Driven By Design

I didn’t know it at the time, but one elementary school teacher with one correction, many years ago, set me on a path that eventually led me here: living in Huntsville, Alabama, after numerous military moves, married to a retired Army officer with three teenagers, designing with words and images. She said, “Don’t start all your sentences with the same word. Be creative, pick different words.”

It was hard at first, but once I was on a mission to design those sentences with different words, it soon frustrated me to start two sentences in a row with the same word. I began looking at those short sentences like little puzzles. How could I design each one, fit the words together, so it would say what I wanted but look different from the one before? Looking back, it should have been clear early on that I was driven by design.

Those little puzzles became bigger puzzles in high school with the dreaded sentence diagrams. But, if I focused on fitting the pieces together, it was not only easy but interesting and fun. Yes, I ended up with a BA in English, and I am a self-proclaimed geek, especially when it comes to words. Eventually, that creativity and puzzle process led me into a few different creative outlets, including rubber stamp crafts, scrapbooking, then photography and artistic photo composition, and most recently logo and brand design. While pursuing the crafty arts and photography, I studied marketing and brand design with the intent to start my own business selling custom photography and other creative products. I started the Holliday Design Studio while we were stationed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. However, I took a break from it when we moved to Redstone Arsenal, so I could focus on our family and extra duties during my husband’s last military assignment and pursue volunteer work in the local community.

It seems the natural progression of my love for words, colors, and images was to dive into logo and brand design. I see logo design as a condensed version of sentence design, using an abbreviated combination of words or letters, colors, and images to convey a unique message. And, because I rarely do things “small,” my new little hobby quickly grew into a desire to create full brands, to help businesses not only mark their brands, but present them strategically in the marketplace.

The Holliday Design Studio has now re-launched in Huntsville, with a focus on brand design and management to help companies showcase their unique selling propositions in the marketplace with cohesive, consistent branding that tells the story of their brands, completing the puzzle to help customers and clients understand each brand. With understanding comes greatness…and it is all Driven by Design.

Recent Work