Adam Redling, Vision Graphics: A 2025 WFI Rising Star

Adam Redling, marketing coordinator, Vision Graphics

When Adam Redling graduated from Salt Lake City’s Westminster College in 2020, the printing industry was not even a blip on his radar.

“Coming out of college, you have this idea of, like, you're gonna work at [a certain] type of a company,” Redling says. “I studied marketing. I thought I was gonna be doing consumer marketing. That's kind of the path that I had planned out in my head.”

However, things rarely go according to plan. In Redling’s case, he took on a range of small jobs right after school, eventually ending up at Vision Graphics.

“I had a friend that worked here on the installation team, and they were looking for more employees,” he says. “I've always kind of liked manual labor to some extent, despite the fact that I went to college to get a marketing degree.”

After about six months on the installation team, Chris Dalley, director of marketing at Vision Graphics, discovered Redling’s marketing background.

“It was only through a series of conversations we found out that he had marketing experience,” Dalley recalls. “I was underwater and we … couldn't do anything just because we didn't have resources and bandwidth. Adam was eager to join the team; he was excited to put his marketing education to work.”

Since then, Redling has served as marketing coordinator on the Salt Lake City-based company’s two-person marketing team.

“Since he's been here, Adam has applied himself to learning the types of customers that we are looking for, that are best for us in the print industry, and being able to communicate value, ideas, solutions — he's been able to take a consultative tone with people,” Dalley says. “There's a difference between ‘do you want to buy a banner?’ and ‘do you want to communicate a message?’ We're doing a much better job of communicating and presenting ourselves in that manner, and it's with a lot of the work that Adam is doing to understand our customers and relate to them.”

While Redling’s title is marketing coordinator, he notes that marketing tasks account for less of his total workload than you’d expect. Some of the other responsibilities he’s taken on include building out a CRM system, website redesigns, and even helping to grow the promotional products and sourcing side of the business. Dalley says Redling has been a great team player in that respect.

“He's also had what I would call a ‘non-marketing task’ of learning a video display content management system, because one of our largest clients has a great need for that, and that has resulted in quite a bit of additional business for us,” Dalley says.

“I really think that it has made me a very well-rounded person, very well-rounded employee,” Redling adds. “Given the chance, I love to take on any project that's put in front of me, and that's something that's always an opportunity here.”

That’s not all. When Vision Graphics acquired a mom-and-pop print shop in Reno, Nevada, Redling took the reins on the all-encompassing project of aligning the new acquisition to Vision Graphics’ presence.

“I definitely kind of took the lead on all things branding, all things marketing; redesigned the whole interior of the location to make it more welcoming, more friendly; redoing things like their logo, their website; creating marketing campaigns to get people to go see the new [shop], and I think that was overall pretty successful,” Redling says.

Vision Graphics also recently acquired a local wrap producer and installer, and Redling is managing a similar effort there — in addition to helping open a new location for that shop in Reno.

On top of all that, Vision Graphics itself went through a rebrand about a year ago after being acquired by a private equity firm.

“Again, [we] gave that responsibility to Adam,” Dalley says. “He had oversight from the executive committee, but was able to manage the design, understand the visual communication we were going for, was able to convert that into a brand that really is closer to who we are and has really received a lot of great reviews from the people we work with.”

Redling sees Vision Graphics’ growth as parallel to his own. “My role is only expanding, and I like to think that possibilities will only open up moving forward,” he says.

Dalley agrees, tying Redling’s work to what he’s seeing in the printing industry as a whole.

“The print business is not that sexy of a business for people coming out of college, for the youth today,” he says. “So the fact that he is interested in what we do, wants to make a difference in what we do, is willing to pitch in and help, and has invested himself in the efforts and the success of the company, I think it speaks very highly to him — I mean, that's what I would be looking for in anybody that I wanted on my team — and I think qualifies for that rising star designation. He wants to be here, he likes it here, and he's trying to improve us as a company.”