There are a variety of scenarios that might lead your organization to consider hiring a consultant or specialist. We’ve encountered many such scenarios. Most are quite common, and some are universal. Each item in our portfolio and work history represents a scenario where we helped an organization take important steps forward.

We’re ready to help you with any of the kinds of scenarios you might face:

• New organizations founded around new ideas or newly-inherited collections can use guidance on everything from strategic and design planning to fundraising to development of basic mission and vision. We’re patient and friendly, and will happily walk organizations through the steps it takes to set out from a place of strength.
• Perhaps your organization has been around for years, dependent on a dedicated cadre of grassroots volunteers for its success. Perhaps that volunteer base has changed, perhaps your markets have evolved, or perhaps you’d just like to work to an updated standard. Our work ethic is built around what we believe to be an important process: that of getting to know your organization, its culture, and its strength. This enables us to help you play up your longstanding strengths in the course of building into new ones, which permits organizational memory to persist and contributes to longevity, sustainability, and success.
• Even polished, professional organizations get tired. Popular tastes and cultural needs are an ever-evolving landscape, and the best-planned programs, projects, and presentations eventually run their course. If your organization or business is built around perpetually important stories, places, and things, recasting your narratives by emphasizing new and different parts and through the use of new presentation formats, techniques, and technologies can help ensure that your public continues to see the work you do as relevant and inspired.
• Sometimes, a member or a subset of an organization sees new possibilities but must first convince others of the need or vision they see before they can bring it to bear. A well-articulated and well-illustrated presentation of the vision can make believers out of skeptics in a way that few other forms of (attempted) persuasion do.
• Professional organizations and businesses the world over find themselves with good ideas and at least some of the resources to back them, but need outside expertise to bring all of the resources needed together and bring ideas to fruition.

If any of the needs or scenarios represented here sound familiar, we want you to know that we’ve been down each such road countless times. We’re ready to serve as sages, navigators, and guides. Each member of our collaborative team is fully in their element with the work we do. We’re happy to be working alongside your staff and volunteers to move your work forward.

Welcome to HRD&P, the business and online workspace of Dave Vago and his co-collaborators. If you’re encountering us for the first time on this website, we hope you’ll find the navigation easy. Our primary purpose is to provide a complete overview of our work experience and capabilities. To that end, we’ve added two important pages. We’ll highlight updates to those pages in this blog from time to time.

Our portfolio, available via this Google Drive link, provides some examples of our visual design work in a variety of categories. This will always be home to a sampling of our work rather than a complete monograph. If you become a repeat visitor to our site, keep an eye out for updates featuring our latest work. We put a great deal of effort into what we do, and are proud to be able to show it off.

On the “Our Work” page, we show a sampling of the various kinds projects we can do. While also not absolutely comprehensive, this will provide a more detailed idea of the extent of our experience. It, too, will receive periodic updates as we complete new accomplishments. Dave’s resume, also a Google Drive link, provides the most comprehensive look at his experience.

We appreciate you taking the time to look at what we do and what we’ve done. If you’ve seen it and decide that we can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re happy to talk through what you need and what you’ve got in mind.

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.