21.   Customers range from giants like Boeing and Nike to smaller firms like Acton-based design firm Product Insight.

22.   Dozens of other Web design firms had sprouted up around Atlanta, and the contract brought credibility for the young firm.

23.   Design firms are now often brought in at the start of a project.

24.   Each has hired Italian design firms to give their midprice sedans some new sex appeal.

25.   Doubters need look no further than the Dallas-based design firm William Reid.

26.   Eleven Delaware design firms were chosen to refurbish the house in styles consistent with the period.

27.   Even today, as president of Effective Network Solutions, the Internet infrastructure design firm he founded, Whitley says he sometimes takes third-party assignments.

28.   Flatbed scanners, which translate photos into digital information and feed them into a PC, have existed for years and are a staple at design firms.

29.   For Ferdinand Porsche, who had started his own consulting and design firm, this soon translated into lucrative contracts with the big German manufacturers.

30.   From there he adapted the designs, producing various tools for use by woodworkers as a side to his Web site design firm, EINetco.