Who is Zadig?

The Zadig team is celebrated for its ability to achieve clarity of thought and expression. We know how to touch people with words, to make the most technical topics accessible and appealing. Time and again, we've proven our skill in managing and completing complex projects. And with our backgrounds in marketing, brand development, management, finance, and publishing, we understand the realities of business and the business of selling.

Rick Newby     

Principal and co-founder

Rick Newby oversees the creation of every publication Zadig undertakes, whether it is your company's annual report, book, brochure, or web site. A seasoned publications manager, he has had nearly twenty years’ experience as an editor with the Montana Historical Society Press and Falcon Publishing (where he served as editorial director before founding Zadig).

With fifteen books under his own name as author or editor, Rick understands the technical and aesthetic challenges that arise in creating superbly produced, expertly written, and clearly communicative texts.

A skillful and vivid writer, he has written copy promoting numerous products and services, ranging from boutique Montana beef to government health care programs to the works of painters and sculptors. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in regional, national, and international periodicals. To learn more about Rick’s publications, click here

As a technical writer and editor, Rick has crafted books, manuals, and web sites on a range of subjects: archaeology, health, technology, the fine and applied arts, western history, natural history, and outdoor recreation.

Talk with Rick if you are planning to produce a publication, in print or on the Web. He will be delighted to provide you with a bid for writing and editing, design, printing, and any other communications services you require.

Liz Gans    

Principal and co-founder

Liz Gans, Zadig’s co-founder, is currently on leave and serving as Co-Director of the Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana. She is also engaged in developing a variety of film and video projects. Liz is a versatile and accomplished consultant with extensive experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. She has proven her strong strategic and business planning skills in the successful launch of clients’ businesses. As a former Director of Marketing for Banana Republic and The Gap and as past Director of ebase Community Support for TechRocks, a project of the Rockefeller Family Fund, she possesses excellent marketing instincts, tested by research and implemented with powerful project management skills.

Liz is available—on a limited basis only—for consultation on marketing, branding, and business planning issues.

Zadig Associates

Beck McLaughlin

Web designer

Beck McLaughlin brings her background in interactive multimedia, arts education, movement theatre, and modern dance to the creation of web site structures that address the needs of a diverse range of clients. Beck works closely with each client to produce a web site perfectly attuned to the desires, needs, and interests of the target audience. Beck’s sites are attractive—sometimes elegant, sometimes playful—without sacrificing a clear and easily navigated presentation of the information. Beck designed the Zadig web site. For more information, please visit her site at www.ollivander.com.

Geoffrey Wyatt

Exhibits and graphic designer

Geoffrey Wyatt has worked for the past twenty years as a graphic designer specializing in both two-dimensional print design and three-dimensional museum and visitor center exhibits design. As an exhibits designer, Geoff has worked to solve a range of design problems. He has created portable and easy-to-assemble traveling exhibits (Montana Outfitters and Guides Association), addressed artifact conservation concerns by installing fiber optic specialty lighting (Chief Plenty Coups State Park, Montana), and has even figured out how to hang automobiles from the ceiling (Alfred P. Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan). Some of his design projects include the 10,000-square-foot Montana Homeland exhibit for the Montana Historical Society in Helena; the 10,000-square-foot Flint in the American Dream exhibit for the Alfred P. Sloan Museum; the 600-square-foot Ragtime to Rock 'n Roll exhibit for the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, Missouri; and the 450-square-foot Shaker Life exhibit for Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

Geoff’s print design work includes books, annual reports, posters, brochures, and company logos for clients as diverse as the St. Louis Zoo, the Missouri Historical Society, Greycliff Publishing, the Montana Historical Society, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Blackfoot River Brewing Company. To see samples of Geoff’s work, please visit his site at www.wyattdesign.com.

DD Dowden

Graphic artist and designer

DD Dowden has worked in the publishing industry for the past eighteen years. She has illustrated, designed, and computer produced more than one hundred titles. Her client list includes Dummies, Cliff Notes Complete, Peregrine Smith Books, Botanica Press, Montana Historical Society Press, Falcon Publishing, Far Country Press, Insider’s Guides, SkyHouse Publishers, TwoDot Books, Idaho Press, and Montana Magazine, as well as numerous nonprofit organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, Montana Wilderness Society, Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, and the Holter Museum of Art. When illustrating, Ms. Dowden works in watercolor or ink. Although specializing in botanical art, she is proficient in any subject matter—having published illustrations for subject matter as diverse as King Lear and the life cycle of Lycopodium.

Doug Turman

Artist and illustrator

Doug Turman, painter, printmaker, and gallery owner (The Turman Gallery, Helena, MT), brings prodigious technical skill, good humor, and a wide-ranging intelligence to his illustrations for books, technical reports, and other publications. Educated at Oberlin College (BA, Fine Arts, 1983) and The University of Montana (MFA, 1993), Turman posesses what one critic calls a “playful and densely textured sensibility . . . out which he creates perfect patterns, brilliantly colored and harmonious.”

Turman’s work has been published widely, including his suite of twelve etchings, “Sobering Moments in Montana History: Actual Events, Genuine Characters,” which appeared in Rick Newby’s Old Friends Walking in the Mountains, and his paintings are featured on the covers of Noisy Soil by poet and playwright Ed Noonan and About Water by Kevin Bezner. Turman’s paintings and prints reside in collections on all seven continents.

Krys Holmes

Writer

Krys Holmes has been a full-time freelance writer for twenty-one years. She writes interpretive texts for historical sites and state parks, edits books and manuals, prepares press packets, creates snazzy web site copy, generates annual reports, and can make your grant proposal shine brighter than its competitors. Ms. Holmes has been published in trade and general-interest magazines, has had several poems and essays published on the literary front, and is a composer and arranger of vocal and choral music.