Amanda Del Vecchio, owner/designer for Focuspoint Designs, has design skills in her blood. Her creativity and design expertise started early.
She said, “My mom actually is an interior designer. So I think that’s where I get a little bit of that creative side of me. I would say I always really enjoyed my art classes or things with a creative outlet.”
Amanda fell in love with design while taking a graphic design class in high school. She studied design in college and practiced in corporate positions before starting her business. Now, with over 20 years of experience, she is a premier graphic designer in the Twin Cities scene.
Her design abilities are a combination of talent and skill. She has a natural eye for design and can tell what works and what doesn’t. She has the knowledge to explain her choices, but also an intuitive understanding of design.
Amanda said, “I always tell people, look at my my portfolio and if you like what you see, that’s my style.”
Why is graphic design important?
Design is the secret sauce of business success.
Most people don’t realize how important design really is. A well-designed marketing piece or site exudes professionalism. If someone is choosing between two options, the one with better design will be selected, when all other factors are equal.
Investing in design is one of the best growth decisions a business can make. You’ll never create a top-tier business without professional design help. Creative professionals know this intuitively, but some business owners have a tough time realizing it.
Amanda’s Graphic Design Career in Minneapolis
After high school, Amanda studied graphic design at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. She didn’t plan on staying in Minnesota after graduation but ended up finding career opportunities in the Twin Cities.
Her graphic design career started in Minneapolis at a wellness company called Eniva. There she designed packaging for nutraceutical products. It wasn’t the most exciting work, but it developed her design skills and attention to detail.
“I was the graphic designer there. And I helped make product labels. So that’s kind of where I feel like a lot of my attention to detail has come in,” she said.
Amanda moved on to a position at Kids Quest/Cyber Quest. Kids Quest provides hourly child-care for families and Cyber Quest is a family-friendly arcade located in resorts and casinos around the US. In this role, she was more involved in marketing and collaborated with others within the organization.
“That was a much more creative job. That company focused on childcare within resorts and casinos. So I helped to design brochures and a lot of their signage,” she said.
Amanda also started freelancing on the side doing wedding design. It was a natural result of the skills she’d developed. Her friends would often request designs for wedding invitations and other projects.
Trying to balance her job and freelancing started to become overwhelming. Going from a creative job to creative work in the evening left Amanda exhausted. She needed a change and thought she would go full-time into a new job.
So, she switched careers and became a Listings Coordinator for Keller Williams. That was a much less creative, more systematic role, which freed up creative energy for her freelance work.
Growing Her Graphic Design Business
Her husband encouraged her to take a leap of faith and go all-in on freelancing. Then she would have the freedom and opportunity to take her business to the next level.
When Amanda started working full-time in freelancing, her business was based on referrals from current customers. She had a great first year but knew in order to grow she needed to do more.
Amanda then hired a business coach to guide her through the process of growing her business. It started to grow even faster after she joined BNI, a networking group for business professionals. Through that group, she learned more about business and found new clients to work with.
“It’s all about who you know”
Her participation in BNI led to her joining other networking groups and connecting with more business owners in the area. She loves to work with owners of small businesses and help improve their company’s design and marketing.
Her customers find it easier to work with her than to go through the effort of hiring a new employee for their design tasks. She typically works with small businesses that don’t have enough work for a full-time designer but need help with various design tasks. She has relationships with local printers, so she can deliver her work digitally or have it printed, depending on the needs of each customer.
Amanda’s philosophy is to create win/win solutions for her clients. Small business owners wear a lot of hats. Some do their own accounting, marketing, sales, and customer service, on top of running the business. Amanda takes graphic design off their plate and helps them develop a brand that stands out from the competition.
Amanda’s mission is to build relationships with and support business owners. Her empathy for her customers shines through in the way she treats them.
For example, some design businesses charge a monthly retainer, where the customer pays a specified amount each month regardless of how much work they order. Instead, her business only asks customers to pay on-demand for the work they actually need.
Amanda’s work with customers is collaborative. There’s a lot of back-and-forth on ideas and designs before the final product is delivered. Her work is entirely customized for each customer and is never templated.
She has worked on a wide variety of projects, including:
- Brochure Design
- Banner and Signage Design
- Product Manual Design
- Marketing Materials and Presentation Design
- Logo Design
- Invitation Design
- Holiday Card and Save-The-Date Design
Planning For The Future
Amanda has built relationships and established her business in the Twin Cities graphic design and marketing field. After a few years in business, she’s seeing steady growth in her work. Her short-term goal is to double her business within a year.
In the long term, Amanda plans to build it into an agency so she can serve more clients. Her unique and highly developed graphic design skills can help more people if she has more support in other roles. She’ll bring on additional staff so she can help more businesses improve their design standards.
If you’re interested in her graphic design services, Amanda is easy to reach. You can find her work at focuspointdesigns.com. Head there to contact her and to see her transparent rates, extensive portfolio, and glowing testimonials. JS
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A resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, Joel is a ghostwriter specializing in SEO-optimized articles for SaaS companies. He writes about mindfulness and self-development on Twitter as @writeawareness. He’s also passionate about improving in the craft of writing and spending time with his son.
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