“During my studies, I learned conceptual thinking”

Stefanie Gmelin, a diploma graduate in Communication Design at Hochschule Darmstadt, is today at the helm of the design agency “Atelier Löwentor”, together with a fellow student from her time at h_da. She has always stayed close to Darmstadt and her alma mater – since many years ago, she has been an active Board member of the friends’ association of her former faculty at the Mathildenhöhe location. There, the alumna is particularly committed to supporting new talent.

Sometimes, Stefanie Gmelin takes her clients on a walk in the Darmstadt woods. Leaves rustling in the breeze, birds chirping, rays of sunshine filtering through the boughs, and the peacefully serene atmosphere have been a boon of inspiration for poets and artists since time immemorial. In such a surrounding, the communication designer will sit down in a clearing together with her clients to give free rein to their ideas and thoughts, and to work on her clients’ brand identity using methods she developed herself. A very special kind of brainstorming. But sometimes, it suffices to just look through the windows of her conference room into the small but idyllic garden of “Atelier Löwentor” located in the historic brewery tower close to Mathildenhöhe and the Rosenhöhe park.

Sharing an office with student friends

Stefanie Gmelin has settled down professionally not far from her former study location. “We used to be students together, and at first we moved into a studio at the Löwentor,” she recalls. That’s why her design agency bears its name. After their studies, they worked as self-employed individuals sharing the studio space. At first, they did not plan to found a company. That came later, when the projects started pouring in, and the office team got bigger. “It sort of grew on us,” says Stefanie Gmelin. Today, seven designers work for the agency, all of them women. It was only in 2014 that Gmelin and her former fellow student Julia Reidel founded today’s company where both of them are CEOs.

“We are well-known in the region,” says the h_da alumna. The agency is working for public clients such as the RMV transportation authority or the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) [German Association for International Cooperation], as well as for SMEs and engineering companies. Focus areas of their work include education, energy, nutrition, and sustainability. They create communication strategies, logos, banners, websites; they design trade fair booths or even complete corporate designs. Their work comprises very small and very large projects, and everything in between, says Stefanie Gmelin, and it always is about “creating visibility for the respective business”.

Starting as a vocational trainee

Stefanie Gmelin was born and raised in the Esslingen region in southwestern Germany. There, she first did a vocational training to become an advertising material producer; that was back in the 1990s. “Today, that profession would be called ‘media designer’,” she explains. Then, she worked for two years in an ad agency near Stuttgart, and as it happened, her former boss used to study Design at Hochschule Darmstadt. “It was he who advised me to study as well,” she recalls. So she researched study options in Konstanz, Wiesbaden, and Offenbach, but finally settled on Darmstadt, since the faculty location at Mathildenhöhe appealed to her. Starting her studies proved easy enough. “After all, I had gone through a thorough basic training, I knew how to handle the necessary technology and work with the software. What’s more, in the agency I had lots of contact with clients. So, I was aware of how things are run, what I can put into practice, and I could thus concentrate on my designs.”

She describes her studies as very practice-oriented, yet offering much more freedom than an ad agency. Her main focus has always been communication first, rather than mere creativity, says Stefanie Gmelin. Even today, in her own company, she is the consultant and strategist who takes over project management and who looks after her clients, writing offers and supervising commissions. “I like that,” says the alumna who also holds a teaching assignment at Campus Dieburg of h_da. “During my studies, I learned conceptual thinking,” she emphasizes.

Coming full circle

This mother of two sons has always stayed close to her alma mater. Not only with the semester interns from the Faculty of Design whom she offers a place in her agency. Since 2021, she and initially Julia Reidel as well have been active in the friends’ association of her faculty. Their former professor Sandra Hoffmann had asked the two designers whether they could imagine being Board members. “That was a wonderful moment, and somehow we had come full circle, since Julia and I had come to know each other in courses taught by her,” she recounts.

Today, five years later, Gmelin is the Managing Director of the friends’ association, and Thomas Kowallik, also a faculty alumnus, is a Board member. Student Paul Abendschein is the vice-chairperson. The friends’ association has now set its sights not only on alumni, but also on current students. It supports excursions, exhibitions, films, and lectures. “We also hand out micro-grants to students, supporting their publications or project presentations,” Stefanie Gmelin reports. The budget covers ten such grants per semester, handed out very unbureaucratically and at short notice.

Wanted: design award sponsors

The friends’ association has also built a reputation by awarding the design awards at the end of a semester to the diploma graduates of the courses of study Industrial Design and Communication Design. For five years, the company Merck had provided the prize money of one thousand euros each; but the pharmaceutical company does not act as a continual sponsor, and now Stefanie Gmelin and her fellow board members have to find new sources to fund the award. But these are difficult times, and so far, their efforts have not been successful; still “we would very much like to keep the student awards alive.” This will be possible if they can drum up about 6,000 euros per year. The alumna will not give up, but continues to look for sponsors and supporters. After all, Stefanie Gmelin has known the ins and outs of advertising and communication since her times as a student.