Epicenter exists to connect, support, and expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the greater Memphis area. When I rejoined the team in 2017, one of my main goals was to manage the look and feel of Epicenter’s branded communications. As a one-woman design department, I had the opportunity to take Epicenter’s new logo and leverage my learnings from advertising to mold a solid brand persona from scratch.

The rebranding of Epicenter can be grouped into several phases: The initial logo rollout to swap out the old branding, updating existing marketing collateral and establishing a consistent look for new materials, and humanizing Epicenter’s tone of voice across all of our digital platforms to appeal to a wider base of entrepreneurs, business partners, funders, and the media.

What am I proud of?

• Being able to completely ditch stock photography, and build an internal photo repository of entrepreneurs that live in Memphis and reflect the diverse population of our city.

• Figuring out how to do things that I have never done before like creative direction for video and photography, UI/UX for web, and copywriting for digital communications platforms.

• Building and refining lean design processes to produce agency-level work under tight deadlines and high levels of ambiguity.

If I had a magic wand…

I would build a design team so I can focus on directing Epicenter’s brand experience as a whole. Design is just one of the many hats that I wear, so a lot of my big ideas outpace my capacity. I established the look, voice and feel of a brand by myself, so I know that I could do phenomenal things with a dedicated team.