The TRG team understands both sides of the business. Most of us cut our teeth on the corporate side, working with and managing agencies, like us, before moving outside ourselves. That unique perspective allows us to understand what real value is, and how to bring it to an organization like yours. It also gives us an appreciation for the little things that really irked us about agencies: billing that didn't align with estimates, poor communication, unclear goals – all of which we try incredibly hard to avoid.

• Kathy Roberts

• Claude Roberts

• Todd Fletcher

• Becky Isenberger

A creative oasis, nestled inside a 1990's doctor's office.

We'll be the first to admit it, the common area outside of our office isn't really that inspiring. In fact, it's downright depressing. That's ok though, we don't go out there much. With plenty of room to spread out, affordable rents, and views looking down Sonterra's 9th fairway — you could say we've been spoiled by the suburbs. Our space is a little like us: not showy on the outside, but you'd really be surprised by what we've got inside.

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The relationship between the Department of Defense (DoD) and Bank of America presents a unique set of branding constraints for Community Bank. While we want to leverage the recognizability of the Bank of America brand, we are also tasked with making the brand stand alone. Walking this line, we developed the Community Bank sub-brand and all supporting materials, and we actively evolve it on a day-to-day basis to keep it relevant and memorable in the minds of their audience.

While we do have influence of how the message is delivered, we don't always have control over what that message is. Such is the case with several of the seasonal loan campaigns we produce for Community Bank on a yearly basis where, due to regulation around the rates that can be offered, we're able to promote the loan, but not a corresponding interest rate reduction. Although not ideal from a messaging perspective, we've created many compelling and successful campaigns for demand generation and general product awareness. Beyond revenue producing campaigns, we also promote several customer engagement and financial education initiatives each year.

Launched in 2005, the latest iteration of the Community Bank main website serves about 300,000 visits per month and, although in need of a redesign, continues to be a central channel for product information and customer education. In addition to managing their public web presence, we've also built the custom CMS that powers it, created a mobile-optimized version of the site, branded their online banking and mobile banking applications, provided usability consulting on their online loan application system, created a custom URL shortener for optimized QR codes, developed their associate intranet, and created numerous campaign-specific microsites.

When Community Bank embarked on a worldwide renovation of its banking centers and in-branch messaging fixtures, we were pleased to lead the effort. We designed the banking fixtures, oversaw custom manufacturing, and provided training and logistical support for the rollout. In conjunction with the new fixture rollout, we developed a custom planning application to ensure each fixture, in each banking center, had the proper marketing materials shipped to it.

Beyond the fixtures, we're always looking for ways to bring the campaign into the banking center to allow both associates and customers to interact with it more directly. Whether through a floor cling, wall graphic, ceiling danglers, or larger dimensional display, these displays provide an extra impact for special campaigns.

As a dedicated part of the Community Bank team, and truly an outsourced department, we've been called upon to do everything from producing associate training, doing direct market research and focus groups, and doing media planning for major campaigns. We're incredibly proud to be a go-to resource for all those little (and not so little) things that come up, as they're often the biggest indicator of trust and comfort.

The brighter way to a better smile.

Sun provides high-quality orthodontic services at a significantly lower price than their competitors. Their business model represents a sea change in the industry that would ultimately benefit customers, if only it could be explained — "how can I really get a high-quality outcome for that much less than everyone else?". The Sun brand answers that question.

Clean and precise.

The Sun logo embodies two qualities a patient wants most in a medical treatment: clean precision. We didn't want these to come at the expense of the personality, approachability, and warm relationship we all hope for with our medical professionals. The warm colors, transparency, and humanist font helps provide visual balance to these competing goals.

Sun's print collateral and advertising continues the clean look of the brand, with ample whitespace, personable copy, and authentic photography. A collateral system was developed that allowed each office to have a customized message with minimum effort, by customizing the content of the folder and with a location specific back to each brochure.

The Sun website was designed to convey the Sun personality, while maintaining the authenticity and localization we worked so hard to establish in each office. To achieve that, we used location detection to show appropriate imagery (representing the diverse landscapes and ethnicities of the cities), and to make finding a location easier. The end result? New patient appointments. Although true online scheduling was not achievable with their existing internal systems, we developed a simple lead generation and distribution system that made it easy for patients to request an appointment.

We continually work to keep the site optimized for search, and manage local Google and Yahoo pages for each office.

Environmental design in Sun's case meant applying the brand experience to their offices. For our inspiration, we turned to an example that our patients were already familiar with: retail. Starting with the newset Sun locations, we worked with an interior designer who took our color and surface direction and turned it into actual materials and floor plans. We then applied our location-specific custom photography to personalize each office and bring some life to ordinarily bare walls.

Spreading the word

Knowing that most new patients come from referrals, we decided to integrate meaningful talking points on stretched canvases in the waiting rooms. These messages act as an important confirmation step for patients who have selected Sun for their braces, and help the new messaging take hold when those same patients tell their friends about the benefits of getting braces from Sun.

Sun has maintained a long-standing relationship between their Corpus office and the local minor league baseball team, the Hooks. In 2011, we renegotiated the sponsorship, and gained a series of local events that would help Sun make the most of its current advertising budget there. We produced an event celebrating the Month of the Military Child, where we gave away tickets to military families and provided special recognition of military youth during the game.

When we began working with ENTrigue, they had an existing logo in place, which was only a few years old. To avoid confusion in the marketplace, we recommended keeping the logo but updating the color palette, tagline, typography, and overall visual brand. In addition to general layout guidelines, we also developed a visual style for their product photography that made their surgical instuments look dramatic and interesting.

ENTrigue's print collateral and advertising was designed to stand out in a crowd of established medical players and showcased them in a way that got instant attention. We embraced the roots and inherent benefit of their small company – innovation and approachability. Whether that was by dropping a real cocktail napkin into a typically boring physician bag at a conference, or by making typically bland products look beautiful, the cocktail napkin has a special place in the ENTrigue story. It represents that moment of inspiration that every surgeon has, to make something better – for the surgeon and the patient. It also represents ENTrigue's desire and willingness to listen to the ideas, to act on them and to improve them.

In 2011, ENTrigue Surgical needed a new site to better capture their transition from startup to established company. Our visual strategy has been to make surgical products look fresh and beautiful. A new photography set for the website really put the emphasis where it needed to be: on the products.

Maximizing screen size

To show off the beautiful images, we designed a hybrid CSS framework that scales down to 4:3 screen widths when needed, but also stretches to take advantage of wide screens. As a result, the rich photos fill the screen, on most any size screen.

Visual navigation

Since so much emphasis is put on the images of their products, we wanted the navigation to allow users to visually identify products and pages. Thumbnailed navigation tabs and a darkened screen for focus did the trick.

When the opportunity came to create a booth design for ENTrigue's flagship tradeshow, we suggested a vendor that had a tried and true booth system that had been refined down to a science. We customized the overall aesthetic to be in line with the brand, came up with the lead capture system, developed an iPad-based product demo system, produced the graphics, and created a looping video highlighting their products. As a result, the show went off without a hitch with record attendance, and ENTrigue won the 2010 best booth award, giving them a prime location at the 2011 show.

A mobile sales demo

We identified early on that the iPad would be a great platform for presenting clinical footage to surgeons and for capturing leads at tradeshows. In the first iteration of our concept, the demo was a big hit, except for the physical syncing. After exploring html5 video (too much data to cache) and developing a custom app (too expensive), we located an existing app that had great video caching support, remote syncing, and an unobtrusive interface that we could easily repurpose. We didn't build it, but it was affordable and effective, proving that not all solutions are custom or expensive.

Sales process

The result of an internal brainstorming meeting, we identified the need to provide a more structured sales support process and tools to support the process. The first result was a whiteboard map, which was then distilled into this process. It allowed everyone to be on the same page and to visualize every touchpoint and deliverable.

After identifying a unique selling proposition, many of our clients find a rebrand in order to visually reflect that message. Whether starting from scratch on a logotype or just refining and reshaping the elements that are already in place, we know the process well.

While we do take on the occasional pure design job or pro-bono project, most of the print work we do is part of a larger project or campaign. The work shown here is just a visual sampling of some of the pieces that were especially effective, or that we still enjoy looking at.

Plain and simple, we love the web. Specifically, we love its ability to constantly evolve as a medium and the challenge it presents to us, as communicators, to use it to its fullest potential.

While we don't have the opportunity to do environmental design for all our clients, it's often one of the most interesting aspects of a project. We certainly know our way around the tradeshow floor with our B2B clients, but we've also been lucky enough to be involved in some retail environmental branding.