Last fall’s merger of design agencies Yamamoto Moss (based in Minneapolis) and MacKenzie Marketing Group (Portland, Oregon) catapulted one of the founders of the former firm, Hideki Yamamoto, out of the manager’s chair and back into the design seat. He couldn’t be happier. “Now I can focus on the creative side,” says Yamamoto, creative director of the merged firm, called Yamamoto Moss MacKenzie. “I’ll have more input into the projects going out of our office.”
Noting that move, Yamamoto was named one of 35 people to watch in 2007 by Graphic Design USA magazine. “Hideki is a rare person in our industry,” says Gordon Kaye, the magazine’s editor. “He can design brilliantly across many types of projects and media, he understands the business as well as aesthetic needs of his clients, and he has succeeded consistently and over a long period in a field where there is lots of turnover and momentary flashes in the pan.”
The firm, which employs 50, projects 2007 revenues of $7 million, has created brand identities—logos, Web sites, printed marketing materials, and sometimes packaging—for General Mills, U.S. Bank, the Guthrie Theater, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Breathe Right strips, and Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare. Yamamoto himself has also shaped branded identities for companies and governments in Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Guate-mala, and the United Kingdom.
Yamamoto, who grew up in Japan, came to the United States at age 20 to study at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Twenty-seven years ago, he started Yamamoto Moss with Miranda Moss, who he married. During his career, Yamamoto has helped start those of many talented designers, including Charles S. Anderson, owner of CSA Design in Minneapolis, and Oscar Peña, a top European industrial designer.
“We don’t just create pretty things,” Yamamoto says. “Whatever we design is created toward branding, and that branding will help our clients’ sales, their businesses, and their communication.” Basically, he says, design ignites brand: “We grow brand by creating the identity and then implementing that identity by applying it to the Web site, packaging, advertising, brochures.”
