Staci Gibson

Staci Gibson is a creative professional with a megawatt talent for email marketing and brand narratives. She studied sculpture at Western Michigan University, earning a BFA degree. In school, she worked as a purveyor of scones and artisan of sandwiches (if she looks familiar to you, this is why) while perfecting her skills at custom lettering and sign making. Her animation studies culminated in an award-winning short cartoon called The Adventures of Justin and Staci (it even went to some film festivals!).

She then began work as a graphic designer for Biggs|Gilmore, which became part of VML, which then became VMLY&R. She met Pair of Ducks co-founder Derek Brouwer in all that alphabet soup, and *fast forward to present* is now realizing a long-held dream of starting a business: Pair of Ducks!

Staci is especially fond of scrappy local businesses, vegan recipes, stop motion animation, candle making, rosemary lattes, and eating breakfast outside.

Derek Brouwer

Derek Brouwer is a design extraordinaire with a penchant for maximalism and a background in account management. He earned a BS degree in Graphic Design with a minor in Art History (which he studied abroad in Italy, molto bene!) from Ferris State University.

Straight out of college, he began work at VML (now VMLY&R), a multi-Ad Age Agency to Watch winner with offices all over the globe. His partnership with Staci Gibson began there, and the two have continued to work together ever since, and now they’ve taken it to the next level by launching their own company, Pair of Ducks.

Derek is a famous lover of eggs and firmly believes that adding a fried or poached egg on top will instantly upgrade any dish. He is a Disney adult, a Nintendo diehard, a fan of contemporary artist/nonagenarian Yayoi Kusama, has an ever-expanding card collection (trading cards, playing cards, lenticular postcards), and builds tricked-out gamer keyboards for fun.

Justin Gibson

Justin Gibson is a writer and illustrator who loves absurd comedy, weird old movies (sci-fi, Godzilla, robots, monsters, etc.), breakfast cereal, and fancy root beers.

He attended Western Michigan University where he double majored in Art and Creative Writing as an undergrad and from which he later received an MFA degree in Playwriting. Some of his fondly-remembered college achievements included a weekly comic strip for WMU’s Western Herald newspaper, a six-episode stage play called Spacecano, and being president of the Western Film Society (twice). He also met Staci in WMU’s art department, which was well worth the price of tuition.

Work-wise, Justin teaches courses at WMU pertaining to art and writing and serves as the graphic designer for South County News, a thriving small town newspaper. Oh yeah, AND he works at Pair of Ducks!

As Chief Copywriter for POD, he writes website copy (like he’s doing right now, hi) and gobs of emails written for specific audiences in an array of voices. He is the POD proofreader par excellence—basically, he has eyes on everything that goes out the door that has words on it.