Two young Bermudians have erupted on to the media and advertising scene with the launch of their company LAVA Visual Boutique.

Jon Legere, 26, and his partner Megan Pitman, 29, started up their communications consultancy on Park Road in June having first developed their skills apart. Already the pair have secured a number of clients including Show-off magazine and Bermudian Business magazine.

Ms Pitman previously completed a Fine Arts degree in Design at Concordia University in Montreal where she also worked at a graphic design studio. In January this year she completed her Masters in Communication Design at St. Martin's in London. After a brief stint freelancing, she decided to return home. At the same time, Mr. Legere, who received a Fine Arts degree in New Media at Purchase College in New York, had hit a plateau in his own career.

He had previously worked for a new media firm in New York and for e-Media and had decided he had learned as much as he could at his then current employer Aardvark Communications.

The two got together and decided to set up LAVA Visual Boutique. LAVA reflects Bermuda's origins as a volcanic island as well as the nature of creative ideas turning into something.

Ms Pitman said: "When are you going through the process of designing you come up with a bunch of liquid formed ideas and then they become solid as they develop. It came from that and we wanted to link it back to Bermuda so something that was new, fresh and the sense of motion and then a foundation."

The word "boutique" reflects the size of the firm. Unlike other agencies that have large numbers of staff working in specific areas, Ms Pitman and Mr. Legere are the only two full-time staff and act as jacks-of-all-trades.

Ms Pitman said: "There is sort of a traditional model for the way agencies are run where the design and the artistic creative side is not necessarily valued as much as we believe it should be. Contemporary, emerging new designers are jack-of-all-trades and they are able to be business people and they are account managers. They can sit across from a corporate client and explain their ideas better than an account executive can so it is being multi-faceted in terms of approach and understanding the business from all angles as opposed to just being a creative or just being a designer or just being a front man."

Ms Pitman says that because they have embraced this combined business and creative approach they can have more intimate relationships with clients. Their services range from logo and branding to web design, print and broadcast advertising campaigns, corporate graphics and event planning.

While there are already many established firms on the island offering the same services, they say that beyond being a boutique firm their international experience also gives them an edge over their competitors.

Mr. Legere said: "The main edge is Megan's background in Montreal and London. I worked in New York for several years. We have such an international scope of how it is done overseas and we're bringing that back home."

Ms Pitman says that when Bermudian designers excel at their craft, they generally tend to stay away from home because it is more exciting and competitive elsewhere. That is the reason she stayed away for so long, but she now sees the establishment of her own design business here as an opportunity to raise the bar.

"London and New York are more edgy places to be practising as a designer however there is a lot of scope for the bar to be raised here and that is where we can come in and see our place," she said.