Why "Rock & Roar"? 5 Personal Meanings Behind Our Company Logo and Mission

Back in 2017 when I was trying to come up with a company name (for the work I had already been doing in Philadelphia since 2008),
I looked at my past and into my future.

The Creation of Rock & Roar Creative
5 Elements of Personal Meaning
in Our Rock & Roar logo

1. LIONS
   I believe I was a lion in another life. Honestly. I am sure I feel this for a variety of reasons.... the stuffed lion my dad got me when I was 6 that I have now passed down to my daughter / Lion King, which I watched daily for who knows how long / Born Free, a documentary about raising lions because the mother lion was poached and eventually setting them free. When I sat down to create a logo for my own business, an image of a lion was the first element that was absolutely set in stone.

2. MOUNTAINS

   I grew up on the flatest land imaginable...not to hate on Eastern NC...but once I saw great big mountains, specifically the The Organ Mountains (aka La Sierra de los Órganos) in New Mexico at age 17 after getting on a plane for the first time in my life, I was hooked. Years later, knowing I would be moving to the highlands of Ecuador when I was creating my company name, I immediately recognized that mountains (and hopefully reaching the metaphorical "height" of my creative career) needed to be reflected in the logo as well.

3. ROCK PART 1 = CURIOSITY AT ANY AGE
   My dad's mom, Libby, passed away when I was really young. I only remember the stories my dad has told me about her and the amethyst rock collection we had scattered around the house I grew up in. Libby was a writer (whose book of poetry, "Thunder in the Drought," helped me get through my late teenage years) and she went back to school to study geology when she was in her 60s. She wrote a poem about it - being scared to be in a room full of younger, judgmental people. In the end she overcame her fears - she wanted to learn about rocks that badly.

4. ROCK PART 2 = ROCK THE BOAT
   To me, John Lewis will forever be the embodiment of rocking the boat in order to do what's right. Getting into Good Trouble is the only way to evolve as a person, a community, a planet. As a designer, I try to do my part by collaborating with other small business and nonprofits that are creating opportunities for others, breaking bad habits, and calling out hypocrisy and systemic oppression. I have never wanted to rock the boat more than after I witnessed John Lewis speak during one of many Art Advocacy Days in DC, and I even got to shake his hand afterwards. One of the best moments of my life.

5. ROARING = ADVOCACY
   Not only do I help small business owners and nonprofits rock the boat, I help them roar. After many years of advocating for federal and state arts funding, I knew moving abroad meant I couldn't visit my legislators anymore. So I wanted to embed my advocacy mission into my business in a way that would resonate with small businesses advocating for themselves. Mission statements are so pivotal to a nonprofit organization (what I went to graduate school for) that I even came up with a personal mission for myself and my for-profit business:
   
   Rock & Roar Creative’s guiding principle is to lend design and consulting expertise to organizations on a mission to serve underserved communities and audiences. We believe that art & design don’t “give” the oppressed a voice. The oppressed have always had a voice, they’ve just been ignored. We aim to AMPLIFY those voices and stories via clean, powerful design.