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About Tom Styrkowicz

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So far Tom Styrkowicz has created 17 blog entries.

Inventing a new way to use photography that utilized my unique ability

A conversation with Kimberly Young about a grant that the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in Kansas City, received led me to proposing a concept to them.

Photographer Rankin, in London, had just done “1000 Britons” where he took everyday Londoners and made them into fashion models. I wanted to do lots and lots of people like that, but I wanted to capture them just the way they were.

When I suggested this to the museum they wholeheartedly got behind the idea. And so “500 Portraits in 5 Days” was born.

I contacted an old friend, Wilbur Montgomery,  a photographer himself in Indianapolis, and enlisted him to be my technical director. My idea was to take someone’s portrait and almost immediately give them a print. Photo printers were too slow, but Wilbur reminded me of our experiences with office machines, and we realized we could use a color copier for the 8 1/2 x 11 prints. A print in 15 seconds, instead of the 3 minutes an ink jet printer would take.

Signing up at the Nelson

Signing up at the Nelson

I also wanted to display a copy of each print, so I had the museum construct a display wall made of 4×8 sheets of foam-core. It would take 6-4×8 panels, using both sides, to hold the anticipated 500 prints.

Building the wall at the Nelson

Building the wall at the Nelson

We started on a Wednesday, then on Thursday Kansas City experienced a city-shut down blizzard for two day. I had no idea if people would turn out Saturday and Sunday, but the event had acquired quite a buzz, and by the end of Sunday I had photographed 816 people!

Photographing at the Nelson

Photographing at the Nelson

64 of the 816 Nelson portraits

64 of the 816 Nelson portraits

All this had been created in my mind, so I didn’t know if any of it would work. Turns out I discovered that I had an ability to very quickly size up a subject and direct them to an interesting pose. In fact, 80% of the photos I created IN ONE SHOT! The people loved them. And even more…they loved the wall. Seeing themselves, their friends on the wall proved to be the most popular aspect of the whole event.

How did it change  my life?

I created a book about the event, and when I started sending it around I received inquiries from other museums to do similar events with them. I will write about this in coming posts, including the one where I photographed 1246 people over 3 days!

A book, and the start of a new chapter

A book, and the start of a new chapter

By |2022-09-02T12:26:21-05:00July 22, 2022|9th chapter, a unique photography ability, ONE by ONE Community Portrait|
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Creating a way to present a client 35 different design ideas. Innovation or heresy?

I was asked by Richard Bird, of the package design firm R.Bird, to help them rethink their design process. Since I had never worked in a design firm I only had my own methods.

The firm consisted of 4 designers, a creative director and Richard. Their typical process was for the creative director to assign a new project to one of the designers, and to approve two or three designs to present to the client.

Throughout my career I have switched between being the client and the designer. I knew from being the client that the outside designer rarely could absorb all the shifting needs of the client.

What I created for R.Bird, which they named PROCEDE, was a start to finish series of design exercises that gave them an insight into the client’s product that was broader than even the client’s thinking. 

How did I do that? I had the whole design team work together on the project.

  

Tempur-Pedic in stores

Researching Tempur-Pedic pillows and their competition.

 

First they all went out and researched the product in stores. 

Next we went through an exercise called “expanding the brief.” Everyone brainstormed about who else might use the product. In the case of the Tempur-Pedic client, the brief said the product would be for a 40+ woman with neck problems.

The brainstorming session led to two other areas…following the trend of “wellness.” And because it was the most expensive pillow on the market, treating it as a luxury item.

Tempur-Pedic design process

Tempur-Pedic design process

The design process

I then encouraged the designers to, in one half a day, generate 20-30 designs. GACK! They all responded. We can’t design 20-30 total package designs in half a day. Sorry. My bad. Not total design…just a logo and visual concept. Print them out and stick them on the wall. By the end of the day there were over 70 designs scattered over every wall space in the R.Bird office!

Tempur-Pedic quick design sketches

Tempur-Pedic quick design sketches

How to decide what to show the client? I gave everyone  a Post-It pad and told them to mark any designs that they liked. That ended up being 38 of the designs. 11 x 17 printouts were put into a bound book, but upon looking through that many designs one kept wanting to refer back to previous designs. Stratton Cherouny, one of the designers suggested putting each design on a 5×7 card. Brilliant! Now they could be shuffled and moved around and compared.

How the client reacted

The client was taken aback when presented with 37 choices, but when the individual cards were spread out one of the clients chose one of the cards. Then another of the clients picked a different card and said, “I like your choice, but what if it had more color like this one?” A third client said, “Yes, but what if we added an image like this one?”

Presenting to the Tempur-Pedic client

Presenting to the Tempur-Pedic client

Magic

Tempur-Pedic the final choice was chosen because of the PROCEDE process

Tempur-Pedic final choice came from the PROCEDE process

What was happening was that the client was engaging in the design process! They were reacting to actual possible solutions, including ones they never though of. In the end the design that was chosen was from the “wellness” category” and not the “40+ woman with neck problems.

In opposition to traditional design firm thinking

Most design firms would never dream of presenting clients with 37 different design choices, presuming that they would get confused and choose “the worst design” (hint…don’t show any designs your wouldn’t be proud of!) Because clients, like all of us, are time pressured, they don’t have time to think through all the possibilities of their product. How valuable is a design firm that does that for the client?

Postscript

R.Bird and I used the PROCEDE process for another client, Avon. When they went to present their multitude of choice the client informed them (only then, not before they did all the design work) that the brief had changed. No problem…19 of their 40 designs addressed the new brief with relevant solutions.

To this day R.Bird still uses the Procede process that I developed with them.

By |2022-09-02T12:26:56-05:00July 19, 2022|8th chapter, rethinking creativity, Tom thoughts|
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my 10th chapter begins

Here are the chapters:

  1. High school and before
  2. School of the Art Institute
  3. Chicago
  4. New York
  5. Columbus
  6. New Jersey
  7. Upstate New York
  8. Leawood
  9. Leawood after Deborah
  10. Today

There are, of course sub-chapters to all of these. Each one signifies either a change in geography, or profession…or life events.

I won’t be writing chronologically. I will key word the posts so that they can be sorted and grouped.

Tom's old business cardsSome, but not all, of my various business cards through the years.

By |2022-09-02T12:27:35-05:00July 18, 2022|10th chapter, history, Tom thoughts|
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How other organizations have funded their community portraits

Is funding holding you up?
If so, here’s 4 ways museums funded their event.

An individual donor
The Indiana Historical Society turned to one of their significant door couple, Dorit and Gerald Paul. The Pauls funded a ONE by ONE Community Portrait at the Indiana Historical Society for THREE YEARS RUNNING! They did this OUTSIDE of their usual giving because they saw this event as a way to help the museum increase attendance by broadening their audience.

“What stands out in the #300in3 collection is the variety of the audience. IHS has never seen such audience diversity particularly in the age and ethnicity categories. It gave us exposure to people who weren’t familiar with who IHS is, what we do, or why it is relevant to them.”

Kyle McKoy
Vice-President of Education and Exhibitions
Indiana Historical Society

#300 in 3

Several sponsors
The Greensboro History Museum timed their ONE by ONE Community Portrait to coincide with the city of Greensboro’s “Fun Fourth” celebration. Being part of the city’s celebration gave them additional leverage with sponsors, who knew there was a guaranteed audience. The museum prominently displayed the sponsors names at the event, and in all promotional materials.

“The portraits are up and they are mighty fine individually, and spectacular as one great big community portrait. We had great media coverage and impacted the city in a way that shows we are all about making connections and engaging our community. People laughed, they cried (literally —with joy at finally having a family portrait), came together as families and joined together as new friends while they waited.”

Carol Ghiorsi Hart
Museum Director
Greensboro History Museum

Share the budget with another department
The Oakland Museum of California was about to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Coinciding with that celebration was a new branding campaign which would feature the museum’s guests, and all their diversity. Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement Mary Beth Smith had us work with their branding agency, Image Design Works, to supply them with images to use in their campaign, which would include street banners, subway posters, newspaper and magazine ads as well as a widely distributed brochure.

Thank you for your extraordinary work. The campaign looks beautiful and has really helped us move the dial on some of our key marketing objectives.

Mary Beth Smith
Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement
Oakland Museum of California

Do it in support of your people
Holly Swangstu, then the Director of the Art Institute at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum wanted to celebrate not only the entire staff of the museum, but also their more than 600 volunteers. Such was the excitement and appreciation of all at the museum that we did it for three years. Not only were people excited to get their portraits, but they appreciated becoming part of the “Community Portrait” wall, where their photo could end up next to the CEO of the museum.

“In the 25 years that I have worked here I have never felt so appreciated. Thank you for our portraits.”
Mary Wren
Docent
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Some things we want to try
People have talked about getting a sponsor for the ONE bu ONE Community Portrait experience. No, we haven’t landed FedEx (yet)! But we’re open to companies sponsoring the experience. We’ll put their names up on the “portable location studio” as well as the “community portrait wall.”

Another option is the folder everyone gets to safeguard their print. It goes home with them, so it’s a perfect place to put a sponsor’s message.

If you’d like more information fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you in a flash!

Call or text 913.940.8900 or use our contact form to tell us about your event.

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By |2023-07-20T16:48:31-05:00February 27, 2020|getting more out of the experience, ONE by ONE Community Portrait|
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Make a ONE by ONE Community Portrait™ experience go farther!

The Oakland Museum of California had the brilliant idea that they could get great images for a new branding campaign (coinciding with their 50th anniversary OMCA@50) if they had us come and do a ONE by ONE Community Portrait™ on one of their “Friday Nights @ OMCA” events. The branding campaign was going to focus on their guests. In just 2 days I provided them with 260 images of 445 people!

Different from our usual events we photographed this one in color to match the Image Design Works proposed campaign.

They did a great job of using TONS of the images to really get the point across about how diverse their museum’s base was. There were street banners.

They used subways posters along the BART line. The station nearest the museum ONLY had OMCA@50 posters in every possible frame.

There was a video.

We were thrilled when we went back to do another ONE by ONE Community Portrait experience at the actual anniversary event. We saw our images EVERYWHERE. This is such a great testament to how compelling our images are.

And a reminder that the images can go much farther than the “community portrait wall.” How else can you leverage the image we create?

By |2023-07-20T16:49:17-05:00February 26, 2020|getting more out of the experience, ONE by ONE Community Portrait|
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Schedule a session with Tom by calling (or texting) 913.940.8900.

©2025 Tom Styrkowicz. All Rights Reserved. Site maintained by cyclone press.

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