Art & Design writing in the Feb. 18, 2010 issue of Vox magazine
Jim Dodson liked art, but he hated drawing. When he discovered graphic design at technical school, he knew he had found the type of art for him. “Bells went off like — that’s it,” Dodson says. “That’s my passion. That’s what I love to do.” He soon realized that not only did he love graphic design, but luckily he was also good at it.
Jill Womack, executive artistic director of Theater Reaching Young People & Schools, says most of the people who can do what Jim Dodson does are in cities such as Chicago or New York, not Missouri. Dodson moved to Fulton in 2004 to get out of the rat race of Los Angeles, where he was born. Always a patron of the arts, he began designing TRYPS production posters throughout 2009 and helped the group with branding, marketing and obtaining more exposure.
Womack says the posters were classy, fresh and said everything she wanted to say about her company. “He is able to look at something and distill it down into one image that tells the whole story,” she says.
Dodson contacted Womack because he was beginning his own business, By Clever Design, and wanted TRYPS to be one of his first official clients. Womack says, “It was a beautiful moment of the stars aligning and the angels singing because it was the right time for such a talented person to give his talent to TRYPS, and we finally had funding available to hire him.”
Dodson’s designed an award-winning athletic poster for Texas Christian University’s basketball team. He also created the mascot logo for Virginia Commonwealth University and designed the Dallas/Forth Worth metro symphony and metro ballet.
While he was forming By Clever Design, Dodson decided that he wanted to partner with more local businesses, so he contacted The Callaway Bank. Vice President and Director of Marketing & PR Debbie LaRue says the bank hired him because “he seems to understand our commitment to the communities we serve. He understands the importance of branding and of serving the communities. Plus, he is creative, and he has a wealth of experience.”
When beginning his designs, Dodson starts with the client’s vision or idea. “You have an opportunity to work with this client and decipher that vision,” he says. The next step is sketching. Even with the best technology at his fingertips, Dodson uses a pencil and paper to sketch his thumbnails and immerses himself in producing the design, like a character in a play. When he has a good concept of what he is going to do, he starts his work on a computer with design programs.
Logos are one of Dodson’s favorite things to design. He says, “Honing down a company from a mom and pop all the way up to a big company is really fun and a great challenge.”
Dodson has been a part of big companies such as Harcourt Brace College Publishers, where he designed college textbooks, but now he is part of the Columbia community. Although there are a lot of ad agencies in town, many small businesses can’t afford them, and Dodson believes that these businesses deserve good design and quality just as much as bigger clients do.
Whether he is designing logos, ads or even just a business card, Dodson can bring a client’s vision to life. “That is the fun part because you have taken all this information in, and now you have to boil it down and come up with it,” he says.” So while he does have national clients, such as the National Association for Teachers of Singing, Dodson understands the importance of local business. “What I’m hoping to do is be able to offer really good quality design at a more reasonable rate,” he says. “Design is a great way to communicate, and it has to be done really well. I think everybody should have the opportunity for that quality.”
