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Office Profiles

Partners in Design is a unique design environment of thinking people, looking to make new collaborations with business partners to enact powerful, profitable and informative design. Established in 1984, we offer design expertise and enthusiasm in graphic design, book and exhibit design, promotional and collateral, signage, packaging and electronic media such as the design for the World Wide Web.

We listen, educate, create and manage design. With each project, PID's process begins with a learning phase to define and lead us to the best solution designed to deliver a message of maximum impact to a particular audience. PID approaches all design as interactive, since design only succeeds when it provokes responses and action.

Since 1992, Partners in Design has made a commitment to ecologically-sensitive design and print production practices. Whether you only know a little or a lot, spend some time at our EcoStrategies page. It offers a wealth of useful information and links to aid you in making better design and printing choices.

Or perhaps you're here because the internet is on your mind and you're wondering how online communications may fit into your marketing strategy. The internet does indeed offer access to a vast audience, yet each company's particular approach to this new audience must be highly focused to be successful. The "information highway" metaphor unfortunately sometimes means that your potential audience may just go whizzing by at 90 mph. You've got to be the best driver you can be. We offer you our top ten reasons why collaboration with Partners in Design can produce successful results for your communications program. Contact us and let us show you how.

At PID's website, you'll be able to view the professional credentials of principals Stephen Schlott and Sharon Mentyka, but they'd like to keep their favorite flavor of ice cream confidential. Welcome!

Stephen Schlott

I started with No. 2 pencils thrown away by my CPA Dad at the age of 2. The pencils never had erasers left on them so I always somehow incorporated my mistakes into the picture. Maybe it was then I started with this problem-solving buisiness. My dedication to these pursuits was as strong at age 3 as in my college days and it finally culminated with my graduation from Pratt Institute in New York. In the course of the 14 years I have practiced design, I have had the privilege of meeting and joining with other professionals of similar temperments as an active member of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD), the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the American Association of Museum (AAM).

Starting my own design office in 1984 and over 300 projects later, things continue to feel like they are falling into place. "Falling" is perhaps not the best word to describe a directed course of action. Collaborations with our clients have resulted in many successful programs that have achieving their marketing objectives, and we have established many long-term working relationships - for me, a real benchmark of success.

Recently, Partners in Design completed the photography and design of the annual report for the Brainerd Foundation (Mr. Brainerd is the founder of Aldus Corporation), the Foundation's website has just been put online and a new website for a Seattle-based tourist attraction is in the works. I am also headed for a walk in the woods this weekend to begin the development of an interpretive program for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

This fall, the packaging campaign for the Blue Willow Tea Company, developed by PID in 1994, will be enlarged and expanded to include new products and retail venues and take on the trade show circuit.

Prior to opening my own can of worms, I have been associated with the office of Lance Wyman Ltd., where I was part of the development of several successful signage programs, including the Minnesota Zoo and the Washington D.C. convention Center and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, where as Director of Graphic Design, my work included projects for the American Museum of Natural History, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Citicorp and the Staten Island Children's Museum.

While creating this web site and compiling its contents, I realized that many of my own accomplishments and talents, both personal and professional, are set forth in different areas of the site. Since you may be visiting only selected sections, I'll take this opportunity to condense and regroup those experiences. Here I am in a nutshell.

My education is from Pratt Institute in New York and I have continued to maintain an interest in design education. I have at various times been an educator at Pratt Institute and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and served on the board of directors of the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) as its Education Chair from 1993-1996.

Starting out in New York, I was fortunate to learn the ropes from two then-prominent firms who specialized respectively in book design and cultural and institutional marketing: Peter Bradford & Associations and Appelbaum & Curtis. The mutual respect that I saw happening between client and designer and the suppression of egos for the project good made an indelible impression on my working process. The idea that work and play could happily coexist also stuck with me and would come in handy later when I had a family of my own.

The studio I have established with my partner Stephen Schlott has enabled me to challenge myself and serve our clients in ways I never would have imagined when we began in New York City in 1984, and I take great pride in that. It says to me that I have taken opportunities when I have seen them and have been both flexible and far-sighted in my growth. I am a project director, writer/editor, budget manager, production supervisor and coordinator of computer-based graphic systems.

The clients I have worked with over the years range from a school for training guide dogs for the blind to one of the Frederick Law Olmstead's most brilliant accomplishments, Central Park in New York City. Highlights along the way have included the Smithsonian Institution, the American Craft Museum, The New York Public Library, and the IBM Gallery of Science and Art. Every project, every collaborations has contributed to enlarging and expanding my understanding of information and communications marketing.

Relocating our office to Seattle and the Northwest environment in 1991 prompted me into research and a peer education project, Sound Design, for which I secured funding and directed. The focus was environmentally-sensitive design alternatives for the design community. Things at PID have never been the same since that project and we now bring a bit of it to everything we do, helping our clients make the best design and production decisions based on their environmental priorities. And, as you can see in the EcoStrategies section of our site, there is much for all of us to gain from interest and experience in this area.