We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jim Harper. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jim below.

Jim, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In a lot of cases, and especially in the small to medium business level I operate at now, people are coming to you with their dreams. If they are hiring you to brand their new business endeavor, you are responsible for bringing their goals to life. That’s a huge responsibility and not to be taken lightly. So a meaningful project not only means giving them great, well-thought-out work or branding, but if years later, the business is still a success. For example, in my current hometown, there are several businesses I’ve branded quite a while ago that are doing really well, and their work and their branding have stood the test of time. It also means my work has been taken seriously and accepted.
One is a utility company, Utilitra, that me and Kevin, my colleague named, branded visually, helped brand the company’s assets, and helped launch digitally as well. To me, that’s meaningful because when we rebranded this company, both us as branding experts and them as a major utility and tech company, we all took the job seriously, and as a team, we collaborated to create a successful business.
Right down the road from them, a family restaurant, led by three brothers, launched six years ago. I branded their stunning restaurant, and they created a whole new experience. But their phenomenal cuisine would not have been taken as seriously with an amateurish brand or logo. And I wasn’t about to do a boring script of the name with the word steakhouse. Instead, we used dimensional typography, heavy detail, custom patterns, a rich color palette, and gave them a language library they could use on menus, the site, social media, and everywhere else to keep telling their story at every possible touchpoint. No matter what, you know Moussalli’s is a family restaurant, that they welcome your family, and that they revived a decades-old institution and made it even better. I never get tired of going to this restaurant. It’s always a phenomenal experience, and they’ve done an amazing job at bringing in a loyal, talented staff. To me, meaning is going above and beyond to bring other people the work that makes their dreams come true. Then you can claim ROI as part of your process because it works over and over again.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Initially, I came up as a designer, hired (and recommended by a friend) at an agency that had to hire 350 people all at once for a giant account. So there’s the luck part. I got paid to learn, to work 24 hours a day, but the agency had food, and a bar, and bean bag chairs, and gargoyles, and the conference room light fixture was a rocket base that had been shot into space. So as a kid, you think work’s always like this? Always this loaded. But years later, all of that went away. But when you’re at a company that big, you form lots of friendships. So I worked at a few other agencies until I went to work for some friends and helped bring in a huge client and got made a partner.

So I owned an agency for a while, grew a couple of large clients, including Brown-Forman, and got to run national promotions and a few global ones and grew the agency from 6 people to over 32. Left their and started my own consultancy as an agency and started helping lots of amazing clients..

I currently am fractional CMO of Clementine’s Creamery in St. Louis, working with a wonderful group managing 8 shops, e=commerce and events. I also run my agency, harpersbizarre.com, plaidcoffeeroasters.com and a publishing start-up called fineprintsmallpress.com.

The thing that people come to me over and over again for is maximalism. I can do other styles. Clean corporate communication, elegant, luxury design, but people like to ask me to do maximalism and storytelling in hyper detail with design elements completely filling up the space. Once you start to embrace maximalism, it’s hard to avoid it. You get to draw a lot, you get to tackle a complex composition. You get to take parts of the origin or story of the thing you’re designing and put them everywhere. I also love pulling people together for collaborations, because we are all stronger together.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

That’s a tougher question than it appears. While we aren’t building houses or roads or bridges, the work people do that is HARD, or teaching children which is also HARD, we are one of the most deadline-driven and multi-tasking professions ever. We are on deadline after deadline. We are constantly juggling multiple jobs and challenges, and we have a tendency to second guessed more than any other profession. Meaning, our work is subjective. There are times when a client “doesn’t like what you did” but don’t have a reason to “not like what you did”. But then you find out the reason they don’t is very personal and contradicts what you presented. So you took the brief or feedback from the client, did what you KNOW is right, used your years of experience to come up with an outstanding visual solution, and it’s STILL WRONG. That’s hard. That makes our job really hard.

If you build something and it doesn’t fall apart and looks aesthetically pleasing, it’s accepted for the most part. We can work hard on something and someone can dismiss it.

So while it’s incredibly difficult sometime as far as the process is concerned, I still get to draw and design and use my visual skills to solve problems and create stuff. The most rewarding part is when we design something tangible that you can hold in your hand, display on a shelf, or have someone pop the cork and drink because you made a beautiful bottle. That’s the reward, and of course when it works.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Similar to the above question, but besides making stuff, and designing and doing all of the design part, there’s a strategy and business part that does not come naturally to me at all. I’ve always done better with a financially minded business partner, or one that has a background in business, because I can get people excited, come up with ideas and designs that people respond to, but at the end of the day, if no one sees it and no one pays for it, it doesn’t help me make a living.

The other thing is we struggle to educate clients on what good design is. Because they’re not familiar with the process, they don’t understand sometimes why we are so adamant about about something being the best solution and they don’t really connect with it. Especially when you know it will work.

I’m not one of those people on a high horse that thinks I’m always right and other people’s opinions don’t matter, but you do get to a place in your career that you are probably 90% on most things you present, and that’s when you are an expert. Similar to me getting 3 good experiences in a row at my doctor or at my local tire place. If the tire place gives me good service at a good price a few times, they’re my tire place forever. We can do that as well for people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://harpersbizarre.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harpersbizarreagency/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harpersbizarreagency
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harpersbizarre/
• Other: plaidcoffeeroasters.com, clementinescreamery.com, fineprintsmallpress.com

Image Credits

Clementine’s Creamery – St. Louis Magazine photo by KEVIN A. ROBERTS