Gardner takes on four partners: ‘I’m going to be here tomorrow, but so are they’

Designer Bill Gardner wants to make something clear:

Despite announcing that he’s bringing on four partners at his Gardner Design, this isn’t about retirement or succession planning.

Gardner said it might be different if he were in poor health, or his wife actually wanted him hanging out at the house, “or if I had anything else to do.”

Since those aren’t the case, he said, “I would be stupid to wander away.”

Joining Gardner as partners are four longtime employees: designer and senior art director Adam Anderson; director of marketing and business development Toni Gaston; digital director Jay Walter; and designer and art director Ellen Youngman.

Gardner started his branding business in 1983 “when I pulled a chair up to a desk and started drawing logos.”

“It was literally a little corner office down there in the basement of the Commodore,” he said of the former hotel and apartments on North Broadway that his family once owned.

“This field has changed so much over . . . my career,” Gardner said. “It’s an entirely different time.”

He said there are all kinds of different tools and platforms — like tiny lit-up screens on phones — that are part of branding today.

“We live on . . . this little handheld device, and it doesn’t hold a logo the way a letterhead used to,” Gardner said.

Plus, he said that “seldom does anyone need just a logo.”

“The brand is so incredibly important to so many different companies. It’s their baby.”

The firm has a variety of clients, such as Cargill, Koch, Kroger and the Sedgwick County Zoo.

Gardner is the one whose “contacts run relatively deep,” and he’s still creative director — meaning he has final say — but his partners are doing much of the work.

Walter’s expertise is websites. Gardner said Walter can take mountains of information and create websites that are easy to navigate.

Gaston, whom Gardner called a whiz at marketing and social media, is all about strategy.

“Whenever we get into a project, there’s this dramatic amount of discovery that goes on,” Gardner said.

Anderson’s design work is so well known, Gardner said, that clients like Google and Facebook seek him.

Gardner said branding is not only about what works, but why, and then creating a clear, consistent message across platforms.

Youngman has a broad range of skills, including everything from what Gardner called incredible illustrations to event creation for a lot of other companies. He called her a powerhouse.

And Gardner?

“If I’ve got a secret superpower . . . it’s probably being able to identify people who . . . have superpowers themselves. Just amazing talent.”

Gardner said “experience matters when change accelerates, and it’s really accelerating.”

He has no plans of retiring because “you don’t retire from relevance.”

“I’m going to be here tomorrow, but so are they.”

This story was originally published January 19, 2026 at 11:39 AM.