CHRIS JOHNSON
communications specialist
Projects
click images below for more
Welcome. This is where you can find highlights of my recent professional projects. For a few other favorites (some dating back to grad school), visit my misc. page.
The Business Card Story
(Or, the recent history of one company as told through business card design.)
Since 2017, I have worked for the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, working to change the image from small hometown nonprofit to nationally-recognized thought leader, while acknowledging the reality that the work we do is very much one-on-one, in neighborhoods and communities, and the focus there is never on "the brand." The focus is always the people, and the mutuality we establish to support people in their recovery from mental health concerns.
Too Much Information
Since 2017, I have worked for the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, working to change the image from small hometown nonprofit to nationally-recognized thought leader, while acknowledging the reality that the work we do is very much one-on-one, in neighborhoods and communities, and the focus there is never on "the brand." The focus is always the people, and the mutuality we establish to support people in their recovery from mental health concerns.
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MENTAL HEALTH DAY AT THE CAPITOL
I took 72 (nearly contiguous) hours out of one of the busiest weeks of my life (including grad school) to help some colleagues pull off a last-minute celebratory Mental Health Day at the Georgia Capitol. I don't regret one minute of it.
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The Pipeline, 2018-2021
I took over as editor of this newsletter (continuously in print since 1990) in 2018 with all good intentions of shutting it down and telling it's 3,000 subscribers to get on the internet. Instead, I ended up more than doubling the subscriber base of this opt-in-only piece of actual paper mail that people want in their mailboxes.
The Pipeline, 2022-2024
The death of my boss in July 2022 meant new roles for me as publisher (and editor, designer, etc.) of The Pipeline as Interim Executive Director during a time of significant stress for the behavioral health industry, the mental health recovery community, and GMHCN itself, after 17 years under the leadership of Sherry Jenkins Tucker.
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I'm a (minor) award winning academic presenter (at the regional level). I don't rely on PowerPoint for anything--as a former college professor, I have experienced half of the 10,000,000 things that can go wrong with PowerPoint. But that doesn't mean I don't use it when I can, because I definitely do.
A long-time client, the owner of the last surviving embroidery studio in New York, called me in to help craft a short speech for a press conference where NYC Mayor DeBlasio and Diane Von Furstenberg were announcing the names of grant recipients. The eventual outcome is more than extraordinary.
The Georgia Peer Policy Collective at GMHCN was a short-lived but wildly successful volunteer effort to engage Georgia's mental health recovery community with policy and policymakers.
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When you and one of your favorite colleagues ever are getting paid to talk with the brightest minds in your field, you know you are in the right place. Finding time to find funding for that effort was a story for a different podcast.
My 20+ years with Rod Keenan New York (aka Rod Keenan) were extraordinary in more ways than can be counted. Putting aside our friendship, the ability to watch, and participate in, the birth, growth, and death of a small business that resurrected a moribund clothing category by making it nothing less than Art, has provided me one of those unique yet universal educations in life and business that you can neither plan for nor replicate. Other jobs gave me rent, and food. This one gave me connection to the people who became my pack, my eternal cohort, my family of friends. We don't go to high school class reunions--we go to Rod's..
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