Hornsby Brand Design Launches Energetic New Website!

We're kicking off the fall season with a bang by launching our new website along with our new Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

After months of hard work and preparation, we are proud to announce the release of our newly redesigned, responsive, parallax website. By updating http://hornsbybrandesign.com with a stylish new creative look and feel, we’ve improved navigation and provided you with an enhanced user experience for the desktop, tablet, and phone.

The site is filled with important information about how Hornsby Brand Design can serve you and helpful branding tips (through our blog) that will make consumer relationships with your brand more successful. Check it out. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Please contact us at info@hornsbybrandesign.com or visit us on our Facebook page or LinkedIn page.

Hornsby Brand Design’s Creativity Recognized with Five Awards

Hornsby Brand Design was awarded five regional Addy awards presented by the Knoxville Chapter of the American Advertising Federation at The Foundry in Knoxville on Sat. night, Feb. 15, 2014. They were given in recognition of Hornsby Brand Design’s creative work for the Knoxville Area Transit, Radian, Arkis BioSciences, the Memphis MPO, and Homes of Love. More than 250 people were in attendance with more than 300 entries competing.

Hornsby Brand Design president, Chris Hornsby, said, “We always strive to offer the very best service and innovative solutions to our clients. The awards are an added bonus to that end. We greatly appreciate the recognition by our peers for our creative efforts.”

The Addy Awards ceremony is the premier event held annually by the Knoxville Chapter of the American Advertising Federation (a business organization comprised of leading advertising and marketing professionals), recognizing excellence in creativity in all media.

Hornsby Brand Design specializes in building charismatic brands by mixing the magic of creativity with the logic of business strategy. Hornsby Brand Design has garnered more than 100 local and international awards for creative/strategic solutions in print, web development and broadcast, along with being published in Print and How magazines' prestigious design annuals. A few of the regional, national and international organizations Hornsby Brand Design has served are the Knoxville Area Transit, American Cancer Society, Regal Entertainment Group, Jewelry Television and the Brunswick Boat Group. Services Hornsby Brand Design offers include brand identity and development, advertising, graphic design, and complete web development and consultation.

View press release.

We're Hiring!

Hornsby Brand Design is looking for exceptional people to join our team! If you have passion about your skills and talents, are energetic, and ready to flex your muscles in an exciting and growing environment, then Hornsby Brand Design might be the place for you! 

Our current openings are for web developer/designer and designer. If you are interested in either position please go here* for more details and information on getting in contact with us.

*(Go here for a Flash/mobile alternative.) 

Letter from the Editor

Dear Friends,

December 21, 2012, was the worst apocalypse. Ever. And we're glad!

In fact, if 2013 were rails and Hornsby Brand Design was a train, I'd have to say we've left the station, are ahead of schedule, and steaming towards the next junction. Now that we're well into the beginning of the new year with spring on the horizon, we're seeing blue skies...even if it is just for the time being.

One piece of news is that recently, we welcomed Pierce LaMacchia to our team as Account Executive. Previously with another creative firm in Knoxville, Pierce brings exceptional experience, energy, and "engine-uity" to our "train." A public relations graduate from the University of Tennessee, he proactively applies his thought leadership and adept marketing skills as he fosters client relationships. Join us in welcoming him the next time we connect!

Left: Hornsby Brand Design accept four Addy Awards at the 2013 Addy 

Awards Ceremony.

Right: Hornsby Brand Design welcomes new A.E. Pierce LaMacchia.

On another note, Hornsby Brand Design took home four Addy awards from the annual American Advertising Federation of Knoxville Gala held Sat., Feb. 16, 2013, at the newly renovated, historic landmark, South Depot Station. Of the honor, Chris Hornsby, our "conductor", stated, "Our mission has always been to pursue excellence in everything we do...our creativity, our service, our follow-through, everything. We think this is what makes our work unique and most of all successful. We are thankful and humbled by our peers' recognition. It's icing on the cake and we're grateful." The gala is the year's largest gathering of communications professionals – celebrating the creative product produced in Knoxville and the surrounding area.

However, the honors didn't end there. Chris was inducted into the American Advertising Federation of Knoxville's Hall of Fame. This award recognizes notable advertising leaders in Knoxville and the surrounding area for their significant contributions to the advertising industry as well as their personal commitment to society. Congratulations, Chris, on a job well done!

Of course, none of this would have been possible without our great list of clients on board who allow us to do what we do best. So a special thanks and cheers to you! Here's to wishing you the best and more this coming year.

Happy 2013!

Bridget Hornsby
Principal

Bricolage - Pulling a large rabbit out of a small hat by the power of branding

"Just Do It." Chances are, you know the company behind this statement. Images of sports shoes and apparel, swooshes, and athletes fill your mind. More importantly, though, you know what the tagline implies. "Just Do It" is now a cultural idea, a way of life, a representation of athletic effort, of competition, of sweat and grit and determination to push one's body to its limits.

Stephen Nachmanovitch, famed author, lecturer, and improvisational violinist, discusses the French word bricolage in his book, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, and equates it to what engineers call elegance, or a system in which something with a very complicated nature is diluted into a simpler representation. Bricolage may produce "a single line of thought [that] has a great many implications and outcomes."*

Nachmanovitch would label the creators of Nike's famous tagline as "creative chemists." He writes that through the process of bricolage, "we take the ordinary materials in our hands [in this case three small words and a period] and turn them into new living matter - the 'green gold' of the alchemists."**

Just as Nike's brand image is elegantly found in "Just Do It," all great brands are birthed from, bathed in, and interwoven with bricolage (e.g. the Rolex crown, Apple's bitten apple, Ferrari's red.) The goal of the master brand strategist is leveraging simple tools to attain complex feelings - i.e. gut reactions to a company that is forever etched in the consumer's mind. Just as "Beethoven crafted his own music, to an amazing extent, of nothing but scales,"* so the medium of our art, whether a logo, tagline, brochure, or website, works within the whole—through the process of bricolage—to create something far more powerful, the "green gold" of all commerce and industry: the memorable brand.

*p. 86, Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art 

**p.87, Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Letter from the Editor: Tell Your Story

Dear Friends,

In previous SweetSpot newsletters, we featured the five branding disciplines…differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation. While we could expound on each of these very important aspects of branding more, the bottom-line is always about storytelling.

From birth, children of every culture hear stories told by parents, grandparents, teachers, pastors, books, and more. Why? Because stories connect us together. Sharing them bridges generations, all the while teaching, entertaining, and bonding. It's even been said that the importance of stories in our lives ranks somewhere between nourishment and shelter. 1

Because stories are easy to remember and illustrative, they build stronger emotional bonds between people and parties. This is true of branding stories as well, which is a viable marketing method, proven to build customer loyalty.

An authentic brand story...

• makes the brand memorable,
• differentiates it as desirable,
• breathes life into it,
• creates a distinctive competitive advantage,
• motivates the target market, and
• positions the company as visionary.

So, the question we always ask our clients is, "What is your brand story?" (Take a look at our article "Brand Legend: Do you have it?" for inspiration and successful brand lores.) Ultimately, our goal is to help them emotionally connect with their customers and provide a memorable experience that will build loyalty. 

Here's to telling great stories!

Bridget Hornsby
Principal
Hornsby Brand Design

1: Price, Reynolds (1978). A Palpable God, New York:Atheneum, p.3.