Disciple Design Follows Unique Mission
Disciple Design Helps All Businesses Compete
By Lance Allan, The Daily News
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
When Craig Thompson founded Disciple Design in 1991, it was mostly a side business that provided pro bono work for a handful of churches and nonprofit groups. Thompson had been in the agency business for 10 years, working with firms such as Malmo before it became Archer Malmo.
But a year later, it suddenly became more. The firm Thompson worked for full-time was in the process of a merger, and he decided to move on.
I started Disciple as a nights-and-weekends thing, Thompson said. I really felt led to go ahead and just take a leap and start that. I didn’t have any clients or any idea of what I was doing, but just really felt like that was the thing to do.
Immediate accolades. Thompson didn’t have any clients, but he did have the ability.
He had recently completed a logo and announcement poster, as well as a birth announcement for his just-born son. He entered all of the work in the Memphis Advertising Federations annual ADDY awards competition under the company name Disciple Design, and he won Best of Show and a copywriters award.
We had won all these awards and got all this publicity, and I was really barely existing at that point, Thompson said.
Business was steady among churches and nonprofits, but Disciple got its break when First South Credit Union, which had recently changed its name from Navy Memphis Federal Credit Union, asked the company to complete its logo work. It turned into an eight-year relationship for Disciple Design.
Helping others. The firm prides itself on helping clients who typically cant afford to pay for top-notch professional service. The business has evolved into a 50/50 split between reduced-price work for churches and nonprofits and full-price business clients.
We discount our costs to churches and nonprofits, Thompson said. Businesses that give us their work at a regular rate help us be able to do the work on the other side that we do at a discounted rate, because part of our mission is to help these organizations compete in the marketplace. In order to do that, we want to give them the same level of work we give everybody else, even though we charge them less.
Offering top-quality work to an organization that can only pay a fraction of the cost enables groups to fulfill missions they might not otherwise be able to accomplish. Its something that is not seen every day in the advertising industry.
It’s pretty rare nationally, Thompson said. When I started Disciple, I was only aware of a couple of other places that really focused on doing work for nonprofit organizations or work that was of a Christian-based philosophy.
Growing business. When Disciple Design got started, Thompson was able to handle all the responsibilities of the firm himself. But as business began flowing in and as technology continued to advance it became necessary to bring on more employees.
The business grew to 11 staff members at one time, and now maintains a staff of eight. Employing a larger staff enables Thompson to serve more as an overseer these days. But he still is involved to some degree on every project.
I act more as a creative director, he said. I do design some of the stuff myself, but then I oversee all of it. It’s a very collaborative environment where several people work on the same job. It’s a real open working environment, which I enjoy immensely.
Range of clients. Disciple Design does work for organizations outside of Memphis, including several contemporary churches in cities such as Houston and Atlanta. While Disciple Design is a Christian-based business, the scope of its work with nonprofits does not end with churches. The company works with organizations such as the Germantown Community Theatre, and also does work for banking, industrial and medical clients.
Were a pretty classic design studio in that we really concentrate on print, Thompson said. But because of my advertising background, we do wind up doing some ad campaigns. One of the things weve become most known for over the years is logo design.
Creating an identity. The firm also has been involved with many companies from the ground up, giving Disciple Design the opportunity to help businesses form an identity.
We do a lot of identity for a lot of companies, especially some of the new companies that are afraid to go to a big agency, Thompson said. So we work with a lot of those kinds of entrepreneur-type folks who are starting a business. They come to us and we can do that at a pretty good rate for them.
We understand because we’ve been there as far as starting up a business. We help them get started with logos and identity work, which is a lot of fun because you get to learn about some new stuff coming up and new ideas people have and then interpret them for the marketplace.
Building relationships. Since 2002, the firm has been able to fulfill more needs through a partnership with Thompson & Co.
We basically act as their design firm when they have needs, things that are very design-oriented, Thompson said. Conversely, I have some clients that we’ve had good relationships with, but as they’ve grown, they outgrew our services. We were losing some clients that way.
Disciple Design
Owner: Craig Thompson
Founded: 1991
Basics: Along with its work for business clients, the design firm prides itself on helping churches and nonprofits that typically can’t afford to pay for top-notch professional service.
