About
Our History
You might say Grand & Weller was an accident.
Scott and Angela, friends and founding partners, had been informally helping a handful of organizations look their best for a couple of years when they found themselves overwhelmed with opportunity. In the interest of effectiveness and efficiency, they decided to make their passion a profession. Grand & Weller was officially born on the back of a napkin at a local coffee shop.
The first big challenge was coming up with the right name. Here’s a little side note: there’s a lot of pressure to come up with a great name in creative industries. Some organizations arbitrarily select an attention-getting, out-of-the-box name like Catalyst or Electrik. Our founders, however, wanted the name to have at least some semblance of personal meaning—to say nothing of their skepticism of names that seem better suited to chemistry-experiments-gone-bad or eighties bands.
Wanting to err on the side of simplicity, our founding friends considered the use of their last names, but the fruits of their labor sounded too much like a piano company. Trying to creatively combine their last names wasn’t working, either. Wiskmoo had an inherently bovine tone—an appropriate name for a flavored milk, perhaps, but not a design company.
Around this time, Scott was buying a house around the corner from Angela in Springfield’s historic Rountree neighborhood. Before long, the business was being referred to by the intersection of their streets: Grand & Weller. The name stuck.
Over the years, the name has become even more meaningful to the team. In many ways, the neighborhood is a picture of what Grand & Weller is all about: character and community. If you were to take an evening stroll with your dog—down the wide streets, beneath the canopy of towering trees—you would witness a community of people bringing new life to old homes, many of which date back to the early 1900s. Ask any of them why they live where they do, and their answer is simple. They’re drawn to the neighborhood because of its character.
Grand & Weller didn’t start out with a fancy idea like “connecting character and community”. It started with a simple commitment to first-rate design and exceptional customer service. Over time, though, Scott and Angela realized that by only focusing on design, they were limiting how much they could help their clients.
Following Grand & Weller’s first national campaign—a collaboration with The C4 Group (a DC-based youth advocacy firm) and the Gospel Music Association—Scott and Angela invited Nathan to join the partnership. In addition to providing much-needed help on a day-to-day basis, one of Nathan’s responsibilities was to work with Scott to figure out how we could help our clients at a more foundational level. No longer content to simply make clients look good, the Grand & Weller trifecta began looking for a better way.
That way was found in the fall of 2007, on the heels of weeks of discussion and planning. Grand & Weller officially became an Identity Marketing firm, adopting a new business model that more accurately reflected the organization and our goals. With a new three-step process of Research, Strategy, and Design, things ran smoothly and grew quickly.
In the spring of 2008, Ashley joined the team, ensuring the continued quality of Grand & Weller’s customer service as the company grows.
As we look to the future, Grand & Weller invites you to do the same. If you think Grand & Weller may be right for your organization, we’d love to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.