The next time you’re standing in line at Target, Wal-Mart or your local grocery chain, take a quick survey of the landscape and ask yourself: With all these products to choose from, how does any one manage to stand out? If you ask Kevin Saladyga  (Industrial Design Technology, '90) and the rest of his award-winning design team at Packaging Specialists, Inc., they’ll tell you it’s all in the presentation.

For the past 14 years, Saladyga has worked in the Point-of-Purchase (or POP) industry, designing functional displays that help his clients stand out from the pack – and the challenge is greater than you think. Market research has shown that a product has only 2.6 seconds to catch the consumers' attention before it recedes into the sensory woodwork. That means Saladyga’s displays have to sizzle.

“The product dictates a lot in determining the structure of a display,” says Saladyga. “The biggest contributing factor in the look of a display is its application or placement at retail. Other attributes of the product that play into the design of a display [include] size, weight, graphics, targeted consumer group, pack-out and the ability to be shipped, just to name a few. After these issues are addressed, it then boils down to the designer’s knowledge and level of creativity to pull off the whole deal.”

Saladyga credits his solid understanding of basic design elements, as well as a healthy competitive streak, with his success in an industry in which he’s essentially self-taught. Hired directly after graduating from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh by Pittsburgh-based Packaging Specialists, located in nearby Clinton, PA, Saladyga has worked on displays for dozens of manufacturers including GlaxoSmithKline, Heinz and Curves. And with 17 awards under his belt, it’s clear that he and his team – which also includes fellow Art Institute of Pittsburgh graduates Mike Harger (IDT, ’04) and Chris Bisegna (IDT, ’95) – have their fingers on the pulse of what retailers (and consumers) are clamoring for.

“The POP industry is very intense and demanding,” says Saladyga. “The biggest challenge is having the ability to visualize things in a flat (unfolded) state and knowing how that design will work when [it’s] folded.” As a result, Saladyga spends a good part of his day solving geometric quandaries in his head.

“A lot of my thinking is actually done outside of work [since] my responsibilities as a manager consume time during the day, which doesn’t allow me to actually design,” explains Saladyga. ”But that’s okay because some of my best work has been created at home.”

After more than a decade of designing and defining his clients’ presence in the frenzied world of retail, you might expect Saladyga to steer clear of malls and grocery stores in his spare time, but that’s far from the case.

“I eat, breath and sleep POP,” says Saladyga. “It’s addicting. There are times when I actually fix a display that has been set up incorrectly by store personnel!”