About
KAREN SUTTON
I began my career in advertising in 1981 (straight from grade school ;o ) when I co-founded Hillcrest Publications in Orange County, California. We published two specialty magazines, “The Community Contractor” and “The Business Press.” My background and first love had been in fine arts and oil painting; I won awards at the Orange County Fair and several juried art exhibitions. Hillcrest Publications was my introduction to publishing and advertising. By 1985 I was doing all the magazine layouts… I learned the fundamentals of design the old fashioned way, with mock ups on paper, lay out and paste up the text and graphics by hand, and then carry the layout boards back to the printer... then there were those bluelines and velox's, things have changed! With the leaps in technology and advances in design software, I drew from my art background to learn desktop publishing. At the same time I was providing advertising sales and formulating office procedures. After moving to San Diego I co-founded SunCoast Media in 1989 that published “On The Market” magazine.
My job, using state-of-the-art software was to design “On The Market” from scratch, editing the articles and producing all the ad layouts. I left SunCoast Media in 1991 and worked in the printing field for four years. It was there that I learned the importance of type and ad specifications and meeting customers' deadlines. Missing a deadline for my own company was bad but missing a deadline for a customer's company was devastating both in finances and goodwill. I resolved to never let that happen.
In 1995 I was hired as the Director of Marketing for a large multi-state electrical company. They had a $2 million advertising budget. I was responsible for designing and placing all their yellow page advertisements as well as designing all the companies’ collateral material.
I left the electrical company to start and manage the Marketing Department of one of the nation's largest bail bonding companies with a $5 million budget in their yellow page advertising. From early 1995 until early 1999 my experience and expertise with yellow page advertising grew at an exponential rate. In April 1999 I decided to open my own Advertising Agency, which was certified for placing yellow page advertising nationally.
Today our mission at Studio One... by Design is to be a full service, ad agency that specializes in web design, creative marketing and publishing throughout the United States.
