Branding is so vague.
What do you actually do?

 

 

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SERVICES

Brand strategy, creative direction, and design
(in that order).

 

Most projects start with a comparison. A gold standard in their industry, a company that is respected and coveted and cool - one with a killer website, label, or video. Except, the creative isn’t what made those companies coveted. They believed in something—an idea, or a hypothesis, or a set of values. At their core, they knew who they are and what made them special. What their particular advantage was.

Nike bottled the feeling of victory and the joy of sport when others were selling shoes. Patagonia sacrificed profit for environmental ethics before anyone noticed. These companies’ beliefs propel them to do remarkable and sometimes even unreasonable things, which in turn yields compelling stories, which begets emotional attachment and if you’re lucky, even love for your brand.

Every company, your company, has a seed of greatness. An idea at its core that was so compelling, it was worth taking the huge risk to make it real.

Brand Strategy
means getting to the heart of that greatness, defining it, and making a plan for doing the remarkable and sometimes difficult things that position and differentiate you.

Creative direction
means crafting of those stories using every tool at your disposal, to drive emotional resonance and win their hearts.

Design
is just a vehicle to make it seen, the quickest place to set a pace and build momentum by making things real—design forces you to make choices, as well as structure and commit to them. It’s a pledge to your customer.

Brands aren’t designed, or crafted in an exercise. They’re built over years, through myriad small choices and actions, and a consistency of vision that needs to be held in the short and the long term. Building a great brand takes walking your walk, committing to bold action supporting your beliefs, values, or concept. It can be vague and difficult work at the start, but the results are clear, concrete, and invaluable (or sometimes, just plain valuable).

Let’s do great things.

 
 

 

Process™

It shouldn’t be surprising that there is no secret sauce or miracle playbook, otherwise all brands would be amazing brands. There are fantastic tools and frameworks, tricks and tips. None of them do the work. In practice, defining a brand feels more like therapy. Or a waltz. It takes great listening and observing, alternately leading and following, discovering something new and other times revealing what was there all along.

Here’s a rough idea of what the flow of a project looks like, but no two projects are ever the same, because no two clients are the same.

As it should be.

 

INSIGHT

Research

Interviews
Brand Audit
Design Audit
Third Party Research

STRATEGY

Planning

"State of the union" assessment
Competitive analysis
Brand positioning
Brand concept
Content strategy
Product development

DESIGN

Execution

Naming
Identity
Web design
Ops integration
Labels / Packaging
Collateral
Environment
Experience design


 

PARTNERSHIP

 

Alta has been many things since 2009. A partnership. Then a studio with an office and six headcount. A placeholder while I moved abroad. A resumé while I got an MBA and a job at Patagonia. The darkest point in the Venn Diagram is me. I’m Alex Chrisman, the heartbeat at the core of this thing, but I can’t and don’t do it alone.

Not every client or project or medium demands the same skill set. I call on a network of photographers, videographers, copywriters, programmers and architects whose fees and availability fit my clients’ needs. It’s the same model that Hollywood uses to make both box-office features and art-house shorts and an idea whose time has come. In a word, partnerships.

 
 

I believe partnerships are more productive than any other kind of business arrangement. Partnerships work in total equality. They make risk-taking feel safe. This gives them the courage to think original thoughts and build impossible things. I partner with brilliant minds to do incredible things—and that includes my clients.

 

These are a few of our trusted partners, we love working with them and think you will too:

Development / Code

Lab43

Profile Studio

Copy / Social

Mora Cronin

Fred Schwartz