Welcome to our work!

Welcome to the work of David Vago and his collaborators at Historic Resource Design and Planning. This website and its overview of our capabilities is a new thing for us. After relying on reputation, word-of-mouth, and casual introductions for two decades, we have decided to step up our game in the department of online self-promotion.

Why do this?

For two reasons.

First, after collaborating on projects on an ad hoc basis with Lens Creek Studios founder Terry Hackney for the past 12 years, we’ve decided to formalize our partnership. We are extensively familiar with their capabilities and work ethic, and give no second thought to our view that their reputation is worthy tying to ours. Going forward, we’re going to be combining our strengths with theirs to offer the fullest possible range of services.

Second, we’ve spent most of the last two decades’ worth of our own time building things: experience, knowledge, resources, contacts, and an ethos for the work that we do. While we have been professionals who have done professional work from the start, true mastery of a craft takes time. After 20 years, we are ready to go beyond letting our business come to us. We believe we have something special to offer the world.

We’ve built ourselves into a uniquely-qualified team of specialists in a few important ways:

• We span a gap between the development of interpretive programming and content and planning and management activities like economic development, business planning, and organizational management. As a result, we are ready and able to offer robust services to organizations seeking to broaden their public appeal and strengthen their fiscal and political capital.
• We are adept translators when it comes to the interpretation of industrial content. We know and understand the history and the mechanics of historic technology and industry, and we know professional museum work. That situates us to be able to offer exceptional work to museums and sites that deal with industrial history and technology, and that must make complicated and esoteric subject matter accessible and appealing to a broad public audience.
• Combining this cross-disciplinary expertise with the highly capable and specialized work that Lens Creek Studios does in the area of interpretive design and fabrication, we can offer an exceptionally complete range of full-package and a la carte services to organizations looking to develop new initiatives or strengthen and rejuvenate existing ones.

We know, then, that we’ve got the capabilities and the drive to do great things. We’re ready to take those qualities out into the world in pursuit of new experiences. We look forward to working with you on the causes and projects that matter most to you.