotage itself.

Or, to put it another way, do you shop at Amazon.com because of the clever, cryptic navigation or because you can buy things without thinking too hard about the process? Do you keep returning to Wikipedia because of the massive homepage animation with the “click here to skip” button that appears every time you visit, or because you can go straight to the information you’re looking for? The user’s efficiency counts, no matter what kind of site you run.

Part of my responsibility at Hile Design is making the sites we build work (in both the user experience and technical senses of “work”), and as of now that includes our own website. Every feature, page and behavior on our new website has been brought up, shot down, reviewed, considered, revised and reconsidered before being added. On the agenda from the beginning, though, was a way to allow any user to browse our portfolio on their own terms rather than ours. I pushed hard to ensure that as little as possible gets in the way of what you’re looking for. We might be a design and marketing shop, but usability is as vital a part of marketing as the appearance. Read the rest of this entry »