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SHD History & Services
Stuart Hughes Design was started back in 1995 by ... uh, well me (Stuart). An abbridged version of our story;
In The Beginning ...
I was stationed up in Kodiak, Alaska in the U.S. Coast Guard (both finally getting some deserved recognition from the Kevin Costner movie) and after getting out in 1987, I attended the Art Institute of Dallas, where I graduated with a degree in Visual Communications in 1990. I then decided to move back to my home town of Webb City in southwest Missouri. As you can imagine there aren't alot of "art" jobs in this area, but I got lucky and landed
the Asst. Art Directors job at a commercial screen-printing company. I learned quite a bit about retail signage, but the demand for artistic creativity wasn't very high, to say the least. After a couple of years, I moved to Fort Worth, TX and got a job over in Dallas at a sign shop as the Art Director. I learned a lot more, met loads of great people and by 1995 was ready to venture out on my own.
Branching Out ...
Now everyone has heard the horror stories about starting a business, but again I was lucky and made enough good contacts in the sign & graphics industry to open my own shop, with clients lined up. This was fantastic, my major account was a tradeshow builder that built very cool displays and booths for the major toy manufacturers across
the U.S. and Toy Fair NYC. My future wife, Tamara, worked for this tradeshow company and we hit it off immediately. Before long, I convinced her that SHD was a much better place for her to be, and we were married soon after. Of course, she keeps the wheels of the business turning, while I just do the design work, and to her credit, she hasn't
ever suggested that we rename the company (pause for chuckle).
Wow, This Is Cool ...
About this time I (along with millions of other folks) discovered the Internet. And it didn't take long to figure out that this was the future of SHD. Working remotely opened up doors that I never even knew existed, which allowed the business to eventually change direction. SHD got out of the sign & graphics business, and entered
the home-based graphic/web design business. During this process we came across a superstar programmer who does some amazing things on the web, and even though he lives in California, we've worked together successfully for years. This sounds a bit scary, I'll admit, but once we disovered we could actually make a living from the home office, we decided to move to the hills of northeastern Tennessee. Now the "how & why" we came to this decision is a whole other conversation (it made sense at the time) and we ended up staying for 5 years. Probably Definitely 4 yrs too long, and after our son Barrett Alan was born August 5, 2002 we decided to move back to Webb City.
This has been a terrific move for us and it feels fantastic being around friends and family again. On January 15, 2007 our daughter Sydney Penn was born (pause for congrats) so the company is definitely growing!
Still Going Strong ...
And there you have it, the short version of SHD. We're a small company - if you call our office you will either speak with me,
Tamara, or get voicemail. We've been doing this a long time and are very easy to work with, so check out some samples of our work, and lets design something!
Thanks for reading,
Stuart Hughes, Owner
Copyright 1995-2008 Stuart Hughes Design, All Rights Reserved
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