Hile Design LLC is pleased to announce its 25th anniversary. Founded in January 1984 by award-winning illustrator Dave Hile, Hile Design is an Ann Arbor advertising and graphic design company that has been creatively serving small businesses to large corporations since January of 1984. See full details »

As the person in charge of hiring creative staff for our ad agency I see a lot of resumes from young designers. Over the past four or five years I have witnessed an alarming trend. Even with tools like Spellcheck, it’s not uncommon to receive resumes with several misspellings and grammatical errors, often in the first paragraph of the cover letter. When I get these resumes, I often don’t take the time to review the candidates’ actual design portfolios. I know that I don’t want a person on my staff who can’t communicate effectively with our clients.

I’ve been asked on occasion to speak to graphic design students at several colleges. They are always amazed when I tell them that one of the most important classes they can take in their design curriculum is English 101.

With this in mind I am providing a list of what I think is important in a creative’s resume. These tips seem like no-brainers but you’d be surprised how often they are ignored.

1. Make sure your cover letter and resume read well. Have someone you know that has a good grasp of vocabulary and grammatical skills review your draft.
2. Avoid being too informal. I receive online resumes without any capitalization, a common web protocol among high schoolers and college buddies, but totally inappropriate for the business world.
3. Go online to review the targeted company to see what services they provide and what kind of creative work they do. As a favor I interviewed a friend’s daughter who was fresh out of design school who began the interview with, “So what kind of work do you guys do?” Write your cover letter and qualifications to align with the creative services the firm provides.
4. It’s fine to mention what you want to get out of the experience of working for the company, but put the needs of the firm first. They are going to be paying you hard-earned money, so they need to be assured that you are going to be a diligent, enthusiastic employee who is eager to do whatever you’re called upon for the betterment of the company.
5. Oh, and have an amazing portfolio.

We are talking with Oneupweb, a digital marketing company that specializes in building relationships and businesses through integrated online marketing and applied creative thinking. Founded in 1996 by Lisa Wehr, the company’s original mission was a simple one: to design websites. When clients began to want their sites to be seen by more people, Lisa gradually phased out the company’s design services and set out to uncover the secrets to improving a website’s position on major search engines. The rest is history.

Hile Design: Can you share a bit more about Lisa’s background, and tell us more specifically about what your company does today?

Oneupweb: Prior to Oneupweb, Lisa attended college with a focus on commercial advertising photography, worked as a forensic photographer, a mounted policewoman in Florida, and was a pretty serious musher with her own sled-dog team in Alaska. When she stopped racing competitively, she started a guided tour business. People would visit Alaska to learn how to mush dogs, and Lisa would act as their guide. In 1996, she wanted to bring in more business, so she went to Wal-Mart, bought a computer and taught herself how to use it. Word spread that she knew how to design websites, and the customers started pouring in. But they wanted their websites seen by more people, so Lisa methodically went about figuring out how to make that happen. The result was Oneupweb, a search marketing company. A few years ago the company moved to Traverse City, and just last year we moved into our new 23,000 square foot global headquarters on Grand Traverse Bay.

Today, Oneupweb is a recognized leader in digital marketing, providing services that include: natural search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing (PPC), conversion improvement and analytics, podcast production, online media planning and placement, social media marketing and search marketing consultation for in-house marketing teams.

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In my four years at art school we had the usual assignments: book covers, magazine spreads, posters and so on. None of these projects ever came close to preparing me for the work I’ve done recently here at Hile. This latest project took patience, a careful attention to detail and incredible daring.

The other day I Photoshopped Julie’s head onto Lady Liberty. And this was not my first head transplant. I’ve gotten eerily good at taking someone’s head and putting it on someone else’s body. If you look at our staff biographies on the new hiledesign.com you’ll see my  work in the area of digital transplantation surgery:

• Art has been transformed into Fred Astaire
• Eric could easily be mistaken for a trail boss
• Monica is Miss Remington
• Mary pops out of a box to the tune of “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush”
• Beth is holding her own against canine opponents
• Katie is a face in the crowd (OK, that was an easy one)
• I’m the Hile Gothic
• Dave is moderating a Nixon-Kennedy debate

No, art school did not prepare me for having this much fun on the job.