Resident teams with PEZ to produce Madagascar dispensers
By Heidi Slomkowski, Staff Writer 06/20/2005
BRANFORD - PEZ Candy Inc. is a company of global proportions. According to PEZ.com, the candy's moniker was derived from the German word for peppermint more than 70 years ago and today, PEZ Candy and Dispensers are sold in 60 countries throughout the world.
The confectionary giant also has strong local ties.
Amy Graver, Branford resident and president of Elements, LLC, an award-winning graphic design firm in New Haven, recently designed PEZ dispenser packaging for Dreamworks' computer animation film Madagascar, which opens this weekend.
"It's exciting because we've gotten a lot of buzz about it with the movie coming out," Graver said.
The movie's main characters are Central Park Zoo animals that include a lion, voiced by Ben Stiller, and a zebra, voiced by Chris Rock. It was up to Graver to decide how these and other characters were presented on the dispenser packaging while ensuring that they adhered to a strict set of licensor requirements.
For about a year and a half, she has been facing similar challenges through designing everything from packaging to counter display boxes to promotional materials for PEZ.
"It's challenging for us, we do a lot of work with PEZ on licensed products such as Mickey Mouse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hello Kitty, BRATZ, so its always a challenge because it comes with restrictions from different licensers that we have to pass our designs through to get approval," Graver said.
While designing logos, annual brochures, websites, promotional banners and tee-shirts for PEZ and other corporation, Graver works towards keeping Elements "creative, exciting and different."
"We like being very diverse, we don't want to see ourselves specializing in any one thing," she said. "I think that one of the reasons Elements is such a creative firm is because in any given day we can work on something very corporate, something very artistic to something completely different."
As a young child, Graver took private art lessons and later attended the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven while a student at Branford High School. After graduating in 1986, she worked toward a degree in journalism at Northeastern University and then worked as a photojournalist for the Boston Globe. It was through her work as a photographer when she, "got interested in how my images could be used artistically to tell a story and communicate, so that's how I got into it."
In 1999, she began her work in graphic design and founded Elements in Hampton, Conn. Although she does not have a degree in the field, establishing the firm was "a natural step" due to her longtime involvement in the arts.
The company began to prosper and, in 2003, she and her support staff moved to their present New Haven location. Today, with clients like PEZ and Dreamworks, Graver has experienced a great deal of success. Overall, she is content not only professionally but personally as well while living in Branford with her husband Scott and 11-month-old son Cole.
"I like where my firm is now, I like being in New Haven, because a lot of my clients are here and I love living in Branford, raising a family, I have a small baby and my husband and I love Branford," Graver said.
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