My name is Dean H. Renninger, and I have a confession to make: I love books. Especially books that draw you in with an amazing cover and deliver out-of-this-world stories inside. It’s those books that you remember the most because the full package delivers time and time again. As a designer, it’s my goal to create this powerful experience with each book I design.
So why the name stage3design? Simply put, this is the third stage of my design career.
Stage 1: Newspaper Designer. After graduating from the University of Missouri with a journalism degree and a minor in magazine design, I landed my first job copyediting stories and designing pages for the Greensboro News & Record. This proved to be a fertile learning ground for working quickly, being creative within boundaries, and executing the fundamental skills of a designer.
Stage 2: Magazine Designer. After a few years on the newspaper, I had the chance to move to San Francisco with my wife to work together on the same magazine, PC Gamer. (Yes, we worked 8 feet apart from each other for five years and lived to tell the tale.) This was a great opportunity to work closely with a small team to publish the most successful gaming magazine of its day. This was at the height of the tech boom, and at one point our issues grew to more than 400 pages! Those were challenging days where we had to think fast on our feet and push ourselves to be creative, fresh, and dynamic. Five years into designing PC Gamer magazine, I was given the chance to launch Revolution, a new dance music magazine. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for an art director to set the tone, style, and look for a new magazine.
Stage 3: Book Designer. After successfully launching Revolution, I changed course and embarked on a new adventure as an art director at Tyndale House Publishers, where I started designing a wide variety of books and Bibles. I now help lead a team of 20 creatives as we publish hundreds of books and Bibles every year. It’s truly a privilege to work with such talented creatives because we honor each other’s work, make collaboration a key to our success, and genuinely want to see each other succeed.