Lush lawn & property enhancement  ↓

My brother Jon has the same entrepreneurial bug as me, which we caught from my Father. Jon’s first company, Lush Lawn & Property Enhancement, had a major problem. Although his crew always did an excellent job, the big contracts for entire neighborhoods or townships are awarded behind closed doors. As a 22 year old “kid”, no one took him seriously.

First, we gave the company a name that had bigger ambitions than mowing your lawn. Then, we designed a business card that said, “whether you hire us or not, we want your property to look beautiful”. I instructed him to go into these management companies and tell the front desk that he’d love to meet, but he’s incredibly busy. Leave this business card and ask for the person in charge to give him a call.

This eliminated his young appearance from the equation and allowed the Property Manager to form their opinion based on the business card alone. Lush grew from 2 guys to 10 in one Summer and now does $1M+ in revenue annually.

BTU Solutions ↓

BTU is a power generation and reclamation company. Sound like a mouthful? That’s because it is. If you need a wind turbine farm in Uganda, BTU puts the puzzle pieces together. Have a coal plant in southern Indiana that needs decommissioning? They can do that too.

The primary business problem BTU had was that their efforts were often politicized and very unpopular. BTU needed an identity that humanized their work. In this freelance project, I sold them on the age old archetype of a “canary in the coal mine” as a symbol of omnipresence, safety and accountability.

You can view the initial concepts presentation here.

Well Made

Well Made was founded on the belief that the things we own should last. Quality, simplicity and efficiency were all essential to communicate in Well Made’s branding effort.

I chose to design an ambigram and even went so far as develop an entire font using only 18 of 26 characters.