2016 Service Award Winner – Deb Kline

Portrait of Deb Kline

Deb is a strategic brand builder, designer, and educator. Known for connecting design with purpose and intent, Deb’s work consistently provides a distinctive competitive advantage for her clients. These include some of the world’s best-known global corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Caterpillar, Sherwin Williams and Panasonic. She draws from the experience of leading branding and packaging for Group 4 Design and Spalding Sports Worldwide.

While her work has been recognized by CADC, American Graphic Design Awards and The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, awards aren’t a real motivating factor. Instead, her passion shines through in the midst of the work; bringing to each project a problem solving approach that challenges herself and others to always improve the solution. She brings the same kind of purpose to her work in higher education, too, serving over two decades as adjunct faculty at Hartford Art School- University of Hartford, SASD – University of Bridgeport, and at Northwestern Connecticut Community College. She credits this work with keeping her own design style current and in touch with emerging talent.

In addition to managing her own design business, Deb is actively involved in the design community, serving as President of the Connecticut Art Director’s Club from 2007-2009 and on the Board of Corporators for the Hartford Art School from 2010-2012. Currently an active member in both the AIGA and CADC. Deb received her BFA from the Hartford Art School in 1990, and most recently her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts.