A Kansas City Creative Agency

We Love Ideas

The purpose of this blog is to share things that make us proud, things that make us think, or things that make us react. It is a place for ideas, because we know that the only way an idea can be valuable is if it is shared — if it sparks a debate, changes someone’s mind, or reinforces something they already knew. We love ideas. We live off ideas. The work we do wouldn’t be possible without ideas.

Overall, it’s our goal to contribute to the larger conversation of branding, design, and marketing. Why are they valuable? How can they be done well? How can they have an impact on an individual, a corporation, or a culture? Anyone who is engaged in what they do thinks about their industry, their inspiration, and their philosophy. We sure do, and this blog is a place for us to collect those thoughts and share them with anyone who is interested. If you decide to poke around, please consider joining the conversation — we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Blog Rollarrow pointing down

Do right: Our process and the philosophy behind it

Posted in Philosophy on February 7, 2012 by David Cecil

An illustration of our process for strategic advertising, branding, design & marketing

Do right

Our motto at Johnny Lightning Strikes Again is “do right,” and it is founded on three things that we believe to be true:

1) The purpose of creative has to be to help a business achieve their ultimate goal.

2) To do this, the work can’t just be good — it has to be right (and there is a huge difference).

3) The biggest enemy of doing the right work is making strategic decisions prematurely.

This is the foundation of our philosophy and it affects almost everything we do. The most noticeable impact, however, is found in the process we go through from the moment a project with a new or existing client is being considered to its completion. It works in three steps.

read more

Starting a business by starting with branding

Posted in News on February 2, 2012 by David Cecil

Snow & Company Signage, designed by Johnny Lightning Strikes Again

In 2010, we were at a poolside event and met an MBA student from a Kansas City college. Since Johnny Lightning Strikes Again is in the business of growing businesses, the conversation naturally turned to a concept for a bar & restaurant that he and a few of his fellow students were considering pursuing. Philosophies were shared, business cards were exchanged, and plans to discuss it over coffee were made. These conversations are always exciting, but they also highlight that there are a lot of hurdles to jump over to go from a concept to opening day.

In this case, there was one thing that made us believe that they had the right stuff to do it, however. They wanted to start with the brand.

read more

Welcome to Kansas City, Snow & Company

Posted in News on November 16, 2011 by JLSA


Dear Snow & Company,

One year ago we met and you told us about your restaurant/bar concept. You didn’t have a location or a brand (that’s where we were to come in), but you were passionate about starting something great…something that would last. A few weeks ago, you opened your doors and served your first frozen cocktail. Congratulations, and welcome to Kansas City.

Your friends,
Johnny Lightning Strikes Again

P.S. For those of you who are interested, we’ll post something about the work we’ve been doing with Snow & Company before too long. In the meantime, you can read an article about them here and another one here (which includes a quote from our very own, David Cecil). Of course, if you’d like to check out Snow & Company in person, you can get the lowdown at snowandcompany.com.

Congratulations to The Rieger and Manifesto!

Posted in News on October 25, 2011 by JLSA

We’d like to take a moment to congratulate our clients The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange and Manifesto for cleaning house in The Pitch’s Best of Kansas City awards. They were awarded Best Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, Best Place for a Business Lunch, and Best Cocktail Menu. They also placed high in Best Chef (Howard Hanna), Best Bartender (Jenn Tosatto), Best Martini, and Best New Bar or Club.

Impressive, right? To read about some of the work we’ve done with The Rieger, click here.

User Interface Design

Posted in Strategy on September 6, 2011 by David Cecil

What is user interface design?

In the past 30 years, the ways in which we interact with content have changed significantly. No longer do we simply pick up a piece of paper and read from left to right — we click, we surf, we roll over, and we search. As these systems have become more complicated it has become increasingly important to make them seem easy. This is the purpose of user interface design.

User interface design, or user experience design, is the process of designing how a user interacts with a given system, whether that system be a website, an application, or a piece of software. It has a hand in all aspects of interaction — how a user perceives a system, how they learn it, and how they use it. While user interface design is primarily associated with digital products, the philosophy behind the field is much older than websites and software. As soon as humans started building machines that required people to operate, someone had to think about how this operation could be carried out as smoothly as possible.

read more

Introducing the new Johnny Lightning Strikes Again

Posted in News on July 19, 2011 by JLSA

A new website. A new agency.

Welcome to JLSA.com, the new online home of Johnny Lightning Strikes Again. Not only did we pack up our brand and move from our previous address (strikesagain.net), we built a brand new house once we got here. We couldn’t be more proud to unveil it.

Johnny Lightning Strikes Again was founded in 2009, and while it may seem like two years is an awfully short amount of time to be in business before overhauling your website, the past two years have been full of change. We’ve grown. We’ve matured. We’ve learned what kind of agency we are and what kind of agency our clients need us to be. Therefore, this is not just a new website. It’s a new chapter in the life of our agency; the culmination of two years of hard work, creativity, mistakes, and success.

read more

Client review from Team Cocktail

Posted in News on May 31, 2011 by JLSA

Lyndsey Higgins, Co-Founder of Team Cocktail, was nice enough to write a little bit about their experience working with us on their branding, clothing, and web design project:

read more

Happy Anniversary!

Posted in News on May 18, 2011 by JLSA

In April, we celebrated our birthday; Johnny Lightning Strikes Again is two years old.

While we’ve been working in the branding, design, and marketing industry for much longer, we can honestly say that the past two years have been the most fun, most productive, and most creative of our lives. We’d like to thank everyone that has been involved in helping us reach this milestone – your advice and support have been invaluable. We’d especially like to thank our clients, both for trusting us with your brands and allowing us to be partners in your businesses. We’re honored.

Here’s to many years to come!

Kansas City Small Business of the Year Nomination

Posted in News on April 18, 2011 by JLSA

We are proud to announce that, for the second year in a row, Johnny Lightning Strikes Again has been nominated for The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s “Mr. K Award.”  The Mr. K Award, named after famed Kansas City entrepreneur Ewing Kauffman, is given to The Chamber’s Small Business of the Year and is based on business growth, exemplary employee relations, and a strong record of service to the community.

We’d like to thank The Chamber and say that it has been a privilege serving businesses in the Kansas City area for your branding, web design, graphic design, and marketing needs!


The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Logo

Clients who understand branding

Posted in News on March 17, 2011 by JLSA

exclusiveMD Logo Design, by Johnny Lightning Strikes Again

Branding is a word that is used a lot – not just in our industry, but in the business world as a whole. But what is branding? It’s a slightly difficult question, because branding is often defined not by what it is, but by the most common applications of it. Branding is when you design a logo. Branding is when you design a website with a look-and-feel specific to that company. Branding is when you mark an animal with a branding iron. While all of these statements are true, none of them can really serve as a proper definition of branding.

Branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. It is a communication tool, used to capture the message of a company and deliver it through visuals. It is not something that a company does once and then checks off their list; it is an on-going process that enables businesses to increase their visibility and achieve their goals.

read more

We're a full service creative agency in Kansas City that specializes in solving business problems through strategic branding, design, and marketing.

Blog Categories