With nearly 100 corporate identity projects under my belt, I’ve helped shape the branding of startups, established companies, enterprise-level organizations, and even game studios. From healthcare providers and SaaS platforms to creative agencies and video game developers, I have built brands that resonate with their audiences and stand the test of time. Whether creating a logo for a new company, evolving an outdated design, or scaling a corporate identity across digital, print, and interactive platforms, I bring years of experience and an eye for detail to ensure that your brand not only meets its goals but exceeds them.
Corporate identity is more than a logo. It’s your company’s personality. It’s the first impression you leave on clients, partners, investors, and users—a handshake that should inspire confidence and trust. My mission is to craft corporate identities that reflect your vision, resonate with your audience, and stand out in a crowded market.
What is corporate identity?
Your organization’s first impression
Corporate identity is the visual and emotional embodiment of your brand’s essence. It’s how you communicate your organization’s story and values at a glance. A strong corporate identity is cohesive, professional, and impactful—leaving a lasting impression on your audience. On the other hand, an outdated, inconsistent, or amateurish identity can undermine even the best products and services.
I work to ensure your branding reflects not just where your company is today but where you want it to be in five, ten, or fifteen years. Whether you’re a startup looking to punch above your weight or an established company seeking to refresh its image, your brand should communicate your message cleanly, clearly, and confidently.
My approach isn’t about imposing a personal design style; it’s about uncovering your company’s unique personality and expressing it in a way that resonates with your target audience. Whether the aim is to appear like a Fortune 500 company or a personable small business, I tailor every element of the design to fit your vision.
Corporate identity examples
Logo & Stationery
IP Secure
Logo & Website
Prime Bodywork & Massage
Mailer
Half Moon Power Yoga
Trade show booth, print collateral, infographics
updox
Your organization's lasting impression
Defending the brand
Once your corporate identity is created, consistency is key to maintaining its impact. Whether it’s a logo, business card, website, or digital ad, every application of your brand must adhere to the same standards to preserve its integrity.
I not only create corporate identities but also ensure they are applied correctly across all touchpoints. This includes developing corporate identity guidelines that define logo usage, color schemes, typography, and more. These guidelines act as a playbook for internal and external collaborators, ensuring your brand looks cohesive and professional no matter where it appears.
From ensuring your logo appears correctly in a magazine ad to overseeing the production of promotional materials, I act as an advocate for your brand, protecting it from inconsistencies and ensuring it always shines.
Your organization's evolving brand
While consistency is essential, your brand must also grow with your organization. Over time, markets shift, audiences evolve, and companies expand into new industries. A skilled designer understands how to adapt a corporate identity to reflect these changes without losing the core essence of the brand.
Whether it’s refreshing an aging logo, adding new design elements for digital platforms, or scaling the brand for a broader audience, I approach every update with care. Gradual, strategic adjustments ensure your brand evolves seamlessly, maintaining its professionalism and impact.
Tailoring corporate identity to your needs
Branding packages
Corporate identity encompasses a diverse range of products and services, making it challenging for many clients to clearly define and communicate their branding needs to a designer—whether they require a single element or a comprehensive suite of solutions. I’ve found that these are the common groupings.
Logo OnlyFor startups or individuals on a tight budget, a logo can serve as the foundation of their brand. While simple, it’s a powerful first step.
Basic Includes a logo, business cards, letterhead, and other essentials. Often, additional elements like presentation templates or notepads are added based on the client’s needs.
Marketing Package A comprehensive set of materials that includes marketing-focused assets like sales sheets, white papers, ads, and infographics. These are designed to reflect the brand’s identity across both print and digital platforms.
Special Projects From trade show displays to vehicle wraps, these one-off projects require seamless integration with the existing brand.
Branding stages
Many clients find it beneficial to start with a basic corporate identity and add new elements as their needs evolve. This approach ensures that each piece is created with purpose, avoiding wasted effort on assets that may never be used. It also allows the brand to grow naturally, adapting to new opportunities and challenges.
Let's build your brand!
Your corporate identity is the cornerstone of your organization’s success. Whether you’re starting from scratch, refreshing an outdated brand, or scaling an existing identity, I bring the expertise, creativity, and dedication to make your vision a reality.
Your corporate logo is your company’s first impression to prospective clients and customers. First impressions are hard to overcome, and most of the time you won’t be there to try.
It is crucial that a seasoned pro with tons of branding experience leads you through the process. And that’s where I come in.
With more than 60 companies of all sizes branded and rebranded from the corporate logo design to everything that comes afterwards, you can trust that I know the pitfalls and opportunities presented in this very important time in a company’s evolution.
Contents
EVALUATING YOUR CURRENT CORPORATE LOGO
The first step is to detach as much as possible from any personal feelings or other connections you may have with your current corporate logo design, to look at it with new eyes, to look at it as much as possible like your clients and customers will be looking at it. If you’re unable to, try to ask a handful of strangers, people who don’t know you or the company, what their impressions are of the company that this logo represetnts.
Don’t lead them. Ask them things like, “How big do you think this company is?” “How long do you think this company has been in business?” “Is this a foreign or a domestic company?” “What business do you think this company is in?” and “Is this company still in business?” Some or all of their answers might shock you. Just try to go in expecting the worst, because most company logos can use improvement. You’re not alone.
Not all of the logos below in my design portfolio tell specifically what each business does, but all of them tell a client or customer that there is a certain level of sophistication. They all impart a clear mood or tone of the company’s business. They all indicate that the companies are probably current, not decades old. And they all communicate a certain proficiency and confidence in what they do.
So now you’ve either seen it or seen it through strangers’ eyes and you understand it’s time for a change. But how can you transition your company into the next phase without that logo that’s meant so much to you?
Maybe you scratched it out on a napkin during a special, inspired moment when you were first starting out. Maybe your favorite niece was an artists and you were proud to let her create it. Maybe initially you didn’t have any money to do it right. Whatever the reason, you owe it to yourself to hold that old logo in your memory, but to move on. You, your employees, and your company’s success depends on it more than you can imagine.
YOUR CORPORATE LOGO’S REACH
In addition to being your company’s first impression, your corporate logo design has a wider reach than you might imagine.
Every design decision you will every make for your company, must relate in some way to the corporate logo, from the color of your trade show booth, to the orientation of your logo on vertical banners, how small it can appear at low resolution. It informs what your business cards look like, your sales sheets, your brick and mortar signage, your website, your app, your company vehicles, and a never-ending continuing list.
Additionally, your new corporate logo has the power to create whatever image in your clients’ or customers’ minds. If you’re a 10-person shop, an improved corporate logo can suggest that you could be a 100-person operation. What I try to do when creating a corporate logo is identify what the perfect business in your area of expertise would look like, what tone they would set, what reaction they are trying to elicit, and work from there.
Now Is Always time to evaluate your CORPORATE LOGO
So again, decouple your emotions from your current corporate logo. I’ll help you right your ship, using the wisdom and guidance I’ve gained over my years as a a professional designer who has done this hugely important work successfully dozens of times before.
Graphic design for UX/UI, Websites, Print, and Digital
From a technical perspective, print and digital design are differentiated by units, resolutions, and types of output. Print is designed in points and picas, sometimes inches and millimeters: web is designed in pixels. Print output has always fallen in the 100-600 pixels per inch (ppi), depending upon the need, where digital output is wholly dependent upon the size of the screen on which it is being viewed—72 to nearly 600 ppi as of this post. Print is mostly PDFs with the occasional exception, while digital is wide open with a plethora of vector to raster file types. From a client/partner’s perspective it’s all about how the end user will view and/or use the designed product. Will the customer be holding it or will he/she be viewing it from 1000 feet away? Will they need to be prompted to call/email or will they be clicking it, etc. [See Related Services on this page for a breakdown of the types of work associated with each of these design categories, including links to portfolios showcasing some of the work Company Man Design has done.]
Print vs Digital
Whether considering print design and digital design jobs, the distinction between the two is largely irrelevant. A designer either has or doesn’t have enough experience to be confident designing certain rare or complicated types of work. In the end, good design is good design.
Good Graphic Design Is Good Graphic Design
The check list of design is fairly, almost surprisingly, small:
There’s a design space (even if that design space is flexible as with responsive websites)
There are client/partner goals and requirements—target demographic, message and tone, branding elements, and text and imagery
There is a clear call-to-action (or multiple ones)
And there are vendor, publication, and/or other output considerations—screen, print, and (in the case of copy and scripting) broadcast
But, again, it’s all design. The designer takes all the requirements (and recognizes and alerts you to to any that may be missing) and creates an effective piece, meaning one that is well-designed, is strongly-messaged, and that is presented to the correct target demographic at the right time and in the most accessible and user-friendly medium to ensure a business-positive action on their part.
Sounds simple, right?
Eggs and Baskets
Though we’ve established that it’s not a competition between print and digital, that’s not to say that one is better than the other FOR YOU. Even then, the choice usually isn’t a stark one of one or the other; rather, it’s a matter of how much marketing emphasis should be assigned at a particular time. Some clients may gain more general benefit from print or vice versa, but usually the distribution of resources is on a case-by-case or campaign-by-campaign basis. Over the last six years of our relationship with one of our longest-standing clients, there are been phases where we focused nearly 100% of our efforts on print. At other times, that same client’s focus was split 50/50 between print and digital efforts. They upped their digital game leading up to trade shows and other events, when they were in the midst of relocating their home office, and each time they have expanded into new markets. All the while, print has proceeded at the same pace.
Company Man Design has experience designing nearly all types of work all channels: print, digital, and web. Additionally, we are uniquely experienced to aid your organization in making these important choices is how to most wisely distribute your marketing resources.
CONTACT US
Bad players in business are like foxes, smiling and promising while hiding plans to eat your tasty chicken body. In this analogy, I’m the faithful farm dog who dedicates itself to protecting you from those foxes.I believe most graphic designers are proficient and ethical. On a professional level, a few bad players can taint the graphic design industry’s broader perception. However, on the individual client level—I believe that’s the level that matters most—a bad design experience is almost always an emotional and monetary offense. Even if I can’t make the bad experiences disappear, I’ve dedicated a large part of my career to ensuring better design experiences, one project, and one client at a time.Too Much Bad DesignI’m continually amazed at how much bad design there is out there. As a graphic designer, I’m cursed to see it all. It shows up as color choices that assault the eyes or leave the sight-impaired scratching their heads. Often, it’s type: poor letter-spacing, awkward alignments, and mystifying font choices. The killer for me, though, is how many terrible logos and poorly-designed websites I run across. I can’t count the number of clichéd logos, logos that do something cute its letters, or logos that had to have been designed by a loved-one or an amateur.
But I can handle a world riddled with bad design. Bad design can be pointed out and corrected. What burns me, what brings out my fight, is learning about clients’ bad design experiences.
Too Many Bad Design Experiences
Bad design experiences come from a variety of causes. In increasing order of darkness, they are
Innocence/Ignorance: With the ubiquity of design programs that advertise themselves as DIY, there’s the appearance of an over-abundance of overconfident designers, or designers who believe they’re capable of more than they are.
Fudging: A designer can add to their portfolio pieces that they didn’t work on by themselves, giving the impression that you’ll be getting that quality of work. Alternatively, a designer can choose to show only the tip of the iceberg, meaning you see the 10% of the very best and not the 90% rubbish. Whether this is done innocently or in full knowledge, it’s misrepresentation.
Premeditated Deception: Though hit-and-run episodes portrayed by unscrupulous designers are rare in the scheme of things, they do happen. I’ve had clients who paid deposits only to be ghosted. Others worked with designers who under-delivering work and threatened to sue. Another client had her websites erased after a disagreement. And there is an endless line of similar stories beyond those.
To right the wrongs, my mission has always been two-fold:
To always ensure good design experiences. Doing so gives clients a benchmark of what to insist upon going forward. It also improves the chances they will return to me for more design; and,
To replace bad design experiences with positive ones. I have a chance to right clients’ perceptions about our industry. And, again, it increases the chances of repeat business.
Never Too Safe
Because I know not everyone can go with my design services, you’ll need to know a few things to keep yourself safe. I could write pages on this topic, but most of the tips I would provide fall into three basic categories. And, between you and me, only the last one matters.
Look past the glitz of flashy websites, stunning presentations, and motion graphics for substance.
Listen past the confident sales pitches, the thumping music, and the too-good-to-be-true offers for truth.
Demand that all design expectations, costs, fees, dates, and agreement details are in writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s text, email, or contract. I prefer email so I can keep everything in one project-titled thread. When both parties do what they’ve agreed to do, how and when they’ve agreed to do it, and for the price they’ve agreed to in advance, there’s no room for a bad design experience.
Never Too Many Testimonials
Thankfully, I have created many good design experiences. Here are some of the testimonials from my many happy clients.
Testimonials
I gave Thomas very loose parameters for my company brand, business cards, and corporate website, then let him go. He produced something better than what I’d imagined.
Brian AllenPrimary, Odyssey Design Studios, LLC
Thomas exceeded expectations with our logo design and website. He kept me informed each step, making sure I was satisfied. He made it easy and stress-free.
Chasity NelsonPrime Bodywork Massage
Thomas and his team are the epitome of professionalism. They completed my website clean-up with awesome execution. And they never pressured me to build a whole new site. So happy I found them.
Chloe ReedPrimary, Glam Nailz
Founders of new companies need partners, not suppliers. My experience with Thomas was such a partnership, throwing himself into the project as if it were his own.
Will KeyserFounder, Venture Founders, LLC
Thomas did a wonderful job designing my corporate logo. I’ll definitely recommend him to my friends and associates.
Yamel GonzalesPrimary, SetPoint Refrigerations LLC
My experience with Thomas was smooth. I provided basic info about us and our services and he produced a full multi-company website and corporate logos for all of our entities. We’re impressed and proud.
Keith SampleThe Greenbox / Alamo City Services
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LET’S WORK!
Posters are big, colorful, attention-grabbing and relatively inexpensive to product. However, the particulars of their design and production present unique challenges best left to a professional.
Regarding design, amateurs or less-experienced designers are frequently tempted to fill a poster corner-to-corner with text and images until the viewer’s eye is has no clear starting point or natural flow.
Regarding production, due to their size, posters often require special printing vendors, paper stock, mounting, and framing.
Since posters are such a good value-for-effect proposition, let me handle the design, production, and delivery of your posters to ensure optimal quality and effect.
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