Strategy/Writing/Design | Connecting your message with your markets
This Italian restaurant established its identity with billboards, television, and radio. Television and radio spots shared the same scripts. To tie its menu to family-style comfort food, out-of-home messaging centered around two tag lines: “So good, you’ll leave home for it” and “Every bite as good as it looks.”
After this Italian restaurant established its identity, it switched its messaging to emphasize its focus on fresh local ingredients and thereby set itself apart from national chains.
Networking, IT, and civic-surveillance experts AllThingsIT wanted a set of sell sheets that presented the essence of some of its core services, establishing a personality for what otherwise might seem like an impersonal, intimidating part of business technology and infrastructure. I created a series of pieces that my client could print either in house or … Continued…
Girl Scouts of Central Indiana provides organizational leadership for girls and adults in a large number of Hoosier counties: 35, at the time GSCI embarked on a capital campaign to replace its longtime office space with a building more suited to its mission and its people. I researched, wrote, designed, laid out, typeset, and produced … Continued…
The Indiana Dental Association’s Annual Session brings together practitioners from around the state for continuing education and social events. When the Association used a thematic tag line (“Beyond Tomorrow, Beyond Ourselves”) to tie together one year’s activities, I created a signature image for use on printed pieces that signed up exhibitors, registered participants, provided a … Continued…
Naming a new company means creating an identity that’s not already registered for online use, which explains some of the (in my humble opinion) downright goofy names you see. For a tech-tutorial website concept focused on graphics software, I suggested the name “Undon’t” as the opposite of “Undo,” and created this logo to highlight the … Continued…
In Indiana’s Decatur County, the Greensburg area serves as a focus of travel and tourism. The 501(c)(6) non-profit Decatur County Visitors and Recreation Commission needed a headquarters location with enough programming space, parking, and public amenities to host its own functions and offer a home for other, smaller non-profits. A $1.5 million capital campaign sought … Continued…
Independent Residential Living of Central Indiana sought to rebrand itself with an identity that more closely reflected how its services and mission had evolved since it was founded. The not-for-profit organization chose Tangram, naming itself after a classic puzzle that challenges you to build shapes out of a set of seven geometric forms, including five … Continued…
When the accounting firm of Lee R. Ford & Associates wanted a new logo, I created a two-color identity design featuring a trio of interlocking plus signs, symbolizing the mathematical underpinnings and precision of the firm’s practice. An optical illusion produces one of the plus signs out of the void between the other two, giving … Continued…
The Indiana Dental Association represents the professional and personal well being of approximately 80% of the state’s dentists. The IDA’s Midwest Dental Assembly, formerly called the Annual Session, combines continuing education with trade-show displays and social interaction for practitioners, office staff, and family members. Among the suite of marketing collateral that publicizes this event, the … Continued…
Indiana/World Skating Academy provides a place to learn and have fun, providing elite coaching for world-class ice-skating competitors from around the work and family togetherness for local residents. Since it opened its doors in 1987, I/WSA has nurtured talent, added ongoing revenue to the City of Indianapolis, and donated ice time to other community organizations. … Continued…
The Indiana War Memorial Commission preserves and showcases a portfolio of museums, monuments, and artifacts, telling the stories of Hoosier veterans and their service from the American Revolution to the present day. Among the IWM’s most treasured holdings: irreplaceable hand-made battle flags, many from the American Civil War, the majority endangered by wear, age, contaminants, … Continued…
For a technology-oriented company that specialized in providing computer systems and services targeting the graphic arts, I created a typographic logo that matched up precisely geometric letter forms with a swirling, graceful ampersand. The combination of hard-edged and curved shapes echoed the focus of the client’s business, aptly named for its products and its customers.
Orthopaedics Indianapolis wanted to promote its services directly to employers and parents. I wrote two ads that used original illustrations based on the character of Humpty Dumpty, the fallen egg in need of rescue. One message promoted the need for expert orthopaedic care to resolve workplace injuries. The other, addressing families with athletic youngsters, pointed … Continued…
The emerald ash borer first reached the United States in the 1990s, stowing away in wooden shipping crates bound for Michigan from China. In the emerald ash borer’s native habitat, many trees display natural immunity to it. Not so in the U.S., where thousands fall prey to the insect’s devastating effects every year. At historic … Continued…
This animal shelter planned a large annual spay/neuter and microchipping event to help control pet overpopulation and reunite lost pets with their guardians. Campaign messages included the bleak statistics surrounding these animal-welfare challenges. Out-of-home messaging used bus tail boards (miniature billboards that appear on the backs of urban transit vehicles). Because these boards offer high … Continued…
[Please note: I’m only allowed to share the scripts of these spots and can’t identify the client’s location.] ——————– In light of the bleak statistics on reuniting lost dogs and cats with their families, Washington Humane, an animal welfare organization with a no-kill shelter, wanted to promote its discounted microchipping event at a local mall. … Continued…
For the orthopaedic specialists at SCORE, I wrote a series of ads that focused on individual sports, including baseball, basketball, football, and soccer. Each ad used an exaggerated statistic to emphasize the difficulty of competing while injured: a 700-foot distance to hit a home run, a 20-foot high basketball rim, an opposing football team with … Continued…
At the same time that Indiana educational trends pointed to rising high school dropout rates, many Hoosier college students who wanted to pursue teaching careers sought other opportunities because of the widening gap between teacher pay and the compensation in other professions. The Congressional Choice for Educational Excellence scholarship program was designed to help would-be … Continued…
The City of Indianapolis committed $19.6 million to a project targeting one of its major east/west arteries, 38th Street, originally dubbed Maple Road. This busy thoroughfare evolved from a residential corridor to a site for small commercial districts that served burgeoning northern suburbs, and eventually became a conduit across the city rather than a destination … Continued…