Eye for design

Fitzsimmons blends graphic-design career with volunteer work

A $5 Kodak camera may have been the impetus for Rita Fitzsimmons' career in graphic design.

She was just 9 years old when she went to work at her family's dry-cleaning shop to earn money for the camera pictured in a Girl Scout catalog. Her dad agreed to pay for half, but it still took her months - at 10 to 25 cents a week - to raise her share of $2.50.

"I wanted to earn the badge [for photography] and I loved the idea of taking pictures," said Fitzsimmons, who owns Designworks in downtown Kalispell.

As a child growing up in Genoa, Ill., Fitzsimmons always gravitated toward visual arts such as photography and drawing.

"However, I didn't have a clue how I could make a living at it," she said.

To this day Fitzsimmons takes every opportunity to talk to high school or college students who want to pursue art-related careers. It's helpful, she noted, for them to talk to someone who makes a living with visual arts.

"My own light bulb went off when I took junior college classes during high school and took a design class," she said. "It was the best of everything. It appealed to my need to draw" and it taught problem-solving in a creative way.

That class was a springboard to Fitzsimmons' decision to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in visual communications from Northern Illinois University. She took extra classes in photography at Northwestern University before landing her first job at an advertising agency in Chicago.

Her graphic design work in Chicago included a three-year stint as an art director for the World Book encyclopedia company.

"I loved working there," she said. "It was a great education because it was on such a large scale, and it was how I learned to write better."

She soon realized that writing and graphic design were a sought-after combination of skills she could offer her clients.

EVEN THOUGH she loved her job, Fitzsimmons was on a mission - to move to Montana. She didn't know what she'd find here to make a living; she just knew she had to get to the Big Sky state.

During her youth, she had been to the Flathead Valley for a family vacation through Glacier National Park, and had spent a fair amount of time in Eastern Montana, where her mother's best friend had married a rancher and had four sons.

"We were all the same ages and they were like brothers," recalled Fitzsimmons, who has three sisters. "I thought they were the greatest people."

Montana was so much on her mind that when her husband-to-be, Lee Koslowski, asked her to go on a date, she said OK but warned him: "I'll be leaving in a week for Montana."

It would take them another seven years to move to Montana because her husband was running a family business in Chicago that he couldn't immediately leave.

When they pulled into Kalispell in 1982, they both knew this was where they would put down roots. They bought a house in Kalispell's historic Fifth Avenue East neighborhood the following year and moved to Kalispell permanently in 1985.

"What was so especially great is that we were dropped into the Bermuda Triangle of great people," Fitzsimmons said, remembering how neighbors such as Dr. Ed and Rita Johnson and their daughter Dr. Reesie Johnson, Ev and Nikki Sliter and Chet and Freda Mahugh immediately welcomed them.

"It's hard to describe how they've impacted our lives."

Ed Johnson urged her to serve on the Kalispell Board of Adjustment, a stint that lasted nine years. Nikki Sliter encouraged her to get involved with Conrad Mansion, so she helped with the annual Christmas bazaar for more than 20 years. Fitzsimmons began serving on the mansion board of directors in the late 1990s, and when longtime president Sam Bibler died in 2002, Fitzsimmons stepped up to be president for four years and remains on the board.

Chet Mahugh inspired Fitzsimmons to get involved with Rotary.

"He would tell me about Rotary and encouraged me by his example" of community service, she recalled. In 1990, with Jeff Ellingson as her sponsor, she became the second woman to join the Kalispell Rotary club. She became the group's first woman president in 1995.

"Rotary has had such a profound effect on my life," she said. "I literally tear up when I think of what this group of mostly gentlemen has done for this community. It's a privilege to be a part of it."

Fitzsimmons has taken her Rotary involvement to the international level, helping support a library in Chacala, Mexico, through visits and bringing supplies to the area.

The Chacala project, which has been supported by Kalispell Rotary for some time, is a springboard for other educational assistance such as scholarships for students in that area of Mexico.

"It's been one of the most amazing things," she said, explaining how Rotary scholarships have helped dozens of Chacala-area youths graduate from high school and complete college.

Recently, another focus of her volunteer work has been helping Special Olympics promote its message by creating advertisements and promotional materials.

Fitzsimmons' wide-ranging community work was lauded by the Flathead Valley this year when she tied for first place in the Best Community Volunteer category of the Daily Inter Lake's "Best of the Flathead" contest.

Fitzsimmons is equally accomplished in her profession. She has won state and district ADDY awards - the advertising industry's largest competition for creative excellence - for several years running, and most recently for her design work for Saddlehorn LLC of Bigfork and corporate identity collateral for her business.

She and her husband, who owns and operates Digital Planet next door to Designworks, have one son, Michael Kozlowski. He's studying graphic design and architecture at Montana State University.

Fitzsimmons is a firm believer in nurturing the creative juices that flow through a community because "art and business don't thrive without each other."

"History and culture enrich us so much," she said, pointing out how landmarks such as the Conrad Mansion, Museum at Central School and the Hockaday Museum of Art enrich Kalispell. "The big push of my life is to up the awareness of that."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com