Twenty-five years of brand identity, campaign, and product work, built for
startups that needed to look established and for enterprises that needed to look
alive. Every engagement below started the same way: read the whole system first,
then place the pixel.
Brands I’ve worked with
Samsung
Toyota
Nissan
Ford
Honda
Hyundai
GM
Chevrolet
Reebok
Dallas Mavericks
American Heart Association
CDK Global
Fortellis
Excel Employment Services
Chaney’s Pralines
Makin The World Famous
Up For Brunch
Gas Crafters
MicMedia
Senushop
Foundations EDC
PAWSIC
Carter High
and many more
01Start to Finish
Not a logo. The whole system.
A case study is the only honest way to show what a brand engagement actually is: the read, the decision, and every surface it touches afterward. Here’s one,
start to finish.
A celebrity barber came to me with an idea rather than a brief. He wanted out of the
traditional brick-and-mortar shop, and in its place, a mobile barbershop that
would go to his high-end clientele instead of waiting for them to come to him.
There was nothing to copy. A barbershop that drives has no storefront to design, no
window to dress, no address to print on a card. The brand had to do all of that work
itself, and it had to hold up parked, moving, and in photographs other people
would take.
The approach
So we built it A to Z: the identity first, then the RV made to match it, then the promo
material, then the partnering assets that would let other brands attach themselves to it.
The wrap was never decoration on a vehicle. The vehicle was the storefront, the
billboard and the venue: one surface doing three jobs. Design it as signage and it
fails as a room. Design it as a room and it disappears on the highway.
A
The brand
Business cardsMerchandiseRetractable banner
One head at a time. A cosmic ground and a gold wordmark, built to survive being
forty feet long on a vehicle and an inch wide on a cap, because both were coming.
B
The build
The wrap, going onThe shop, finishedRed carpetForty feet of signageExterior screenInterior fit-outIn service
The brand went on before the shop opened: wrap, interior, mirrors, screens, capes.
By the time a client sat down, every surface they could see had already been designed.
C
The partnering assets
Partnership deckCampaign activation
The last piece was the one most brand projects skip: material built so that
other brands could attach themselves to it. A deck that explains what an
RV parked at your event is worth, and what standing next to it buys you.
D
The outcome
It stopped being a barbershop and became a partnership magnet.
Since launch he has closed partnerships with the Dallas Mavericks, Reebok,
Parade, prominent hotels, and community events, and more since. The clientele
never had to be persuaded to visit a barbershop. The barbershop arrived, and brands wanted
to be photographed standing next to it.
Case 02
Chaney’s Pralines
Brand identity · Retail packaging · Print
The problem
Chaney was selling pralines out of her kitchen and they were selling. What she
wanted was retail shelves. A shelf is a different animal than a kitchen.
A kitchen product needs to taste good. A shelf product has to survive a container,
print correctly, read at arm’s length beside competitors, declare what’s
in it, and scan at a register. None of that is decoration. All of it is design.
The approach
So the brief wasn’t “make a logo.” It was: make this sellable in a
store. That meant building the identity and the production artwork as one job, die-lines cut to real containers, an ingredient list on every label, a scannable code,
and print-ready files handed over rather than pretty pictures.
The mark had to hold at two inches on a jar lid and on a sign above a door. It was
drawn for the smallest surface first.
A
Shelf-ready
Round 2″ · jar lidSquare 4×4 · jar body
Artwork spec · every printed surface
Two die-lines cut to the actual containers: two inches for the lid, four square
for the body. Both carry the ingredient list, because a shelf requires one and a
kitchen doesn’t.
The spec sheet names every surface that had to be produced, right down to
“Glass/Plastic Jar” and “Jar/Plastic Top.” And the
market code is the small piece that does the biggest job, it turns a
homemade jar into something a register can ring up.
B
The system
Colour
Powder blue#C7DEE0
Praline brown#694418
Gold#C89321
White#FFFFFF
Voice
“Soft n’ Sweet.”
Ingredient list on every label
QR to chaneyspralines.com
Print-ready PDF handoff
Built to scale down
The wordmark sets in a high-contrast display serif over spaced caps, with a pecan
device above it. It was specified against the two-inch lid first, if it holds
there, the storefront sign takes care of itself.
C
Applied
The jar rangeStorefront signBusiness cardsProduct, shippedSocial · Today’s SpecialSocial · the range
D
The outcome
After the rebrand, the offers started coming: stores asking to carry her.
She had been ready for a while. What was missing was a jar a buyer could picture on their
own shelf, labelled, listed, and scannable. The pralines never changed. The thing
standing between her kitchen and a storefront did.
Case 03
Excel Employment Services
Full brand identity · Print · Environment
The problem
Candice had already built the business. Excel was placing people in jobs, coaching
candidates through the process, and consulting for small companies, and it was
working. What it didn’t have was a look that said so.
That gap costs more than it looks like it does. A brand that undersells a working
business loses the room before the conversation starts, every impression formed
on a card, a banner, or a booth is an impression formed without you there to correct it.
The approach
So this was never a logo project. It was a system: decided once, specified properly,
and applied to every surface a client or an employer would actually touch.
Consistency is the communication. When the card, the brochure, the banner and
the booth all say the same thing, the business reads as established, because it is.
A
The mark
ConstructionSymbolStacked lockupOne colour
An X for Excel, resolved into a handshake in the negative space, the name and
the transaction carried by one form. It had to survive being stamped on a table cover and
printed a quarter-inch wide on a card, so it was drawn once and specified in four states.
After the rebrand, Excel started landing bigger employer contracts.
The service hadn’t changed, Candice was already good at this. What changed is
that her materials stopped arguing against her. A rebrand doesn’t win the contract.
It stops one being lost before the meeting starts.
02Selected Work
Brands built to be believed
64 pieces across identity, packaging, product, and campaign grouped by the
kind of problem each one solved. Click any piece to see it full size.
Enterprise Campaigns
11 pieces
Fortune 500 SaaS campaign work: email, paid and organic social, landing pages, and concept decks.
Brand Systems
7 pieces
Marks across healthcare, beauty, tailoring, broadcast and nonprofit, drawn in one colour first. A mark that holds in solid black holds anywhere: embroidered, etched, or an inch wide on a phone. The rest of the system follows.
Storefront Brands
9 pieces
Brands people walk into. Cafe and dispensary identities carried from logo through packaging, merchandise, signage and the room itself.
Writing & Studio Production
14 pieces
Key art, decks, and campaign material for film, sports, and entertainment properties. Some designed for other people's projects, some written and produced by me.
