What We Do

Anchored Creative Studio works with organizations of all sizes to create intentional brand strategy and design. Below is a quick list of our specialities, as well as some fast facts.

Visual Strategy & Branding

• Our core offering goes beyond logo creation, digging deep to define your mission and audience, and creating the perfect visual identity that will aid in attracting the right clients and customers.

• We start out with a collaborative strategy session before translating your brand strategy into visual form, creating a brand identity that represents your values and will resonate with your desired audience. 

• Once we nail down your core brand, we'll get to work on other elements, such as business cards or other collateral items. Each branding package can be customized to fit your needs. 

Donor & Enrollment Design Strategy

• Well-versed in donor communication, we have worked on individual giving campaigns, school enrollment campaigns, foundation proposals, corporate sponsorship and membership packets, and everything in between. 

• Having designed nonprofit materials that have resulted in donors of $2 million, Anchored can work with your team to create materials that result in action from your donor base. 

Environmental Graphic Design & Wayfinding

• We love creating large-scale designs to help your audience place exactly where they are and branding a space.

• We create custom property maps, aerials, and branding to truly make your property, neighborhood, city, or other location truly feel like a place.

Our Process

01. Discovery

No matter the type of project we are working on together, it all starts with discovery. We will discuss in-depth the type of problems you’re looking to solve, the scope of your campaign or deliverables, and any other considerations. From there, our team will deliver a proposal outlining the scope of work, and we’ll kick off working together.

02. Strategy.

Anchored Creative Studio is a huge believer in strategy before design - it strengthens the weight of your project, helps us really identify your audience, and will chart your organization toward success with the implementation of our work together.

In this stage, we dig deeper into your organization’s wants and needs for your branding and/or campaign, and pair that with our design expertise. Our team will come up with a creative brief and strategy document that outlines the creative direction of your project.

03. Presentation & Refinement

From here, you can sit back and relax while our team gets to work on creative concepts. We will send over our concepts with a short video, outlining our thought process behind these initial concepts, and how they fit in with your audience and mission. From here, most clients have just a few tweaks and refinements to get in before we move onto the next step.

04. Final Steps & Deliverables

Our Business Values

Challenge. You’re coming to us because there’s something that isn’t quite clicking with your business. We are here to help align your organization’s design style so that everything else will fall into place. Our process of brand strategy and design brings your organization’s mission to the surface so you can better reach your core audience.

Honesty. We believe in being very real and open. This value is the reason we have structured our process like we have, so we are able to dig deep and get to the real tenets of your brand. We are honest about what will work for you and how it will fit in your business. We create custom projects for custom clients, and honesty is at the core of that.

Transparency. We kick off all potential projects with a phone consultation, and then deliver a pricing proposal that provides in-depth detail on timeline, pricing, scope of work, and other expectations of our project. We have thorough contracts so everyone is protected, and nothing is left up to guesswork.

Connection. Anchored is an intentionally small studio, taking on a select number of clients per year. We do this so we can make real connections with the organizations we work with - you’re never a number to us, and we are always here to respond swiftly to any questions. We hope to forge not only a professional relationship, but a personal one as well.

FAQs

• Is Anchored Creative Studio a good fit for my business?

  • We'd love to hop on a call and find out! We start every potential client relationship with a brief discovery call, so we can find out about each other and what services would work best.

• I’d love to work with you, but we aren’t located in the same city/state/country. How does that work?

  • Anchored Creative Studio almost exclusively works with remote clients! Through experience (aka, a lot of trial and error), we have fine-tuned our process to work equally well for a client in the same neighborhood as us and a client located several time zones away.

  • At the outset of working together, we will find a mutual time that works well for both of us for a phone call (which can also happen over Skype or Google Hangouts, for our international friends). Beyond this meeting, everything else occurs via email and Asana (a project management tool we use for all clients).

  • When presenting drafts of your materials, we send short videos outlining our thought process. It’s just like a video call, except we don’t need to nail down a time for us both to be free. And if you ever want to hop on a video call or phone call, that’s always available, as well.

• When is the right time to invest in branding for my business?

  • Although there's no one-size-fits-all rule for branding your business, most clients find their way to us when they a) feel like their existing brand no longer fits their organization, and/or b) they’ve outgrown a visual brand they created on their own, and now want to invest in professional branding.

  • We've found branding projects to be most successful when a business has been established for at least six months. This way, you have a solid idea of what both your short and long-term goals are for your organization, and have a solid idea of the direction you're looking to move in to attract your core audience.

  • We also work with plenty of organizations that have been around for several years, and are looking to uplevel their business. No matter the age of your company, we want to create a brand identity that will last with you throughout the years.

• How do I know that I'm ready to work with a professional strategist/designer?

  • There’s also not a one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but most of my clients come to me when they’re not happy with a brand they came up with themselves, and/or feel like they have outgrown their existing brand. When your brand is no longer speaking your message and reaching your audience, it’s likely time to refocus your branding efforts.

• Do you offer payment plans?

  • Of course - I typically require a 50% payment up front to get the project started, and 50% at the end of the project. If you’re looking for something different, be sure to mention that in our consultation call and we can discuss options.

• I know exactly what I want for my logo and am looking for someone to create it. Can you do that?

  • If you’re looking for just a logo and nothing else, and/or an exact replica of an existing logo sketch, unfortunately we cannot. As of right now, we only offer specific design packages with a minimum spend. We welcome ideas and inspiration for logos and other branding elements, but always create original artwork for logo designs. This way, your brand elements will speak directly to your audience.

• I’m on a tight schedule and need branding done in a short time period. Can that happen?

  • Get in touch and we can find out! Our smallest package usually takes between 4 and 6 weeks to complete, but if there’s availability, we can definitely get it done quicker with a rush fee added.

• How far out do you book your projects?

  • I generally book out projects between a week and a month in advance, depending on my current schedule. I will always outline a timeline in our contract so you’ll know exactly when we’ll be getting started. And if there’s a certain date you’d like to have the project wrapped up by, definitely let me know and we can work around that.

• I’m ready to get started! What are the first steps?

  • Awesome! The first step is to get in contact with me to set up an initial consultation call, where we’ll talk all about why you’re looking to invest in brand services, who your audience is, and what deliverables you’re looking to get out of the process. If it feels like a good fit, I’ll send over a proposal outlining pricing and timeline. From there, we’ll get the show on the road!