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Business & Tech

The Design of an Image

Local designer Ted Bertz has left his mark on the 95-year-old Durham Fair.

You could say that it’s Ted Bertz who's responsible for the highly successful “branding” of the Durham Fair. It’s his Middletown firm that has led the graphic design of every one of the Durham Fair fine art posters since 1987.

Each of the posters -- and the stories behind them -- are now available in one place, Bertz's book Fair Play: 23 Years of Durham Fair Posters ($50), which was released earlier this month.

Specializing in creating “look and feel” for companies and organizations, Bertz Design Group adds “a voice and a story” to the stunning visual images and logos the firm creates for its clients.  

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“There are two personas in the fair marketplace — a carnival image and a down-home, agricultural image. We have been driven by a respect for farming life. We’ve deliberately stayed away from the midway,” said Bertz, who himself has farming roots. 

Creative director John Gibson adds, “As humans and as a society, we are hard-wired to respond to visual messages. The Durham Fair posters respond to a place in us that is innocent and in touch with our agrarian selves, especially being in New England. It is a message that has contributed to the success of the fair over time.”  

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As a long-standing volunteer with the Durham Fair Association, Bertz was asked to create a poster 24 years ago by then-president Len Baginski. Much of the talent and resources for making the posters has been donated by volunteers including Lee Moody, former Mohawk Paper Company representative, who contributed the paper the posters were printed on, and Durham Fair volunteers Terry Oakes Bourret and Aleta Gudelski, who contributed their fair artifacts for many of the poster designs.  

Like the fair itself, Bertz Design Group is a family-grown enterprise; daughter Katie Kesten took over the role of principal from her father, and Judy Bertz, Ted’s wife and Katie’s mother, served as business manager since the company’s beginnings in 1976. The company started as a one-man studio from his Durham home after retiring from Xerox Corporation, “over a lifetime ago,” says Bertz. 

An Ohio native, he grew up on a farm and worked his way through art school as a coal miner.  

At 72, Bertz is still charming, vital and handsome. His activities reflect the depth and complexity of the man that he has become over time.  His retirement career is as a professional abstract art painter using oil and ancient encaustic technique which uses beeswax to create “a special luminosity that only the wax gives me.”

He draws and sketches local landmarks that “often go overlooked” and collects old manuscripts “because I like the typesets and the calligraphy.”  

This year’s Durham Fair fine art poster is a reprise of the 2002 poster in honor of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 in a smaller format.  Known as the “Weeping Flag,” the poster artist is Bertz’ daughter Dawn Droskoski.  

Fair Play, as well as the “Weeping Flag” poster are available for sale at the Durham Fair Souvenir Booth. The book is also available for sale at www.blurb.com.

The booth is located inside the fairgrounds and halfway down the hill on the right-hand side of the road as soon as you enter the main entrance to the fair off of Main Street. A portion of the poster proceeds will be donated to Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid charity to support U.S. farmers who are struggling due to drought.

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