Eat Here Now

June 3, 2025

After years of experience with Big River Grille, restaurateur Rob Gentry decided to open up The Blue Plate – a modern take on a traditional diner. The fresh and creative menu was complemented by the sleek contemporary interiors designed by architect Roddy Creedon of Allied Architecture. Our team was tasked with developing a logo and identity design that captured the spirit of the place and the food.

Over a period 15 years we created brand design and marketing tools for Chattanooga’s metropolitan diner. As the restaurant grew and changed over the years, so did the branding. Our team designed strategies and messaging for digital, print, photography, interior design and so much more.

Early designs leaned heavily on typography, creating layouts that brought to mind neon signs, city streets, wax paper and diner marquees. When great photography of the food and drinks became available, they became part of the design language of the brand.

In later years, the designs evolved to a condensed version of the type on flat color with halftone patterns, always paired short and clever writing. This style followed the relaunch of The Blue Plate’s bar as a separate, sister establishment: Local 191. It used similar type and half tones, but with complimentary colors.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Brad Dicharry, Joseph Shipp, Travis Hitchcock, Mark Slawson, Liz Tapp, Stephanie Fast; Photography: Grant Dotson, Graham Yelton; Writing: Caleb Ludwick.

Start Your Ascent

October 12, 2022

Start Your Ascent

H3LIUM Brand Design

H3LIUM is a Web3 native company with the mission of onboarding new builders and companies into the ecosystem to pursue unique fundraising opportunities — through creative services and unparalleled industry expertise. H3LIUM Studio is a full service creative agency with leading industry expertise in all things web3. Their team provides the highest quality creative offerings through in-house talent and represented artists.

The H3LIUM platform was the brainchild of the creators of the Balloonsville NFT collection. They saw great potential in expanding the types of collections they offered, as well as growing out their suite of services for others seeking to get into the sometimes confusing world of NFTs.

We helped guide them through the process of creating, naming and branding a new umbrella company that could house all the different kinds of products and services they were offering, and would offer in the future.

When it came to the design solution, our team thought a lot about the metaphor of flexibility or malleability — things being shape-shifting, scalable, adaptable. People who are interested in Web3 seem to have a shared interest in products and projects that are multidimensional and hard to categorize. They seem to fit whatever space is needed, much like the gas of Helium. The extreme thins and thicks in the type family embody this as well.

The final result is a design that embraces freedom and exploration, pushing boundaries to see what the worldwide web can actually be.

Creative Director: Paul Rustand; Art Director: Mark Walter; Designer: Noah Marlowe.

Niedlov’s Rebrand

May 22, 2020

Love to Knead, Knead to Love II

Niedlov’s Rebrand

Inspired by trips overseas, Niedlov’s new owner Erik Zilen tasked us with updating their look in hopes of recreating the transportive feeling that comes with setting foot inside the same venerable bakeries he visited in Europe.

The challenge was to update one of Main Street’s most recognizable, and established logos and create something that was going to walk the fine line between being refreshing and new, while also still retaining the timelessness of the previous logo. And to update an original logo that we designed in 2004.

The end result was a wordmark inspired by the handcrafted, old-world typefaces seen in documents from the late 1700s, paired with a color system that showcases the unique ingredients that have made Niedlov’s a Chattanooga staple for the past twenty-plus years.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Mark Slawson, Travis Hitchcock.

ENJOY

April 17, 2019

ENJOY

Blue Plate / Local 191 shuttle wrap

Widgets & Stone has been working with Chattanooga’s metropolitan diner, The Blue Plate, for over a decade. The design team also helped develop the bar brand that grew out of the Blue Plate space in 2012: Local 191.

As part of brand development, the design team has been involved in marketing efforts like billboards, advertisements, social media and email design. For fall of 2018 the Blue Plate and 191 experimented with a bus wrap on downtown Chattanooga’s free electric shuttle service.

The designs celebrate the personalities of each brand while still working together to create a cohesive wrap.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Travis Hitchcock.

Streaming Made Simple

August 6, 2014

Streaming Made Simple

Boxcast: Live HD Video, from Anyone to Everyone

Boxcast is a pocket-sized breakthrough technology that makes it simple for anyone, anywhere to stream live video to everyone, everywhere.

Boxcast is a startup with a few years already under its belt. The company’s leadership was finding that the brand identity and communications materials it had created early on weren’t quite doing the job. So a couple of their experienced investors turned to Widgets & Stone for help.

Led by Mandy Meredith and Paul Rustand, the team also pulled in writer and strategist Caleb Ludwick of 26 Tools. The team quickly and efficiently produced several possible solutions for identity and communications, resulting in a clean, clear and straightforward look and feel.

Along with identifying five key target audience archetype stories, and ways to speak to those audiences, Widgets & Stone and 26 Tools created a new logo, design styles, photography guidelines, strap lines, headlines and explanatory copy.

Web designers Alex Ogle and Jason Fritts of Tubatomic joined in to establish web styles and templates for the client to implement.

“I have seen many presentations by nationally renowned creative agencies over the years,” said investor Tobey Maloney, “But this was by far the most impressive. The quantity and quality of concepts delivered on the timeline and budget was spectacular.”