Align

About

At Bates Creative Group (BCG), passion for our work begins with you, the client. We embrace your vision and goals, then apply strategy, process and inspired design to produce positive results.

Founded in 2003, our woman-owned, award-winning creative firm offers a unique assortment of creative, technical, and artistic expertise. Our team has more than 16 years of experience developing engaging and solidly-branded magazines and corporate marketing materials. We partner with outside experts when needed for research, database programming and other services. Located in vibrant, downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, right outside of Washington, D.C., we serve clients across the United States.

Writers

Debra Bates-Schrott
President, BCG

Debra has devoted over 16 years to art direction, magazine design, branding and marketing collateral development. In that time, she and her team have won more than 60 awards for their design for organizations as diverse as Cisco Systems, U.S. Marine Corps, and the America Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Today, she and her team take a strategic and collaborative approach to create modern design for magazines, Web sites and marketing materials.

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Lou Ann Sabatier
Principal, Sabatier Consulting

Ms. Sabatier has been the Managing Director for an international economic magazine and Associate Publisher for a national opinion magazine. She has been a publishing consultant for the past 16 years, working with consumer, business, non-profit, association and corporate publishers. Ms. Sabatier is adept at evaluating strategies and operations and then identifying recommendations that help companies meet their goals and achieve enhanced profitability in tough markets.

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Donna Vincent Roa
Managing Partner & Chief Strategist for Vincent Roa Group, LLC

Donna Vincent Roa, PhD, ABC, is an IABC-accredited business communicator who re-engineers the way organizations and businesses communicate. Currently, she is Managing Partner & Chief Strategist for Vincent Roa Group, LLC, a firm that provides world-class strategic communication services and specializes in communication for and about the earth and its people (e.g., environment, science, sustainability, energy, LEED, technology, public health, and lifestyle communications).

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Mike Barkley
Design Director, BCG

Mike has been a dedicated member of Bates Creative Group for the past eight years. During his time at BCG, he has applied his strategic approach and award-winning design on a variety of projects. With design experience in print, Web, and multimedia, Mike’s versatility makes him an invaluable member to the team.

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Ian Betts
Interactive Director, BCG

Ian is BCG’s maker of alphabet soup. Through a varied career in the arts and interactive media, he’s worked on the design and development of user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing Web sites, and helps to translate the mire of acronyms, codes, and buzzwords inherent in anything Web. If you want to see what’s on Ian’s mind (mostly), you can check out the BCG Delicious bookmarks.

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Ernie Achenbach
Studio Manager, BCG

Ernie leverages his extensive design and production background to efficiently manage projects, schedules, and processes with a detail-oriented approach. As a liaison between clients and designers, he is the “go-to” guy for any issues that arise during the course of the project. In his free time, Ernie is a regional actor who appears in shows in the D.C. area.

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Seth Sirbaugh
Creative Director, BCG

Seth has been an integral part of our team for the past nine years. His design work is highly regarded in the industry, having appeared numerous times in Print Magazine’s Design Annual, Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington Annual Show, and HOW magazine. Seth’s magazine design has also earned him six gold Ozzie awards for excellence in magazine design at the Folio:Show in New York.

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Mae Coughlan
Designer, BCG

Mae is greatly inspired by popular and indie culture alike — art, fashion and especially music — and it shows in her versatile design style. As a five-year member of the Bates Creative Group team, she leads and contributes to a variety of projects, from brand development and implementation, to corporate collateral and publication design.

Her high standards push her to develop dynamic compositions, refined typography, and sophisticated hierarchy, especially in her publication work. Her most recent projects include leading the redesign and ongoing design of Marines and Saving Land magazines, as well as ongoing feature and cover design of National Parks magazine.

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Marina Linderman
Designer, BCG

As one of Bates Creative Group’s newest and youngest designers/illustrators, Marina enjoys the collaborative atmosphere and the fact that she can ask anyone at anytime for an individual critique of her work, whether it’s a rough logo sketches, an illustration that’s in mid-construction, or almost finished spreads. With a great desire to learn and become top notch, Marina has learned new techniques and InDesign keyboard shortcuts to work more efficiently and effectively. She also experiments with colors and typography to try to push the envelope.

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Contributors

Mae Coughlan, BCG – Editorial
Katie Lesser, BCG – Illustration
Marina Linderman, BCG – Illustration
Darryl Sebro, BCG – Illustration
Mike Barkley, BCG – Illustration
Seth Sirbaugh, BCG – Illustration
Chris Hong, BCG – Illustration