©2005-2008
Jerman
Design
Incorporated

Steven R. “Steve” Jerman graduated from Utah State University with a degree in Advertising Design. Twenty years later he is considered one of the state's leading designers and cultural innovators.

The Utah press have referred to him as “Utah Personality” and “a name often dropped name in the SLC scene over the past two decades.”

Steven began his career as a production artist for boutique agency, et al, inc. There he art directed the successful Salt Lake City mayoral campaign of Palmer DePaulis.

He then joined another USU alum, copywriter, Scott Ford to supply concepts for many of the city’s top advertising agencies. Seeing greater fulfillment outside of advertising, Jerman sought to further his design education by mentoring with many of Utah’s best graphic artists.

Mastering Design
In 1990, he worked as a designer for Ted Nagata, Salt Lake’s singular craftsman who was well known for his corporate identity work, including trademarks for many of Utah’s ski resorts and The 2002 Olympic Bid Committee.

Nagata was an innovator in the use of the Macintosh computer for all phases of design and stressed old school efficiency and economy. Steve added vector illustration skills to his knowledge of the QuarkXpress layout program. Within five years, the majority of all graphic design was being done on a computer.

T-shirt Roots
Jerman had begun designing and marketing T-shirts in college. Shirts sold in the parking lot of Grateful Dead concerts lead to other commissions and an opportunity to create designs for KRCL 91 FM, a leading community radio station that galvanized Utah’s cultural tastemakers.

Seeing the longevity of some of the shirt designs (one KRCL design, “The Lion of Zion” has been in print for 21 years) Jerman ventured to create Natty Threads®, a young men’s active wear company, operated in tandem with his design business.

In five years Jerman saw a strong demand in the Japanese market. In 1994 he traveled to Tokyo where he was introduced to a major "Shosa Soga", which at the time was the world’s largest trading company. This textile giant said that Jerman’s designs were “two or three steps ahead of the others.” They agreed to be an exclusive distributor in Japan and exhibited the line for the best response of any American casual surf/street brand in the fall of 1994.

The distribution agreement was not fufilled by the trading company, but by this time he’d received press coverage in several local publications, most notably Salt Lake City magazine, in which he was named a “Utah Personality.”

Turning to Merchandising
Next, he took his knowledge of fashion manufacturing and applied it to the apparel needs of local businesses and organizations. In the 1990s Jerman Design (then merged into Natty Threads, Inc.) won more design awards for apparel than any single firm. Jerman has created successful merchandising graphics for restaurants, micro breweries and organizations. In all he earned over 25 design awards including Print, Graphis and AIGA designations.

For three years, Jerman produced commemorative plates for the National Association of Postmasters of the United States. He has contracted with several gift-manufacturing firms and has designed for stationary, wearables, ceramics, woven, wooden, metal and glass goods applications.

Editorial and Book Design
In 1995 Steve designed his first book, the gold medal winning “Big Book of Bowling” for Gibbs Smith, Inc. Other successful book designs followed with “Art of the Boot” and “First Tracks: A century of skiing in Utah”, the most complex and lavishly illustrated book about Utah’s ski industry.

Trade book design experiences led Jerman to magazine design. And the successful re-design of three publications. Jerman received two Society of Publication Designers awards for art direction of layouts done for NewWest magazine, an innovative fine art and literary start-up.

Fine Art and Illustration
A life long love of art has meant an appreciation and a blurring of the line between fine and commercial art. In 2003 one of Jerman’s found art collages was accepted to the Utah State Painting and Sculpture Annual. Jerman has employed many illustrative techniques using Photoshop to create collage and photomontage. A historical bent, fueled by a hobby trading collectibles, can be seen in much of his work.

Ten years earlier Steven was inspired by the woodcuts of lost California artist, Everett Ruess. He obtained permission from the Estate to make reproductions and merchandise from Everett’s blockprint images. In 2004 his love of Everett lead to a position promoting the first annual Escalante Canyons / Everett Ruess Days festival, uniting nature and art lovers from around the country.

Festival Graphics
Graphic design for festivals has become one of Jerman Design’s specialties. Steven was the 2003 graphics coordinator for the Utah Arts Festival. For four years he designed and produced merchandise for The Bicknell International Film Festival (BIFF), known as Utah’s other film festival and the smallest film festival in the world. Steve took BIFF from graphic obscurity to world-wide B-movie prominence.

Work done for The Downtown Alliance’s Farmer’s Market has lead to several awards and a cult-like following for the burgeoning market’s posters. Saturday market attendance has spiked in three years. Designs for the event have been helped by the ability to communicate a certain level of conscious consumerism.

Quality and Honesty
With past clients including craft brewers, coffee roasters and award-winning restaurants, his taste for fine quality, simplicity and time honored methods inform his work. Further he sees a holistic connection to doing business honestly and equitably and communicating creatively and memorably.

A fourth-generation Utahn, Jerman works from his Salt Lake City, Utah home and studio.