Built to Last
A long time ago in a neighborhood not that far away, our team started collaborating with Downtown Durham, Inc (DDI).
We were operating under another name with a slightly different team when our first DDI project kicked off in 2010, and our offices were close by in the heart of downtown Durham. It’s hard to believe that it’s been around sixteen years(!) since our work together first began. Both of our organizations have seen changes since then, but the quality of our partnership has remained strong. Time flies when you’re doing valuable work with invested partners!
A set of colorful tees mocked up for our brand refresh presentation to DDI, illustrating options in their modular logo kit.
One of DDI’s primary functions, then and now, is to provide a dedicated effort in fostering a vibrant downtown. That shows up in many ways, like DDI’s effort to support business diversity and success, active community event programming, and their dedicated Ambassadors crew who provide helpful services for downtown businesses and residents. And that’s just to name a few facets of DDI’s important work.
The HALO 22 team is now working remotely, but we’re no less committed to preserving downtown Durham’s unique culture through our interdisciplinary projects with DDI.
In our years of working together, we’ve always aimed to showcase downtown’s vibrancy in every piece. Whether it’s creatively styling report data or creating promo posters for programs and events, we bring curiosity to the table—and an eye for brand consistency. This helps us make sure our work serves DDI’s communication goals while reinforcing their brand.
“HALO 22 is our go-to whenever our organization needs a high-quality marketing concept, brand, or design. They take the time to understand exactly what our goals are for each project and then consistently deliver work that blows us away.”
—Gina Rozier, Downtown Durham Inc.
Our approach has granted us a lot of trust from DDI, and remains a foundation to the success of our projects together.
The ROI of Our Commitment to Process and Collaboration
As a non-profit organization, DDI often needs to stay on a tight budget (and timeline) for each project. But we never let challenges stand in the way of good work. We use our time wisely by clarifying details with their team during project kickoff and providing regular status updates. We get answers to content questions before we start designing, and flag any potential roadblocks as soon as we see them. And, we consider how the individual piece relates to existing—and future—DDI work.
With the new branding in place, DDI can go confidently into meetings and events knowing the brand will be inviting enough to support their complex work—and remain memorable to attendees. Photo Source: DDI
As an added bonus, our decades of hands-on experience with their brand means that we move into and through designs swiftly—especially after we created a robust, refreshed brand kit for them in 2024.
Staying closely engaged with the DDI team from start to finish means that we stay mindful of budget, on time, and on target across a variety of projects.
A benefit of having a long-term client relationship is that we can also take time to consider how well the piece worked in retrospect, get structured feedback from the DDI team, and make plans for what we might need to refine to make it even better in the future. Sometimes that’s as simple as changing a font size or style for improved readability on screen, and other times it means reworking the layout entirely, or considering a different print material. However large or small potential refinements may be, their team’s trust in our process results in memorable materials that allow DDI to effectively communicate with their target audiences.
Showing Our Work
Let’s take a look at how the above translates into our work.
Refreshing the Brand
When DDI approached us for a brand refresh, we knew we’d be working with a large group of stakeholders. That, and DDI’s existing brand styles carried a lot of equity from over the years that we couldn’t afford to lose.
When we were through early process planning and scoping out the work, we created structured methods of collecting their input at carefully timed intervals. The time we took to understand where DDI was headed and what was needed to better support their outreach downtown was invaluable. It helped us nail down our goals before we started the design phase. By the time we got together as a group to review the new style options, we were on the same page with the best interests of DDI and downtown in mind. Communication, process, and collaboration lead to strong choices built to last.
Our new brand styles for DDI resulted in stylish uniforms and iconic branded vehicles for their Ambassadors. Photo Source: DDI
DDI’s new brand has even helped build trust and recognition within the community via their Ambassadors. The new Bull Ride program puts the DDI brand more front and center than ever before with residents and visitors—and the brand is further strengthened through the coordination of matching, branded Ambassador uniforms and other utility products.
We love seeing all the ways the new brand we created together serves their work—and downtown.
Building Flexibly for Screens
When building new brands, we consider many factors. One of those is how well it performs on screen.
Report data presented in vibrant brand styles like these encourages readers to take their time in review.
DDI produces a number of digital materials each year, from fun social media posts to info-rich reports for downtown businesses and investors. So, we built the new brand around the idea that it needed to convey approachability and professionalism—no matter the medium. The brand color palette and collateral font choice work just as well and as clearly in print as on screen, and the styles can be easily molded to fit the interests of their target audiences.
For screens, we provided initial social media design templates to illustrate how flexible the brand can be in communicating different tones, from fun and punchy to sophisticated and clean. We also created a new quarterly report template that’s visually engaging despite being data dense.
On screen products that can flex to fit to speak to different audiences and goals are truly a win for an organization doing broad work, like DDI.
New Visions for Print
One example of how our process led to a great revision is DDI’s 2026 State of Downtown Durham report. We went from a traditional, vertical layout to a new, horizontal approach to improve data table presentation and readability. Up front, it sounds like a huge lift. But, with the combination of thorough document styles built into our design template, and over a decade of brand familiarity, we were able to accomplish the radical layout change with less effort and at a speedy pace.
A page from our Merchant Handbook project.
Another showcase print piece is our redesign of DDI’s Merchant Handbook. This guide is printed and shared with downtown merchants-it’s especially useful for new businesses sorting out operations. The booklets in previous years had been fairly ad-hoc, and DDI recognized they’d benefit from a more organized, templatized approach. Bringing the new brand styles to bear was the excuse to redesign. Our new design tidily fits a lot of info and photos onto the page to minimize page count and print costs—without losing organization or stylistic sophistication.
With every project refinement, DDI can feel more confident in reaching their goals.
What’s Next?
In the near future, we’re looking forward to working with their team on a 2025 Annual Report, as well as a rebrand for one of their programs that encourages residents to engage with local businesses downtown.
We’re thrilled that DDI considers us a go-to for creative projects. Whatever’s next for DDI, we’re ready
Project Showcase
Take a deep dive into some of our DDI projects over the years.
