Design department expansion provides creative insight from idea stage through completion
As part of CSSI’s 30th anniversary celebration, we are featuring stories that will showcase the many talents used in our studios and shops each day. We hope that whether you learn something new or are reminded of something you’ve forgotten, you’ll gain an appreciation for the wide range of talents and opportunities we offer. In this issue, our focus is on the “Creative” hat, a staple of the CSSI wardrobe, because creativity is, and always has been, the cornerstone of Chicago Scenic’s work.

While CSSI’s design department has been a crucial part of the company’s creative process, over the past several years, CSSI president Bob Doepel saw the need to further expand the department’s capabilities. “We’ve had more and more requests from clients for creative development, along with requests for creative support from the design houses too,” said Doepel. So, building on the staff of trained designers and craftspeople that CSSI already employed, CSSI added Jeff Bartle as director of creative development to expand the company’s ability to assist customers in concept and design development resources when their ideas are just getting off the ground.

“Santastic,” a holiday-themed experience that CSSI worked on with real estate developer General Growth Properties, is an excellent example of a project that maximized CSSI’s enhanced design capabilities. GGP shared its vision with Jeff and, beginning in early fall 2006, he began to create and further define a new holiday destination and tradition. When production ended in early November 2007, more than 70 Chicago Scenic employees had spent approximately 2,320 hours creating three Santastic villages in Chicago Scenic’s facility and bringing the new holiday experience to life.

“Our newly expanded resources, including Jeff Bartle as director of creative development, are available to our clients and outside designers on an ‘as-needed’ basis,” said Doepel. “We have always been a design-build-manage organization; now many customers will find it more efficient to use our in-house creative development resources in conjunction with their own. This gives their project a seamless flow from start to finish.”

These new capabilities will continue to benefit our clients because, as Bartle pointed out, “Chicago Scenic has always been creative on the back end of projects and now we can enhance the front end and further help deliver our clients’ message while integrating it with budgets and resources at the same time.”

“Our clients benefit,” Doepel said, “and outside designers do, too, because we understand their creative language and we can help them achieve their goals with ease.”

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