Role: Creative Director and Project Lead - Managing a team of fourteen designers and copywriters.

Before Marion Design Co. began creating branding material for Marion Health, we sought an understanding of the company’s history, values, and presence to ensure we were designing with empathy. To accomplish this, we began by performing an internal audit in which we interviewed and surveyed MGH employees, patients, and community leaders. As we learned more about MGH, forming relationships with the people that daily shape MGH into what it is, we came to understand the attitudes, visions, and experiences of MGH’s own community.

Designing for a healthcare network in 2020 also revealed the resilience and strength of MGH. Our design process took place as MGH’s teams became front-line workers amidst an unfolding pandemic, reinforcing the idea that human need is ever-changing while our caretakers are adaptable and devoted. As an employee of 30 years shared with us, “[MGH] desires to serve the community well by being proactive with the services they provide to meet the changing needs of healthcare...They are committed to making the patient the focus for the decisions they make.”

In addition to an internal audit, we also performed a competitor audit of healthcare networks offering services similar to Marion Health to better understand the industry itself. We visited Marion Health’s various facilities, grounding ourselves in the place we would represent. We witnessed Marion Health’s values--quality, patient service excellence, effective communication, resource management, teamwork, and community-driven--come to life around us as we intentionally incorporated these values into our design process.

After developing a thorough understanding of Marion General Hospital, we began sketching potential marks for the brand. Inspired by healthcare symbolism, organic patterns, and soft shapes, we created various iterations of what the brand could be. After proposing three focused designs, we worked with MGH to finalize the mark.

The final mark, The Pulse, maintains a steady embrace around the center and welcomes patients into a similar embrace. Forming a compassionate network of growth, it remains rooted in Marion Health’s integrity, innovation, and holistic care as it reaches more patients and their communities. At its core, the Pulse alludes to the foundational legacy of the Red Cross as an icon of quality care, and the strong blue color is reminiscent of MGH’s long-standing history throughout the region. Like the undulation of an ambulance siren, the Pulse’s ripple-like movement embodies Marion Health’s ever-expanding influence on the community.

The Pulse’s colors imply tranquility, agricultural roots, and innovation. Blues and greens are often associated with health, growth, innovation, care, and community. We selected these colors to embody Marion Health’s pride in its community, reflecting its hard-working, rural setting. Colored with blues and greens, The Pulse welcomes in and provides comfort to the community.

We paired The Pulse with a typeface selected to reflect its soft edges, ensuring its approachability as a brand. The typeface is open, gently drawing Marion Health’s community in. Its rounded curves make the brand more human and reflect the curves of the mark itself, while the typeface’s sharp points represent Marion Health’s strict standard of excellence. Specifically, the ‘N’ in “Marion” ends on a curve, leaving the viewer with an open invitation to become a part of the Marion Health community.

Using shapes from the Pulse, we also designed icons to represent Marion Health’s values, signify wayfinding in their facilities, and form a common language throughout the brand itself.

Ultimately, The Pulse transforms Marion General Hospital into Marion Health, and transforms the company from a rural hospital to a rural health network. The new brand not only allows Marion Health to expand its identity within the community but it also showcases their identity more accurately, revealing all they are capable of as a health network.

What is a community’s responsibility to unity? How does a community strive forward together when dissension and tension is high? In the forefront of my own community is a wound which still festers some 90 years later. The event - the lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Smith in Marion Indiana - is rarely talked about and is often seemed as something to be “forgotten.” However wounds so deep do not so easily disappear. Whenever someone brings up the idea of memorializing it, it is shot down. At the same time as I learned of the unrest in my own community a national debate formed around monuments and memorials, particularly in the southern U.S. around confederate monuments.

How do we, in a culture so polarizing, create space for productive and peaceful conversations in communities seeking not our own personal convictions, but our community’s best interest? In processing these large issues, the Understand. Discover. Act. kit was hatched. It seeks to provide a resource for community organizations to use that contains resources and tools aimed at helping communities to have productive and peaceful conversations about the false memories, abrasive memories, or longed to be forgotten memories within our own communities.

The kit contains three units for a community to process together. Understand catches the community up to the broader story in context of national dialogues and urges them to press forward. Discover allows the community to grapple with the specific issues in their own community making sure to listen to diverse voices around the community. Act pushes the community to come to their own solution since the same solution won’t be right for every community and set in motion a plan and path forward.

All in all, the desire of the kit is to grapple with the question: How do we as a community navigate a past we would rather forget?

Now take a breath.
It’s okay that this is a hard task.
A hard task, however, does not mean it is a task not worth doing.
This task is worth doing.
So... take a step back and breathe.
Find a crew to move forward with you.
Find people to move forward in the public square.
Memory and Reconciliation are worth it, because...
People are worth it.
Conflict is sure to arise and obstacles will be sure to find you.
But keep on stepping forward.
Begin discovering.
Let reconciliation begin.
All you have to do is take the next step.

Boka’s story begins in the late 1950’s or 60’s as far as I can tell. Although little remains in terms of the history of the Boka brand except for the existence of the Sabovich Brothers who were grape growers in Bakersfield California. In fact, it’s a wonder I even stumbled upon the Boka brand myself.

I set out one afternoon in search of old hand-painted type at an antique store. In one of the booths I stumbled upon an old grape crate with a lovely set of unique letterforms. At the time I knew nothing of its history, but that Boka crate caught my eye and I set to turn those four letters into a whole typeface.

The Boka story begins here.

All that existed was four letters: B - O - K - A. These letters became the foundation for the Boka typeface.

I understood that Boka was unique and rebellious with a flare for showing off. However, in order to create a typeface that worked in context, issues with the baseline and the extravagant flares would need to be adjusted so it could be typed and still appear balanced. The key in all of this was to make sure that it would functionally work but retain its uniqueness, rebellious nature, and flare. However, the rebellious flare carries back much further to ongoings with the Sabovich Brothers. While it’s hard to find much about Boka Brand - beyond the crate where this all started - a search for the Sabovich Brothers led to some results.

Mentions of the Sabovich Brothers are found in the Congressional Record and articles in El Malcriado (The Voice of the Farm Worker) Magazine where they tell of the Sabovich Brother’s involvement in an illegal scab ‘union’ entitled the Agricultural Workers’ Freedom to Work Association (AWFWA).

It was in these magazines that the typeface found a life through old politcal cartoon illustrations. After finishing and refining the typeface and turning it into a usable font, I began to explore how it could be used and what type of life it could live beyond an .otf file.

In the end, Sad Boy Kombucha was born along with a set of five suited playing cards. These products allow the typeface to stand out accompanied by parts of the historical illustrations that link back to its deep and scandalous beginnings.

Mbutfu Community Centre is located in Eswatini, Africa. Their dream is to bring radical change to the young people there by building a community centre that offers support and encouragement to the youth of the area through sports, discipleship, and educational help

Starting with the mission statement and branching out from there I selected a group of words from the business plan and words I discovered during brainstorming to become the driving force for what the brand needed to represent. Ultimately Sports, Education, and Discipleship were the cornerstones that the brand was built upon.

The next step began to be thinking about the shapes these words represented or the things that might convey movement, excitement, and direction. I kept coming back however to the importance of these three words.

Sports. Education. Discipleship.

This led me to a further exploration of these words - pairing them down into symbols. These symbols became the basis for the brand. Sports could easily be represented with a circle to indicate a ball of some sort. Maybe this is a soccer ball or a volleyball or some other ball waiting to be played with.

Education in many ways is about learning and growing so an arrow carried the meaning of upward movement. And discipleship is about multiplication - taking one person and growing exponentially from there so a multiplication symbol or X became a way to symbolize this key principle.

These three shapes simplified became pieces that could join together to build a larger whole. Circle. Arrows. X.

The final mark came from thinking about how soccer is played and where the beginning of the discipleship process came for those 7 boys in July who said yes to following “God with us” The field itself takes the shape of the rectangle soccer field and contains the pieces in planning a soccer play.

Mbutfu Community Centre is a field as well. One which opens its doors and helps those who come to plan a play or a pathway for the life ahead of them.

At the end of the process came the final mark which housed sports, education, and discipleship into a field. This field becomes their mission field. But it’s also a place where local people will find a home - one with excitement and fun echoed in the soft curvy lines on which the brand is built.

Mbutfu will be a place of energy, of support, of transformation, and equipping. A place with the energy of orange, the calming transforming power of blue, and with the lush growth of green. Coming together - people with different paths finding home in the center of the Mbutfu community.

McConn Coffee Co. has been serving the Indiana Wesleyan University students and faculty since it began as “Common Grounds” in 1996. In 2002 the business moved from McConn Chapel into the Barnes Student Center, placing it in the most trafficked space on the entire campus. 


Since its small beginnings as an opportunity for undergraduate business majors to receive experience, the coffee shop has grown to serving the thousands of students, staff, faculty, and visitors of Indiana Wesleyan.

It is obvious to anyone who enters the Barnes Student Center that McConn Coffee Co. has a certain energy. There is a warmth and friendliness from both the baristas and the customers. With such a distinction being at the heart of McConn’s purpose and values, community became the center of the brand.

From our surveys and interviews we learned the words warm, history, family, relationships, and laughter were some of the most used to describe McConn. Gathering these essence words helped us to form a bank of values that McConn’s logo needed to encompass.

This mark is derived from a love for community, a foundation in a Christ-centered university and investment in their history and growth. McConn Coffee Co. has a wide target audience—from current and potential students, parents, faculty, and many more—yet with commonalities between them. What is the vein that pulls each customer to McConn? Is it their favorite kind of Fresh Brew or a Thin Mint Avalanche? These distinctions, while they may seem small, are rather important to building a brand.

The commonality was found in a tie into McConn history and architecture. This discovered path brought out the warmth and richness of our familiar coffee shop while highlighting the relationships McConn is remembered for. The quatrefoil has been such a large part of the Christian story and now it continues to tell a story here at McConn.

History
The quatrefoil is a shape steeped in history. Prevalent in the church for its place in stained glass, this four lobed shape represented Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This beautiful tie into their past first and foremost stands for McConn’s Christian faith.

Community
The four connected circles also stand for their strength and value in their community. The overlap and interconnectivity that happens at the center of this logo illustrates that ever flowing friendship and laughter that happens at McConn.

Sustainability

The center leaves of the logo are inspired by sustainability of products and growth of their character. McConn does more than serve coffee—McConn invests in the individual and grows the community.

Project completed alongside Summer Fisher and Grace Herndon.

Brookhaven Wesleyan Church exists to deliver hope and freedom through the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

Working alongside Brookhaven’s communication team as the sole designer, I worked to rebrand Brookhaven over the course of a couple months. Through historic research, mindmapping, and observational research I began to see Brookhaven as a directional community. Words like hope, freedom, and transformation imply movement inherently. Coupled with the church’s new discipleship strategy of Grow, Gather, Give, and Go a picture of the church as one who not only welcomes but also sends beyond emerged.

As I sat in church one Sunday in the midst of the process, I looked up to the ceiling and saw within the architecture of the octagonal sanctuary these same values of movement and direction. In the ceiling were arrows and triangles that undulated and flowed to create a mark that not only points inward but out as well. These directional words and shapes create an image that reminds us to grow and give and gather and go, but also to look up and remember why the church exists and who it is there to serve.

What does it look like to break into the market as a new business? When I began working with the CNZ Audio team they were just starting to ideate and launch their products, but wanted their products to stick out in the guitar effects pedals world. The three brothers who own the company were at the time in middle and high school so coming in as a designer was a unique experience to work with an exuberant team full of ideas.

As I began the project, I had to learn about the various types of Delay, Distortion, and Looper pedals and translate the ideas of the creative thinking team into illustrated and designed pedals which would catch the attention of the young audience they were seeking to reach.

In the end, there were almost 30 pedals in their three series of pedals that are now available online and in stores.

During this project, I learned how to design for one color screen printing and had to communicate with the printer in China by email to ensure the files were set up properly with the correct color values.

In the years since the business was launched CNZ Audio has seen success as their pedals have reached the feet of young musicians and seasoned musicians alike creating a community around good music and cool design.

Through pulling words from my research and my conversations with the Revival for Our Day team I began to find themes of action, story, & movement. These words carried with them visual connotations of upwards movement, motion, beckoning, repetition, and beginning.

But there was something else that gripped me much tighter, it was a story Spencer had told when I first met to discuss the need for a brand for their organization. Back before the organization started in 1962, Reverand Loran Helm was headed home and rested his hand on the gate outside the church as he swung it open. At that moment he heard the Holy Spirit say, “You go to a certain man’s house for prayer.” It was this moment that sparked a movement centered on day by day obedience and the Holy Spirit’s awakening to the world.

As I researched and began to sketch, the story of Reverend Helm at the gate did not leave me. It held rich history for Revival for Our Day and showed that first act of obedience.

Shapes began to appear as I traced the gate and drew the patterns I found. Shapes that conveyed motion and movement like my research implied. The flowing elegance of this simple gate spoke to what the brand needed to be - simple yet still revealing these elegant curves within its structure.

Then everything clicked.

At the top of the gate was a loop resembling the Holy Spirit’s awakening to the church in Acts 2 with flames of fire and the arches with the gate showed a repetition signifying continual obedience beginning with the first obedience, day by day, moment by moment.

The gate held the answers.

Cleaning up these shapes brings us to a mark which has its roots in that night Reverend Helm put his hand on the gate.

Finally the brand was expanded to not only show a main lockup and their acronym (RFOD), but also to work in context of their podcast and subscriber newsletter.

Marion is home to a community unified under one common identity, teeming with vibrant life, exhibiting deliberate care, filled by focused action, and overflowing with tenacious hope. Although the community has so much, they suffered from a poor self perception and my team came in at the end of the rebrand to build their standards and guidelines for a path forward.

More Than A Brand seeks to introduce the community to their assets and celebrate the wonderful people and places already existing in their community while showing them the values that make up their new brand.

Along with a book demonstrating their values, the City of Marion desperately needed brand standards to help them maintain a consistent brand across all platforms. With a small team in Marketing and Public Relations they needed something that explained clearly who they were and how to implement their tone, logo, and imagery into the community. From layout to content organization and design, I led the design team through iterative designs to a place where we could provide the City with what they needed in a clear and effective manner.

Marion Design Co Team Members: Rebecca Hoskins, Sophia Hawkins, & Micah Hamsher