Kevin joins Z2 as an art director. With more than seven years of experience serving both business-to-business and business-to-consumer clients, he has worked in both large and boutique agencies. Most recently, Deval spent five years at Milwaukee-based Norman Design as a graphic designer. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater.

April joins Z2 from Brookfield-based Bader Rutter & Associates as a public relations account executive. With nearly five years of professional public relations experience, she has worked with clients in the building, construction and design industries, agrichemical industry and more. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Z2 is one of several local advertising agencies working in partnership with Milwaukee Area Technical College and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design to expose minority high school students to careers in advertising, marketing and web development.

As a founding board member of OnRamp, it’s gratifying to watch the progress of our second flight of students as they work side-by-side with agency professionals who have volunteered for this intensive, semester-long program. Over the course of the semester, students are introduced to careers in the industry, exposed to concepts of branding and product line logic, and given hands-on opportunities to work with industry software tools.

OnRamp is the result of more than two years of planning. Thirteen students successfully completed our pilot program last year. This year, 16 students are participating.

Our ultimate goal is to package OnRamp for adoption by other agencies so that, working together, we can help to create a more diverse workforce within the advertising industry.

Special thanks to my colleagues, Kerry Tasch and Jessica Menke, for volunteering their time to work with this year’s OnRamp students!

Check out OnRamp’s website at onrampmke.org to learn more about the program. While you’re there, buy t-shirts designed by the OnRamp students. Proceeds go to support future programs.

If you’re there on Saturday, March 28th, keep an eye out for Cory Zimmermann (a MIAD alum) as he’ll be there reviewing portfolios… (And who knows, he might be keeping an eye out for a designer to join us here at Z2.)

They showed up again, this time at Card Observer.

You can see the Z2 Marketing business card, as well as a business card we did for Port City Studio. (Oh, and many other great business cards other people have designed!)