Ten Years of Design in Edwardsville
Jesse | Aug 27, 2009 | Comments 0
A flyer for the Creativille tenth anniversary, showing clips of some of the designs.
by Jesse Gernigin
Meeting Steve, owner and creator of Edwardsville-based design company Creativille, is like meeting your first cool teacher in high school. You know the kind. Not really that old, outwardly happy, and possessing an energy that accounts for their tremendous ability to communicate their talents. He is dressed in his day to day work clothes, T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. All of it comfortable, all of it right.
I’m here to interview Steve about Creativille’s ten year anniversary, and how he got started all those years ago. Interviewing him I can’t help but feeling young again. Maybe it is Steve’s laid back nature but I’d swear, for a second, I was standing at my art teacher’s desk in high school, captivated by ideas I had yet to consider.
To celebrate ten years, Steve is throwing a party at the Edwardsville Arts Center. The party kicks off a exhibit Steve has curated, “Impressed by Design: Letterpress in the Heartland.” The exhibit showcases Steve’s letterpress pieces, has a short film documenting his work done by Preston Gibson (brother of Parker Gibson) and features five other letterpress artists.
Steve started designing because he wanted to create, “A branding strategy and graphic design firm.”
Steve talked about how he wanted his work to deregulate the stereotypes of art and use art to open new channels of communication in Edwardsville. His work embodies a type of understated sophistication. Both the typography and images reveal a sense of space that confirms what the rest of the piece is saying. The colors he uses are often broad and bold and remind me of promotional posters from magic shows in the 1900’s.
When I asked Steve why he had settled in Edwardsville he responded, “I chose to work in Edwardsville, because…It is our hometown, and we love it.”
Talking to Steve, this made sense. In no way did he seem the kind of person that relied on his location to determine his destiny. He conveyed this fact with his presence, constantly saying “hello” to everyone-young and old-passing out Jack Handey bits of wisdom and generally extemporizing in back chat wherever he went. However, endearing or not, I wondered how staying in Edwardsville affected Steve’s business. I wondered how he could find big success in a small town.
“In my business,” he began, “You literally can work from anywhere with a FedEx box and internet connection. From an egocentric angle, I love that I can create a nationally recognized company and run it in this great small town that we love.”
The answer felt a little too pat, but when pressed further Steve merely quipped in his Warholian coolness, “It is not the place that commands the creator, whether it is the love of the eye for the art.”
Creativille, however, does not just focus on branding. It also focuses on, “A wide range of graphic design and branding needs beginning with brand identity development, communication collateral, books, magazines, employee communications, financial communications, event marketing, advertising, signage and online social media.”
Steve’s ambitions don’t stop here though. Steve already has another exciting project planned, a one day conference on design and communication. It will be hosted by Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis (COCA). The conference title is ‘One Day’ and will play host to a number of speakers. Although I am not at liberty to discuss the speaker line-up I will say it is impressive. The theme of ‘One Day’ revolves around future speculation as in, “We should do that ONE DAY” and the conference One Day represents the speculated ‘one day’. I’ll be doing an article on that in the near future, until then fill your time by exploring Steve’s website and blog here at.
Steve’s website and blog can be found here.
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Filed Under: Art Exhibitions
