Apple & Anchor exists to fix that. We’re a brand strategy studio in Franklin, TN — led by Jess Redmon, with 20+ years of brand strategy and creative direction experience across founder-led businesses, nonprofits, and national brands. We take the complex, hard-to-articulate thing that makes your business genuinely different and build the brand system that communicates it clearly, consistently, and memorably.
We’re a tight-knit team of strategists, designers, and project leaders who care deeply about the work we put into the world. You won’t get handed off to a junior account manager. The people you meet are the people who do the work.
Jess has spent more than two decades helping organizations figure out not just how to look good but how to mean something. Before founding Apple & Anchor, she served as VP of Creative Services at Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp, where she helped promote Music City’s $9.2 billion hospitality industry. She chaired the Graphic Design department at O’More College of Design and holds a certification in Design Thinking from Stanford University’s d.school.
What that résumé doesn’t capture: Jess has a rare ability to walk into a room, listen to how a founder talks about their business, and immediately identify the gap between what they mean and what their brand is actually communicating. That’s the skill clients come back for. She leads strategy on every engagement and brings the energy of someone who genuinely loves this work.
Jessica Ray is the reason projects don’t just start well — they finish well. As a certified Project Management Professional, she brings structure, clarity, and calm to every engagement. She’s the person who turns a creative vision into a timeline, keeps stakeholders aligned, and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks between strategy and execution.
She’s worked across marketing, research, and creative strategy engagements — which means she understands how brand projects actually move through an organization. Clients consistently tell us she’s the reason the process felt as good as the outcome.
Emily is the person who takes complex, dense, hard-to-visualize information and makes it beautiful and immediately understandable. She specializes in information design and visual storytelling — the kind of work that turns a 40-page research report into something a stakeholder actually wants to read, or distills a complicated brand story into a single image that lands.
Her background spans executive communications, public-facing campaigns, and community-centered design — which means she’s equally comfortable designing for a boardroom presentation and a neighborhood nonprofit. She brings precision, care, and a genuine eye for what makes visual work resonate.
We're probably your people if...
We’re probably not the right fit if you need a quick logo, the lowest price, or a vendor who just executes without pushing back. We’re a thinking partner first — and the work reflects that.