marc v. stress

In January of 2000, after a career at ChaseDesign and Syracuse University, Marc V. Stress fulfilled a career-long goal of owning a professional design firm when he founded stressdesign. Since 2000, Stress and a growing group of employees (now numbering four) have served more than 100 clients coast to coast. Many of his design solutions have been spotlighted by leading industry publications and organizations, including Harper Design International, Rockport Publishers, GDUSA and Portfolios.com. Stress holds a bachelor's of arts in graphic design from the State University of New York College at Fredonia, as well as an associate's degree of applied science in both advertising design and production and photography from Mohawk Valley Community College. Marc serves as president of AIGA Upstate New York.

Is graphic design a growth industry? One of the reasons why I was (and remain) so attracted to and optimistic about graphic design as a profession is that the work we do touches every other profession, business and organization. Your bank, the auto manufacturers and that new company that hasn't been started yet will need to communicate about their services and goods. I think the graphic designer is the most eternally employable professional. Over the next 50 years, graphic designers will continue to be highly sought after to develop solutions for the next big communication revolution. Through organizations like the AIGA and DMI, graphic designers will continue to refine and clarify the profession. The question of design services will shift from "Do I need a designer?" to "You don't have a designer?"

Do graphic designers have a special responsibility to promote a green society? I think designers have always had a responsibility to use resources wisely long before it was chic to be concerned about the environment. It's even more important for us now to be helping our clients make intelligent choices about the footprint we leave. Many of our clients are actively responsible. We still do a lot of what would be considered "print" design; however, the documents end up as PDFs on websites or distributed via e-mail.

ONE THING I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IS music. It's a device that I use to re-create histories and forge futures.

FAVORITE MOVIES

Barton Fink
Smokey and the Bandit
The Terminator

FAVORITE BOOKS

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

FAVORITE SONGS

"Hard Sun" by Indio
"Take 5" by Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Lincolnshire Posy" by Percy Aldridge Grainger

FAVORITE FINE ARTISTS

Alberto Rey
Jackson Pollack
Ansel Adams

FAVORITE TV SHOWS

Lost
Family Guy
Entourage

BOOKMARKED WEBSITES

I love architecture and designing spaces, so I've got a lot of materials, resources and architecture sites bookmarked. One of the most important bookmarks is tinyurl.com. You should use it the next time you have to send a link with more than 30 characters via e-mail.