Valarie Martin Stuart
Editor: Production Perspective

Valarie Martin Stuart didn't know what she wanted to do with her life as she entered college, but she knew it would have something to do with stuff that was printed on paper. As she entered the University of Missouri's acclaimed School of Journalism, she was torn between her desire to either become an international reporter covering war zones or a photographer shooting athletic feats for Sports Illustrated.

While studying at Mizzou in the mid-1980's, Valarie won the logo design contest for the largest philanthropy on campus, Greek Week. When MTV visited the school for a special week-long feature, as a reward for the school raising the most money nationally, Valarie's logo design was beamed into living rooms across the United States. And when the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity ripped off her design to create their own t-shirt (which she later learned was called "copyright infringement") she figured she might be on to something.

After college, Valarie had to choose between a job offer of waitressing in St. Louis's hottest nightclub and ruining her clothes with alcohol stains, or doing design and production for a printing company and ruining her clothes with inks and chemicals. She choose the latter, and her career in graphic design began.

Valarie had the pleasure of learning production and design in the days of rapidiographs, waxers, rubylithe and Compugraphic typesetters. Though she didn't get along very well with her X-acto knives, which had the tendency to go into attack mode when handled, she thrived as a production artist and soon worked her way up the design ladder. While working in the advertising department for a women's clothing retailer in the early 1990's, Valarie made the conversion to Mac-driven production and began using QuarkXpress in its earliest incarnation. She also became adept with Adobe Illustrator version 3.0 when she had to convert hundreds of apparel logos from camera-ready stats to computer-ready vector files.

When she moved to Dallas, Texas in 1994, Valarie began freelancing. Over the past decade, she has worked with both business and ad agencies as well as design studios, doing production, design and art direction. Her account experience has included local, national and international clients such as Barney (that purple dinosaur), Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, Dallas Galleria, DFW Airport, La Madeleine, New York's Times Square, Nokia, Nortel, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, 7-11, Subaru, Zales Jewelers and more.

In addition, Valarie was an instructor at Collin County Community College in their Applied Graphic Design Technology department. Courses that she taught include: Electronic Prepress, focusing on QuarkXpress software from beginning to expert level knowledge; Digital Publishing II, focusing on all aspects of professional graphic design, including workflows, production techniques, layout and design for campaigns, font technology and design, scanning and resolution, studio skills, proofing and printing technologies, paper considerations, binding and finishing techniques, business practices, contracts, copyright law, and project production; and Digital Imaging I, focusing on introductory Photoshop skills.

Valarie is currently an independent contractor and owner/creative director of her own boutique design studio, Wavebrain Creative Communications. Valarie was featured in the December 2002 HOW magazine article on common-sense business practices entitled "Beating the Deadbeats." If she'd ever get off her duff and enter design competitions, she might be able to list some fancy-schmancy awards that she's won as well. Alas, the only recognition she can currently boast is that winning logo circa 1987 that showed up on MTV.

Valarie is also the editor of Creative Latitude's Production Perspective, which focuses on those pesky production details for print design.

One reason Valarie remains an independent contractor is that she enjoys vacation much more than corporate America allows. Her interests include travel to destinations that involve stupidly expensive activities like skiing and scuba diving. Valarie also spends her free time with her husband, her three-year-old son, and her garden.

Visit her site at www.wavebrain.com.