Cody and I have always joked that this is a fake company, or perhaps, half joked, as there are always hundreds of things we want to improve upon or implement. So in a way, we’ll never quite get to where we want to be. This can be frustrating, but I’ve come to realize that this entire endeavor is a process anyway (and that the minute we feel we’ve arrived is the minute we start to slide).
But this last year, and really, the last two or three in particular, we’ve made strides to improve the health of our business and create the best possible work environment for our team and client partners. We pay 100% of our team’s health insurance. We offer a retirement plan and profit sharing. We’ve increased our paid time off. There’s more opportunity for travel, professional development and leadership. Our entire team has a say in what projects we take on, and there’s a kegerator that never runs dry. Our process is more inclusive and collaborative than ever. The opportunities coming our way are more challenging and invigorating. We’re traveling to speak at more conferences. We’re being hired to write magazine and major industry blog articles. And while we’re experiencing rapid growth, we’ve continued to maintain several client relationships that are as old as our company itself.
But perhaps most exciting; we’ve been at this for nine years. Cody and I graduated from college on May 10, 2009, founded CODO the following Monday, and are still here. We’ve built an amazing team of designers and thinkers, and we get to travel around the world and create beautiful work for people we like and respect. This is all crazy. And we’re thankful for every single day.
Here’re a few highlights from the last year.
WE’RE GROWING
The most important news from the last year is the hire of two new designers, Ryan Pickard and Emma DePrez. This makes us 6 strong and the extra set of hands has allowed us to begin offering a few new services and field work that would’ve been impossible to take on and execute to our standards a year ago.
WE MOVED TO A NEW OFFICE
After nearly nine years in the Indiana humanities building, we found a new space that we couldn’t pass up at 902 Virginia Ave. Located conveniently above a Tiki Bar (friends and clients, The Inferno Room), we now have room to continue adding to our team, host larger events, and spread out and collaborate with our client partners in new ways. While I have a hard time seeing more than a year or two in the future, I do know that this will be a wonderful headquarters for us for the next five years.
WE WORKED WITH STATESIDE CLIENTS IN:
Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin
WE WORKED WITH INTERNATIONAL CLIENTS IN:
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, and China
WE TRAVELED TO:
Beijing, Toronto, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and Utah
Other highlights
We worked with a total of 25 breweries, including 9 startups, 5 rebrands, and 11 return clients.
We launched our first cannabis branding project and are already working on a few more.
We traveled to Beijing en route to branding our first Chinese brewery.
We developed packaging for one of our favorite breweries in the country, Big Lug.
We named, positioned and branded Plain Spoke Cocktails, a new RTD cocktail company that is gearing up to sweep the midwest.
We rebranded a 145 year old fraternity.
Other team favorites from the last year were designing a huge museum exhibition for the Indianapolis Colts, branding a new Indianapolis Charcuterie Company, the aforementioned Tiki Bar, a bean-to-bar chocolate company, an orthodontist, an entire Indiana county, and a Design Thinking-based Charter School.
