Design&Image created the look for Allegro Coffee, the look that has made Allegro coffee the premium brand for Whole Foods.

Design&Image put the human face on Weitz Construction, with black and white images of their employees -- these are the faces of the people who have built the relationships and have made Weitz Construction so successful.

And Design&Image is created the world of effulgent light that pours through the symbolic aperture of the Starz Entertainment brand, a brand which competes with the likes of HBO and Showtime.

There's more to the creation of a visual brand than meets the eye though. A visual brand is the heart and soul of a company, and the fulfillment of a thousand or so concise elements that bring it all together. 

That requires depth and strategy. And tools: the creation of color palettes, typography, photography, outdoor graphics, packaging, marketing materials and graphics, brand application manuals...the list goes on.

Have Deborah, Ben or Eli tell you about the Design&Image brand process. It's about so much more than design. And image.

urbandwellers creates handcrafted designs for urban living spaces that innovate for smaller, urban homes. Larry Beard Jr., principal, has created a fantastic case study for marketing his company for success:

He dives deeply into periodic visioning exercises; his marketing mind is organized; he's created a marketing experience that is thoroughly integrated into his sales process; the story of the company is evolved and knows what it stands for and has developed language that emotionally reaches the end user.

When owners of major hotel chains receive a proposal from urbandwellers they receive a whole mind experience that encapsulates left-brained features and right brained emotional benefits; the beauty of the offerings are duplicated flawlessly on the web, and as proposal 'stories' made for the Ipad.

Catalogues based on the buyer's psychology also duplicate the experience on the urbandwellers online web site. Every medium is designed with imagination. And humility. The humility is Larry's ability to effectively anticipate and answer the burning questions that matter most to his clients. That's the payoff that comes with heavy research into the needs of his buyers.

urbandwellers, it's really a marketing system. One I think all companies should study.

Larry claims some of my advice has helped him create his marketing vision. Maybe. But think Larry's marketing prowess is what will make urbandwellers so successful. And if there is anything I can suggest along the way, well, I'm honored.

It was like Brand Camp: Dayton, Ohio. It rained, but mostly because of severe brainstorms...

Dayton, Ohio -- Ink Stain -- was invited to brainSTORM (a definite precursor to RAINmaking, for sure) with DESIGN and IMAGE and BRAND JUICE of Denver, in a think tank with (insert major hair care brand) brand managers in Ohio, in a brand complex, an ideation birthplace for the heart and soul of new product ideas. My task was to help bring to life a new and secret hair product -- most likely because of my very own, well-known, goddess-like hair doos. (Ha, not the first major brand to ask for all of my beauty secrets).

What a fun place to build a brand, like a multi-colored brand gymnasium:

Brand savvy stalwarts dashed about consulting props and paperwork, then sequestered themselves in mini-think tanks, as they shot out ideas in a rain of brainstorm bullets. We did brand curls, and brand sit-ups and brand crunches, and brand yoga.

 Amazingly, the entire facility is just for thinking stuff up for the benefit of imminent, burgeoning, flowering, emerging brands.

It was like walking around a massive romper room for product breakthroughs - and a bit like a real play-house too, with massive tricycles to ride around on and mini basket ball hoopla, and props and art supplies...and when the lunch whistle blew, a massive brand buffet was wheeled in. 

 This is what BRAND CAMP is like, I thought.

Except, of course, there was that one brand interrogation room...where you make the emerging brand sweat, crack the case, make it talk, ask it every relevant question about where it was last seen and who it was with...then it spills its guts, rolls over, and is an accomplice to a major identity and sales path breakthrough.

- And yeah, we got an extra day in Dayton. (A tip for the wise: winter flights out of Chicago, highly, highly, unpredictable, connecting flights are a 50/50 chance)

But we had a lot of fun anyways, thanks to a brand crew that knows having a good laugh is part of the brand.