RockPoint Bank Brand Identity

“Our City Deserves a Local Bank”

RockPoint Bank Brand Identity

The founders and shareholders of RockPoint Bank believe it will fill the void left by the disappearance of truly local Chattanooga financial institutions. The newly planned bank will not only bring critical lending decisions back home, it will conduct every aspect of its operations in the best interests of local business owners, entrepreneurs, and their constituents.

Widgets & Stone worked closely with the team of founders, led by Hamp Johnston, Camille Daniel, Kerry Riley and Patrick Jensen to walk through the naming and branding process for the new bank.

The result is a dynamic mark, inspired by the region’s landscape and the city’s skyline. The symbol calls to mind upward movement, sailing and flying – an expression of the bold and adventurous endeavor of starting something new.

The capital campaign began in early 2020 and has certainly faced some challenges with COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, but the founding group has tremendous confidence in their position, purpose, and prospects. Their enthusiasm has RockPoint rapidly approaching their goal. Widgets & Stone looks forward to bringing the brand to life when the raise is complete and the bank is established in the community.

https://www.rockpointbank.com/

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Designer: Travis Hitchcock.

History in the Re-Making

History in the Re-Making

Logo for Healy & Co.

Healy & Company, LLC is a boutique commercial brokerage firm with a national reach based in Chattanooga, TN.  With deep roots within the community, (since 2002), Healy & Company has been among the top producers in the region in commercial transactions.

Widgets & Stone redesigned the Healy & Co web site in early 2018. When the company decided to shift away from its main identity being associated with SVN, owner John Healy asked the team at Widgets to create a logo with a sense of heritage and history. The team created a unique look that is sure to stand out in the competitive landscape of contemporary logo styles.

Designer Travis Hitchcock developed a vintage line rendering of the company’s offices and paired it with a customized version of the LHF Whistler typeface.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Travis Hitchcock.

Tinkering with Space

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Who you are is how you work

Tinker Ma Brand Identity

Although Tinker Ma is a new name and company, its collective experience and commitment to community are nothing new. Trey Wheeler and Thomas Palmer of Cogent Studio and Craig Peavy of PVDesign are joining under the new brand of Tinker Ma and are offering clients their more than 60 years of combined expertise in architecture and design.

Architecture is complex, but Tinker Ma’s process is simple: take an idea from the client, breathe life and art into and reflect it back into the world. Widgets & Stone employed that exact same process with the three partners throughout the naming and identity design process.

The design team worked closely with Trey, Thomas, Craig and collaborative partner 26 Tools to uncover the ‘why’ of their new endeavor and explore a variety of names and brand identity solutions.  

The final result is a design that tinkers with space (‘ma’ is japanese for “space”). A modular system that allows for experimenting, for playing within places, and for perfecting the spaces in between.

“Tinker Ma believes that who you are is how you work, and what you make, and the things you leave behind.”

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Art Direction: Travis Hitchcock; Design: Travis Hitchcock, Mark Slawson; Writing: 26 Tools; Photography: Cogent Build, PVDesign.

Ten Seasons

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Ten Seasons

Chattanooga FC Uniform Design

Widgets & Stone has designed the Chattanooga Football Club’s kits for the tenth time in the club’s history. 

Taking cues from what had come before (2009-2015, 2016, 2017), the design team used navy and white uniforms from the founding season, with touches of sky blue for accents. Drawing inspiration from partners/sponsors VW and vfl Wolfsburg, the designers created patterns out of dynamic linear elements to create the sense of movement and transition.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Travis Hitchcock; Production: Diadora USA; Photos: Ray Soldano. 

Soccer meets the Avant Garde

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The Avant Garde

Avant Soccer Identity Design

This consulting group grew a club from scratch in Chattanooga – one that has been extremely successful. After fielding many requests to replicate their success in other cities, they decided to start Avant Soccer. Avant Soccer experts are thoroughly convinced that the growth potential in American soccer is in markets of 1 million or smaller.

And because Avant Soccer believes that small markets are the future of American soccer, they offer the following to lower division clubs across North America:

· Branding
· Sponsorship Structure & Activation
· Budgets
· Business Management
· Ticket & Merchandise Sales
· Gameday Operations
· Marketing & Social Media
· Supporter Ownership

Widgets & Stone created an athletic identity with naming and logo design.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Naming: Matt Greenwell, Paul Rustand; Design: Travis Hitchcock, Mark Slawson, Brad Dicharry.

We Are The FC

We Are The FC

Chattanooga FC 2013 Ad Campaign

For the fifth season in a row, Widgets & Stone has developed a campaign for the NPSL soccer club, Chattanooga FC. This season’s theme has centered on including all Chattanoogans as part of “the FC.”

With copy developed by 26 Tools’ Caleb Ludwick and fantastic photography provided by Steven Llorca, Widgets & Stone collaborated with Alex Ogle of Tubatomic to create a commercial for the club. View it here.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Bradley Dicharry; Writing: Caleb Ludwick; Photography: Steven Llorca; Video: Alex Ogle.

For Love of the Game

Passion for the sport drives the club and the brand

Widgets & Stone’s team was tapped to help promote the Chattanooga FC brand for the fourth season in a row. Widgets designed and wrote everything from ads to promo materials, postcards to e-blasts, billboards to merchandise, uniforms to tickets. Built around the theme “For the Love of the Game”, the 2012 campaign highlights the club’s pure passion for the sport — playing and cheering out of sheer love, rather than for profits or fame.

The CFC board attributes team’s ongoing success (the largest attendance in the league) in large part to the high quality of the brand design, promotional materials and advertising. Widgets & Stone wishes the team and coaching staff all the best as they head off to San Diego compete in their second National Semifinal in the past three years!

See much more on our Chattanooga FC Flickr set.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Brad Dicharry; Writing: Caleb Ludwick; Photography: Steven Llorca; “For the love of” logo: Dustin Hysinger & Ashley Worley.

For the Love of Pig

Link 41 Brand Identity

Identity and design work done for Tom Montague and Trae Moore, owners and operators of Link 41 Artisan & Cured Meats. Widgets & Stone crafted a brand as carefully as these artisans craft their sausages and bacons. Communications created range from logo and tagline, to longer copy, packaging, environmental design, signage, advertising and a customized WordPress template. 

See more images on our Flickr slideshow.

green|spaces

Identity Design for Sustainable Building 

When green|spaces set out to change the way that buildings are constructed in Chattanooga’s downtown, the nonprofit project approached the project with design thinking front and center. Widgets & Stone and 26 Tools collaborated on the establishing the identity, then partnered with other talents (Ray Padron/Range Projects, Tubatomic, Haskell Sears) to design further projects.

The stated, measurable and achievable goals of green|spaces included enabling 20 LEED certified buildings in the downtown Chattanooga footprint within 3 years (a goal reached in even less time than that!), as well as helping 150 local contractors, designers and others to become LEED accredited professionals. For a city of Chattanooga’s size and — unbelievably — total lack of LEED buildings this was an earth-shaking vision.

The challenge was to communicate the scope of the project’s efforts, to its widely varied audiences. Contractors, architects and interior designers, commercial, building owners, City code inspectors and more needed to be connected with an incentive fund for commercial projects to be built green, certified sustainable and include high profile green features. And there was also a resource center for both commercial and residential projects, showcasing the best eco-friendly materials and methods available in the marketplace.

The brand also needed immediately to communicate the credibility and quality standards that it would uphold. A three year-timeline, after all, does not leave much time for building a reputation: green|spaces needed to bust out of the gates at top speed. The project’s name emphasized the directors’ belief that we do not need a sharp dividing line between urban park space (eco-beneficial) and buildings (eco-harmful) - that instead we want buildings that are green|spaces. 

The brand, likewise, called to mind collaboration, connectedness, and building blocks that — working together — build a greener good.

See other projects for green|spaces: signs & displays, interactive kiosk, green|light certification.

Identity Design - Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Art Direction: Bradley Dicharry; Designers: Bradley Dicharry, Matt Greenwell, Joseph Shipp. 

Zümfoot

Sunny, organic, stylish, holistically healthy shoes for a walkable world.

Naming, branding, packaging and environmental design.

Rebranding six stores from the Birkenstock Place

Stretching from Chattanooga to Cincinnati, Birkenstock Place retail footwear stores was an established chain that, for years, had carried primarily Birkenstocks. An established message of health and product quality were supported by brand repositioning efforts by the German footwear giant, including style input from superstar designer Yves Béhar and supermodel Heidi Klum. But with other great brands including Merrell, Keen and Dansko, the store owners decided that the store name was limiting growth potential.

Working with writer and brand strategist Caleb Ludwick, we dug into national trends and local markets, creating archetypes of customers (and potential customers), telling the stories of each and what tips them from awareness into purchasing activity. And we found that even with Birkenstock’s fashion focus, there was still often a perception that each pair came with a free membership to Armpit-hair Anonymous and Ukuleles-R-Us. Customers were looking for a shoe store that brought Birk health benefits, but also that look good. So we began by foregrounding design, while retaining strong focus on health and clever thinking.

The new shoe store name, Zümfoot, is a made-up word that communicates : Good for your feet and good for your life; style that is not excessively precious; comfort, honesty and healthy. (See the logo here.)

We also developed a retail concept built for growth, including unusual store design, unique product offerings, brand implementation guidelines for everything from answering the telephone to music played in the store, and customer service tips that communicate the right expectations with every customer touch. Zümfoot, a store offering sunny, organic, stylish, holistically healthy shoes for a walkable world. (Interior and concept designs here.)

Packaging, advertising and point-of-purchase signage evolved to give a unified voice to Zümfoot’s brand personality, while at the same time to showcase the many individual shoe brands offered. (Packaging and advertising images here.)

Return on branding investment

The strength of the brand concept and design was demonstrated when a shoe manufacturer bought licensing rights to create a Zümfoot brand of shoes, for 4x the cost of the original brand creation.

See all the images on the Widgets & Stone photostream.