Schumer-Vandeven wins best ad designer, 16 awards at MPAME meeting

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.

“I realized I am not a city girl,” Schumer-Vandeven said.
She worked at Concord in Cape Girardeau and then in between life and kids, Schumer-Vandeven stepped away from the graphic designing world a time. When she decided to get back in the game, she tried for nearly four years to get hired at the Republic-Monitor, where she has been for the last seven years. She was hired by Beth Chism, who was the Republic-monitor Publisher at the time, who helped her bloom professionally.
“I really learned what kind of designer I could be,” Schumer-Vandeven said. “She challenged me to be better.
Republic-Monitor Publisher Crystal Lyerla is proud of her graphic designer’s achievements.
“I am honored to work with Stephanie. She is an invaluable asset to our team here at the newspaper,” Lyerla said. “I’d like to personally thank her for using her remarkable talents and skills to fuel our mutual efforts and say congratulations on this monumental achievement.”
She was also named the vice president of the Missouri Press Advertising and Marketing Executive this year where she gets to plan different aspects of the annual meeting.
“The wide variety of stuff I get to do is great and what I love about working here,” Schumer-Vandeven said of her time at R-M. “I do everything from a sig ad, which is a logo and a name to full-page ads and magazines. It’s not the same thing every day.”
It also helps when your mind works like hers.
“Someone can be talking about what they want to do for an ad and my brain is already laying it out in my head,” she said. “Probably comes from my dad who used to paint pictures out at TG-Missouri for the Japanese workers. It’s very common to have a painting of your home in that culture and that’s what he would do. I also had an uncle who worked for Disney. I’m not as good at the painting part of it, but I can make things look pretty.”
That skill has served her well when doing the various advertisements people see in the Republic-Monitor each week.
“I always look at the message the customer is trying to send and fit it in the confines of the size of their ad,” she said. “Then I let the imagery or do the text in a way that catches the eye to tell their story.”
However she does it, Schumer-Vandeven is already planning on how she can keep some of her awards for a second year in a row and keep doing what she loves.
“Someone was already telling me that they wanted that best designer award next year, but I don’t plan on giving that one back,” she said. “I’ve always said that this is my forever job and this is always what I want to be doing in some way.”