ZIELINSKI Design Associates

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I represent CORE PUBLISHING. We publish four different lifestyle magazines in different markets in the US, and our magazines are distributed through upscale luxury hotels in each market. I’m the company’s creative director and production manager, so I’m responsible for producing the magazines and getting them printed every quarter.

What challenge were you trying to address with ZIELINSKI Design Associates?

We had a group doing some design work for us, but it was time for a new look, so we brought in ZIELINSKI.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially asked ZIELINSKI to come up with some designs for our covers and a different look that could standardize our features in each of the markets. Fortunately, they came up with great assets, so we hired them to do that work on an ongoing basis.

They’re currently in charge of designing the covers and inside features of our four magazines each quarter. We always get a nice layout for the magazine’s content from them, which we then revise or tweak based on the author of the story and my art direction. After making the necessary changes, they present the layout back to me, which is usually perfect then.

What is the team composition?

I work with three people from ZIELINSKI. Their team includes Stephanie (Graphic Designer & Art Director), Tom (President & Chief Creative Officer), and an accounting person.

How did you come to work with ZIELINSKI Design Associates?

We had worked with ZIELINSKI on other projects before, not only on our publishing side but also on some advertising and marketing projects that we had. Among these projects, we had them design some websites, including ours, and other promotional marketing pieces. As I mentioned, we gave them some assignments for the magazines’ designs, and we ended up hiring them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around $25,000 per year. However, 2020 was a bad year for publishing, so we only had two issues that year. Thus, we’ve spent around $75,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with ZIELINSKI for over three years now. We started working together in January 2018, and our engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Since working with ZIELINSKI, we’ve seen more traffic and engagement from people coming to our website after finding us on our clients’ websites and our magazines.

How did ZIELINSKI Design Associates perform from a project management standpoint?

ZIELINSKI is excellent, and they perform seamlessly. Working with them has been a sheer pleasure.

We communicate via email and telephone calls. Everything is mostly handled via email, but we hop on a call if a harder-to-explain issue arises. It is very easy to get them to respond.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ZIELINSKI is excellent at what they do, and they have very good designers. They help us with four different magazines, each one with a different look and feel based on each market, and they’re very good at keeping up with that and maintaining each of their styles. That’s not easy to do.

They also communicate seamlessly with me and everyone else involved, which helps create a good working environment for everybody.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be amazing if ZIELINSKI did their work for free! On a more serious note, there’s nothing I would have them improve. Of course, we’ve had our differences on certain points of view regarding some layouts, but they end up doing as I told them.

Overall, I’m very happy with how they work, so I don’t have any constructive criticism to share.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Always challenge them and make sure that they’re on top of the newest and greatest trends. You always have to challenge the people that you work with to get the best out of them. I’m sure that we challenge them all the time, especially with deadlines.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of product development for the R+Co brand at Luxury Brand Partners, where product development is my focus. Prior to that, I was director of product development at Sally Beauty Holdings.

What challenge were you trying to address with ZIELINSKI Design Associates?

Tom (President & Chief Creative Officer) has worked with me over the years on various web projects, both at my previous position at another company and my current position at Luxury Brand Partners.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We currently have 10 web development projects with ZIELINSKI pertaining to hair color brands. Including past work at my former position, we’ve collaborated on projects for a total of 23 different brands within the health and beauty sector.

These projects include landing pages and backend formulation systems for hair color products. They’ve done a lot of technical work for me, which has been challenging because hair color is a very chemically and educationally heavy subject; it requires the assistance of a sophisticated design firm.

They’ve also helped me with a lot of photography work for the websites and a tremendous amount of packaging design. Additionally, they’ve created video content and conceptual designs to highlight product launches within various brands.

Most of the projects on which I’ve collaborated with Tom date from when I worked at Sally Beauty. At the time, I was in charge of about 72% of the company’s portfolio, and Tom was very instrumental in the work related to the hair color brands. He did all the designs and photoshoots for those projects, demonstrating that his firm was very diverse — they’re a great resource for us.

The last big project that ZIELINSKI completed was a hair color website separate from Sally Beauty. They basically developed a system that walked the customer through a series of hierarchical questions. After completing the questionnaire, the system recommended one out of 147 different shades of hair color.

Whatever code they wrote, they delivered a very simple interface for our customers to go to our website and answer questions related to their hair characteristics, desired hair color, skin tone, and more. They also created all of the visual assets, which was very difficult to do. They had to make all the various tonal colors look different through that program on devices.

That particular project was done from scratch in collaboration with a design firm that I brought in. They developed the site on WordPress and coded some parts using Java. Those are the two main technologies that I remember they used.

Among the content that ZIELINSKI has developed for us stands out the hair color one-on-one project. It was an educational program that went out to 12,000 employees in all of our stores.

This was a modular program with video content created by them, as well as a hard-copy binder to support the content. ZIELINSKI put together the videos to support each module, including the scripts and everything related to the video production.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with 6–7 people from ZIELINSKI.

How did you come to work with ZIELINSKI Design Associates?

Tom had a salesperson who called me, and we set up a meeting in our corporate office. We started working on our first project shortly after I met Tom.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $5 million–$10 million on the projects with Sally Beauty alone. We had some big projects, and I wasn’t the only person in the company using ZIELINSKI’s services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around December 2003, while I worked at Sally Beauty. I don’t know if ZIELINSKI still provides services or maintenance to those projects, but I still work with them on my current projects with my current company.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The brand for which ZIELINSKI did the important website that I mentioned before is now the largest brand in Sally Beauty’s portfolio and the fourth most important brand in the entire US. Tom was really instrumental in the creation of the conceptual designs and the launch of that project. Thanks to their great work, the brand achieved $161 million in sales in 2019 with a very high profit margin.

How did ZIELINSKI Design Associates perform from a project management standpoint?

Currently, we communicate with them through Zoom calls, but we used to communicate via email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ZIELINSKI’s strengths are their attention to detail and their level of talent. Many times, I’ve relied on Tom and his team to do the work necessary for the project on hand, and throughout our engagement, they’ve demonstrated various talents of high caliber.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be good if ZIELINSKI slowed down and asked for clarity if necessary. Sometimes, they run with the projects a little too fast. For example, on our last project, I believe that the designer didn’t completely understand the brief, but she ran with it.

We had to go over their artwork, and we ended up spending more time on that project than what was budgeted. If she had called for clarification, this wouldn't have happened. However, this hasn’t always been the case in the past.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set up check-in calls via video calls because I’ve recently found out that a visual collaboration provides us with a different level of accountability.