STELLA BUGBEE
It’s an interesting time for Stella Bugbee. After taking maternity leave to care for her twins, she’s returning to design full-time to launch her own studio in New York City—one where she plans to work largely by herself. Bugbee has come full circle in a way, co-founding a firm shortly after school and eventually moving on to a prominent agency. “Now it’s about the project and not about the work environment,” she says. “I’d like to remain independent and flexible.”

Bugbee is no stranger to the challenges of owning a business. Roughly a year after graduating from Parsons, she co-founded Honest with two of her former classmates. She found the idea of a small creative environment intriguing, especially after internships everywhere from Doyle Partners and Number 17 to Kate Spade. The young firm found quick success and worked with such clients as the Andrea Rosen Gallery, Ultra Records, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

But her partners started to focus on motion graphics, and Bugbee wanted the chance to collaborate more and work with really big clients. “I realized that there was quite a bit more I wanted to learn from other people,” she says. So she left the business after five years for a stint at The New York Times Magazine followed by a design position at BIG—Ogilvy & Mather’s Brand Integration Group.

The latter was a truly eye-opening experience. Freed from the worries of running a small business—everything from taxes to technology woes—she got the chance to think almost exclusively about design. “It was really exciting for me personally,” she says. “I didn’t expect it to be as creatively fulfilling as it was.” Bugbee appreciated the academic approach at BIG, as well as the opportunity to work with high-level creatives. The position forced her to justify her work and taught Bugbee that you can push design even for corporate clients —as long as you know how to pitch those ideas.

Now she’ll apply the sum of all these experiences to projects she tackles on her own. In addition to client-driven design, she plans to resume teaching at Parsons and continue pursuing side projects. Right now, for example, she works on an indie magazine called Topic, which revolves around a different theme each issue. Bugbee’s primary goal is to keep doing interesting work. “I feel like I’ve just started,” Bugbee says. But if the beginning is any indication, hers is definitely a path to watch.

TOP: Spreads for two differently themed issues—Food and Family—of TOPIC magazine. ABOVE: A poster from the traveling exhibit, THE CITY WITHOUT A GHETTO, which is meant to educate public-housing residents about the politics of their living situations. RIGHT: An eye-catching home page for rock band LE TIGRE’S website.