When The Tenfold Collective first meets with a client to discuss creating their brand, we don’t just want to know about the product and target audience. We want to know what makes them tick. To get inside our client’s head we try to adhere to a process to make sure we’re touching on everything that goes into creating a personal and effective brand.

Now, let’s be clear — we don’t believe in a formula that works every single time. We acknowledge (and even revere) the pure intuition that is an indisputable part of our craft. But, we also figure a little check-listing never hurt creative types, and it’s all about balance, right? Right. Without further ado…

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A father-and-son team based in Bend, Ore., approached us for a brand identity design. Through the branding process, Sean Patrick and his father, Dennis Patrick, got to explore what made them really excited, and also, where and how they excel. Along the way, we were inspired to drop their original name. Dennis, a longtime electrical contractor, said: “There’s always a way to do it. You just have to be innovative.”

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After making the decision to move to a new city and a build out my career, I knew it was imperative to make an impact with my personal branding. The unique challenge involved developing an identity not only for a freelance professional, but for very specific experiences associated with building a network of new colleagues.

I coined the name Design That Talks, as my freelance company, and now needed to build a professional image without losing ‘me’ in the process. Before starting with any of the designs, I needed to step back and think about how I was going to approach people and companies and what I wanted their first interaction with me to be. Being a traditionalist, I knew hand written letters and face-to-face communication were going to be the primary tools.

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A group of post-production industry legends got together to start New Hat, an independent video and film production agency in Santa Monica, California. The new company wanted to communicate their expertise of color correction and the freedom of the independent New Hat’s creative process. My thinking was to allude to screen movement and inject a fresh look to the company brand to help separate New Hat apart from their corporate counterparts.

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Media Access is a fully integrated media solutions company whose services include sponsorship, TV production, TV content creation, on-line and mobile content creation as well as event management and marketing. This task was about turning a small job on it’s head and investing a bit of extra time and ‘zest’ into creating something that is robust for the client, in order to enable them to appear established and be competitive.

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My approach to most identity projects usually begins with simply allowing ideas to spin around in my head for a few days before sitting down to sketch. For me, it is usually not too helpful to start off with developing a long list of words or to develop any sort of mind map on paper/screen. Of course, what is referred to as “mind mapping” is most likely always happening in some form or another despite not being put to paper. After all, aren’t we as designers hired because of our ability to make connections that may not be immediately apparent to non-designers? I’d like to think so.

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During the episode entitled “The Second Coming,” in the final season of the Sopranos, Anthony Jr., deep in the throws of depression and disaffected with the world, rants to his family at dinner about the food being unsafe because the FDA is allowing companies to spray viruses onto food to combat bacteria.

While much of the sopranos was fictional, AJ’s outburst was actually founded on semi-recent developments. Earlier that year, Intralytix, a Baltimore company that manufactures phage-based products to kill bacteria on food, had been given the green light by the FDA for one of their lines of phage-based food safety products.

I was approached by Intralytix because they had decided it was time to attend to their brand, which had been pretty much an afterthought up until that point. There was no clear visual identity. Employees had home-made business cards with different iterations of logos and colors. It was clear that given the public scrutiny they were receiving coupled with the desire to grow, they needed to develop a viable brand.

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Based on an eclectic array of influences, the task was to collaborate with the owners to help determine naming convention, overall brand positioning and design an identity system for a new, Asian/Malaysian inspired eatery and retail shop.

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FocusRx is a small consultancy with a finely nuanced understanding of pharmaceutical laws and systems. Using this specialized expertise, they partner with large health care provider organizations to develop prescription plans that work and make sense for the end-users. We are talking about ridiculously complicated, labyrinthine systems that would make the average head spin. FocusRx sought a graphic identity that could portray this narrow specialization within the health care field and demonstrate its value. Because they operate in an industry where efficiency and precision are a mandate, their identity must be clear, simple, and direct, but with a character that distinguishes this company amongst its peers.

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We were approached by Garbage Critic—a waste reduction and management consultancy—to design an identity for their startup. As a new agency with extensive experience in the public sector, it aimed to position itself as the leader in the field, as an innovator but also as a valuable team player in the quest for widely adaptable solutions to the waste problems we face. One of our challenges was to represent waste—something few people wish to think about—in a way that was engaging and eloquent.

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