A Family Business
Nearly quarter of century ago a sister and a brother, one a Marketing Director for a global IT company and the other a senior graphic designer for a London agency decided to set up in business together to provide design and marketing services at a fair and reasonable price.
Deliberately choosing not to have in-house creatives, they built a remote team of well-established design and web specialists with decades of proven experience. This set up and a creative team working outside traditional agency restraints was highly unusual back then. Whilst other agencies have adopted a similar approach and remote working has become common in more recent years (did we start a trend?) we believe it continues to be what sets us apart.
We provide marketing services on an ad hoc or on ongoing basis as an out-sourced marketing resource. As a multi-discipline creative team we can deliver both marketing consultancy and strategy but also a vast range of graphic design and web services ranging from leaflets, brochures and reports as well as websites, infographics, white papers and logo design.
Working from a small rural premises near Newbury, Berkshire we certainly don't have your typical (dare we say it trendy?) agency office but we do get a great a view and 2 very cute office dogs! Even better, without all those 'normal' agency overheads all you're paying for is our time and expertise!
our FOUNDING partners
Our Founding Partners are sibling duo, Joanne Somerville and Duncan Kerr. Having forged successful careers in marketing and design their skill sets were a great match and as they'd survived working together previously they decided to give it another go way back in late 2000! Nearly 25 years later they're remarkably still talking to each other and enjoying doing the kind of work they love best!
JOANNE SOMERVILLE
MANAGING PARTNER
As a Chartered Marketer with years of practical marketing and design experience, both client and agency, as the elder sibling Joanne naturally runs the show at Design Eclectic working closely with the creative team, project managers and back office staff.
Having juggled this with a busy family life (yes that is identical twins you can see ) since the business was formed all those years ago she remains as committed as ever to ensuring we fulfil those original goals of delivering intelligent marketing and design at a fair and reasonable price to our clients.
DUNCAN KERR
CREATIVE PARTNER
Duncan worked in primarily creative agency roles in a long graphic design career giving him the insight and experience to lead our creative team here at Design Eclectic.
As your typical perfectionist graphic designer his 'red pen' on proofs is legendary with our creatives but the positive of that is that our clients can be sure that when they receive a proof it has passed his rigorous quality control checks (& that Joanne will have checked his checks too)!
How we
work
A personal touch with long-lasting relationships
"As Senior Partners in Design Eclectic we continue to personally manage our retainer contracts where we provide on-going monthly marketing services whilst also being actively involved in other ad hoc client projects. This hands-on approach enables us to build in-depth knowledge and understanding as well establish strong relationships. We're honoured to have clients we've worked with for more than 20 years, we count that as a major achievement and proof that we're doing it right!
We remain as committed today to the operating model of the business as we were at the very beginning. Crucially it enables us to personally work on projects which genuinely interest and excite us, rather than taking on work purely to cover overheads. We feel extremely lucky that we've been getting to do what we love for so long!"
Joanne Somerville, Managing Partner