Illustration. While at the newspaper, Mark developed an illustration style that continues to be commissioned by many corporations today, such as the Walt Disney Company. To view samples, click here.

While Mark was working for newspapers, he did illustration work for local advertising agencies. One of those agencies was Kich/Cotter Advertising & Marketing. As soon as the agency learned Mark was leaving the newspaper, they made him an offer.

The Advertising Industry

As Art Director for Kich/Cotter, Mark was in charge of developing designs and concepts in print, television and, eventually, the web. He did work for such organizations as the U.S. Air Force, Advantage Rent-A-Car and Taco Cabana, creating everything from prepaid phone cards to commercials.

When his first web project came along, he didn't take to it at first. "The tools weren't there yet to do interesting work and you had to manually code the pages. But the experience gave me the basics of coding that would prove valuable later on."

The Summit Group

As Creative Director in charge of the art department, Mark designed and developed eight websites in 12 months. He worked closely with the agency's programmer and quickly learned the ropes of website programming. "To this day, I use as many as seven programs to develop one website."

			Clients. Ideawire, inc. works with large and small organizations, providing well-designed websites, with advance features such as database-driven content and e-commerce.

After working for the Summit Group for over a year, Mark went into business on his own, in hopes of filling a void he identified in professional website development. "I learned from my experience that there were two groups of people developing websites: designers who couldn't program and programmers who couldn't design. Fate had placed me in situations where I had learned both at the very beginning of the Internet explosion. I wanted to offer superior design and sophisticated programming, which is hard to find in the marketplace. That's where "Ideawire" came from: we offer ideas that are wired to work on your website. We set up servers, offer hosting services and provide professional-looking websites."

Soon, companies such as Advantage Rent-A-Car (the largest independently-owned car rental company in the U.S.) and Cargill (the largest privately-owned corporation in the country) were added to Ideawire's roster of clients. Ideawire offers depth for companies seeking an online presence and also adds years of print design and promotion to its services. "I like to say it all started with a wired idea. Now, we're handling projects for corporations 100 times our size," Mark states. "Most clients initially think we are a large company. Later they find out we're a small company with a large shadow and that we can do better work than larger firms can do."

Another key advantage in using Ideawire is the marketing background. Unlike most designers, Mark got his degree in Advertising and applies marketing strategy to many projects handled by the company.