Like numbers, facts, and diagrams? Have we got some bad news for you.

You could call Two Guys Global a devotee of good taste and a supporter of small local businesses — or simply applaud the fact that when we see an opportunity to do good work with good people we jump on it — and especially when it involves free sourdough bread for life. The design work became loved and recognized throughout the city and was acknowledged not once, but twice by Lürzer’s Archive magazine. Win-win-win.

When the 2023 Kentucky legislature started making ominous noises about limiting the rights of transgendered people with SB 150 — known as the ‘Anti-Trans Bill’ — we realised it threatened to drive marginalised communities out of the Bluegrass to seek security elsewhere. Working with a small group of partners, principally Queer Kentucky, an LGBTQ+ non-profit that champions queer culture in the commonwealth, we developed the ‘Stay Here’ campaign, built on supportive messages, rather than incendiary ones.

The social injustice demonstrations of 2020 left a mark. Especially in our original hometown of Louisville. It happened in the belly of the pandemic and most of us felt powerless to do anything meaningful. But we knew that we could at least develop messaging that might contribute to raising awareness, and maybe even a little money to help support the critical work being done by Black Lives Matter and the Urban League.

We love clients who want to stand up and tell the world about how proud they are of their brands. Better yet, they want to make them look as cool as they (and we) believe they are. So when an iconic Kentucky cult product shows up on your doorstep with stars in its eyes asking you to get it the attention it deserves, what else can you do . . . but help make it famous?

You might have heard of the Gracies, a prestigious Oscars-like awards show named after Gracie Allen. The Gracies are a production of Alliance for Women in Media, an international association created to inspire female leaders. AWM asked us to build a website (or two) and help them with online advertising. As part of the project, we also developed AWM’s 70th Anniversary identity system, including the Voices name.

Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit organization founded by families whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and Whitney/Strong Organization, a Kentucky group committed to finding commonsense solutions to end gun violence, came together in early 2022 to help President Biden pass his landmark federal gun-reform bill. Shortly after the law was enacted, we deployed this common-ground statewide outdoor / digital campaign to support the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s commitment to continue to cross the aisle on this critical initiative.

Nobody could ever say we don’t court weirdness. Fringe Festival, a coordinated series of global performance-art events that originated in Scotland in the late ’40s, crossed the Pond and ended up in our Kentucky backyard. From three double-sided posters to three double-sided postcards to three double-sided tee-shirts . . . and the talents of a letterpress wizard . . . the work (literally) wrote itself, and appeared at the disreputable bars and venues you might expect

Despite being one of the better-known architecture firms in the region, recognised as much for its fun bright orange logo as its insightful, creative design, Work approached us about updating its identity to match its evolution to a larger and more sophisticated company. The assignment grew from an acknowledgement that Work‘s strength lay in its ability to uncover and communicate the exceptional.

We wouldn’t call ourselves gearheads, but we certainly love beautiful cars, especially when they’re from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, a time when we were both motorkhanaring our way through the agency ranks . . . and some of the best vehicle brand ads ever were fighting for pole position. This client, hailing from Austin, Texas, had heard of Two Guys Global and was looking for a creative firm that knew how to make the classical contemporary, starting with a fleet of posters and POP for her new showroom.

It’ll come as no surprise to learn that the urban Black population is under-served when it comes to mental health treatment. This discrepancy is compounded by the stigma many Black men and youth experience as they have to grapple with mental illness’s challenges. University of Louisville and Louisville Metro coordinated with Two Guys Global’s client, NAMI, to raise awareness of this issue. We developed the MindOurMind outdoor and digital campaign by leaning into how resilient and resolved someone has to be to tackle the problem.

Diversity, equity, and inclusiveness shouldn’t be thought of as dirty words. In our world, a world of imagination, creativity, and courage, those qualities are all fundamental to good storytelling. In response to a Lutheran assembly that asked for help in renaming and branding their mission — a congregation characterised by its eclectic and accepting spirit, established to appeal to those who can’t find a home among more conventional belief groups — we realised that in a time of fractured and homogenised relationships, there was a need to express how and why they could stand for the alternative.

‘Welcome to a place suspended in time, somehow separated from the distractions and headaches of the twenty-first century, attracting wanderers, tourists, road warriors, and dreamers alike. It’s a place rich in history, rich in surprise, and richer still in the kind of warmth it engenders among those who stay a while and escape the modern world’s complications, divisiveness, and superficiality.’

We like to think of ourselves as traditional-minded, but not old-fashioned. We believe that things should be done properly the first time. That deals can and should made on the sincerity of a handshake. That you don’t stop until everything’s right. In that shared spirit, and for want of a better phrase, we get on with the remodeling crew at French like a house on fire. Every year we do a series of three mailers that reflect how much value they can bring (forgive us again) to the table.

You wouldn’t believe how much money there is in scrap metal and recycling. It’s an enormous industry nationally, and the stakes for credibility and awareness are high. So it’s critical to present brands in ways that crush it. Aimed squarely at a hard-working-blue-collar-roll-your-sleeves-up type of crowd, mainly male, and predominantly fans of rock and roll, a couple of guys created some smashing video content and attention-grabbing outdoor boards and collateral.

“Before most of the great buildings, the parks and streets and boulevards. Before the celebrated names and events. We’ve been here, helping Louisville’s most at-risk and vulnerable citizens — poor families, destitute mothers, and their children. We’ve been here because we believe in this city. We’ve been here because we believe in the promise and power of working together to make life richer, to improve society, to help the weak become strong, and to defend those in need. Above all, we’re here to ensure the health of the city’s children. We are Home of the Innocents. And we are the heart of our city.”

Western Reserve Academy has been consistently ranked high among the nation’s top boarding and day schools, and 100 percent of the graduates go on to attend four-year colleges or universities — many at the most selective schools in the world. It’s a hidden secret in a small town in Ohio, and it takes its communications to the outside world seriously, demanding only award-winning creative work.

When children’s rep companies Blue Apple Players and Walden Theatre merged, they were the beneficiaries of a lovely new award-winning logo. Unfortunately, it was just a logo, and not, poignantly, not a brand. So when they had the chance to announce that they were finally completing the Canon, all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays, they had nothing to reference except a nice style guide. Enter: Two guys stage right. We had several challenges: We had to excite people about Shakespeare (an old dead British guy in tights); explain why children’s theatre was relevant to Louisvillians; explain why theatre was even relevant at all; and explain why the Canon itself was important [see note about dead guy in tights].

Back in the olden days, before marketing directors decided that humour and snarkiness had no place in advertising, we were asked by the local chapter of the Advertising Federation to help them raise awareness about our industry. Their goal was to generate interest in the advertising profession for high school and college students — basically, to take a cross section of people . . . people in suits, tech people, number-crunching people, writers and designers, and even the folks who (try to) manage them . . . and to make them look as if they’d be awesome to hang out with for the rest of their working lives.

Two Guys Global loves a challenge. When a local, small pizza chain in the comfortable beigeness of Indiana wanted to reposition itself in front of a younger audience based on the hitherto-poorly-advertised importance of its ingredients — particularly given the presence of its equally-poorly-advertised-but-nonetheless-dominant-corporate neighbour, Papa John’s, which had just begun to double down on its ‘Better Ingredients, Better Pizza‘ shtick, we had to bite.

As America’s fastest-growing bourbon, Rabbit Hole doesn’t lean on its heritage and Kentucky roots, but stands up and says, proudly, “We’re the adventurers who give rise to ‘What’s next?’ The iconoclasts who ask ‘Why not?’ And the extraordinary who say ‘We will.‘” It’s a bourbon crafted to appeal to those who cherish their individuality, and who, through a life inspired by imagination and love, seek exceptional friendships and experiences. ‘The Wonderful Party’ tells their story in a way that gives a colourful, grateful nod to the brand’s wellspring, and the Sundance Film Festival work acknowledges Rabbit Hole’s place in the pantheon of creative and ambitious souls.

They were a small, ambitious group of passionate creative doers, thinkers, and dreamers. They embraced and practiced the ideals of the Golden Age of Advertising, and they sought kindred spirits to help them not just develop their positioning, website, and graphic branding, but conceptualise and design their interior space. Cue: Two Guys Global.

Highland Coffee was one of the first coffee shops in town. In fact, they became an institution. But sadly, after 23 years, the Pandemic took its toll and their brick-and-mortar location in the Highlands closed. The location was core to the brand, of course, but the legacy and the quality of the coffee remained, and so Two Guys Global was asked to position them as an online brand. We drove the initiative with a campaign of five custom-illustrated letterpress posters based on the caffeine-inspired tagline ‘What Are You Up For?’ supplemented with a refreshed logo, a range of t-shirts, mugs, and sundry other tchotchkes.

Our client Rabbit Hole came to us with an outrageous-but-turned-out-it-to-be-true-after-all story of a woman with nine children, a distillery, and an international bootlegging operation. Mary Dowling was the first female distillery owner and operator in the US, but she had the ill fortune of coming to prominence at the very worst time, Prohibition. Her legend and the bourbon it inspired live on in this fine whiskey, a testament to the woman we subsequently and appropriately dubbed the ’Mother of Bourbon.‘