The Design Company of West St. Paul

The Design Company of West St. Paul is a graphic design firm in West St. Paul, Minnesota. The studio works in branding, print, web and environmental design, with a client list that has included the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Saint Paul College, the Wilder Foundation, the Minnesota Department of Health, the Minnesota Department of Education, Wilder Research, Minnesota Compass, District Energy St. Paul, TECO, the Minnesota County Attorneys Association and Public Radio International. Projects have ranged from brand identities and annual reports to websites, intranet sites, environmental graphics, campaign identities and display and collateral work, including the Recycle More campaign and the Revealing Meth display. The firm holds a 5.00 rating from the customers who have reviewed it.

The company was founded in May 1978, when Joy Yoshikawa and Pat Hayes sat on a porch and wrote three goals for their new communications firm: have fun, do good work, and make a profit. More than 40 years and thousands of completed projects later, those priorities still guide the studio, which has built its history around hundreds of clients, vendors and friends. The original third goal has shifted over time toward paying it forward and moving forward, and the firm now adds socially committed creatives to its freelance pool and promotes those individuals, its clients and other like-minded contacts to the community. Its design work has covered print design and production, web design, UI and UX design, marketing and social media, accessibility, and qualitative and quantitative design research, alongside pro bono work for metro nonprofits and organizations such as Art from the Inside and Chicago Fair Trade.

The studio sits on Western Ave N, about 0.2 miles from Boyd Park and the same distance from the Purple Heart Memorial Highway. Saint Paul College is roughly 0.4 miles away, as are Cochran Park, Concordia Avenue and Capitol Hill Magnet.

Four decades of branding, print and web work for Minnesota agencies, colleges and nonprofits have kept The Design Company of West St. Paul doing good work close to home.