Menu
For over 20 years, this small-town firm has been helping local businesses like yours reach greater heights. We are growing—but the most vital things will never change.
It was around 2000 when a local picture framer asked Amy Wissing to create her first professional design. Nothing fancy, just a nice, one-page handout detailing the artwork and photographs he framed, matted and put behind glass in his home garage.
At the time Amy, a local girl from Bird-in-Hand, was still in college, studying to become a teacher. But she always had a knack for creating visually pleasing charts, images and graphics—the kind that helped people understand things easier and better. “When I was teaching,” Amy recounts, “any kind of worksheet or correspondence I created was always more of a design piece, focusing on logical flow and functionality. To this day, user-friendliness is always key to whatever I do.” It was a skill appreciated by the local fire company that hired Amy to help out here and there, whether it was creating a local newsletter or pulling off a big fundraiser.
Her next big project was for a carriage maker in her hometown. Her father took the pictures of the custom carriages as they came out of the shop, and she did the rest. By this time, Amy was teaching music full time and also running a music studio, which she would continue doing until 2009, when she turned her attention completely to her design clients. “This little side thing started to ramp up and turned full time,” she says of her work at the time.
She named her outfit Lancaster Design & Consulting, or LDC for short, and her logo included a bird, in homage to her Bird-in-Hand origins— “and the fact that I’m always flitting around,” she says with a laugh.
For Amy it was an easy decision to make: After years of working with the same local businesses, nearly all manufacturers, she felt like a partner to them of sorts, and enjoyed their growing success as something that she, too, could take part in. “I like seeing other people make a living with their hands,” she describes. “LDC works in the background, yet we have a direct impact on somebody who has a business and is making a living for their family. And in turn, they employ people who make a living for their families. And everybody contributes to the community around them.”
It’s a rising tide lifts all boats outlook that Amy’s held to firmly since the beginning. It’s also shared by the growing team she’s assembled around her more recently to help LDC clients do more—and navigate the higher rungs of success that inevitably come from their long days of focused work on making wonderful things here in Lancaster, whether it’s candy, furniture or carriages. “We understand the owner-operator model,” LDC team member Lisa Campbell says of the firm’s clients. “We get that kind of grassroots-business owner—because that’s essentially what we are, too.”
And the name: Lancaster Design & Consulting. While Amy may have initially begun doing just graphic design work for clients, it quickly blossomed into more. Ads. Catalogs. Logos. Brochures. Event Promotion. Websites. Social Media. And more. Over 20 years later, the consulting part of the business has become a big part of what they do: Everything from helping clients define their unique public identity (known as branding), to creating marketing plans, so clients better understand their customers—and the most effective ways to reach them. Even media, from videos to digital ads, is becoming part of the mix.
Just like their clients, Lancaster Design & Consulting has achieved a unique growth of its own, despite never having placed an ad. It’s still a word-of-mouth company that prides itself on closely walking with clients and meeting them where they are—whether it’s in a field or in your shop—and taking them where they want to go.
“They call someone who understands their business,” Amy says simply of her clients. “We are just another person at their table, and we work side by side.” Often for years, or even decades. Her very first clients—the picture framer and the carriage makers—remain LDC clients to this day. She recalls with satisfaction at having witnessed her clients’ business growth firsthand, and seeing them move through their lives, like getting married and having children who are now adults. “I get a kick out of it,” she says.
Amy’s business has grown, too. “None of this would be operating the way it does without the people that we have right now,” she says of her team. “They take a lot of joy in sharing what they know. They are incredibly self motivated, and they always want to do the right thing.” Despite growth, some things at LDC will never change.
Like keeping business within the same (small) geographic area. Stopping by to see clients in person. Making sure clients are always taken care of, no matter who they interact with at LDC. As Amy sums it up: “It’s real people, boots on the ground, right in front of you.” And finally, doing the important thing of all, which is freeing clients from the burden of those tasks at which LDC happens to excel. “Their time is best spent either in the shop making something, or talking to a customer to figure out what they need,” Amy says of her clients. “We’re all about getting them to shine where they’re best.”
Whether you’re new or familiar with us at LDC—if you’ve been thinking about creating or rejuvenating a product, organization or business unit—give us a call at 717.388.8810 or drop us an email at connect@lancasterdc.com.