Her wall could be quite literally full of awards from floor to ceiling, if she wanted it to be. Republic-Monitor Composition Manager and Graphic Designer Stephanie Schumer-Vandeven earned 16 awards at the Missouri Press Advertising and Marketing Executive meeting at the Lake of the Ozarks April 21-22.
Schumer-Vandeven earned six first-place awards in the weekly category, three second-place finishes, four third-place awards, and three honorable mentions. The meeting is strictly to honor those who excelled in the world of advertising and marketing.
“I’ve gotten a lot more first place awards this time around,” she said.
The first place awards recognized the Republic-Monitor for the best Classified Section, best signature page, best ad content for the entire publication, best ad series and best ad campaign to name a few.
“Getting first for our classified section is pretty awesome, that is the second year in a row,” she said. “Then, getting the one for the entire publication is a big coup. The judges are looking at how the advertising flows all the way through the paper and how they coincide with each other.”
The one that Schumer-Vandeven is probably most proud of is being recognized as the best advertising designer.
“That’s the huge one,” she said. “Ever since we started entering things for these awards that’s the one that I have been shooting for. I’ve gotten second and third place before, but never first. I’ve been designing since I was young and to see it recognized as the best is very cool.”
Schumer-Vandeven didn’t exactly start out in the graphic design world, as she was initially interested in photography.
“I come from a family of artists and my dad said that I needed to know how my pictures would be printed, so I took the graphic arts class in high school. A few months of being on the computer I knew that this is what I wanted to do. We were also taught in the old school style of burning film and cutting mats. I was trained when Macs were just a box. My teacher at the time didn’t know too much about it, so I taught myself.”
From the halls of Perryville High School, and the Vocational Industrial Club of America (VICA) she went onto Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, where she studied for four-and-a-half years (partly because math is not her friend).
“Considering how I use a math equations to figure out the ratio of advertising to editorial content, everything comes full circle,” she said.
Out of college, she had trouble finding a position in her field, so she ended up working at WalMart for a time in (fittingly) the one-hour photo studio. She interned for two summers in Kansas City, Kansas in a print shop and then in St. Charles in another small print shop. That was until she learned an important lesson.