Ron Larson

The Best Part of my Job
Challenging everyone on the team to excel at any creative challenge

First Job
Self-employed landscaper at age 14

Favorites
Movie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
TV Show: The Office
Musician: James Taylor
Vacation Spot: Hilton Head Island

Greatest Accomplishment
Having a loving wife and raising three beautiful children

If I had more free time, I would…
Travel through the U.S. - there is more undiscovered beauty than you could enjoy in a lifetime.

Who would you cast to play you in a movie?
Jack Nicholson

Title: CEO, Art Director
Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

After graduating high school in Pittsburgh, Ron left his hometown to enroll at North Dakota State University to study architecture. After three years of study, however, he accepted that his true passions lay elsewhere - in studio art and graphic design. He returned to Pittsburgh to enroll in The Ivy School of Art.

Upon graduating from art school in '77, Larson's considerable talent and drive for quality work landed him a position as art director with Robert Casey & Associates, a reputable design firm in Pittsburgh. Here, he applied the training he received from school and worked side-by-side with seasoned designers to hone his craft.

Two years later, in '79, Larson was recruited by David Hawbaker to join a young, but thriving ad agency - Hawbaker & Associates. Here, Ron worked on regional and national accounts including: Alcoa, Dollar Savings, Fisher Scientific, Gallitin Bank, Kellogg American, Medrad, Steelite, Townsend, and Westminster College, for example. Larson's work won numerous regional and national advertising awards including performance-based AMA awards. During this time, he also won a national ADDY award for a memorable print campaign for PPG Industries.

In the early '90s, Larson lead Hawbaker & Associates into the digital age, by overseeing the agency's conversion from traditional board design to the fast-emerging computer-based technologies. Ron also took on numerous other responsibilities at the firm including human resources. In '94, David Hawbaker welcomed Larson as a full partner in the agency and promoted him to CFO. Hawbaker & Associates became Hawbaker & Partners, later that year.

By '97, Hawbaker was preparing for retirement and Larson was looking to replace Hawbaker and to expand the agency through a merger or acquisition. Ron found a perfect fit in JRO Advertising of Erie, Pennsylvania and in Jack O'Brien to become the agency's new president and creative director to lead the agency into a new millenium. In 1998, the merger was complete and LarsonO'Brien was born.

Today, Larson oversees the financial operations of the organization, but remains highly active in his craft as Senior Art Director and his work continues to capture the imagination and win honors and distinctions. In 2003, a sales catalog he designed was chosen Best of Show among 10,000 entries in the Sweet's Awards. In 2008, his work earned an Architectural Record Excellence in Advertising Award. And in '09, Ron's work on a different campaign earned Best of Show for the same award competition.

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