Brand first.
Always.
HQ Labz is a brand and technology studio in Birmingham, Alabama. We started with logos and brand identities. Today we also build the websites, apps and AI agents behind the brand, and the brand still comes first.
Where it started
Darrick Long grew up in Birmingham making things: models out of whatever was in the house, drawings, and later graphic design and visual storytelling in college. That became a design studio, and the design studio became HQ Labz.
For years the work was brand work: logos and identity systems, print and event campaigns, decks, and the marketing around them, for small businesses, churches, universities and nonprofits.
What changed
Clients kept asking for the next thing. A site they could edit themselves. A portal for their members. An app for the crew in the field. Then AI made it possible for a small team to run like a big one, so we build that too: the software and the AI agents behind the brand.
We run our own company on an AI chief of staff we built, called Coulson, and we build the same kind of system for clients.
What stayed
The brand still leads. Every project starts with how it should look, sound and feel, because that is what people see first, and it is what makes everything behind it worth using.
Four promises on every project.
The brand leads.
The look and the voice come first, and every screen, email and agent follows them.
Something real in week one.
A first identity direction, a clickable prototype or a first draft, so you change what does not fit before the real work.
Fixed prices, in writing.
One package, one price and one timeline, agreed before anything starts.
You approve what goes out.
AI agents draft, prepare and follow up. You decide what they may send on their own; everything else waits for your approval.
Something real in week one.
The first thing you review depends on the work: a first identity direction for a brand, a clickable prototype for a site or an app, a first draft for writing.
- 01
A short call
We hear how the work gets done today, including the spreadsheets and the group texts.
- 02
A fixed price
One package, one price and one timeline, in writing before anything starts.
- 03
Something to review first
In the first week: an identity direction, a clickable prototype or a first draft, so you change what does not fit early.
- 04
Launch and handoff
It goes live, your team is trained, and you own it. Plain updates the whole way.