MGMT.: ARIEL APTE, ALICIA CHENG AND, SARAH GEPHART
At mgmt.design, three really is the magic number. This trio of graduates from Yale’s MFA program
have parlayed a bond formed during graduate school into a successful business partnership. “We were
all very similar in taste and shoe size,” laughs Cheng about how they all became friends. And those early ties have translated into a highly collaborative working style, one that’s the secret weapon behind this Brooklyn design studio.
The company started in a rather unassuming way. After Yale, the women went their separate ways, collectively logging time everywhere
from Doyle Partners to 2x4 to Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Three years ago Cheng and Apte went freelance fulltime
and rented a shared office space. The arrangement naturally evolved into mgmt., and Gephart came on as the third partner in 2003.
“We were all kind of burned out to some degree on working ourselves to death for other people,” Cheng says. “Quality of life is important
to us.”
Today the designers have the freedom to set their own hours and make work/life balance a high priority. They describe the start of
mgmt. as a scary but exciting risk, and it’s one that’s definitely paid off. The firm’s client roster includes the Guggenheim, Phaidon, the
International Center of Photography, the American Folk Art Museum, and Rockefeller Center. Rather than subscribe to one aesthetic,
the firm strives to create clean, restrained, and respectful designs that enhance the content at hand. Currently, there are two full-time
designers in addition to the partners.
Early on, one of the biggest challenges was having three people with such similar backgrounds. “When you start a business, you’re
hoping to find a partner with complementary skills,” Cheng says. “At first, we were like a car with three wheels that all turned in the
same direction.” There was a great depth of design experience, but the young company had to work at gaining business savvy.
The Brooklyn-based company’s next big step is the opening of a second office in Minneapolis. It’s going to be headed up by Apte, and
it will be a leap for the designers to create a fluid working system between the locations. Other goals include tackling more identity projects,
and adding a permanent exhibit to the list of temporary ones the firm has already designed. But no matter what comes next, the
trio can rest assured in their knowledge that, sometimes, friendships form the strongest business foundation.
LEFT: MGMT. did the exhibition graphics for LARRY CLARK, a retrospective of Clark's work, at the International Center of Photography in New York City. RIGHT: This Phaidon Press title is the third in a series of books that highlights recent houses from around the world. FAR RIGHT: MGMT. designed exhibition graphics for PICTURE THIS: WINDOWS ON THE AMERICAN HOME at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
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