Carling Design is a boutique design studio, except we don’t sell little black dresses and expensive accessories. We’re a New York-based editorial design firm specializing in magazines, books and custom content inserts and publications (which isn’t to say we’re not interested in menus, baseball cards, and congressional reports).
Though book projects tend to dominate the studio these days, we got our start in magazine design. Covers, start-ups, and redesigns in the consumer and B2B sectors were followed by art direction of quarterly, custom content magazines for the Topps Company and Lucasfilm. At the same time, we began a long association with Sports Illustrated, producing special advertising features. Success with SI was followed by assignments from Fortune, Life, Money, Mutual Funds, Prevention, and Runner’s World. At around the turn of the century (the most recent one), Carling Design expanded into book design and since has produced hundreds of children’s and adult non-fiction books for, among others, DK Publishing, Facts on File, and Scholastic. Industry niches have included consumer, B2B, educational/ library, and custom publishing markets in the sports, entertainment, shelter, and financial sectors.
This year, we’ve added website design and development to our roster of services. We’ve got several sites in the works and will be adding samples to our online portfolio soon.
While no job is really too big, there are some jobs that are too small (anything under four point type). The bad economy ensures a talented pool of freelancers to augment our permanent staff (which pretty much is just the overworked eponymous designer). Tom works on a Mac platform in InDesign and Dreamweaver and is Photoshop, Illustrator and PDF proficient. Our rates are competitive, though rarely high enough to support kickbacks. “Six-figure” clients, however, can count on a cheery holiday card every December. We’re very proud of our on-time, on-budget record and our long-standing relationships with many of our clients.
Tom works out of his loft in lower Manhattan, next to the Brooklyn Bridge, where he lives with his daughter, Tian.
Carling Design Highlights
- Average length of relationship with top five clients since 1989:
11 years.
- Redesigned What is Life?, best-selling college biology textbook in U.S. (WH Freeman) 2011
- Redesigned Scholastic’s annual Year in Sports; sales doubled in first year. 2009
- Hired by Macmillan CEO, John Sargent as a Design Consultant for Bedford/St. Martins and WH Freeman. 2003 – 2005
- Generated 6 MM+ in sales for Scholastic with innovative design for Book of Lists. 2003
- Designed and produced 100+ children’s non-fiction books, several recommended by the American Library Association for reluctant readers. 2000 – present
- Created more iconic DK Eyewitness and other DK books than any other outsourcer.
- Created hundreds of special sections for Sports Illustrated bringing in 300 MM+ in revenue. Sections regularly placed in the top 10 most noticed features. 1990 – 2007
- Art directed 20 quarterly issues of Star Wars Magazine (Topps Co./Lusafilm) 1995 – 99
- Art directed 16 quarterly issues of Topps Magazine (Topps Co.) 1990 – 95
