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Local Designers Get Creative With State's Favorite Things

Firm Has A Hand In Designing Logos For State Street, The Packers And Others.

Wisconsin State Journal :: BUSINESS :: E1

Thursday, August 14, 2003
Jason Stein Business reporter

The stadium's new 1930s style logo and graphics come from a small firm that is putting its designs on some of the state's best-known sites.

Lambeau Field is just one stop on a Wisconsin tour that has taken Mark Schmitz and his 13 employees at ZD Studios from State Street in Milwaukee to State Street in Madison. ZD Studios, 111 S. Hamilton St., has created images for the Miller Brewing Co.'s visitor center and tour in Milwaukee. In September, Schmitz will be unveiling a new State Street logo to accompany the redesign of Madison's favorite thoroughfare.

It's a kind of professional homecoming for Schmitz, 40, a grandson of one of the founders of American Family Insurance in Madison and a graduate of Madison Area Technical College's commercial art program.

"In many ways our work has been out of the state for many years," said Schmitz, whose clients from outside Wisconsin include companies such as Westin Hotels & Resorts of White Plains, N.Y.

The designer's dreams, however, have stayed in Wisconsin.

For 28 years, Schmitz carried in his wallet an autographed menu that legendary Packers quarterback Bart Starr had given him as a boy. When ZD Studios received the logo design contract in 1999, Schmitz had a chance to draw on memories of his childhood idol.

Fit into the same oval shape as the Packers' signature "G," the Lambeau Field logo shows a quarterback in an old-style leather helmet, his right arm cocked and ready to throw. The player, Schmitz said, is "part (current Packers quarterback) Brett Favre, part Bart Starr and a little bit of Johnny Unitas."

The logo and the $295 million renovation of the stadium, built in 1957, seek to tout Lambeau's claims to football history and make it into a year-round destination for Packers fans. Team executives have said they hope the changes will help the Packers remain competitive by generating $23 million to $30 million in additional revenue for the franchise.

The logo's "been exactly what we were looking for," said Packers president and chief executive officer Bob Harlan, who had wanted to evoke the early days of the National Football League. "The more (Schmitz) did the more it appealed to us," Harlan said in a telephone interview.

In the end, ZD Studios designed not just the Lambeau logo but locator graphics and images for concession stands, retailers and a 20,000 square-foot restaurant. More than 2,000 graphics and photographs are being installed everywhere from Harlan's office to the Packers Hall of Fame to stadium restrooms. Schmitz even wrote guidelines for the stadium's advertisers so their images would reinforce the 1930s look.

"I think what makes it unique is that the Packers are really tying together a theme for the whole stadium," said Kelly Huggett, a marketing specialist for Coca-Cola in Chicago, who hired Schmitz to do Coke's Lambeau Field advertising.

Schmitz won't say what the Packers paid for his work, but it's clear the contract has led to other sports projects for his firm, which had sales of $250,000 in 1994 and $2.5 million in 2002. Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director for UW-Madison, said ZD Studios would design a logo, signs and graphics for the renovated Camp Randall Stadium that will open in its first phase in the fall of 2004.

"We hope to piggyback upon that and employ (Schmitz) to help us in our overall efforts to sell suites and club seats," Sweeney added.

Though Schmitz has other dreams, like designing brand images for an entire Olympics, he said the Lambeau Field project has been unlike any other. Schmitz never imagined he would have the chance, as he did Sunday, to take his sons, Riley, 7, and Cole, 5, to Lambeau Field and stand with them in the south end zone, looking up at his own logo on the new scoreboard.

"They think they're Brett Favre right now and I thought I was Bart Starr," Schmitz said, remembering how it felt to watch his boys sprint across his hero's home field, "I almost started crying."