Triple Strength Merged With Sharp Innovations

I am surprised to learn that Triple Strength joined forces with Sharp Innovations in July this year. These two agency bring back so much memories for me.

When I finished in college around 2001, I wanted to work for a web design and development agency in Lancaster and Sharp Innovations was the only one in the area. Its web design was horrible, but I always impressed with its marketing strategy. Joseph Sharp, founder of Sharp Innovations, was a business savvy fellow. I went for an interview and talked with him, but I did not land the position. I don’t remember why it fell through. They probably never called me back.

One day, I found out about Triple Strength and applied for a web design position. When I came for the interview, I was a bit skeptical. The agency was in the middle of nowhere. When I rang the doorbell, all I could hear was a dog parking. As I was about to leave, Lance Dietrich, the founder, came out and greeted me. The studio turned out to be in his home’s basement. I ended up joining them as a part-time web designer. My main responsibility was taking the graphic designers’ Photoshop mockups and sliced them into webpages using Dreamweaver. Hùng Nguyễn was the creative director at the time with Pam, another graphic designer and Lance who was also doing graphic design.

I was with Triple Strength for a couple of months, but I loved the environment. It was a small, creative group. I didn’t know much about typography and I really didn’t have any design skills. Hùng taught me a bit about design here and there. They were going to offer me a full-time position, but the money was not right. I left for Vassar College. Later on when I needed references to apply for new jobs, they were always available for me.

Years later Lance sold Triple Strength to Hùng and now it had merged with Sharp Innovations. It is probably a good thing because Hùng can bring the level of design that Sharp never had. Even today, their web design portfolio is pretty average. I wish them all the success.