Gary Baker resorted to an age-old strategy five years ago when many of his major corporate clients were being acquired or leaving town, meaning they no longer needed him to produce annual reports for them.

He diversified.

With fewer firms in need of his services, the president of what was then known as Baker Design tweaked his core business to include a greater emphasis on his passion for graphic design. Since then, his firm has grown rapidly by creating corporate identities, promotional designs, Web sites and even branding themes.

The expanded services even led to an expanded name, Baker Designed Communications, which has done work for clients as varied as UCLA, communications giant Qualcomm Inc., sporting goods maker K2 Inc., and gaming company Pinnacle Entertainment Group Inc.

In 1994, Baker’s company posted revenue of $1.3 million. This year, he is projecting $3.6 million. “I wanted to bring more to my clients and bring us into a more strategic role,” he said.

Baker launched the company in 1984 as its lone employee at an office in Larchmont Village. It stayed in that location for 13 years, until moving in 1997 to an old printing plant on Seventh Street in Santa Monica. Baker designed the interior himself, ripping out a drop ceiling and installing skylights to help stimulate the 30 staffers who packed the offices during the busy season the months leading up to and immediately after year end.

“When you do annual reports, you’re like an accountant in tax season,” he said. “Our real rock ‘n’ roll time is (October) through April.”

Team approach

While making the transition to branding and other services, Baker found it was helpful to split his workforce into teams in which project managers supported creatives. Today, each team includes a senior designer, account manager and production manager. That leaves creative types free to do what they do best develop and flesh out design strategies to communicate corporate messages.

Another turning point came when Baker hired Michael Copeland three years ago to help develop a marketing strategy.

“We had been selling design and execution of design, but there was no strategic component to it,” Baker said. “We would do interviews, research and homework, but now we truly are creating strategic ways to communicate.”

A native Angeleno and 1974 UCLA graduate, Baker spent time after college bouncing between several local design firms, freelancing along the way, before launching his own operation.

“I wanted more control,” he said. “It took me a while to figure out what kind of work I wanted to do, because in L.A. you can do a lot.”

When he started Baker Design, the business offered clients a design-oriented annual report service. The company would take a client’s fiscal data and ideas on presenting that information and then create a package for presentation to shareholders.

But clients eventually started dropping due to mergers and acquisitions. H.F. Ahmanson & Co., which owned Home Savings of America, was bought by Washington Mutual Inc. Atlantic Richfield Co. was snatched up by BP Amoco. First Interstate Bancorp of California merged with Wells Fargo & Co.

Baker, who had done work for all those acquired firms, said his move to expand services was more of an evolution than a conscious decision. “It has deepened our relationships with our clients,” he said. “It makes us more valuable to them.”

Expanded role

One example of how that works is Tenet Healthcare Corp., which hired Baker Designed Communications in 1998 to prepare its annual report. In the course of that work, officials at the Santa Barbara-based company told Baker they had been working unsuccessfully with national branding companies to update Tenet’s corporate identity in time for a scheduled takeover of eight hospitals in Philadelphia.

Tenet officials asked Baker to throw together a game plan. Within five months, Baker delivered a new logo, branding theme, stationery and even vehicle signage. Tenet officials then said they wanted an Internet site. Again, Baker accepted the job and put together the Web page and even developed an intranet system for the firm.

“It was an opportunity,” Baker said. “It was an exciting opportunity to work in a new medium and find ways to connect the image to the goals.”

(Baker still does annual reports and the company this year won three awards from “The Black Book,” a sourcebook of photographers and illustrators used by art directors and buyers.)

Mike Thacher, general manager of public relations and communications at Unocal Corp. in El Segundo, said his company’s five-year relationship with Baker has been revealing.

“I have turned them down for projects, and Baker comes by personally to see me, to ask me what they could have done differently to get the job,” Thacher said. “That’s unusual to me. He personally does it and follows up and is concerned that he understands and stays in the loop with you.”

Roxanne White, vice president of business development at Baker Designed Communications, said the firm has reached a critical point in its development. Though it now offers more services than a small design studio and less-expensive fees than a big agency, it’s having a tough time attracting large clients interested in the same range of services as Tenet.

“I think that we aspire more toward (the big agencies), but we would never be as big as they are,” White said. “We want to keep the top-level people working with the client.”

In that respect, White said, the company has worked itself into something of a niche.

“Under our roof, we actually employ strategists, copywriters, marketers,” she said. “And you’re always working with one of the principals in the firm.”