About ThinkTank

Thinkin’ it Through since ’22 (actually, ’11)

ThinkTank was originally formed in 2011 as a Business Planning consulting firm, physically located in Denver, and went on many adventures through these United States helping and planning businesses. We have a background in economics and math and history and stuff, so it was good. 

Every business we planned needed some sort of graphic design work done—and storytelling whether visually or verbally is our passion—so it was only natural to dabble with the Creative Cloud when it debut in 2012. As it turns out, Business Plans are actually more effective if they are well branded and visually appealing—weird—so flash forward to 2020 when we had some extra time on our hands and decided it was time to go all-in on brand identity design. 

But, if you want to be a graphic designer you need a portfolio website, right? And if there is one thing we are VERY particular about around here when it comes to branding, it’s fonts.

Long story short, we couldn’t get the fonts we wanted on our original website builder—we can recall the sense of betrayal—so we learned how to develop on WordPress and never looked back. (Yes. THIS, the font you’re reading, is the reason we only build in WordPress. New Atten Round. So friendly. So round.)

Business Planning, Graphic Designing, Website Building and more

At this point, describing “what ThinkTank does” was getting cumbersome.

It was somewhere around here that we got our first taste of SEO research and analysis. Remember how we mentioned the background in economics? Well, for a long time, economic data was kinda hard to find, because of entirely uninteresting reasons surrounding the US Department of Labor in like 2013. It was a bummer for econ geeks everywhere. 

But when we got into doing the SEO for our own website, we discovered the truth that all of that beautiful data had just changed form. Yes, friends, if you know a thing or two about economics AND writing, Search Engine Optimization might also be the career path for you. Naturally, we only learned all of this great stuff AFTER we built our first two versions of our own website (which is also why we have a SEO-First policy, now) because those websites had to be restructured to maximize the things. 

Motion Design, just ’cause

So, for real, if you are a designer of some sort and you are using the Adobe products, you should level-up your skills to Motion Design, too. Look at all the neat, branded, things you can do! 

While it’s not easy, you can make a few small changes to files you are already using in the logo-design phase of your work to make it much simpler to create motion later on. Then, if you happen to know some things about web development, you can export these motion logos as ultra-small code files for interactive websites, or as motion graphics for video. 

Anyhew, that’s all to say that somewhere in here we started using After Effects which you can export as “lotties” and we learned to install on our websites. Learning Motion Design was organic and a lot of fun and by far one of the most useful things to know in today’s short-attention-spanned market. 

Artificial Intelligence Because It’s The Future and It’s Awesome

You may be interested in ThinkTank because we are very creative—and you might allow that this means we are some nerdy, nerdy, nerdy, nerds. 

So when ChatGPT appeared on the scene last year we were skeptical at first, but couldn’t believe “it was real” when we really got into it. But got into it we did with a very open mind. 

Now AI is absolutely essential to how we do business. We are delighted to work with it, delighted to learn more about how to use it, and delighted to teach you how to run your business better with it. Our friendly CustomGPT, TTOLContentGPT, helped develop this entire website, which involved who knows how many words of branded and optimized copy; and you can chat up our friendly TTOLCustomerGPT by using the ChatBot thingy on this site to set up a free 30-minute demo if you wanna learn more. 

boutique full-service creative marketing agency

Somewhere in 2022 when we started adding Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing to our official list of services. Our websites with our various seo-first, quality-first approaches were doing well. Part of this approach is a lot of custom-content developed through a streamlined process (the brand system) and so it became only natural to start distributing it to Social Media, too. This might at this point mean ongoing blog posts, infographics, video, audio, photography, or more. But once you’ve already got the SEO research, a systemetized brand, a centralized and well-maintained website, and artificial intelligence on your side—maintaining the discipline required by modern marketing is much simpler. (Not easier! Simpler!) Besides, it’s better than going door-to-door. 

The transition to being a “marketing agency” was actually born of SEO research.

For the previous few years we were a “full-service design studio.” The difference between the two phrases has entirely to do with getting found on the internet for exactly “what you do,” which is important. (Naturally, of course, we had just re-ordered some business cards right before discovering this compelling change. It’s just how this business goes. ) If you say, “full-service design studio” the internet, and thus people, don’t know what you mean—maybe you’re a hair stylist—but if you say, “full-service marketing agency” people are like, “ohhhh! You can build my website AND brand AND marketing! Help me, please!”

“Storytelling”

Honestly, take away all the words and stuff, and the thing we really love doing is storytelling. Spinning a fireside yarn. You know, words and stuff. 

Oddly enough, if you actually wanted to write and illustrate a book, you would have to have all of the skills we’ve accumulated. 

And that’s all we do here: Learn your story—and tell it to everyone in a way that is accessible to everyone.