A tight-knit core team of strategists, we build teams to suit project and client needs, leveraging a diverse roster of creative professionals as skills, styles, budgets, and timelines require.
Our core competency is collaboration and our expertise is execution---delivering consistent excellence on time and on budget.
The Team
Kate Schmidgall
Founder and Director
Dave Baker
Managing Director
Obiekwe "Obi" Okolo
Creative Director
Sarah O'Malley
Senior Graphic Designer
The Brands
As a creative agency, BitterSweet directs, edits and manages teams of graphic designers, photographers, filmmakers, writers and developers (both people and processes) to ensure compelling deliverables that meet real business needs.
Through our in-house magazine, we square up with the harsh realities and heavy statistics to find glimmers of a solution. Ranging in topics from refugee care to financial literacy, food deserts to elder care, anti-trafficking to housing for the homeless, we have vigorously sought out hope and inspiration even amidst poverty, injustice, corruption, disease, devastation and abuse.
The Creative Process
Scope + Budget
We need little more guidance than 'the problem we're trying to solve is X'. Give us the 'why' and we will do everything else (what, how, when, where, who). With baseline parameters (problem, budget, timeline), we will craft a creative approach and with your permission, see it through to completion. This is the moment we write you a proposal outlining our approach and the time/cost that goes with it.
Distill + Concept
No matter the scale of the challenge our process begins with dedicated time for research and discovery. We engage stakeholders, establish a communication rhythm, inventory existing assets, set goals to evaluate project success, and concept our vision.
Craft + Deliver
With approval on concepts, we crank into production. We build the right team based on what’s required for the work and then a project plan with milestones, to-do’s, dialogue and files in a central location that both our teams can access as needed. Of course our aim is excellence, on budget and ahead of schedule.