Disclosure: Shaun Anderson‘s (B.1973) Art Portfolio. This is a personal project. I used Gemini Pro 2.5 to review this early work. See our AI policy. From the author: I was an award winner with the Shell Livewire Young Business Start Up Awards 1997 through PSYBT. This page, like others in my portfolio, codifies this proof for the future. It was a tumultuous period in my life. At this time, I was a father of a 3-year-old and was working full time in Tesco night shift. soon to be a single parent (for the first time). After school and college, I didn’t like the jobs available to me, so I self-traded as Vision Design in 1997, and I picked up some jobs in the local area doing graphic design and corporate identity jobs. A lot of local companies helped me out in the early days, taking a leap of faith and dealing with me. I still have a few of their designs.
Entrepreneurship in Response to Circumstances
The establishment of Vision Design in 1997 by Shaun Anderson (born 1973) serves as a compelling example of entrepreneurship born from necessity rather than predetermined ambition.
At the age of 23 or 24, a pivotal time for career beginnings, Anderson initiated his own enterprise. The catalyst for this move was articulated in his own words: “After school and college, I didn’t like the jobs available to me, so I self-traded as Vision Design in 1997”. Anderson had a young child born by this point, and was about to become a weekend dad.
This statement reveals a proactive response to a perceived lack of suitable opportunities in the local job market. Rather than accepting unfulfilling employment, Anderson created his own professional path.
The term “self-traded” is particularly indicative of the era and the nature of the venture; it suggests a sole proprietorship founded on individual skill, initiative, and risk.
This act of professional self-determination frames the origin of Vision Design not as a pursuit of a pre-existing entrepreneurial dream, but as a pragmatic solution to external economic constraints.
The business was founded to provide graphic design and corporate identity services, directly leveraging Anderson’s skills to fill a niche within his local community. It was Anderson’s interest in art and early dealings with a famous Ice Cream manufacturer way back in 1989 – effectively his first paid design job- that gave him the confidence to have a go at such an early age.
Formalisation and the Pursuit of Credibility – The Federation of Small Businesses
A critical early step in establishing the legitimacy of Vision Design was securing membership in the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).
The certificate of membership issued to “Mr S Anderson” is dated 8 October 1997, providing a precise chronological anchor for the formalisation of the business.
This document, bearing the membership number 1188393, was more than a formality; it was a strategic asset for a nascent enterprise.
For a young entrepreneur operating as a sole trader, establishing trust with potential clients is a primary hurdle.
The FSB membership provided immediate, third-party validation.
By aligning with a recognised national organisation, Vision Design could effectively borrow from the FSB’s established reputation, mitigating the perceived risk for local companies considering its services. This move demonstrates an early understanding of what is now commonly referred to as social proof.
Furthermore, the certificate prominently displays the values of “Quality, Integrity, Service, Strength“. By joining the FSB, Vision Design implicitly adopted this ethos as its own brand promise.
This was a savvy marketing decision, as these conservative, professional values would have resonated strongly with the target market of established local businesses.
It was a non-verbal commitment to reliability and professionalism, communicating that despite its recent founding, Vision Design operated with the same core principles as its clients.
The Fabric of Local Enterprise: A Review of the 1997 Client Portfolio
The portfolio from 1997 provides a tangible record of Vision Design’s early work and its role within the local commercial landscape. The clients represent a cross-section of a typical town’s service economy, highlighting the designer’s versatility in catering to diverse industries.
Table 1: Summary of Vision Design’s 1997 Client Portfolio
| Client Name | Industry/Sector | Key Services / Tagline | Contact Information Provided | Initial Design Observations |
| Trafalgar Building Preservation | Building/Construction | Specialists in Dry & Wet Rot, Rising Damp & Woodworm | 2 addresses (Port Glasgow, Glasgow), 2 phone/fax numbers, AOL email | Strong, blocky typography; use of a graphic element (Trafalgar column) in the logo. |
| Principles Health & Beauty Salon | Health & Beauty | “Enjoy the Principles Experience!” | Address (Greenock), Telephone | Elegant serif font; emphasis on customer experience through tagline. |
| Simpsons Photographers | Photography/Events | “Wedding Cars,” “Quality and Comfort for all Occasions” | None provided | Simple, clean layout; direct and service-oriented messaging. |
| McDonald’s (960MC) | (Presumed) Personal Branding | None provided | None provided | Monogram-style logo (MC); likely linked to Thomas McDonald. |
Client Case Study: Trafalgar Building Preservation
The work for Trafalgar Building Preservation, a company specialising in treating damp and woodworm, exemplifies a brand identity tailored to project strength and reliability.
The design choices, such as the use of strong typography and solid graphic elements, directly reflect the robust nature of the construction industry. The business, under the proprietorship of Thomas McDonald, operated from two locations in Port Glasgow and Glasgow, indicating a significant operational footprint.
A particularly telling detail is the provided email address: xxxx@AOL.com.
This serves as a technological time-stamp, firmly placing the business in the mid-to-late 1990s.
At this time, an email address from a dominant provider like America Online was a sign of a modern, forward-thinking small business, yet it predates the widespread adoption of custom domain names.
The inclusion of both telephone and fax numbers alongside email illustrates a business operating at the junction of analogue and early-digital communication, a hallmark of this transitional period.
Client Case Study: Principles Health & Beauty Salon
In contrast to the functional branding for Trafalgar, the work for Principles Health & Beauty Salon showcases an ability to market aspirational services.
The tagline, “Enjoy the Principles Experience!”, shifts the focus from a simple transaction to an emotional outcome, and makes use of a professional logo and brand they already had.
This language elevates the salon, located in Greenock, from a place where treatments are administered to a destination for self-care and enjoyment.
This demonstrates Vision Design’s capacity to adapt its creative approach, moving from the masculine, industrial identity of a building company to a more feminine, experience-driven brand for the beauty sector.
McDonald’s Wedding Cars
This was a brochure for McDonald’s Wedding Cars. Vision Design sold advertising to wedding-related advertisers to pay for the brochure for McDonald’s, a macro business venture in itself.
The Visual Language of an Era: Analysing the Late-90s Design Aesthetic
The collected works in the 1997 portfolio serve as a visual time capsule of the design landscape of the late 20th century.
The aesthetic is characteristic of the desktop publishing era that immediately preceded the Internet’s dominance in commercial art.
The layouts and compositions appear optimised for print media—business cards, letterheads, flyers, and information booklets—which were the primary applications for “corporate identity” at the time.
The typography, featuring clean serif fonts for elegance (Principles) and bold, geometric sans-serifs for strength (Trafalgar), reflects the software capabilities and font libraries common in the period.
The graphical elements are clean and vector-based, designed for versatility across different reproduction methods, from high-resolution print to low-resolution faxes and photocopies.
There is a notable absence of any mention of web design, which was still a nascent and specialised field for small, local businesses in 1997.
This portfolio captures the visual language of commercial design at the last moment before the internet fundamentally reshaped its priorities, tools, and aesthetics.
Conclusion: A Symbiotic Relationship Between Designer and Community
The 1997 portfolio of Vision Design is more than a collection of logos and layouts; it is a document that illustrates a functioning local economic ecosystem.
The founder, Shaun Anderson, concluded his introduction with a crucial observation: “A lot of local companies helped me out in the early days, taking a leap of faith and dealing with me”. This statement encapsulates the central theme of the entire enterprise.
A clear, symbiotic relationship is evident.
Vision Design provided a vital business-to-business service, creating professional branding that enabled other local enterprises—a builder, a salon, a photographer—to project a credible image and compete more effectively.
In return, these same local companies provided the essential revenue and, just as importantly, the trust that allowed a new design business to establish itself and survive its critical early phase.
The “leap of faith” taken by clients like Principles and Thomas McDonald (and McDonald’s Wedding Cars – no relation to Trafalgar, mentioned earlier) was an investment in a fellow local entrepreneur, one that was reciprocated with professional work that supported their own growth.
The portfolio, therefore, stands as evidence of this mutually beneficial loop, capturing a specific moment of community-based commerce where the success of one small business was intrinsically linked to the success of its neighbours.
