About Us
Kerning & Co. was founded on a simple belief: great design comes from getting the details right. Since 1995, founder Brian Brown has been immersed in the craft of graphic design, building a career that spans small businesses to internationally recognized brands like Marvel, Coca-Cola, Hallmark, and NASCAR. In 2001, he stepped into the role of Art Director, where he's spent over two decades training and mentoring designers and interns—while still staying hands-on, personally leading the majority of projects that come through the door. That balance of leadership and craftsmanship is at the heart of everything Kerning & Co. creates: work that's both strategically sound and meticulously executed.
The name Kerning & Co. reflects the design philosophy down to the smallest detail—literally. In typography, kerning is the subtle adjustment of space between individual characters, the small shifts that make a word feel balanced and easy to read. The logo puts that idea into practice: two overlooked, underused keyboard characters, the "]" and "<", brought closer together until they form the letter "K." It's a small transformation, but it captures a big idea: design is about combining the right elements, in the right relationship to one another, to create something stronger than its parts. That's the approach we bring to every project, whether it's a single mark or a full brand system—finding the fit that makes everything click.
Meet the Founder
I don't just design visuals—I solve business problems through structured visual communication.
To me, graphic design is a puzzle you solve for someone else. A client hands me the pieces — the message, the constraints, the target audience — and my job is to work out how they lock together into something clean and clear. My training is rooted in foundational art, so structural clarity and visual balance aren't a nice-to-have for me; they're the baseline everything else gets built on.
I was an art director and creative strategist with over 25 years leading creative teams and running high-volume commercial production. At TF Publishing, I scaled operations to deliver up to 400+ titles a year, managing print procurement and vendor relationships worldwide. I was known for working fast without cutting corners — deep in Adobe Creative Suite, precise on pre-press — and over two decades I've brought design work to market for brands like Marvel, Harry Potter, NASCAR, and Hallmark.
I grew up in Indiana, and the drive to create started well before I ever touched a screen. My senior year of high school, I took top honors at the high school, county, and state art contests, which helped earn me a partial scholarship to Purdue University for computer graphics. My tools moved from paper to pixels over the years, but that competitive instinct and foundational training never left — it's why I can move fast without losing precision.
25+ Years of Leadership:
from early creative concepting through final productionMassive Volume Delivery:
delivered at volume without slowing down on qualityTop-Tier Performance:
recognized as the organization's highest-output designer, year over yearFlexible:
can execute at a high level inside someone else's constraints, and also originate work from scratch