The Creative Work Behind Sebring Airport

If you’ve ever noticed Sebring Airport’s eye-catching signs, polished website, or savvy social media posts, you’ve experienced Diana Ries’s artistry.

For more than three decades, Diana Ries Designs has been the creative force behind the airport’s marketing and communications. Ries launched the agency in 1991 and works alongside her identical twin sister, Erin, who lives in Telluride, Colorado. Diana is based in Atlanta, and despite the distance, the two work closely together with help from a small team. Their company mission is to “bring great ideas to your brand… which will bring your brand to life.”

For Sebring, that has meant just about every creative corner: marketing, advertising, event planning, website design, logos, graphics, social media, large airport signs, and print materials. She also finds manufacturers and works with them directly to bring projects to life.

Airport Executive Director Mike Willingham describes Ries as eclectic, artsy, talented, and smart. “She is an integral part of our economic development work,” he says. Beverly Glarner, his former executive assistant, agrees: “Diana did everything for the airport that is creative. No matter what I needed, she was Johnny on the spot.”

Ries grew up in Baltimore and earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising and applied design from the University of Maryland, but says, “I’m mainly self-taught.” Before starting her firm, she worked for a music and entertainment publication. When it went out of business, she struck out on her own. Mutual colleagues introduced her to Willingham and Sebring Airport. Today, about 65 percent of her agency’s business comes from aviation, a niche with its own language, audiences, and marketing needs.

Years of working together have built a relationship of trust. “You can tell it like it is,” she says. “They trust me, and that’s worth its weight in gold.” She speaks fondly of Willingham and Deputy Director Andrew Bennett as “two incredible guys.”

Marketing is only part of Ries’s story. She has also run a nonprofit farmers market and owned a women’s clothing store, where she helped women discover their personal style, essentially working as a stylist before the profession was widely recognized. “I was ahead of my time,” she says.

Her own style is hard to miss: funky, colorful, and topped with signature hats. “I dress like this all the time. This is just who I am. I’m not going to dull myself. I’m just going to be me.”

Ries is also a studio artist whose latest creations are decorated mannequins, exhibited in galleries and at art events, including Burning Man, where she is a long-time attendee. In Atlanta, she chairs the Castleberry Loft Tour & Wine Tasting for the Castleberry Hill Neighborhood Association, which raises money for the arts and historic preservation.

Across her business, charity work, and art, Ries brings a vibrant creative energy, and her long-standing partnership with Sebring Airport has helped the aviation hub soar.