There’s no project too big or small for David Spivak’s design firm
By: Gwen McNamara
HIGHTSTOWN A of thought and months of work went into the design and implementation of new menus as the popular Americana Diner in East Windsor.
The brains behind that work was a man named David Spivak.
Mr. Spivak is the founder and owner of Design Solutions, a marketing firm that offers everything from brochure and mailer design to Web site set-up and planning for merchandise, menus, and more.
Serving mainly small- to mid-sized companies, Design Solutions has a team of seven who can handle concept, design, photography, copy writing, printing, display and signs, and trade-show graphics.
"We’re really a single-source solution for all a business’ marketing needs," said Mr. Spivak, a South Brunswick resident. "We really value the personal relationships we develop with clients. Learning about and getting to know a person’s business enables us to better serve our customers."
A graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York City, Mr. Spivak started Design Solutions as a home-based business in the mid-’80s.
"I started out working with pottery doing my own formulations, glazes, all that," Mr. Spivak said. "The idea behind Design Solutions started on the side. My father is a patent attorney, and he got me into patent illustrations. I built, and have maintained, a good size business around that."
In addition to technical drawing for patents and other areas, Design Solutions also has a number of food clients.
"We work with the Americana Diner and Colonial Diner on menu design, gift cards, thank you, birthday or anniversary mailings and handle all their printing," Mr. Spivak said. "Perhaps another specialty area is in color-accurate work."
For clients, like Brookside Veneers in Hopewell, Design Solutions has the ability to accurately match colors from product to printing ensuring higher-quality promotional brochures and catalogs.
Recently, the company has ventured onto the Internet.
Design Solutions has created Web sites for SCORE, a volunteer organization helping small businesses, and Antronix, a maker of components for the cable industry.
"My philosophy is that too many sites are done poorly by techies with no design sense," Mr. Spivak said. "They don’t reflect the identity of the company or the printed materials of the company.
"We make sure to represent a company’s brand identity all the way through," he continued. "Making sure the Web and print work together."
He also gives businesses the option of having a site they can edit and update on their own.
"Companies don’t want to have to come back to us and pay every time they want to update their site," he said. "So we give them the option to pay a little more up front, but be able to be in control down the line."
Some of the more interesting projects on which Design Solutions is working are designing a game board and cards for a game geared toward the educational market. The company also has worked with Raceway Petroleum, designing its coffee cups, coupon mailers, brochures, logos and signs.
"Raceway is also subcontracting their pizza grill set-up," Mr. Spivak said. "We helped them name the business, created a tagline for it and are coming up with a logo and promotions. It’s called Mama DiVinci Pizzeria and the tagline is, ‘The fine art of pizza.’"
When developing products for clients, Mr. Spivak and his team take a look at three things: the competition, what the company is trying to achieve and whom it’s trying to attract.
"The designs have to please the client, but they also have to be something the customer will like," Mr. Spivak said. "You need to look beyond the client’s own taste."
Design Solutions does not use focus groups, but does stress that clients show potential design concepts to some customers to get feedback before they make a decision.
Mr. Spivak, a father of three, moved Design Solutions to Hightstown a little over a year ago.
In the future, Mr. Spivak hopes to make his business a little more focused.
"Right now, we do everything, which is really fun, because we’re always presented with new challenges and learn about new industries," he said. "But business-wise, it might be better for us to focus on certain avenues such as our technical drawing, food services and color accounts work."
In addition to his business, Mr. Spivak tries to find time to give back to the community and is active with several charities, including those associated with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative brain disorder for which, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, slowly diminishes the affected individual’s ability to walk, think, talk and reason.
Mr. Spivak also works with the American Cancer Society, Indian Field PTO in Monmouth Junction and the Bnai Tikvah in North Brunswick.
Design Solutions is located at 114 Rogers Ave. in Hightstown. For more information call (609) 443-3100 or visit www.design-solutions.biz.

