I first met Regina Rubino in 2010 while attending a night course at UCLA: “Careers in Graphic Design”. The class syllabus included introductions to successful designers. One week Regina led a class tour of one of her projects, the Andaz hotel in West Hollywood.
It was two years later that a mutual friend referred me to IMAGE: Global Vision for a design position. This was a wonderful opportunity for me and I knew I would bring a unique skill set to IGV. Still, it was Regina who recognized the fit for my eclectic range of talents, which (in addition to design) includes being a professional music instructor, composing music for commercials, videography, and a writing degree. This is actually the first time that I’ve been paid to use that degree in a direct way. What some might see as a non-lineal path, Regina viewed as a wonderful amalgamation of assets which she could leverage to fill many design components.
Engaged enthusiasm is how I’d describe my days in the studio. From my vantage point, I am here to all serve all interests for IGV and in that course have created video packaging and poster advertisements, websites, and identity systems, performed strategic planning research and written business strategy proposals. I’ve helped to brainstorm at the development stage and done the psychographics legwork—that is—figuring out who our client’s customer base will be, and how to engage them.
My biggest surprise was the rapturous sense of detail, in the most minute aspects of a project. I could not have imagined the enormous depth of immersion that takes place before one element is conceived in the spectrum.
We don’t just create. First we learn all about our client’s industry, their business, and all the outside factors that effect the business. We delve into who their existing clients are, who could and should be their clients, as well what their actual and perceived needs are. We need to know what appeals to them, even in the most subliminal way.
The projects that excite the most are the ones in which a multi-faceted range of needs, coalesce into an entire strategic design, where we can fulfill broad needs while employing the one perfect paradigm. There’s great priority placed on the ideal that all the elements come from same place, the same thought process, to achieve a level of consistency, and reinforce the message. It’s remarkable the extent to which they’re willing to go… so that one brand is communicated across a multitude of platforms.
Again, nothing prepared me for the extraordinary lengths Regina reaches when creating complex components in Santa Monica, then translating those concepts to their physical form on the other side of the world, and to be able to have that piece come out exactly the way she expected. Nobody else would accomplish this with the seamless elegance and fluidity that she does. When your work spans the globe, you have to transcend time. There’s never a bad time of day to address concerns…in the pursuit of perfection.
All in all, this was a monumental challenge to be brought into. After two years, I’m still learning to speak the language, and for an education junkie, I’m certainly getting my fix.
