Rick Miller recently sat down with VISTA Today to discuss his 25 years in advertising, most of which has been as owner and creative director of Northlight Advertising. During that time, Rick and his staff have created some of the region’s most recognized brands, distinctive logos, definitive taglines, award-winning ad campaigns, effective marketing materials, and elegant, functional web sites.

Bill Mangan, the owner of the McKenzie Brew House in Malvern, Devon, and Chadds Ford, said it best: “If you want better advertising, you need to consider Northlight. They provide a level of service and industry knowledge that most companies can only dream about getting.”

VISTA Today: Where did you grow up?

Rick Miller: I’ve always lived in this general area. I was born in Roxborough and when I was in first grade, we moved to Lancaster. We lived there until my junior year in high school when my father got a new job and we moved to Plymouth Meeting, where I graduated from Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School. Then I went to Ursinus College. My wife and I have lived in Chester County for almost 40 years.

What did your father do?

My father was orphaned at an early age. His father was killed in a truck accident when he was nine, and his mother died the year after. He was taken in by his uncle who was a Methodist minister. He served two stints in the Marine Corps. In between, he went to the Antonelli School of Photography. When he got out of the Marine Corps, he worked in a camera shop and was a freelance photographer for a few years. Then he got a job at The Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic, photographing craniofacial operations. As time passed, he became interested in offset printing – which at that time was transforming the printing industry. He started his own print shop in our basement, which eventually evolved into a full-time job. At times, he had other full time jobs but almost always had a print shop somewhere. He had several different printing businesses as I was growing up, so that was my introduction to the graphics business. I ran the press after school and at night, worked in the darkroom and started designing logos, business cards and brochures. My father is also a great handyman – he could do carpentry, electrical work and plumbing – so he did almost all of the physical set up of each print shop he opened. I learned how to do all that stuff while helping him.

Where did he learn those skills?

The offset printing process he taught himself. He learned most of the construction skills from his uncle. In addition to being a minister, his uncle was also an excellent carpenter. He had a carpentry shop in his house and made furniture, birdhouses, dollhouses and did all kinds of home repairs. When I was in high school, he made a jewelry box for me to give my girlfriend for Christmas.

By the time my father joined the Marines, he was a pretty good carpenter in his own right, but his primary interest was in photography. That’s why he jumped at the chance to work at the Clinic, even though it meant moving the family to Lancaster. That was a great opportunity for him.

What was that like?

It was definitely a unique job. He built a scaffold so he could lie above the operating table and film the operations on patients – mostly kids with cleft palates. In our basement at home he had a dark room setup with light panels where he would hang the photo transparencies of the surgeries.

Wow. That sounds kind of morbid.

Those images were hard to look at, but they were interesting and always made me feel lucky to not have those ailments. Anyway, while he was working for the clinic he got really interested in offset printing, which is based in photography. We already had a darkroom, so he bought a printing press and there you go. Eventually, he bought a small printing company in Lancaster and quit his job at the Clinic. After a few years that business just wasn’t successful enough to support his growing family – by that time I had three younger sisters. So he took a job as a print buyer at a big new direct mail insurance company in King of Prussia. That’s when we moved to Plymouth Meeting.

How did you know you wanted to work in advertising?

I actually got interested in advertising in junior high. My father’s stepsister was married to the art director for Smith, Kline & French. I always thought he was a cool guy. He smoked a pipe and wore an ascot – it was the sixties and he was very Mad Men-esque. He was also a good painter and exhibited his artwork in local galleries. He also made a nice living. They had a Mercedes, a modern house in Lafayette Hill with a swimming pool – and his paintings were all over the house.

That was a concept I could handle – starving artist is OK, but as a teenager, having a nice house and a cool car was way more appealing. I had always loved to draw and was learning to write, so advertising seemed like a good combination… art without the starving part.

So did you go to an art school?

My parents really wanted me to go to Ursinus College – it was conservative and close enough that I could come home often – Dad bought me a motorcycle for high school graduation. So that’s where I went. At that time there were only a few art courses and no photography, advertising or marketing programs, so I majored in English and took every art course they had. During my junior year, Dad gave me a Canon single lens reflex camera for Christmas. My friends and I set up a darkroom in our dorm storage room and during that period I did a lot of photography, painting and writing. I was class president, yearbook editor and graduated with honors in fine art. I was also involved in theater – and produced, directed and appeared in our production of Marat-Sade. I also built the set. It was a very controversial play in those years and the administration pressured me to cancel it. I assured them it would be artistic and promised there would be no nudity or obscenity, so the show went on… to sold-out audiences. It is actually one of my most treasured memories.

What was your first job out of school?

I had worked as a shoe salesman at the Florsheim store in the Plymouth Meeting Mall all during college. After graduation, I continued that part time and got a full time job selling and designing advertising for the Roxborough Review in Manayunk – this was before Manayunk was hip. In fact, it was far from fun. During my first week, one of my clients complained about my long hair. He was a Polish butcher and didn’t appreciate the fact that the paper had assigned a “hippie” to his account when his regular rep was out sick. I showed him some new ad mock-ups I had designed and we started to get along. He later called my boss and requested that I become his regular account executive… no haircut was required.

My parents weren’t crazy about my hair either.

They didn’t like long hair?

No, they wanted me to have a traditional haircut. It was the seventies and like most college kids, I was rebelling. One weekend when I came home, they wouldn’t let me in until I got a haircut. So I stopped coming home.

How long did that last?

Not too long. I graduated, got the newspaper job and lived at home that summer. My parents were in the process of getting divorced, so I pretty much concentrated on work – and on getting my own place as quickly as possible.

So how did your career in advertising progress?

I wasn’t real thrilled with my job at the newspaper and at the same time, my father and his partner had landed a contract for a huge printing job, so they started another printing business in West Chester and hired me and one of my college buddies to run it. We also got an apartment together. The job took almost two years to complete. Then the business closed and I got a job as manager of the brand new Gap Store in King of Prussia. For extra money, I sold a few paintings and after two years at the Gap my roommate and I opened a small art gallery in Norristown. At about the same time my father and his new wife opened a little print shop in West Chester. If you’re counting, I believe that was the fifth printing business.

They called it Joan Richards Printing… because his name was Richard, and her name was Joan. She quit her day job and worked full time in the print shop. Dad worked at night running the press. The business picked up and they offered me a job, so I started working part time. I added photography, graphic design and copywriting to the printing services we provided and things got busier. Soon we were busy enough for him to quit his other job and work full time at the print shop. Dad decided we needed more space, so he rented a bigger place on Market Street – right across from the old Courthouse. I was pretty busy doing the creative portion so we hired a press operator. Things were going pretty well.

I can tell from your tone that things were about to change…

After about a year, Dad got restless and decided to start a soft-pretzel business.

Seriously?

Yes. In case I haven’t mentioned… Dad gets bored easily, and he’s willing to try almost anything.

He had seen a guy with a cart selling snacks right outside the Courthouse and decided we could do better than that. We went out that night and he bought a new Ford van. Then we drove it to Sears and bought two propane ovens which we installed in the back. I made a sign for the roof that said “Soft Pretzels – Baked Fresh Right Here”. We built a counter inside the sliding side door, put a big cooler full of ice and soda under the counter and the next day he parked it at the college and sold hot soft pretzels to the college kids. He came back to the print shop with handful of cash and said, “Look at this! Tomorrow you can do it”. I said, “No thanks”.

So for the next few weeks, Dad ran the pretzel van and I ran the printing business. He soon decided he was going to make this a bigger endeavor and convinced a business associate to fund it. They built a self-contained mobile pretzel shop on the chassis of a 16-foot trailer. It was like a travel trailer – only it didn’t have a motor. He made it look like a big oven using fake bricks and big, black iron covers for the windows that could be propped open in the daytime. He did the interior fit-out himself and I made the “Pretzel Oven” logo and signs. They hauled the unit on a trailer and rented space in parking lots and shopping centers where they would place the unit and sell pretzels and other snacks. Within a year, they had three of the self-contained units and two mobile units – recycled Mister Softee trucks they painted to look like ovens.

So is that what you ended up doing?

Heck no… I was a bit more focused. And, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Dad decided to sell the printing business and I had no interest in the pretzel business… so I started looking for a job in advertising while Dad tried to sell the print shop.

During that period, my wife and I had gotten married and bought a little “handyman special” house in Lionville. We did a lot of renovation work on the house and had developed some equity. We decided that we would buy the print shop from my father. We were able to borrow enough money to meet his asking price and bought it. I changed the name of the shop to Market Street Graphics, and turned it into a print shop and graphic design studio. We got pretty busy and within a year, I had five employees. In three years, we were on three floors with a big photo studio on the third floor and three presses in the basement. Buying that business was a good idea… but selling it was an even better one.

You sold the printing business?

I ran that business from 1977 until 1984, when I decided I really just wanted to do the creative work. I was doing photography, writing and design, but had lost my interest in the printing part. We were setting type at that time on a PC based phototypesetting machine, where the operator could see the words onscreen, but it was all yellow code on a black screen – and it was exposing light-sensitive paper to a laser. Then you had to take a cassette out of the computer and put it into a chemical processing machine. The designer would then use razor blades and rubber cement to make a “paste-up” of the complete page, which would be photographed to create the printing plates. Combined with the darkroom and plate processing chemicals, the place always smelled toxic, which may be why I totally lost my sense of smell.

As it happened, that same year I went to a graphic expo in Philly, and I saw the first Mac computer with a WYSIWYIG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) screen. You could actually see on the screen what font you were using, the layout, pictures, etc. And then you could actually print the whole layout – on one piece of paper. No more rubber cement and razor blades. It blew my mind. I had just spent $40,000 on three typesetting machines that were rapidly becoming antiques.

So I put the business up for sale, found a buyer, and never looked back.

So then what did you do?

We bought a house in Chester Springs and I took a few years off. My wife had been in law school while I was running Market Street Graphics. She graduated about the time I sold the business and went to work for a law firm in Paoli. I stayed home and played frisbee with my golden retriever.

A few years later, she decided to go into practice on her own. She quit the firm, and I started freelancing. We both worked out of the house. I bought a Macintosh and put in a fancy dark room. For a few years, I worked alone as Miller Design. I later partnered with a friend named Kina, who did sales for me. That relationship became Northlight. For the first two years, we ran it out of my house, soon we got very busy and rented a three-story office on Swedesford Road in the Stone Bank offices. It was a very cool space – post and beam construction, lots of light, high ceilings, and a balcony. Here’s the really ironic part… we were selling so much printing that in the basement of that building, we built a print shop. And guess who I hired to run it?

I’m guessing it was a close relative…

Yep. Dad. By this time, he was in his late 60s and didn’t have a full-time job. He had just closed his hair salons – don’t ask, that’s another chapter. So he came to work at Northlight. He was in the basement, Kina was on the first floor, and I was on the second floor. My wife said I was out of my mind to rent a 4,500-square-foot building for three people. I told her not to worry and within a year, we doubled in size. Within another year, Northlight was really cooking and we had about 12 people.

Who were your first clients?

The largest segment of our business was homebuilders. Northlight rode the housing bubble for several years. We designed the logos for the communities, did the brochures, created the ads and made the sales center displays. We had builder clients from Newport to Naples – and we won dozens of awards, including about 50 from the local Homebuilders Association. We were also doing work for other local businesses and schools. We designed the Alumni Magazine and other stuff for Ursinus. We did multi-million dollar capital campaigns for Ursinus, Malvern Prep, Brandywine Conservancy and Episcopal Academy. We also did ad campaigns for banks, a couple pharmaceutical companies, Scott Honda, Brandywine Motor Cars and several local restaurants, including the Dilworthtown Inn, Harry’s Savoy Grill and the William Penn Inn. We also did some amazing events, including a three-day seminar for a pharmaceutical company at the Ritz-Carlton in center city with a James Bond theme and a team-building event where we taught the entire company to juggle. We still have a diverse clientele, including The Desmond, First Priority Bank, the General Warren, Harry’s Savoy Grill, McKenzie Brew House, Hatzel & Buehler (the country’s oldest electrical contracting company), lots of builders and others.

Is there a campaign or client you can think of that was a career highlight?

We had a developer client based in Delaware that built nine golf-course communities around Pinehurst, North Carolina. He picked us up in West Chester with his corporate helicopter, and flew us to the Smyrna Airport, where we would board his prop-jet and fly to Pinehurst for lunch. Then, we toured the properties. We made nine logos and nine marketing campaigns for the different communities. Eventually we built nine sales centers.

We also did an interesting campaign for the Dilworthtown Inn. Jim Barnes at the Inn wanted a new campaign to focus on a younger audience. We created a series called, “Seductive, Sensational and Sublime”, that featured ads with close-up shots. One was of a woman licking chocolate off a fork. Did I show that one to you?

No, I think I would have remembered that.

Yeah, I think you would have (laughs). I used Linda, who has worked for me for 18 years, for the mock-up shots. Linda presented the mock-ups to Jim. He gave the okay to run them in Philadelphia Magazine and Linda explained the process of hiring a professional model for the ad.

“Well, who’s this?” Jim asked. Linda told him she had posed for the mockups.

“It’s PERFECT; run it!”

Cosmopolitan magazine has a deal where you can place regional ads at a reasonable price, so we also ran the ad in Cosmo. I think Linda’s mother bought several copies of that issue to give to her friends.

I really love doing unusual projects. I guess that’s the handyman skills and sense of curiosity I inherited from my father. We love shifting gears and learning about different businesses – and our clients appreciate the fact that we don’t specialize, because we look at every new project with fresh eyes and come up with new approaches. We’re also a “one-stop” shop because we can pretty much handle everything – design, web development, displays, events, public relations, social media… if we can’t do something in-house, we have 25 years of experience building relationships with people who can.

Tell me about the Trolley.

Carl Dranoff, one of Philadelphia‘s most renowned developers, is building a high-rise luxury condo building in downtown Philly, right on the bank of the Schuylkill River. Before they broke ground, they hired us to develop a teaser ad campaign. They also needed a temporary sales center, but had no building to put it in. So they rented an antique trolley from the Philadelphia Trolley Company and hired Northlight to turn it into a rolling sales center.

I designed the wrap graphics for the exterior and displays for the interior. We replaced a few of the seats with a countertop for workspace and brochures, and built displays for the floor plans, elevation drawings and sales info. We attached the displays to the brass poles and handrails with brackets I made out of conduit clamps. The “Travelling Sales Trolley” got rave reviews and a lot of press coverage. The decorated models are not yet open and the building is already half sold.

Sounds easier than creating a mobile soft-pretzel plant.

Yes, it was. They parked the trolley at the site, next to the Schuylkill River, at 22nd and Locust. They also drove it around town and used it for realtor events. People would come in the front door and walk out the back with brochures and other information. Maybe we should have added a pretzel oven…

How do you know if an idea is any good or if a design is bad?

It’s easy to pick a design I like, but the trick is to design something that other people will respond to… and you never know what another person will like. For instance, a few years ago we created ad mock-ups for a new community our Delaware developer was building. We showed him four or five different approaches and he spread them all out on the conference table. He had his entire staff come in and walk around the table, and vote on each idea. The results were almost even – and some of the comments were astounding. He ended up running all of them over the next few months. The community sold out ahead of schedule.

It’s always amazing to me how many ways people react to the same words and images – and that includes designers, not just customers. Every person on this planet is wired differently… and in most cases, that’s a good thing. Life is never boring.

It must be a tough job to do something that is so subjective.

It’s a lot easier than some jobs, but as I said, you never really know what another person will like. I’ve been lucky to make a career out of guessing correctly most of the time. For instance, I’ve been doing logos for a long time and by the time I have one I’m happy with, it’s usually the one the client will like. When I show three or four ideas, it’s usually the first one I did that they end up picking. I guess that’s because I instinctively put my best effort into the first try, but clients always want to see options, so sometimes the alternatives I create end up being a little derivative. That’s why we almost always involve more than one designer – to get a fresh take on the approach.

But there’s something to that. Not many people can work in a creative field. It’s almost like an instinct that you either have or …

Well, that’s sort of what I’ve always thought, and I’ve been very lucky in that regard. I’ve got a loyal following, but I have also hired dozens of creative people who have done some incredible work.

But you didn’t have a mentor to show you the ropes?

Not in regard to design and writing, that was a combination of some lucky natural gifts and self-taught lessons. My mother was always artistically inclined. She still does a little painting. And most of whatever common sense, self-reliance and handyman skills I’m lucky enough to have came from my father. I’d say that the most important words he ever said to me were, “Just figure it out”.

He’s always been a creative thinker and was never afraid to try something. I haven’t even told you half of the jobs he’s had or half of the stuff he’s done. Every other time I turn around, he has a new business. He never had a business course. He just had brass balls, and he always knew how to do the hardware part, the carpentry, the electric… he could handle that from start to finish.

Together, we are quite a team – you should see the kitchen we built at home. I designed it and the two of us built it. He was upset with me when I hired a builder to do the schoolhouse renovation for Northlight’s new office building. He thought we could handle it. I convinced him that it would never get done – plus I’m not sure the township would have given us a building permit.

How has that mentality factored into your work at Northlight?

If somebody calls and asks us if we can do something, we try to always say yes – unless it is clearly beyond our capabilities. We’ll get off the phone, and go to work figuring out how to get the job done. One thing I don’t do any more is high installations. Linda won’t let me go up an extension ladder. Once my father and I were installing a three-dimensional logo in the lobby of one of our builder clients. We didn’t have a ladder that could reach 25 feet in the air, so we tied a couple together. Then I think we placed that on a table. Linda, who was bringing us coffee, just about died when she saw what we were doing… so I’m not allowed to tie ladders together anymore. At least not when she’s looking.

What does your father do now?

He is 87 and lives in Naples, Florida. Down there, he has two or three businesses. No employees – just him. He does work as a handyman, installing ceiling fans, remodeling bathrooms, etc. I made him business cards that say “Richard the Handyman.”

Then there’s the business I want him to quit…

The first time I visited him in Naples, he came to the airport to pick me up in his car and on the back window, there was a decal that said “Master Crackologist.” I told him I didn’t want to ride in the car with that decal on the window because there are many ways someone could interpret it. He told me I have a dirty mind… go figure.

A guy down there convinced him he could make a fortune sealing cracks in patios and driveways. Amazingly, it was the same guy who sold me the phototypesetting system I bought when I had my printing business. Small world.

Anyway, he stays busy… as always. I think that is why he is still pretty healthy – plus, my sisters keep an eye on him and make sure he eats regularly.

Do you see a lot of yourself in your father?

Like everyone, I’m a combination of my parents’ genes and my environment. I’m a pretty good handyman, just designed our new bathroom and built a kitchen table out of an oak tree we cut down – and I can also design a pretty good logo. When I look in the mirror these days it’s a bit scary, cause I’m really turning into him… but it always makes me smile.