Responding to a Request for Proposal (RFP) is a unique and challenging creative process that parallels many of the stages in executing the project itself. It requires not only a clear understanding of the client’s goals and requirements but also the ability to distill those objectives into a compelling and well-structured response that stands out from the competition. My role in RFP responses goes beyond just assembling documents—it’s about creating a vision, a brand, and a strategy that resonates with the client.
Embracing the challenge of simplicity
Adapting Eva-Lotta Lamm’s Yoga Notes book into an app presented unique opportunities and challenges. The book itself provided a rich foundation with clear visuals, step-by-step guidance, and charming illustrations. However, transitioning this content into an interactive digital format required rethinking its flow and functionality while ensuring the final product stayed true to the essence of the original work.
From the start, I approached the project with humility and curiosity. I understood that even seemingly simple projects come with their complexities, and assumptions can lead to missteps. This mentality has become a cornerstone of my design philosophy.
The app design process
1. Understanding the vision
Before starting any designs, I worked to fully grasp the project’s scope, goals, and challenges. Yoga Notes, while sweet and straightforward on the surface, required careful attention to tone, audience, and functionality. I delved into the book’s backstory—why it was created, who it was for, and how it could better serve its audience as an app. This stage also involved defining the user base: a mix of yoga practitioners and instructors seeking clarity and simplicity.
2. Research and User Insights
User research was vital. I conducted surveys and usability tests with target audiences to learn their preferences, habits, and pain points. Observing how users interacted with similar yoga apps helped identify opportunities for improvement. For example, users appreciated clear navigation and visual aids but often felt overwhelmed by cluttered designs or redundant features.
3. Analysis: Crafting personas and Mapping
The insights from research were distilled into detailed user personas. These personas guided every design decision, ensuring the app aligned with the needs and goals of its audience. Additionally, I created navigation maps to establish a clear flow for the app’s interface.
4. Design: From sketches to prototypes
Armed with insights and plans, I moved to the design phase, starting with pencil-and-paper sketches. Early-stage concepts were shared with the client for feedback, allowing for adjustments before progressing to digital prototypes. This iterative process saved time and ensured alignment with the client’s vision.
Using Adobe XD, I built the interactive prototype, ensuring that every screen—from the home page to detailed pose instructions—was user-friendly and visually engaging. Key features, such as simple navigation and charming yoga illustrations, were designed to reflect the book’s approachable tone.
5. Tesing and refinement
Throughout the project, I prioritized user feedback. Multiple rounds of usability testing with prototypes revealed potential pain points, which I addressed before finalizing the app’s design. This iterative approach allowed for continuous improvement and alignment with user expectations.
6. Launch and post-analysis
The final prototype was handed over to developers, and I remained closely involved to ensure the design’s integrity during the build. After launch, I analyzed user feedback and considered future updates to improve the app further. The Yoga Notes app became a practical and charming digital companion for its audience, staying true to Eva-Lotta Lamm’s original vision.
Reflections
Looking back, the Yoga Notes app is a reminder that no project is “too small” to teach meaningful lessons. This experience taught me the importance of research, iteration, and collaboration—principles that continue to guide my work today. While my capabilities have grown exponentially since this project, the Yoga Notes app remains a proud example of thoughtful design that marries form and function.
If you’d like to explore how I can bring this process to your next project, let’s start a conversation!
With nearly 100 corporate identity projects under my belt, I’ve helped shape the branding of startups, established companies, enterprise-level organizations, and even game studios. From healthcare providers and SaaS platforms to creative agencies and video game developers, I have built brands that resonate with their audiences and stand the test of time. Whether creating a logo for a new company, evolving an outdated design, or scaling a corporate identity across digital, print, and interactive platforms, I bring years of experience and an eye for detail to ensure that your brand not only meets its goals but exceeds them.
Corporate identity is more than a logo. It’s your company’s personality. It’s the first impression you leave on clients, partners, investors, and users—a handshake that should inspire confidence and trust. My mission is to craft corporate identities that reflect your vision, resonate with your audience, and stand out in a crowded market.
What is corporate identity?
Your organization’s first impression
Corporate identity is the visual and emotional embodiment of your brand’s essence. It’s how you communicate your organization’s story and values at a glance. A strong corporate identity is cohesive, professional, and impactful—leaving a lasting impression on your audience. On the other hand, an outdated, inconsistent, or amateurish identity can undermine even the best products and services.
I work to ensure your branding reflects not just where your company is today but where you want it to be in five, ten, or fifteen years. Whether you’re a startup looking to punch above your weight or an established company seeking to refresh its image, your brand should communicate your message cleanly, clearly, and confidently.
My approach isn’t about imposing a personal design style; it’s about uncovering your company’s unique personality and expressing it in a way that resonates with your target audience. Whether the aim is to appear like a Fortune 500 company or a personable small business, I tailor every element of the design to fit your vision.
Corporate identity examples
Logo & Stationery
IP Secure
Logo & Website
Prime Bodywork & Massage
Mailer
Half Moon Power Yoga
Trade show booth, print collateral, infographics
updox
Your organization's lasting impression
Defending the brand
Once your corporate identity is created, consistency is key to maintaining its impact. Whether it’s a logo, business card, website, or digital ad, every application of your brand must adhere to the same standards to preserve its integrity.
I not only create corporate identities but also ensure they are applied correctly across all touchpoints. This includes developing corporate identity guidelines that define logo usage, color schemes, typography, and more. These guidelines act as a playbook for internal and external collaborators, ensuring your brand looks cohesive and professional no matter where it appears.
From ensuring your logo appears correctly in a magazine ad to overseeing the production of promotional materials, I act as an advocate for your brand, protecting it from inconsistencies and ensuring it always shines.
Your organization's evolving brand
While consistency is essential, your brand must also grow with your organization. Over time, markets shift, audiences evolve, and companies expand into new industries. A skilled designer understands how to adapt a corporate identity to reflect these changes without losing the core essence of the brand.
Whether it’s refreshing an aging logo, adding new design elements for digital platforms, or scaling the brand for a broader audience, I approach every update with care. Gradual, strategic adjustments ensure your brand evolves seamlessly, maintaining its professionalism and impact.
Tailoring corporate identity to your needs
Branding packages
Corporate identity encompasses a diverse range of products and services, making it challenging for many clients to clearly define and communicate their branding needs to a designer—whether they require a single element or a comprehensive suite of solutions. I’ve found that these are the common groupings.
Logo OnlyFor startups or individuals on a tight budget, a logo can serve as the foundation of their brand. While simple, it’s a powerful first step.
Basic Includes a logo, business cards, letterhead, and other essentials. Often, additional elements like presentation templates or notepads are added based on the client’s needs.
Marketing Package A comprehensive set of materials that includes marketing-focused assets like sales sheets, white papers, ads, and infographics. These are designed to reflect the brand’s identity across both print and digital platforms.
Special Projects From trade show displays to vehicle wraps, these one-off projects require seamless integration with the existing brand.
Branding stages
Many clients find it beneficial to start with a basic corporate identity and add new elements as their needs evolve. This approach ensures that each piece is created with purpose, avoiding wasted effort on assets that may never be used. It also allows the brand to grow naturally, adapting to new opportunities and challenges.
Let's build your brand!
Your corporate identity is the cornerstone of your organization’s success. Whether you’re starting from scratch, refreshing an outdated brand, or scaling an existing identity, I bring the expertise, creativity, and dedication to make your vision a reality.
Graphic design for UX/UI, Websites, Print, and Digital
From a technical perspective, print and digital design are differentiated by units, resolutions, and types of output. Print is designed in points and picas, sometimes inches and millimeters: web is designed in pixels. Print output has always fallen in the 100-600 pixels per inch (ppi), depending upon the need, where digital output is wholly dependent upon the size of the screen on which it is being viewed—72 to nearly 600 ppi as of this post. Print is mostly PDFs with the occasional exception, while digital is wide open with a plethora of vector to raster file types. From a client/partner’s perspective it’s all about how the end user will view and/or use the designed product. Will the customer be holding it or will he/she be viewing it from 1000 feet away? Will they need to be prompted to call/email or will they be clicking it, etc. [See Related Services on this page for a breakdown of the types of work associated with each of these design categories, including links to portfolios showcasing some of the work Company Man Design has done.]
Print vs Digital
Whether considering print design and digital design jobs, the distinction between the two is largely irrelevant. A designer either has or doesn’t have enough experience to be confident designing certain rare or complicated types of work. In the end, good design is good design.
Good Graphic Design Is Good Graphic Design
The check list of design is fairly, almost surprisingly, small:
There’s a design space (even if that design space is flexible as with responsive websites)
There are client/partner goals and requirements—target demographic, message and tone, branding elements, and text and imagery
There is a clear call-to-action (or multiple ones)
And there are vendor, publication, and/or other output considerations—screen, print, and (in the case of copy and scripting) broadcast
But, again, it’s all design. The designer takes all the requirements (and recognizes and alerts you to to any that may be missing) and creates an effective piece, meaning one that is well-designed, is strongly-messaged, and that is presented to the correct target demographic at the right time and in the most accessible and user-friendly medium to ensure a business-positive action on their part.
Sounds simple, right?
Eggs and Baskets
Though we’ve established that it’s not a competition between print and digital, that’s not to say that one is better than the other FOR YOU. Even then, the choice usually isn’t a stark one of one or the other; rather, it’s a matter of how much marketing emphasis should be assigned at a particular time. Some clients may gain more general benefit from print or vice versa, but usually the distribution of resources is on a case-by-case or campaign-by-campaign basis. Over the last six years of our relationship with one of our longest-standing clients, there are been phases where we focused nearly 100% of our efforts on print. At other times, that same client’s focus was split 50/50 between print and digital efforts. They upped their digital game leading up to trade shows and other events, when they were in the midst of relocating their home office, and each time they have expanded into new markets. All the while, print has proceeded at the same pace.
Company Man Design has experience designing nearly all types of work all channels: print, digital, and web. Additionally, we are uniquely experienced to aid your organization in making these important choices is how to most wisely distribute your marketing resources.
CONTACT US
You’ve clicked on a portfolio that I haven’t gotten to. Not to worry. Chances are, I do that, too.
With decades of design experience across a huge array of industries and projects, there’s little I haven’t touched. Chances are that I can do whatever you need and/or coordinate with others to get it done.
So maybe it was good luck you arrived here because if you give me something I haven’t already done, it’ll be your work featured in the newest portfolio!
Bad players in business are like foxes, smiling and promising while hiding plans to eat your tasty chicken body. In this analogy, I’m the faithful farm dog who dedicates itself to protecting you from those foxes.I believe most graphic designers are proficient and ethical. On a professional level, a few bad players can taint the graphic design industry’s broader perception. However, on the individual client level—I believe that’s the level that matters most—a bad design experience is almost always an emotional and monetary offense. Even if I can’t make the bad experiences disappear, I’ve dedicated a large part of my career to ensuring better design experiences, one project, and one client at a time.Too Much Bad DesignI’m continually amazed at how much bad design there is out there. As a graphic designer, I’m cursed to see it all. It shows up as color choices that assault the eyes or leave the sight-impaired scratching their heads. Often, it’s type: poor letter-spacing, awkward alignments, and mystifying font choices. The killer for me, though, is how many terrible logos and poorly-designed websites I run across. I can’t count the number of clichéd logos, logos that do something cute its letters, or logos that had to have been designed by a loved-one or an amateur.
But I can handle a world riddled with bad design. Bad design can be pointed out and corrected. What burns me, what brings out my fight, is learning about clients’ bad design experiences.
Too Many Bad Design Experiences
Bad design experiences come from a variety of causes. In increasing order of darkness, they are
Innocence/Ignorance: With the ubiquity of design programs that advertise themselves as DIY, there’s the appearance of an over-abundance of overconfident designers, or designers who believe they’re capable of more than they are.
Fudging: A designer can add to their portfolio pieces that they didn’t work on by themselves, giving the impression that you’ll be getting that quality of work. Alternatively, a designer can choose to show only the tip of the iceberg, meaning you see the 10% of the very best and not the 90% rubbish. Whether this is done innocently or in full knowledge, it’s misrepresentation.
Premeditated Deception: Though hit-and-run episodes portrayed by unscrupulous designers are rare in the scheme of things, they do happen. I’ve had clients who paid deposits only to be ghosted. Others worked with designers who under-delivering work and threatened to sue. Another client had her websites erased after a disagreement. And there is an endless line of similar stories beyond those.
To right the wrongs, my mission has always been two-fold:
To always ensure good design experiences. Doing so gives clients a benchmark of what to insist upon going forward. It also improves the chances they will return to me for more design; and,
To replace bad design experiences with positive ones. I have a chance to right clients’ perceptions about our industry. And, again, it increases the chances of repeat business.
Never Too Safe
Because I know not everyone can go with my design services, you’ll need to know a few things to keep yourself safe. I could write pages on this topic, but most of the tips I would provide fall into three basic categories. And, between you and me, only the last one matters.
Look past the glitz of flashy websites, stunning presentations, and motion graphics for substance.
Listen past the confident sales pitches, the thumping music, and the too-good-to-be-true offers for truth.
Demand that all design expectations, costs, fees, dates, and agreement details are in writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s text, email, or contract. I prefer email so I can keep everything in one project-titled thread. When both parties do what they’ve agreed to do, how and when they’ve agreed to do it, and for the price they’ve agreed to in advance, there’s no room for a bad design experience.
Never Too Many Testimonials
Thankfully, I have created many good design experiences. Here are some of the testimonials from my many happy clients.
Testimonials
I gave Thomas very loose parameters for my company brand, business cards, and corporate website, then let him go. He produced something better than what I’d imagined.
Brian AllenPrimary, Odyssey Design Studios, LLC
Thomas exceeded expectations with our logo design and website. He kept me informed each step, making sure I was satisfied. He made it easy and stress-free.
Chasity NelsonPrime Bodywork Massage
Thomas and his team are the epitome of professionalism. They completed my website clean-up with awesome execution. And they never pressured me to build a whole new site. So happy I found them.
Chloe ReedPrimary, Glam Nailz
Founders of new companies need partners, not suppliers. My experience with Thomas was such a partnership, throwing himself into the project as if it were his own.
Will KeyserFounder, Venture Founders, LLC
Thomas did a wonderful job designing my corporate logo. I’ll definitely recommend him to my friends and associates.
Yamel GonzalesPrimary, SetPoint Refrigerations LLC
My experience with Thomas was smooth. I provided basic info about us and our services and he produced a full multi-company website and corporate logos for all of our entities. We’re impressed and proud.
Keith SampleThe Greenbox / Alamo City Services
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