Member Spotlight: Bonfire Red

Member Spotlight by Amy Hamm, Partner / Managing Director

Provide us with a brief summary of your business’ services.
Bonfire Red is a premier branding and digital experience design studio. We provide custom design and development solutions for websites, mobile experiences, apps, prototypes, brand identities, and print collateral. We are proud to work with a wide range of clients, from emerging start-ups to the world’s leading companies such as JP Morgan Chase, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Food Equipment Group, Bel Brands USA, Victoria’s Secret, NetJets, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, The Ohio State University, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Aston Martin Newport Beach.

Tell us about your company’s mission and values.
Bonfire Red is an award-winning creative studio of 16 associates, proudly based in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Joey Zornes and Chris Rinehart founded the company in 2011 on the belief that a small, focused team can deliver a more powerful consumer-first, brand experience than larger agencies. Our business was built under the belief that digital is the core medium of our time. We’ve built a team of designers, developers, and producers who are passionate about interaction design, and make creative decisions based on human interaction.

“It’s not just what we make, it’s how we make it.” This is a core value of Bonfire Red that we live and breathe every day. The way we produce award-winning work is just as important as the work itself. We treat every client as part of our business – a long-term partner. When our clients succeed, we succeed.

Our Core Values:

Creative is our core
We all have different names for the same thing — A Maker. We’re problem solvers, thinkers, tinkerers, and doers cut from a different cloth. Creative thinking and execution is what binds us.

Clients are our kindling
We value strong partnerships and handpick our clients for chemistry and quality. Our clients provide us the great opportunity to make and create every day.

Passion is our flame
We’re passionate about passion. It’s at the heart of everything we do and it’s louder than words. It’s in our DNA.

What are the services you use the most (or are looking forward to using) from the Columbus Chamber?
We are excited to just get involved in our community in new ways. We feel the Chamber will not only give us an opportunity to connect with other great minds, brands, and businesses, but it will enable us to share our expertise, experience, and story to help other local businesses grow. We love the idea of being part of something bigger and helping our community grow in new and unique ways.

How do you stay engaged with trends that you see in your industry?
Our industry (branding and digital) is ever-changing. We read. We test. We prototype. We network and share ideas with our peers in the creative community. We gather a collective voice of consumer (VOC) to help us create the best experiences that deliver on our clients’ goals.

Please describe your company culture.
Bonfires bring people together. To tell stories. To enjoy one another and connect on a personal level. Red is the color of passion, and we wear it on our sleeves, every day. At Bonfire Red, you experience an environment where great work and shenanigans coexist. The work always comes first, but we take opportunities to joke, laugh and launch an occasional nerf dart. We consider ourselves a family with a commitment to stay small, by design, and cultivate amazing relationships with every single person in the studio.

What defines a successful employee at your company?
We are by design a small studio which means we have to be super selective on who joins our motley crew. We focus on hiring the most talented creative minds dedicated to their craft. We want to foster a great work community that is inviting and imaginative and understands work/life balance. To succeed you must bring passion, fire in your belly, desire to learn, and have a relentless pursuit to continually elevate our craft locally, regionally, and nationally.

What makes Columbus such a great place to do business?
We absolutely love Cbus. Columbus has an incredible creative community with varying types of independent makers. We have cultivated great partnerships with specialists and studios all over our city to augment our team in key areas such as copywriting, SEO/SEM, consumer research/testing, videography, photography, 3D, and technology platform expertise. We believe Columbus is a hidden gem of creative design talent. We are committed to bringing the spotlight to our Cbus community and our collective passion for great design.

Social Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bonfirered
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bonfire-red/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bonfirered/
Website: https://www.bonfirered.com/