Today we’d like to introduce you to T. Christian Helms.
Hi T. Christian, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in a small North Carolina mill town long before the internet and today’s design culture. I had no idea brand design was a career. But I could write, so I studied writing and art at UNC Chapel Hill. Late in my time there, I found brand design— a perfect marriage of the two things I’d studied. From there it was grad school in Atlanta, working in Manhattan, and eventually moving to Austin and starting my own agency. It’s been slow and steady growth (and a wild ride) since then.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not always. You have to be a little crazy to think you can start your own shop. Luckily, I had a fantastic client list in music— brands like The Hold Steady, Modest Mouse, Wilco, The National, and Spoon. But as we all know, that industry has changed dramatically, and eventually I returned to brand design. It was an exciting time.
Years later, I got walloped by Lyme Disease and was out of commission for a few years, and after a long recovery, I had to build back my life and agency. I used a lot of the tenets of brand design to do it.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
With deep knowledge in consumer goods, lifestyle brands, and hospitality, our branding agency services clients across the globe and next door. Our core practice is focused on brand design. Design is content with intent, and creating a new brand is to manifest a vision of an organization’s future. Brand design is an agent of change.
The best branding honors who you are today but also charts a course for who you will become. It is a catalyst for growth and the bridge that takes you from where you are to where you want to be. It crafts a strategy for success and builds assets to make it real.
In short, branding is not about communicating value; it’s about creating value. It is not what you make. Branding is what you make possible.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Ha, absolutely. Jumping off on your own and leaving a dependable job to start your own agency is a risk. Buying a building to house it was a risk, too. But my favorite risks have been betting on promising young creatives. I’ve often hired the candidate with the third best portfolio of work, because they were simply exceptional human beings. I can teach you to be a great designer, but I can’t teach you to be a good person. Over and over again, those team members have grown to be great brand designers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://helmsworkshop.com/
- Instagram: @tchristianhelms
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tchristianhelms
