Project.org
Remember when Banks used to give away toasters? In the same spirit, NY Community Bank is giving away free gifts to those opening new accounts. The higher the balance, the bigger the gift. Jon and Valerie are the face of two NY Community Bank members: Queens County Savings Bank and Roosevelt Savings Bank.
Agency: VIACOM Outdoor
For more on "Beyond the Toaster" see WSJ article, October 2004
Volume 12, Number 3 – Spring 2002
FOR THIS ALUMNUS, TEACHER AND EMPLOYER, IT’S ALL IN THE FIT FAMILY.
It’s a little odd to hear a 37-year old man reminisce about the “old days.” But Jon Shoates’ field is Web design and advertising, which means that in the last 15 years, he’s lived – and thrived through a technological revolution. “Back then,” Shoates says – meaning the late 80’s – when he launched his career in the ad business, no computers were involved in his work, the making of slide show presentations and record packaging.
Shoates saw the Internet revolution break out around him in the early 90’s while at the graphic design company Taylor & Ives, where he was studio manager. It didn’t take him long to imagine himself in his next incarnation: Web designer/producer. He taught himself HTML, coded his own web site (“I wanted to make sure I could do it for myself before doing it for other people”), made sites for friends, and went on to producing on-line annual reports at Taylor & Ives. In 1994, he founded the company he owns now, SGNET Solutions, a New York advertising and graphic design firm. The firm’s specializes in Web design and print/advertising services (direct-mail, packaging) in financial services, entertainment, and health care. Perhaps the company’s most prominent client is The New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s leading medical publication, for which SGNET supplies web services, direct-mail literature and other services.
Like a lot of people who go into advertising, Jon Shoates had artistic inclinations; he was constantly drawing as a student at Park West High School, in New York. Told by a teacher that the only way he was going to make a living was as a “commercial” artist, Shoates promptly went off to find out what commercial art meant. In his senior year, he attended a Saturday program at FIT, and liking the experience, he applied and launched into the Advertising Design program. He found himself the only African American in his advertising class. How did that feel? “Lonely,” the soft-spoken Shoates recalls. “But I had a few mentors who were African American,” he says, “and they made it clear to me that it’s not a level playing field, that you had to work a little harder, you had to be better. I felt as long as I did that, I’d be okay.”
Shoates has not only done okay, he’s done it by sticking close to his FIT family. He teaches Advertising Design at FIT (he wrote and teaches the department’s first Web design course); and at SGNET, located on Seventh Avenue not far from the college, he works with two fellow alumni, Kevin Charles, who heads up the Web division, and who at 27, is ten years younger than Shoates – and Jerome Duran, the head graphic designer, who is ten years older than Shoates. It’s not exactly three generations of FIT alums under one roof, but it’s close. That working relationship illustrates perhaps the most important lesson that Shoates says he drew from his FIT experience: “Get to know the stars, the best of your fellow students, and network”.
Robert Knafo
Shoates speaks about the importance of understanding web fundamentals.
Conference Resources
www.Photodisc.com
www.PGP.com
www.HSH.com
www.webmonkey.com
www.mbda.gov