BRANDING
Holy Family Fire —
GROUND UP
Twenty years in, Holy Family was still running on a Tennessee Titans knockoff. No guides, no system, no ownership. I built one from scratch.
Project Year :
2023–2025
Role :
Creative Director
Scope:
Brand Identity · Creative Direction
Approach:
System Design · Stakeholder Leadership
Problem :
Schools don't lose students because their programs are weak. They lose them because they look like they might be.
Holy Family had great academics, strong athletics, and a tight community. But the brand said none of that. No guidelines. No approved assets. Every coach, vendor, and department doing their own thing. After 20 years it had accumulated into something that looked exactly as old as it was.
That's what I walked into.
Solution :
I rebuilt it. All of it.
New logo system. New color palette. New typography. Motion templates, print standards, apparel guidelines, social assets — documented in Holy Family's first-ever brand guide, published July 2023.
The HF logomark and FIRE wordmark were developed across every application imaginable — light and dark, outlined and clean, athletic and academic, vertical and horizontal. The Jerusalem Cross, already part of the school's heritage, got elevated into the academic mark it deserved to be. Three typefaces. Six colors with full PMS, CMYK, RGB, and hex values. Clear space rules. Misuse examples. A complete approval workflow.
Built to run without me. That was the point.
Challenge :
The design was the easy part.
A rebrand touches everyone. President, Principal, athletics, advancement, admissions, contractors, vendors. Everyone had opinions. Everyone had history with the old logo. I ran structured reviews, wrote tight briefs, and built a decision process that gave people a voice without turning it into a committee.
When the guide published, the conversation changed. No longer, "I prefer this." Now, "This is the standard."
Summary :
Holy Family Fire now has an identity system worthy of what the school actually is. Uniforms, signage, video, print, social, events, apparel. Still active. Still scaling. In 2025 alone, enrollment exceeded goals by 15% and fundraising by 20%.
This is a championship program — on the field, in the pool, on the ice, and in the classroom. A tight-knit, faith-driven community that wins, and now looks like it. The brand didn't build that culture. But it finally represents it.
That's what a real brand system does.
