ANN DONAHUE
Staff Reporter
When Hollywood wants creepy, it often turns to Margo Chase.
The Web site that Chase designed for the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is laden with the kind of creepy cool that makes the program such a hit with teen viewers.
Textured velvet banners invite online visitors to explore the dark world of Sunnydale High School. Menacing-yet-perky Buffy is pictured getting ready to battle evil enemies amid links to pages based on past episodes and the show’s most popular bad guys.
The award-winning Web site was designed by Chase and her colleagues at Margo Chase Design, a small Silver Lake shop that specializes in projects for the entertainment industry.
Her signature use of Gothic elements in everything from Web sites to movie posters has built a strong following among Hollywood executives and connoisseurs of the occult.
“There’s an overlay of mysticism, the occult and the supernatural in her work,” said Philip Meggs, an art professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has followed Chase’s work. “She has to get top billing among people who created the Gothic culture that’s prevalent among young people. I think she’s had more influence on defining that culture than the music or films that are produced by it.”
Chase said her grasp of the Gothic stems from her love of history.
“I read and collect a lot of books about medieval times and I think that shows up a lot in my work,” she said. “I love the Renaissance roots of letter-form design, calligraphy and typography.”
Chase first opened a design studio in her home in 1986 with the intent of living upstairs and working downstairs. But the business grew so much that she soon had to find another place to live while using the house for studio and office space.
Over the past 13 years, Chase’s design work has included posters for the film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) and the cover of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” CD.
During the past several years, Chase has worked for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, designing its signs along with felt covers for the blackjack tables and front panels of slot machines.
She also has worked with Cognito Films Executive Producer Alan Landau in Santa Monica to create a corporate identity for his company, which produces commercials for clients like McDonald’s Corp. and BMW.
“She worked with us from the inception of the company,” Landau said. “We created a name with her, and from that put together the whole feeling and vibe we liked. I wanted the image to be progressive, contemporary, about the future. She captured the new millennium feeling with a look that I think is perfect kind of retro-techno.”
Chase wouldn’t discuss her fees but said they vary widely and usually are determined through a bid process with the client. Last year, revenue reached $498,000 and projected revenue in 1999 is $575,000.
Chase is now designing bed linens for Italian fabric manufacturer Matteo with her fees to be determined on a royalty basis. “I have a good sense of what will sell or won’t,” she said. “With product design I like to take that risk and hopefully reap the rewards when I make something that people want to buy.”
Chase attended Cal Poly San Louis Obispo and majored in biology with an emphasis on pre-veterinary medicine. She took a graphics design course on a lark “an easy A,” she thought and got hooked.
She went on to do graduate studies at UC San Francisco, where she studied medical illustration with the hope of combining her science background with her love of art.
“It just turned out to be an uncreative kind of thing to do,” she said. “It wasn’t the challenge I was expecting I started wanting to do things with a more wonderful, unique look.”
After college, she moved to L.A. and began freelancing as a designer before deciding to open her own shop. Some of her first clients were bands that played small clubs and needed posters or covers for self-produced albums.
While refining her skills, Chase was forced to learn the nuts and bolts of the business world. Two years ago, her design studio had seven employees, which has since been whittled down to four so that more money could be pumped back into the firm.
Learning to effectively run such a streamlined business has taken time. “I’ve had to wake up,” she said. “I would hire these management consultants and they would come up here and shake their heads and say ‘Oh my God. You’ve got to get your (act) together.’ I’ve really learned a lot over the years looking at the bottom line and tracking hours. They’re all the things you need to know and I should have learned in the Dark Ages, but didn’t.”
