Accelerating Growth through Brand

April 26, 2026

Accelerating growth through brand

Alleo Brand Identity

Hospice of Chattanooga has a proud legacy of providing compassionate care to patients and families across the Southeast. As the organization expanded its services—adding pediatric and perinatal care and growing into multiple states—it needed a unified brand to connect its network while honoring local roots. We partnered closely with the executive team to lead a full brand strategy, rebranding, and naming process. The challenge: unify a variety of distinct organizations under one cohesive identity without sacrificing local recognition.

Together, we created a new name, brand architecture, logo, and visual identity system. The resulting brand—Alleo Health System—serves as an umbrella for all service providers, maintaining existing local names while aligning them through a cohesive visual and symbolic system.

This strategic rebrand fueled extraordinary growth, expanding Alleo’s reach to over 80 organizations in 15 states, driving revenues from deficit to seven-figure profits, and culminating in a transformative acquisition that established a new health-focused nonprofit with a $112 million endowment.

Services: Naming, Visual Identity + Brand Architecture, Writing, Website Designs (multiple), Ads, Outdoor, Video

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design Direction: Liz Tapp; Design: Travis Hitchcock, Mark Slawson, Athene Ruiz, John Le, Ben Dicks; Writing: Jacob Biba; Photography: Dotson Commercial.

Talent on Display

February 2, 2023

Talent on Display

A family of logos and websites

For over 35 years, Displaycraft has been making excellent custom displays and fixtures. They engineer every aspect of permanent display and fixtures creation with worry-free, full service capabilities, regardless of project scale. Over time the company has expanded its array of services, and the new ownership group decided to showcase that by bringing three companies under one umbrella, DCI Manufacturing.

Widgets & Stone used the long standing Displaycraft logo as a jumping off point for the look of the entire logo family. New websites for each entity followed soon after, with streamlined graphics and content.

DCI Manufacturing is a family of companies built to meet manufacturing needs. It consists of Displaycraft, K2 Metals, and DC Lab. K2 Metals offers complete metal fabrication — design, production, and assembly services to customers across a wide variety of industries. DC Lab is result of their unique ability to work alongside entrepreneurs and craftsman to offer advice and expertise as they develop and scale their product.

Creative Director: Paul Rustand; Design Director: Liz Tapp; Designers: Liz Tapp, Mark Walter, Brad Dicharry; Writer: Ross Hagan.

Coloring Outside the Lines

October 21, 2022

Coloring Outside the Lines

Tucker Build Office Graphics

Tucker Build is a commercial construction team, made up of design-build specialists. They know every project is unique, and that's why they break the mold again and again for their clients. Tucker Build’s expertise is in bespoke planning, managing, and building. Their process is defined by the specifics of each project and their job is to think of everything.

Widgets & Stone captured this sensibility when we created the Tucker Build identity, and we sought to expand upon it in the design of the graphics for their new office. Designed by architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen, the office embodied a clean, Modernist minimalism. Our team embraced that style and expanded on it in our approach to environmental graphics.

The office is decorated with standoff black and white photographs of Tucker Build’s work, accentuated with bright swatches of red and orange that break the edges and spill across the walls. The results are dynamic, yet with a bit of restraint that ties the space together, across hallways and rooms.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Art Direction & Design: Mark Walter; Fabrication, Printing & Installation: Steven Eddy, PSS.

The Making of an Icon

October 19, 2022

The Making of an Icon

Catalog Design

ICON Structures are designed with the same care as architectural and fine art structures, and needed a catalog that helps pronounce that. Bold, colorful photography and vibrant, red typography lead readers through a streamlined narrative of featured products, style guides, and more.

Design Direction: Liz Tapp; Art Direction & Design: Emily Ricks.

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.

Crafted by Hand

July 20, 2022

Crafted by Hand

Labels for Grayton Beer

From the brew to the artwork, everything about Grayton Beer's latest special release is handmade the old way. Thirteen Silver Dollars Barleywine draws on the old-world tradition of American Barleywine. And if it wasn't patriotic enough, they put some of it away to age in bourbon barrels. And when it emerged, they called it High & Mighty.

The Florida brewery asked us to create hand-illustrated labels to bring these two country-song-inspired names to life. Art Director Mark Walter literally handcrafted the main components of the design in order to capture the essence behind the brewing techniques.

Art Direction & Design: Mark Walter.

The Full Spectrum of Learning

July 7, 2022

The Full Spectrum of Learning

Lighthouse Kids Website

Lighthouse Kids is a children’s learning center that serves the Autism community at all varying stages of development.

Lighthouse Kids approached us with an idea to build a website that can grow with the organization as more locations and internal developments emerge. The website needed to be a central hub for resources and connections for the Autism community, with a focus on functionality and usability for caregivers and physicians, alike.

The website we designed and developed encourages community connection by inviting caregivers, family members, and career applicants, to engage with Lighthouse Kids events and discourse. Interactive forms across the site allow caregivers to communicate how and when they want to engage with the organization, while calendars encourage and guide connections within the Lighthouse Kids community.

The Lighthouse Kids’ logo guided the direction of the design, from typography to color palette. A slab serif with playful terminals make a statement in large-scale titling, while thin sans serif Raleway body text synthesizes seamlessly with modern UI expectations.

Handing over the reins to their new website, we equipped Lighthouse Kids with the tools and knowledge they will need to continue building their website as the organization develops and expands.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design Direction: Liz Tapp; Design: Emily Ricks; Technical Support: George Bairaktaris.

Not Your Run of the Mill

June 6, 2022

Not Your Run of the Mill

Brand design for Mill Town

The Standard Coosa Mill was once an icon of Chattanooga’s manufacturing might. Neglected at the heart of the Ridgedale neighborhood—a shell of the building has stood for decades, empty and in disrepair— a stark contrast to Chattanooga’s celebrated city center just two miles North East.

Benwood, Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, and Collier Construction have formed a partnership that will soon revitalize this abandoned 20-acre parcel. Through a sustainable redevelopment model, Milltown will deliver a unique Mixed-Use and Multi-family community—boasting contemporary office space, ground-floor retail and dining, coffee, single family stand-alone homes and townhouses, community center, public plaza, green space, and more.

With a long history of partnering with Collier Construction, Matt Greenwell led the project to help name and brand the new development. The history of the place and the buildings helped provide inspiration both names — Mill Town for the development, Coosa Mill for the redesign of the factory — as well as for the design. The diamond shape of the now defunct Standard Coosa Thatcher Mill provided the foundation of the Mill Town mark. Bright bold colors and typography were selected to stand out in the environment.

Along with all the new homes being built in the Mill Town development is the anchor structure of the old factory, Coosa Mill. The refurbished water tower provided the inspiration for the abstracted enclosure of the Coosa Mill logo, which mirrors the geometry of the Mill Town logo.

While very much still a work in progress, the Mill Town identity is slowly beginning to take shape. Signage, wayfinding, promotion and web design are helping to build this new and exciting development in the heart of the city.

Learn more about Mill Town here.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design Direction: Matt Greenwell; Design: Matt Greenwell, Mark Slawson, Emily Ricks, Liz Tapp, Noah Marlowe.

Civiq Duty

May 18, 2022

Civiq Duty

Graphic Series

CIVIQ is a quarterly event hosted by the Chattanooga Design Studio, an independent non-profit community resource that promotes excellence in urban design through education, facilitation, and collaboration. The program introduces and humanizes national and international movements in urban design by showcasing visionary work being done by practitioners in other cities.

Widgets & Stone has been designing posters and promotional graphics for the program since 2019.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Athene Ruiz, Noah Marlowe, Stephanie Fast, Emily Ricks, Paul Rustand.

Monkey See, MonkeDAO

May 4, 2022

Monkey See, MonkeDAO

New identity for the first NFT DAO on Solana

MonkeDAO is, the first NFT Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) built on Solana cryptocurrency. The group works to provide unparalleled value to our members and the Solana ecosystem through community-led projects, connections and innovations. With the success of their initial NFTs (unique 8-bit Monkey portraits), the community is seeking to launch several new initiatives and needed a brand that could take them to the next stage of growth.

MonkeDAO built a culture that's quirky, fun, and irreverent, but also fairly bold — investing in the future of web3 while operating according to some pretty high libertarian ideals around rights to privacy, democratic processes, and the like. Kind of a fascinating collection of traits — playful, but also professional.

We wanted the visual impression of the brand to reflect that quirkiness—to feel quite bold and sure of itself while embracing some wonky, unconventional aesthetic decisions. The odd contrast in the logotype, the cheeky rotation of the "D", the use of color to create moments of high contrast, the heavy black lines in the icons—these decisions are all meant to feel quirky, but self-assured. Not subtle, but not wacky either.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Mark Walter.

Telling Stories that Matter

April 26, 2022

Stories that Matter

Chattamatters Visual Identity

Chattamatters is a brand new project from The Enterprise Center in partnership with The City of Chattanooga. Civic Storytelling Director, Mary Helen Montgomery, and Videographer & Motion Graphics Producer, Ian-Alijah Bey, have teamed up to lead the project. Pitched as a civic storytelling initiative, Chattamatters aims to "promote civic engagement and help residents understand some of the biggest issues facing our community (and how to address them)".

We worked with the Chattamatters team to design a visual identity that is bold and optimistic in tone, straightforward and approachable in execution. The visual strategy is meant to center the content and not the brand—to unite the series of stories with a cohesive aesthetic that does not complicate the user's experience.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand, Design Direction & Design: Mark Walter.

Better Together

April 7, 2022

Better Together

Chattanooga FC 2022 Uniform Designs

As the Chattanooga Football Club entered its 13th season (and third with a professional men’s team), the club announced that it would be relaunching the women’s team which had been discontinued in 2018. Widgets & Stone created designs to reflect the campaign theme of “Better Together.”

The club, in deep collaboration with the design team, landed on a set of designs that expresses both the unity and individuality of the two teams. Each design highlights the center of the jersey, whether with a dynamic split of two organic patterns or with the point of several chevron arrows. Each design is unique and connotes a sense movement, creativity and teamwork.

Both teams wear the same colors: navy and sky for the field players, green or purple for the keepers. One of the only two differences in the designs is in the navy kits: chevrons for the women, the split pattern for the men. The other key difference is the color scheme of the logo: the women use sky as the primary color, while the men flip and use navy instead.

The results are winners with the club and fans alike. Our hopes are that they will propel the teams to be winners on the field as well!

Creative Director: Paul Rustand; Designers: Emily Ricks, Mark Walter, Noah Marlowe; Photography: Ray Soldano.

To the Rescue

February 18, 2022

To the Rescue

Logo for Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus

In 2000 volunteer firefighter James Wessel helped his local fire department purchase a used firetruck. When the truck broke down on its very first call to a house fire and the house was lost completely, they went back to the salesman who brokered the deal looking for compensation. As it turned into a lengthy legal battle, James decided that he could do better. He founded Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus in 2001, buying, fixing and selling one fire truck that first year.

In the twenty plus years since then, the company has grown by leaps and bounds — buying, fixing and selling hundreds and hundreds of vehicles every year. But as the company’s reputation and brand equity has grown, the original logo began to lag behind, not adequately expressing their integrity and expertise.

After a failed attempt at logo redesign a few years ago, we were asked to come the rescue. We created a new logo that embraced their rich heritage but also would take them into the next era of growth. We developed a flexible logo system that could accommodate all the many applications: digital, print, apparel and more.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Mark Walter; Illustration: David Webb.

Going the Extra Mile

February 18, 2022

Going the Extra Mile

Reliance Partners Environmental Graphics

Reliance Partners helps provide trucking insurance for freight companies – whether they have just one truck or as many as a thousand. The company’s philosophy of going the extra mile for their customers is paying off in dividends and Reliance is growing. So much so that the company has moved into a much larger facility, building out a couple floors to make room for all their employees.

The architects and interior designers at Franklin Architects tapped us to create interior and environmental graphics to bring the Reliance brand to life in the new space. Working closely with COO Laura Ann Howell, our team created signs, window treatments, break room graphics, and “instagram-able scenes” throughout the office.

The end result goes the extra mile to reinforce the Reliance brand in the contemporary professional setting, while adding dynamic visuals to the decor.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design Direction: Liz Tapp; Design: Mark Walter.

Spec-tacular Building

February 17, 2022

Spec-tacular Building

Brimstone Builds Logo

As Nashville and the surrounding region have continued to grow in population, a new spec home building company saw an opportunity to grow as well. Brimstone Builds sought out Widgets & Stone to create a new logo to help them compete in the market.

Our solution is far from cookie-cutter and is built to last for many, many years.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Mark Walter.

Be Green, Be Good

January 21, 2022

Be Green, Be Good

Green for Good Logo

The Green for Good idea was spawned from Startup Week CHA, in which entrepreneurs were invited to pitch ideas to the city for ways to inspire better recycling practices. Brian Wright’s Green for Good was one of four ideas chosen by the city and awarded grant money to pilot the program and assess the results.

The Green for Good concept is a threefold plan: identify fun, inventive ways to recycle in the home, school, and at work. Businesses and organizations on the Southside that will be participating in the pilot program for the month of January. The Green for Good team will be collecting the recycling on a weekly basis.

Proceeds from the collections will benefit Habit for Humanity. Each participating business will compete to win a Green for Good prize pack.

Widgets & Stone donated a logo to help the cause get off to a good green start.

Creative Direction & Design: Paul Rustand.

Tinkering with Space, Online

January 19, 2022

Tinkering with Space, Online

Web site for Tinker Ma

Tinker Ma offers clients their more than 60 years of combined expertise in architecture and design. The name is a play on words, as architects tinker with space (‘ma’ is japanese for “space”). Widgets & Stone created the adaptive logo and identity system for the firm in 2019, and returned to help build a functional and dependable web site in 2021.

Tinker Ma is prolific, with many team members producing many projects around the southeast. With their old web site, they could not update it themselves and had to rely on developers to do it for them, and as a result, the site did not showcase newer work. We set them up on a new platform and gave them a tutorial on how to add and change information themselves, allowing Tinker Ma to stay up to date.

Visit the web site.

Design Direction: Liz Tapp; Design: Liz Tapp, Noah Marlowe; Photography: provided by Tinker Ma.

A Good Business

December 17, 2021

A Good Business

Relationship Business design identity

Relationship Business is the latest endeavor of Goodstory (and Counsel Creative) founder, Kenny Morgan. As a writer, podcaster, and coach, Morgan champions a message of people-over-profit—relationships before business. Keen for a fresh perspective, Kenny asked Widgets & Stone to build a flexible visual identity to unite his many projects. The resulting system hinges on a versatile typographic strategy softened by a nature-made color palette and hand-drawn flourishes.

Be sure to keep an out eye for the book and the podcast as they roll out in the coming months!

Design Direction & Design: Mark Walter; Photography: Goodstory.

Making Smiles Blossom

November 30, 2021

Rodriguez Family Dentistry Logo

With her practice expanding to a new location, Maricela Rodriguez approached Widgets & Stone to redesign her Family Dentistry that would communicate the energy that distinguishes their team.

The Rodriguez visual identity consists of flexible a system of elements—the logo, typography, and color palette—that ground the Dentistry in fresh, modern aesthetics. The Rodriguez “flower” symbol features a halo of overlapping linear forms of petal shapes, playfully made of the iconic tooth. The brand typeface is styled in bold and all caps to increase legibility and structure, while the looping nature and color palette of the logomark counteract with softness and whimsy.

The logo design required a malleable logo that could work as new partners were added, or even if the practice were passed to another dentist altogether. As a means of remedying the unknown, the logomark was built with the flexibility to alter or remove the surname.

Creative Direction: Paul Rustand; Design: Emily Ricks.

Hello Monty on the Corner

November 24, 2021

Hello Monty on the Corner

Signage & Graphics

We told you about helping our long time collaborator Rob Gentry as he and his brother Clay worked to start the new restaurant and bar, Hello Monty. The construction was completed and Hello Monty opened to the public in October of 2020. We also were able to help put some finishing touches on the beautiful building remodel Rob and Clay did with Tucker Build: the signs.

Designed to be a classic neighborhood joint, Rob and Clay wanted the signage to be minimal and to complement the building. Art Director Mark Walter expanded on Designer Travis Hitchcock’s stacked type logo and identity to make an elegant sign that took advantage of being on the corner. A bright “Hello” neon sign in the script from the logo lights the way to the slightly hidden location of the front door.

Inside the bar, Mark added a wall mural of a vintage map. While now known as Main Street, it used to be called Montgomery Avenue, and that was the inspiration for the name.

Creative Director: Paul Rustand; Art Director: Mark Walter; Designers: Mark Walter, Travis Hitchcock; Exterior Sign Production/Installation: Victory Signs; Wall Mural Production/Installation: Adams Litho.