Don't let the Southern accent fool you. When it comes to staying on strategy or keeping to a schedule, Jill Coull is anything but laid-back. Just call it a happy by-product from her first job

at a two-person design firm where, right out of the University of Florida, she was pretty much running the business. Over a decade later, with a career that's spanned small to mid-sized agencies and hundreds of freelance assignments, it's hard to find an art director who sweats the details more. Or can keep a company on track better.

After graduating from the University of Florida (no, it's not a coincidence), Dave Sandstedt

bounced around from Colorado to New York to Boston where he sold his soul to the gods

of direct mail because he'd become addicted to eating. After a few years of 80-hour weeks spent working on everything from Fortune 500 companies to micro-chip testing equipment to high-end vodka, he got a call from his old college friend. They realized that an art director who could write and a copywriter who could design were a pretty rare combination. Even more rare? Creative people who do what's right for your business, not their portfolio.