I recently sat down to talk with Tessa Millhollin about her career as a graphic designer. Great Falls has been her hometown since she was seven. Her story is part of a larger series on people from Great Falls whose careers have taken them farther afield. Millhollin has established her own design business in NYC, you can read the full story here.

When the Great Falls Edit launched, Millhollin designed the graphics and color story for the new site. So, I just had to ask her how she came up with the concept for this peppy little publication. And, I could just feel her experience growing up in Great Falls, oozing into the project. 

“We were looking at some retro inspiration, as well as taking a cue from nature, particularly fish and the landscape around Great Falls,”  Millholiin said. 

The goal, she recounts, was to design something clean and versatile, using the graphics in a wide variety of pieces including photography, and by using blocks of color that would become synonymous with the brand. As with any new entity, the branding needed to be flexible enough to grow and expand as use cases changed or morphed. 

“When I was designing, I was thinking about the fact that it would live on the website, but it might also need to work in really small-scale print pieces or other formats that were yet unknown,” Millhollin said. 

The hope for the GF Edit branding was to deliver readers something modernized and hip, but that also connected back to the roots of Great Falls. When Millhollin was in the inspiration phase of the project she turned to the iconic Milwaukee station for ideas.

“I really loved the colors that used to be part of the station, so that’s where I started.” Millholiin said. “It was really fun to get to work on all that. In the end, the color palette that we landed on both reflects nature, specifically a trout’s coloring with pistachio green, poppy and sand as accent colors, with a soft black and white logo.”

Then, I put her on the spot and asked her, “What's it like to see your designs out in the wild?” I wanted her to be honest about if how the banding was used met her expectations, or were applied in ways that she imagined they would be.  

“Honestly, what makes a successful design is that a designer shouldn't have to handhold it the whole way at the end after delivering the assets,” she said diplomatically. “When I pass off the designs, you need to have options to work with them and understand how to apply them.” 

When I pressed for her opinion, she said, “It's been really fun to see all the different elements come to life. For example, I love that the poppy color became the button color on the website. It’s fun and exciting for me to see, because when I’m designing I think in broad terms not the specifics. So I love it.”

To see more of Tessa’s work, visit her website: https://www.tessamillhollin.com/.

What do you think of our branding? Do you see the inspiration for the Milwaukee station? Does it sing Montana trout to you? Send us a line at greatfallsedit@gmail.com, we’d love to hear your thoughts.