Unmasking Jager DiPaola K e m p <
by Pamela Polston
> where capitalism meets the cutting edge
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Dad trusts Black & Decker like it was made by * God. Mom thinks Macintosh is de rigueur. Sis won't even look at jeans that don't say Guess? and her brother is hooked on Nintendo. Eighty-seven cereals on the grocery shelves fail to woo grandma from her Quaker Oats. And you? Bet you've got your must-have brands, from aspirin to automobiles. You'd have to be comatose to grow up in America and not acquire some fierce, possibly irrational faith in a brand name. The result of such loyalty? The top 20 brands in the U.S., according to Financial World magazine, are worth a total of $ 2 0 0 b i l l i o n . A discerning consumer like yourself probably believes the products you favor are truly superior, and ^ maybe they are. Nonetheless, some people are paid good money to make sure you know it. What you may not know is that some of those people are in Burlington, Vermont. And they're not nefarious capitalist brainwashers; they're artists. Really good artists who just happen to be focused on certain products and the marketing paraphernalia that helps sell them. Jager DiPaola Kemp Design isn't exactly a household name, but in design, advertising and marketing circles it comes close. In the last five years, J D K has emerged as one of the biggest — from a half-dozen to 55 employees -T- and hippest design houses in the country. The acronym represents husband-and-wife designers Michael
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Jager and Giovanna Di Paola, and business partner David Kemp — the "left brain" of JDK. These three, originally from St. Albans, I B r Montreal and New York, respectively, are princiW pals in the company with a reputation for worka[ holism, cutting-edge graphics and visionary, holistic development of products — most visible in Vermont are probably Burton Snowboards and Magic Hat. JDK also has an enviable grasp of the ever-changing youth market that is both intuitive — the average age in-house is 28 — and extensively researched. The JDK Design mission — "to be highly effective in the use of design as a strategic brandbuilding tool" — sounds pretty straightforward. But that's before you read its Manifesto for the M Future of Design, entitled "The Consciousness of K Chaos." This document spells out JDK's belief H system with a constellation of signs-of-the-times K like "Thinking is fluid, fast-changing, reflective V of the light-speed evolution of technology." f Under a section about the role of the designer in this fast-paced world, the manifesto warns, "Those who do not respect the process and the symbiotic web of m/f^W 1 creative viewpoints are doomed to ^^ T extinction in the new reality of ^^ '^L>ien." Whew. ^ ^