The newspaper editor was on Mommy hiatus, freelancing from her attic office. With her youngest child in kindergarten, it was time to go back to newspapers or forward to start the kind of company she wanted to work for.

That company would be a community of smart, creative people. They would use their creativity to help clients inform, entertain, educate and motivate a target audience. It would be challenging, but it would be fun.

Hollister Creative became a community of two in 1993, when founder Kim Landry hired her first employee, a recent graduate of Drexel University’s graphic design program. In 2010, Heidi Karl celebrates her 17th year as Art Director and leader of Hollister’s award-winning graphic design team.

Today Hollister is a community of 10, with a strong core of senior people who have been working together as a cohesive team for many years. Kim’s husband Peter Landry left The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996, after 13 years as a reporter and editor, to take over the agency’s educational publishing division, Hollister Kids. Managing Editor Martha Michaela Brown joined the agency in 2000, Editor Don Harrison in 2001, Office Manager Susan Steigman in 2002, Editor Rachel Vigoda in 2005, Designer Georgette Klotz and Education Writer Emilia Pastina in 2007, Designer Jon Barthmus in 2009.

The pairing of content and design that began with the Kim-Heidi collaboration continues to distinguish Hollister today. Among the largest graphic design firms in Greater Philadelphia, Hollister is the only one that offers a full range of editorial services, from tight, bright copywriting for brochures and websites to the planning, reporting, writing and editing of an entire newspaper or magazine.

Hollister is able to deliver on the promise of compelling content and content-driven design because the agency’s writers and designers work closely together toward a common goal. For each print and online product, they seek a marriage of words and images that seem made for each other, the way music and lyrics make a song.

Over the years, the desire to inform, entertain, educate and motivate through words and images led Hollister to specialize in three areas: Marketing Communications, Custom Publishing and Education & Public Outreach. The creative team is a consistent national award winner for projects in all three categories. Sample projects can be seen on the Portfolio pages of this website.

Certainly creativity is an important reason for Hollister’s longevity and success, but it is not the only reason. “Every one of Hollister’s competitors is creative,” Kim Landry notes. “Most clients are looking for something more. They want a strategic partner who will ask the right questions, understand their business challenges, and help them reach their goals.”

With that in mind, Hollister trademarked the slogan “Creativity is not enough.”  

“That may sound counter-intuitive for a creative services firm,” Kim says, “but it’s a fact. Like most stereotypes, the one about creative folks being a bit flakey contains a grain of truth. Typical worries for people who hire designers are projects going off course, over budget or past deadline — because it happens too often.”

Where Hollister Creative can and does stand out can be summed up in one word: competence. “We have a hard-earned reputation for reliability,” Kim says. “Our clients know they can count on us as partners, to provide good advice, respond to their needs and get the job done right.”