Capital Ideas: Camron Gnass

Housed in a remodeled, 100-year old building on the 600 block of East Michigan Avenue, Vision Creative’s home haunts are clearly a product of Camron Gnass—the founder, president and creative director of one of Lansing’s strongest brand management studios.

Enthusiastic, engaging and talkative in person, Gnass designed the office space himself—no cubicles, free and open and airy—so that that his eight staff members can easily move around and interact which each other; the space facilitates the company’s vital daily creative interactions. 

“You’re seeing it now,” he tells me as we sit at his desk and watch a project manager chatting her way through the office from colleague to colleague. “It’s really organic in here on purpose. It’s not tidy and there are no cubicles and there are no rules about what paper you can and can’t use.”

The design, like many of today's most noted work spaces, is built to make the most of the New Economy’s most important commodity —talent. And it reflects the mission of Gnass’ company.

Vision Creative is a brand creator and management shop, with staff that is intent on learning what makes their clients' companies tick and finding ways to help them build and market those strengths. It's a company born of creativity and innovation, and one that Camron has nurtured carefully since he founded it in East Lansing at age 19.
 
“We’re not selling a commodity,” says Gnass. “We’re not selling an object over and over again. We’re helping people recognize their individual-ness, and recognize what’s going to help them perform better in the marketplace. That doesn’t happen just within one person’s mind. It happens from collaboration. The web programmers collaborate with the illustrator who collaborates with the project manager who collaborates with the creative director. Everyone’s coming from different backgrounds; everybody’s got something different to offer.”

Attracting Talent

The city of Lansing is learning from Gnass’ example, and beginning to rethink its own urban design to compete in the New Economy.

With increasingly vibrant, diverse and walkable urban neighborhoods, more downtown living options, and investments in amenities like sidewalks, streetlights and public transportation, the city is building the downtown vitality attracting knowledge workers to places like Madison, Portland and Boston.

Now the Lansing region, through companies like Vision Creative, is attracting its own new talent — from Michigan and beyond.

"My staff are the rock stars here,” says Gnass.  “I have an employee from Bismarck North Dakota, one from Grand Rapids, one from [Michigan’s] Thumb. I’ve got one homegrown here in Lansing who went to school on the east coast and transplanted back here. There are great people who are pretty cultured, from all over, working here. And they’re really, really good at what they do."

His company is growing as well, having hired three new staff in the last year. Part of Gnass’ employee recruitment strategy is learning what potential employees are looking for, both in the workplace and the community, and finding ways to sell the region to them.

The “guy from Bismarck” Gnass hired turns out to be graphic designer, Jon Eslinger. He , too, is enthusiastic about the city and its culture.

“I think it's a great mixture of the hometown values that I'm used to in North Dakota, and diversity, which is something I'm getting used to," says Eslinger. "It's very inspiring. Outside of work, I love just hanging out. Michigan—especially this area—is great for people watching, and being around different people.”

Building for Success

Gnass bought his historic downtown building and renovated it at the suggestion of fellow urban pioneer Kris Eilliott, who developed the popular 621 next door, and owns Troppo and Tavern on the Square. 

He also spent a year renovating the loft apartments above his studio, and currently rents the two stylish spaces to Cooley law students from Philadelphia and Southern California. He also helped design other urban loft renovations in REO Town and downtown Owosso.

"I grew up working at a hardware store in downtown Dimondale," he says. "My favorite days were the Sundays. Literally, [with] every old guy that would walk in I’d hear a story about the war, about how something was built; I’d hear a story about some of remodeling or reconstruction. That’s where I fell in love with these historic buildings, work[ing] in this 100-year old building in downtown Dimondale."

"The second I put my lofts up for rent they were gone," he says of his Lansing renovation. "People want places like this because they want connection. They want to live in places that make them feel like that—surrounded by things that make them feel good. Living in an urban environment makes them feel that there's something metro about them. And [they're] wanting to be involved in community. It's all about community."

Gnass, who still lives in Dimondale with his wife and three children, also volunteers with Lansing’s city design team (revising sign ordinances and dealing with other municipal issues), and as a soccer coach in Holt. He knows that the same features that make his office design functional and vital for creative people like Eslinger—the diversity, opportunities for interaction on the street and sidewalks, good design—also hold true for the city of Lansing.

”When you’re deploying a new brand, or a revised image, or a new look and feel and identity system, you don’t do it and then just start marketing with it,” says Gnass. “You have to get people on the inside to buy into it first before you can go external. I think that what Lansing is going through is almost like this. We’re coming out of an identity crisis. The city is starting to treat ourselves like our own client.”

“We’re getting ready to deploy the new Lansing Arts Council web site, and once people visit it, and understand everything that's going on here, they’ll be blown away,” says Gnass. “They won’t understand where those things have been. Because they've been here all along. And I would challenge that, in terms of density or per capita, there are as many options in this community as anywhere in the country. I would challenge that’s not the case in every city of our size.”

Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.