Smack Dab Studios

Special to the Savannah Business Report

Moving a successful business to a new town takes a leap of faith and a lot of guts. But for Hannah Byrne, owner and chief creative officer at Smack Dab Studios, a full-service graphic design and Web development firm, relocating to Savannah nearly three years ago turned out to be the best professional decision she ever made.

Byrne founded her company in Atlanta in 2004. Before starting Smack Dab Studios, she worked in a series of technology roles with Ben Carter Companies, Emory University Healthcare System and Blooming Cookies. She decided to go back to school to earn a degree in graphic design and became vice president of creative services at What’s Up Interactive, where she worked with high profile clients such as UPS, Coca-Cola, Rock-Tenn, FOX Television and Tropicana.

Working in a Web-oriented firm made it difficult for Byrne to pursue her passion for graphic design, brand development and print work, which prompted her to start her own company. However, after two years working in the Atlanta business community, Byrne decided to move her firm somewhere smaller.

To her surprise, she found that although Savannahians revere their place in history as Georgia’s oldest city, they do not object to newcomers. On the contrary, Byrne said she was instantly welcomed into the community. “I thought that they would be closed off and wouldn’t like outsiders,” she said. “But they couldn’t have been more welcoming.”

Byrne also found that Savannah was not a “good old boys” town, as she feared. She credits some of the city’s prominent businesswomen like Cora Bett Thomas for paving the way for the next generation of women business owners.

“This community has not only embraced us,” she enthused. “They have kept us working at full capacity for the last two years. It’s really been amazing, quite frankly. Every time I think we’ve reached a plateau, someone recommends us to someone else and it keeps going.”

The way the community has embraced her is reflected in the long list of the city’s oldest and most prominent companies and organizations who commissioned the studio’s work. Smack Dab recently signed contracts to do print work for Herty’s Advanced Materials Development Center; print and Web design for J.T. Turner and Carson Construction companies; design work for MyGulfstream.com; branding and advertising for Leopold’s Ice Cream and The Coastal Bank; and Web design and development for the Georgia Historical Society, Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace and Savannah Economic Development Association.

Byrne and her six employees offer a full line of services from business cards to logos, brochures and other collateral materials and are available for high-quality print work. She said the company tends to choose clients who have at least three needs and work to establish a cohesive brand and presence.

However, it’s not just the amount of work in Savannah that has made the move so worthwhile for the Smack Dab team. Savannahians welcomed the type of business structure that Byrne envisioned.

“Moving to Savannah changed everything,” she said. “Now I have the kind of business that I always imagined I would. I wanted to be ‘smack dab’ in the middle of their business working closely with clients on a regular basis so that we could understand their needs and develop a cohesive brand that would work for them.”

Smack Dab Studios has continued to evolve during its short tenure in Savannah. A little over a year ago, the company merged with Color Maria, along with the technical expertise and business savvy of longtime Savannah entrepreneur and now Chief Technical Officer and Partner Blake Ellis. “As a business partner, Blake has been a valuable voice in the business,” Byrne said. “We make a good team because we really complement each other’s strengths.”

An active community volunteer, Byrne is the vice president of programs for the Downtown Business Association and recently joined the advisory board of the Creative Coast Alliance, the knowledge-based-business promoting non-profit organization that originally coaxed her to the city. Byrne has enjoyed the close camaraderie in Savannah’s business community.

“The business community is far superior here than it was in Atlanta,” she said. “Even our competitors here are friends. We feel comfortable referring work to each other based on each other’s strengths which makes our business community as a whole stronger. That’s so rare in a business community but it makes it so nice to work here.”

Byrne said she used to wonder where she should move her business to because she was never totally comfortable in Atlanta. But now when she asks herself the same question, she gets a completely different answer. “I wouldn’t leave here,” she said. “There is no other place I would move my business to.”