Lou Maxon with "the Great One," Wayne Gretzky.

Lou Maxon went cross-country in search of a dream, foundit back home.

By Scott Holter
He's still only 30, but already Lou Maxon has found his "dream job": art director for Lexus magazine, a sleek, word-strong quarterly with stories crafted about Finnish ice sculptors, grapes that grow high in the Andes and playing hockey with Wayne Gretzky written for the nearly 1 million Lexus car owners worldwide.

Maxon, himself, wrote the Gretzky piece, about a weeklong joyride of an assignment as a participant in the hockey great's fantasy camp.

"I got to write it, design it, direct it and live it," he said about the February 2004 spread, for which Maxon wrote, "The moment the puck hits the blade of my stick, I realize I've achieved my hockey dream: a pass from the all-time assist leader. Could it get any better?"

Apparently it can and has. Just one year later, seated in a conference room at Fluent Communications' casually unrestrained office on the east side of Seattle's Lake Union, the lanky, jeans-clad Gonzaga alumnus — whose youthful demeanor flouts the fact that he's already found and left a career in New York City — speaks about his vocation like a teenager who got to meet his sports hero.

"This is not a magazine that hits people over the head to buy a car," he says. "This is a non-threatening way to reach people and keep them loyal to the car they already own. I worked with the best photographers and writers in the world, and traveled to places like Singapore and Nice, France."

That's a half-a-world away from Spokane where the Seattle native first dipped into magazine publishing for his 1995 senior project at Gonzaga – designing, launching and serving as editor of Code: The Creative Culture Magazine. Contributions came from several friends in New York whom Maxon had met during a Fordham University program on magazines the summer before, and Tower Books would pick up Code for its shelves.

The New York bug returned to bite Maxon, the graduate, in 1996. Tied down at an ad agency job in Seattle, he told his future wife Kim he wanted to move there.

"And so she quit her job," he recalls, "and we left. Got there with no job and no apartment."

Two years and three design jobs (The Village Voice, Time Out and YM magazine) later, Maxon, now married, was back in Seattle art directing the Bayliner boats account for a worldwide advertising agency.

"We loved New York, living on the Upper East Side, riding the subway to work, just the pace of it all," he said. "But we left a 1,000-square-foot apartment for which we were paying $1,500 a month. When we were moving out, four women were getting ready to move in."

Thoughts of starting a family and buying a home coincided with Maxon's discovery of a newspaper ad: "Wanted: Art Director for New Magazine." The new publication was Metropolitan Living and Maxon, taking a huge cut in pay, got the job, creating an identity for the monthly glossy with eye-grabbing distribution boxes throughout downtown Seattle and a tabloid-style design that won numerous awards and led to a design director slot at Seattle magazine.

Both Emerald City publications led to some interesting encounters.

"I once did a cover photo of (ex-University of Washington football coach) Rick Neuheisel at Husky Stadium," Maxon recalls. "I wanted him lying on his stomach at the 50-yard line, but he didn't want people to think he was 'lying down on the job.' "

Maxon opted instead for a close-up of Neuheisel, who was fired by Washington three years later, with the headline, "Is the $1 million man worth it?"

"Then there was the time," Maxon says, "when (former Seattle Mariners' manager) Lou Piniella met me for a photo shoot at Safeco Field and handed me a bat full of pine tar. I had to stay for the game, and my hands were sticky all night."

He grins snidely at the jocular anecdotes, but sobers when the talk turns to life away from the office, where Maxon donates his design and marketing savvy to the Seattle chapter of the Ronald McDonald House.

"It's a way to give back and to be a good steward," he said, "just like they taught me at Gonzaga. That liberal arts education turned out to be very important for me. As art director, I see my Gonzaga time in play every time I do something new."

And yes, the family and home are the biggest components of Maxon's dream life. Thirty-five minutes after work each night, he is home with Kim and young sons Henry and Jack in the house they built two years ago near the Cascade foothills.

"I keep saying I've reached the pinnacle," Maxon says, "and I'm doing it in Seattle."