2002 article about branding agency, MiresBall in design publication, Communication Arts.

1. January/February 
Eight Dollars
www.commarts.com

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Mires>design for brands
By Julie Prendiville Roux
Client Kurt Listug, CEO of Taylor Guitars, proclaims
to have a thing or two in common with design firm
Mires: “We’re both real anal and very detail-oriented about
what we do.” In the case of Taylor, the ‘what we do’ is craft
high-end guitars for those ranging from weekend enthusi-
asts to seriously-famous musicians.
In the case of Mires, it’s supplying strategic thinking and
design solutions for clients ranging from roof tiles and video
games to coffee beans and theater. Also travel, dining out,
surfing, telephones, trading cards, golf and toys. And that’s
just a partial list. José Serrano, principal/creative director,
says, “We’ve had a wide reach of different types of accounts—
we haven’t been in one certain category, like medical. We
can learn what the clients’ needs are and tell a story that fits
that particular need. That’s where the storytelling comes into
play. It gives us the freedom to attract any type of client.”
So that’s the thread that ties these disparate areas together:
story. At Mires, they believe there’s a story behind every
brand that has its own unique voice. That belief has cata-
pulted the San Diego, California, firm into a realm of suc-
cess they never dreamed of. And one they don’t take for
granted. Serrano says, “We never want to get comfortable.
We’re always looking for new things we can be doing.”
Located in a picturesque, charming enclave of antique shops,
printers, car repair shops and palm trees, the firm’s beach-town
locale belies a bustling enterprise with an impressive client
list. As the business grew, they offered more and more services.
And over time, the former moniker of Mires Design—and
the sole act of design itself—didn’t fit.
Imagine their surprise when it turned out they were in need
of a story of their own. Principal/creative director Scott Mires,
founder, says, “We’d been wrestling with it for a few years.
We were offering a lot more than just design—design was
limiting for us. We had become a strategic partner to our
clients. We helped to build their brands. There’s this stigma
to design as just being esthetic; we wanted to position our-
selves as being more strategic. A lot of times it’s your old-
time clients who are pigeonholing you and sometimes you’re
not good at promoting yourself to existing clients and talk-
ing about your new capabilities. We never really had a tag-
line—a descriptor for what we do.”
As they grappled for a new identity, their tagline ‘design for
brands’ transformed into Mires>design for brands. It’s a
Right: Bay 2 Bay poster. “Every year, the Point Loma YMCA organizes
a fund-raising regatta that extends from Mission Bay to San Diego
Bay,” said creative director José Serrano. “This poster is an expres-
sion of Americana, with a roughness and rawness that reminds you
of a weathered old boathouse.” Gerald Bustamante, illustrator.
“Posters have played an important role in our overall revitalization of
the Arena Stage brand and identity, which coincided with the arrival
of a new artistic director in 1998. In addition to helping to restore
lost luster, and to reposition a venerable institution in a changing
cultural landscape, the brand identity program gave the theater a
strong, overarching personality that made it less dependent on the
success or failure of individual productions. These posters were
selected for the permanent collection of the Library of Congress,”
said creative director Scott Mires. Miguel Perez, designer; Mark
Ulriksen (The Women)/Jody Hewgill, illustrators.
subtle name that came with much discernment. Principal/
creative director John Ball says, “It was a great transition
thing where it kept design up there pretty high, but it also
introduced the strategic part of what we do: design ‘for
brands’.” Mires adds, “We didn’t want to totally walk away
from the esthetic, because that’s how we’ve gotten where we
are—doing really incredible work—along with this other
great component. At times, it’s been intuitively strategic but
now it’s become more process-oriented strategy.”
“So in a way,” Ball says, “it was like taking a dose of our own
medicine, stepping back and saying, OK we’re different
now, how are we going to be positioned in our world, with
our clients and potential clients? We looked at the name and
the identity, redid the portfolio and the Web site.” Serrano
continues, “The one thing that we did differently from
most people is that we had actually done the work we were
talking about. It wasn’t: Oh, we’re going to change our name
and we’re going to refocus ourselves to say we’re doing strat-
egy now, or, now we do brand work. We actually have a
body of work that shows that we do those things. So now
that we do have a new name, we already have work to back
it up.” Mires adds, “It’s like doing a package for a product
that doesn’t exist yet. It just makes people race to it and say,
hey that’s really not any good.”
One key client, Neill Archer Roan, CEO of The Roan Group,
a strategic business development company, has watched the
firm grow. Mires has worked on Roan’s Arena Stage and
California Center for the Arts client projects for years. He
says, “It’s one thing to get a really great project the first time
around, and another to get it for ten years. Their differentiat-

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4. ing point is the quality of thinking and
execution. Miguel [Perez, design director]
is basically the Leonardo di Vinci of execu-
tion, creating an incredibly juicy execution
of the idea and making it absolutely
perfect. Things fail in execution. Mires
is bulletproof in terms of executing
strong concepts.”
Bob Schonfisch, director of creative ser-
vices, Sega America, remembers his first
encounter with Mires. “I was doing research
for a corporate identity project. By the
time I met John Ball, I was pretty well down
the road of assigning another agency.” But it
turns out, that was just for one assignment.
Mires kept in front of Schonfisch by sending
him spiral-bound books of recent work—
books he’s kept to this day. Schonfisch, whose in-house
marketing group does extensive work on the front end
of assigning projects, brings a lot to the table in terms of
market research and strategic thinking.
He references his company’s mission words, displayed in his
office: Defiant, Passionate, Fearless, Unexpected, Irreverent
and Independent. “Every piece of work we put out there
has to have at least several of these properties,” he says. Once
he began working with Mires, he found like minds, especially
because they were able to grasp and appreciate his up-front
strategic planning, not just deliver creative. “By the time I
did give them their first assignment,” he remembers, “it
was a huge project—redesigning hardware packaging and
all the peripherals.”
He continues, “The good thing is that they listen. They’re
able to take direction and elaborate on it. It’s seamless in
terms of communication. During the process, it doesn’t
matter who I’m talking to; we’re all on the same page. You
don’t get mistakes out of them.”
That’s where that attention-to-detail claim comes in. Serrano
says, “When we get a project, I tell clients, you’re welcome
to go to the back and go through our archives. See some of
the work we’re really proud of. Whether it’s 1-color, 2-color,
4-color, or whatever, the detail that goes into it is going to
be amazing. We’re not going to give you ‘choice A’ or ‘choice
B’ design. When we commit to a project, whether it’s one
dollar or ten dollars, you’re going to get that level of detail.”
Each principal/creative director, Mires, Ball and Serrano,
handles his own accounts, working with teams of designers
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and outside writers, illustrators and photographers. In 2001,
Tom Carroll joined the firm as marketing director. “It was a
missing piece that fit perfectly,” Mires says. “We also added
project managers that added a whole level of getting things
done. Before, the three of us would run around doing all
that and now we have people who actually keep track of
every last detail.”
Scott Mires has steered the Taylor Guitars account since the
mid-1990s. Listug says, “My concept of branding is not to
come up with something clever or advertising-y. Sometimes
when you talk to [design] people, they want to do some-
thing pretty but haven’t thought much about strategy. Scott
is long on strategy and he can create a beautiful, impactful
piece. He’s enthusiastic about it.”
Scott is one of those designers who still does tiny pencil
thumbnails. Serrano and Ball encourage their teams to do
marker layouts before turning on the computer. At first-
round internal creative meetings, they’ll have a plentiful,
rough bounty of work, much of which is shown to the
client. This way, they tend to over-deliver in the number of
concepts they come up with—one more component to their
own corporate strategy. This idea of over-delivering seems
to have propelled them to the next level.
Roan offers, “The biggest challenge with branding as it
relates to design is continuing to have the butterfly evolve.
If you look at Mires work over a period of time, what you
see is an arc that is very subtle. There’s a process of reveal-
ing and unfolding that is really organic. There has to be an
unfolding of the story.” ■
Mires staff (from left): (first photo) José Serrano/Gale Spitzley/Joy Price/Tavo Galindo/
Jen Cadam/Miguel Perez/Andrew Goddard; (second photo) Scott Mires/John Ball/
Kathy Carpentier-Moore/Toni MacCabe/Wendy Bowman/Dara Cadam/Holly Houk/
Andrew Goddard/Mark Ruzich; (third photo) John Ball/Mary Pritchard/Dave Roberts/
Holly Houk/Paula Monterrubio/Cory Dunn/Gordy Adsit/Dara Cadam/Howard Weliver.
Mires>design for brands
©2002MarshallHarrington

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This page: “The newspaper had just purchased a new
fleet of trucks. We asked, ‘What can we do to promote
the newspaper in a nontraditional way? Who needs
words or logos or large-scale corporate graphics?’” said
creative director José Serrano. “We turned to the experi-
ence of reading the newspaper itself. In this case, using
a classic cartoon from the Sunday funnies.” The San
Diego Union Tribune, client.
Qualcomm 5TGP packaging. “This solution represented a
sort of coming-of-age for the mobile phone industry,
communicating unequivocally that this type of product
could be friendly and fun. In the early days of mobile
phone marketing, packaging focused primarily on brand
graphics,” said creative director José Serrano. “On the
whole, it felt pretty flat and cold. We brought human
emotion into the equation. With Qualcomm, we saw a
great opportunity to rewrite the rules with color and
images of people consumers could relate to.” David
Adey, designer; Carl Vanderschuit, photographer.
Dreamcast shopping bag and binder. “Sega gave us the
assignment to redo their Dreamcast packaging. This idea
was one of the finalists. While focus groups ultimately
favored another solution, at Sega’s request we gave it
new life as the hero visual at the E3 tradeshow. Execu-
tions included binders, bags and banners, including one
70’ tall hanging outside the L.A. Convention Center,” said
creative director John Ball. “The image, which refreshes
the ‘Sega scream’ campaign of years past, grew out of
the concept of head-to-head online gaming and express-
es the full-throttle intensity of the Sega brand.” Pam
Meierding/Jeff Samaripa, designers; Carl Vanderschuit,
photographer; Sega of America, client.
“VerdeStyle was an online gardening community, a very
early e-commerce play. So early, in fact, that investors
didn’t really get it,” said creative director John Ball.
“VerdeStyle’s vision included much of what the world
came to expect an online brand experience to be: shop-
ping, commerce, chat and so on. We designed every-
thing: identity, Web site, packaging, sales collateral. It
was an ambitious program that gave us early insight
into the dot.com boom that was to come.” Miguel
Perez, designer.

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Mires
Left: GoCard media kit. “This media kit for an early leader
in postcard advertising was encyclopedic in scope, reflecting
the passion of our client, an entrepreneur who lived and
breathed the subject,” said creative director John Ball.
“We captured his excitement and propelled him forward,
legitimizing the medium and speaking to the advertising
community in a way it could not ignore.” Eric Freedman/
Gale Spitzley, designers; John Kuraoka/Alan Wolan, writers;
Miguel Perez, illustrator.
This page: Wildlife exhibition catalog. “Our client was a
brand-new, $70 million art center in the small-town of
Escondido, California. The inaugural museum exhibition
featured artists’ interpretations of animals in various media.
Our job was to give the show a marketable identity, with-
out overpowering the art,” said creative director John
Ball. “The catalog was entered into the American Associa-
tion of Museums, where it ended up on a Top 10 list along
with the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art and
other nationally-recognized institutions. Our little museum
got instant credibility.” Gale Spitzley, designer; California
Center for The Arts Museum, client.
California: In Three Dimensions exhibition catalog. “For
the catalog accompanying this show on contemporary
California sculpture, every artist contributed an essay,” said
creative director John Ball. “We used each layout to create
a different typographic response to the work. The type on
the cover was embossed and debossed—tactile in both
dimensions. A typographic sculpture!” Deborah Hom,
designer; California Center for The Arts Museum, client.
Positioning, name and identity for a golf e-commerce site,
Gball.com. “While a lot of golf e-commerce sites already
existed at the time Gball arrived, everyone was going for
the traditional equities,” said creative director Scott Mires.
“We went the other direction, speaking to first-timers just
getting into the game. We positioned Gball for a hipper,
more fun, less serious crowd.” Cherie Peltier/Miguel
Perez, designers.

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Mires
Left: Taylor Guitars 2001 catalog. Mires has
worked with Taylor Guitars since 1995, touch-
ing every aspect of its visual communications
except advertising. “Our strategy was simple:
create a piece that no musician could ever dream
of throwing out. Through research, we know
that the typical acoustic guitar purchase cycle
exceeds six months, so the brochure had to
have real staying power,” said creative director
Scott Mires. “It does so with rich, sumptuous
images, to be sure. But it also does so through
education, detailing not only what goes into a
Taylor, but what it takes to make a great guitar.”
Scott Mires/Howard Weliver/Lois Harrington,
art directors; Gale Spitzley/Howard Weliver,
designers; Eric LaBrecque/Bruce Moores,
writers; Marshall Harrington, photographer.
This page: Deleo Tile is a regional, family-run
manufacturer of clay roofing tiles in a business
dominated by big, multinational concerns. To
help the company compete, Mires highlighted
its heritage and celebrated the authentic crafts-
manship that goes into every tile.
Deleo’s corporate folder communicates the
heritage and craft positioning of the com-
pany. Multifunctional pockets accommodate
a range of marketing materials. Joy Price,
designer; José Serrano, creative director; Dan
Thoner, illustrator.
Warm, earthy textures and tones unify Deleo’s
collateral and help to communicate the com-
pany’s purity of product, in support of its posi-
tioning as environmentally safe and friendly.
Joy Price/Miguel Perez/Gale Spitzley/Deborah
Hom/David Adey, designers; Eric La Brecque,
writer; José Serrano, creative director.
Deleo point-of-purchase. Kraft cardboard
reflects the natural quality of the product,
while a die strike feature pops up to allow the
box to double as a point-of-purchase display
for distributors. Miguel Perez, designer; José
Serrano, creative director; Tracy Sabin/Nancy
Stahl, illustrators.

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Mires
Left: Terra Sketch packaging. “A recycled paper handmade
from organically-grown cotton left over as waste from the
manufacture of backpacks: How much more roots-respon-
sible does it get? I really wanted to push the ’good for the
earth, good for you, good for your pen’ envelope in this piece
explaining the process to the consumer,” said creative director
José Serrano. Miguel Perez, designer; Tracy Sabin, illustrator;
Green Field Paper Company, client.
Body Glove packaging. “Grains of sand, beads of water. An
experiment to capture the look and feel of the ocean,” said
creative director José Serrano. “Printed in silver and black on
raw craft to give it a shimmering look, and at the same time
to express a non-slick, industrial feel that would appeal to the
type of person who would buy these fins.” Miguel Perez,
designer; Carl Vanderschuit, photographer; Voit Sports, client.
“First World was an early broadband player back when broad-
band was new and people weren’t sure what to do with it,”
said creative director John Ball. “The brochure, addressed to
a business audience, was designed to depict the real-world
benefits without getting too technical. Basic messages, bright
colors, full bleed.” Miguel Perez/Kathy Carpentier-Moore,
designers; Miguel Perez/Sam Grogan, illustrators; Marshall
Harrington, photographer; First World Communications, client.
This page: Anacomp Corporate Style Guide. “Anacomp is an
information management company that had just come out of
a reorganization and that was making a transition to Internet-
based technology,” said creative director John Ball. “They
didn’t have much of an identity, and they had never really
branded themselves. At the same time, they were doing busi-
ness worldwide and had made several acquisitions that
required a unifying umbrella. This was their stake in the
ground.” Deborah Hom, designer; Miguel Perez, illustrator.
Anacomp newsletter. “Our first project after creating
Anacomp’s new identity, this newsletter became an illustra-
tion of what you could do with it,” said creative director John
Ball. “We really put the manual to work, making use of the
full palette. Archiving data onto microfilm, CDs and Web sites
is a pretty dry subject, though you wouldn’t know by the
looks of it.” Deborah Hom, designer; Tracy Sabin, illustrator.
Icon for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau’s far-
reaching tourism effort. “The city’s previous logo was hard to
reproduce in certain applications,” said creative director José
Serrano. “Revisiting and updating it, Las Vegas wanted to
position itself firmly around its gaming heritage, but in a way
that was instantly readable and appealing to the full spec-
trum of visitors. This simple, legible solution lends itself to
print, television and large-scale applications for live events.
We’re seeing it everywhere.” Miguel Perez, designer.