About
The long version
Fifteen years building brands. Some of them my own.
I’m Chris Edington. I grew up in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and joined the Coast Guard in 2004. Four years of service took me to Charleston, South Carolina, where I started in design and earned a B.A. in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of Charleston in 2011.
I spent the next decade working agency-side on brands like Porsche, Audi, Milk-Bone, and Rachael Ray Nutrish, then went in-house as creative director and later chief marketing officer at Island Brands USA, where I helped raise more than $5 million from over 6,000 investors and shipped the can design that carried the brand into national distribution.
In 2013 I founded Puddle Pirate Co., a lifestyle brand for the Coast Guard community. Ten years and more than 10,000 shirts later, I sold it in 2023.
In 2023 my wife Kaitlyn and I co-founded Quell, an art supply company built for working artists and educators. She runs the community and the classroom side. I run the brand and the build.
In 2024 I started Edington Studio, a practice for founders who want the same thing I wanted when I was one: naming, identity, packaging, and web that actually ships, from someone who has done it himself.
Most recently I started Mr. Sniff’s, an incense brand I’m building from scratch: sourcing, packaging, and fulfillment, out of Pittsburgh.
I live in Pittsburgh with my wife and two kids. Edington Studio is a certified veteran-owned small business.
Timeline
How I got here
2024–now
Edington Studio · Founder & creative director
Naming, identity, packaging, and web for founder-led and product companies.
2023–now
Quell · Co-founder
Art supplies for working artists and educators, co-founded with my wife Kaitlyn.
~2017–2021
Island Brands USA · Creative director, then CMO
Helped raise more than $5 million from over 6,000 investors and shipped the can design that carried the brand into national distribution.
2013–2023
Puddle Pirate Co. · Founder
A lifestyle brand for the Coast Guard community. Built it, ran it for ten years, sold it in 2023.
2004–2008
U.S. Coast Guard
Four years of active duty, stationed out of Charleston, South Carolina, where I started in design.
Philosophy
How I work
I learned discipline before I learned design. Four years in the Coast Guard taught me that a plan is only as good as the person willing to run it at 4 a.m. in bad weather. Design school could not have taught me that. Neither could a portfolio review.
Most creative work fails at the handoff, not the concept. A good idea sitting in a deck is worth nothing on its own. I care more about what ships than what pitches well, and I structure every project around that: fewer rounds of exploration, more rounds of production.
Owning brands changed how I advise them. When the P&L is mine, a font choice stops being a debate and starts being a decision with a deadline and a cost attached. I bring that same pressure to client work, because it makes the work better and it respects the client’s money.
I read Marcus Aurelius the way I read a production schedule: the obstacle is the work. Move through it.