Life Experience Puts Lewis On Top
A lifetime of creativity pushes Rick Lewis to the No. 1 position of this year's top designers for BFL&S.
The oft quoted sports adage says, "It's not winning that is important, but how you play the game." But for Rick Lewis, president of ProForma Preferred Systems in Long Beach, Calif., how he plays the game is a big part of why he wins—and boy, does he.
In addition to winning seven awards in the BFL&S Top Design Contest in 2001—including Best of Show—and gold and silver medals in commercial printing in 1999, Lewis also won awards from the Admissions Advertising and Marketing Association of America and the Printing Industry of America last year.
So it's clear that when Lewis says the key to producing award-winning designs is listening to the client, he knows what he's talking about.
"The secret to success is to look at projects through the eyes of the client's target market," said Lewis. "Distributors may find that the design will be something they wouldn't prefer, but if it speaks to the target market then distributors have to design for its taste, not their own."
Putting these words into practice may often prove difficult, but not for Lewis because he has marketing in his blood. Born in Queens, N.Y., and raised in San Jose, Calif., Lewis began helping his mother with her marketing firm at the age of 14. By 19 years old, Lewis was working for his mother, helping her manage target market campaigns for the banking industry in Southern California.
Of course, given that Lewis is a designer today, it might seem like a foregone conclusion that he would end up working in marketing. Nevertheless, fate had something else in mind.
Before he could dive headfirst into a career in marketing and design, he would have to decide whether or not he wanted to be in show business. As it happens, the two went hand in hand.
Stage & Television
Around the same time Lewis was beginning to help his mother with her marketing company, he decided to get up on stage to act in a high school production of "Guys and Dolls." Someone in "the business" saw him and asked him to do some summer stock. That led to an audition for a professional gig at Marriott's Great American (now known as Six Flags Great America) in Santa Clara, Calif. This ultimately led to Lewis auditioning for a role in a Disney theme park show. And the rest, as they say, is history.
"I flew down to L.A., auditioned for Disney, did a bunch of productions for them and kind of grew my way through the ranks at the company," said Lewis. "I started as a singer/dancer and then I wrote, directed, choreographed and eventually managed target marketers around the world."
While working for Disney, Lewis worked and performed in 19 countries and 75 cities around the world. From Bangkok to Stockholm, Lewis has seen it all. Though he was primarily en-gaged in working on the creative side of those Disney productions, Lewis said he often found himself hanging out with the technicians and business people on the crew.
"When you're with people 24 hours a day, you strike up relationships," said Lewis. "They gave me a shot and, as things went on, I just started working my way up the ladder."
In between tours with Disney, Lewis studied business, music and theater arts at Cal State, Long Beach on a partial scholarship he won for playing the trumpet. He eventually earned a certificate in Business and Management of Entertainment in 1979.
Lewis also supplemented his income by appearing in commercials, and even landed a role on the soap opera Santa Barbara. But despite paving a road halfway to a successful stage and screen career, Lewis had a change of heart after meeting a famous actor who had once spent a year living in his car after his hit series was cancelled.
"It taught me how easy it is to lose everything in the entertainment business. I decided that this is not the career I wanted to go after—that wasn't how I wanted to raise a family," he said.
Happily Ever After
Instead of venturing down that road, Lewis decided to return to the fold. Towards that end, Lewis bought a Proforma Preferred Systems franchise in 1987 and set sail for what would eventually become an award-winning career in marketing and design for printed products within the business forms industry.
Fifteen years later, Lewis is still happy with his decision, and part of the reason is his passion for making clients' ideas come alive. In addition to carefully listening to each client's goals and designing to the taste of individual target markets, Lewis said he attributes his success to his ability to have fun and to color outside the proverbial lines. "If you're having fun creating your project, it will be reflected in the end piece," noted Lewis. "Be bold and exciting in your design efforts. Dare to be big and colorful or small and simple. Just be different and special. Designers have to be able to come in the backdoor with their ideas." It's the way to be successful, he added.
For example, Lewis is currently working on a coffee table book of photographs depicting Cuba. During the project, he and another designer were having trouble developing exciting design ideas, so Lewis decided to put on some music to break the tension and the next thing he knew, he and his fellow designer were dancing around the room playfully throwing things at each other. Suddenly, an idea for laying out the book came to them.
"So many people design and work within a certain framework," observed Lewis. "Sometimes designers have to step back to see things from a different angle before they can get it right."
For Lewis's "Best of Show" design last year—a catalog for the prestigious Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif.—he decided to showcase the school's 50-year history while stressing its progressive curriculum and idyllic setting. This helped to create the brand-identity the institution was looking for.
Needless to say, the project was a rousing success—so much so that Lewis was recently called on to design a piece for Brooks' new visual communications program. "What was unique about the Brooks project was that we were working with world class photography," said Lewis. "It made us work even harder because we weren't working with photos out of a drawer, and it provided us with an opportunity to be special and unique."
Truth be told, though, Lewis sees every job as an opportunity to design something special and unique, not as a repetitious project with no room for creativity. Perhaps that's another reason why Lewis has been so successful.
However, while some people might see Lewis's dalliance with the entertainment industry as time wasted traveling down a dead-end road, he sees it differently.
"I don't see the entertainment work I've done as much different from designing," contended Lewis. "The challenge is to come up with a tangible way to communicate intangible ideas, which isn't very different from producing a show. A pretty picture on a page means nothing if it isn't effective. The entertainment industry helped teach me how to do that."
By Allan Martin Kemler