Direction for the creative team on structure, messaging, and aesthetic for the new TMC homepage. Grounded in three stakeholder meetings, twelve interviews, and the client's own strategic plan.
TMC is a 75-year, three-generation, family-led real estate investment enterprise in Middle Tennessee. It develops, manages, and invests in the real estate it owns, and advises the partners and community who build alongside it. Their single biggest brand problem is that people who trust them with millions still can't say what they do. The homepage exists to fix that: quiet confidence, unmistakable clarity, and enough proof to make an out-of-market investor lean in.
This is the strategic frame the whole design serves. Investors don't get sold by the site. They hear the name, look TMC up to confirm legitimacy, then go straight to the Juniper Square investor portal to do business. The site's job is to make that ten-second credibility check land hard.
The company sits on a set of tensions worth designing into: steward of legacy & architect of growth, Nashville-rooted & built to scale, founder-led & enterprise-built. Hold both sides. The verbal identity below is Michael Hutzel's working draft. This mockup is the first place we test it live.
The working company-type identity: a vertically integrated real estate investment enterprise. Investment comes first. The services exist because TMC owns the assets, so their interests and their partners' point the same direction. Advise is the one outward-facing service: it extends beyond owned assets to the partners and wider community who seek their judgment, and it is the bridge into the legacy story.
The Mathews Company has spent 75 years doing the quiet work that shapes cities. Developing, investing, managing, and advising across Middle Tennessee, they operate at the intersection of deep market knowledge and long-term thinking. Three generations of family leadership have built a firm where trust isn't a talking point, it's the operating model.
Much of what defines Nashville was built by The Mathews Company. For more than 75 years, we've developed, owned, and managed real estate across Middle Tennessee, often seeing opportunity where others didn't. Office, industrial, retail, multifamily, mixed-use: our portfolio spans more than 2 million square feet and three generations of earned judgment. We don't just know this market. We helped build it.
This surfaced repeatedly. The anecdote that captures it: a board member already in deals with TMC, asked to describe the company, said essentially "I'll be honest, I don't really know. I'm in deals with them. I trust them. I like them. But exactly what they're responsible for? I don't know." The punchline: a great problem to have, and a brand problem to fix.
The confusion is structural, and the homepage has to actively cut through it:
Critical framing for art direction. TMC develops and manages property, but they are fundamentally a vertically integrated real estate investment enterprise. They provide development, management, and advisory services because they own the assets, not as a menu they sell. Do not design them like a general contractor or an architecture firm. There are no gleaming glass skyscrapers to fly drones across. The real portfolio is office space, commercial warehousing, adaptive reuse, and mixed-use. Less "sexy skyline," more "quiet ownership of things that matter."
A practical note on imagery, less a rule than a reality to design around. We will not be able to rely on purchasing or capturing glossy, cinematic content: sweeping drone footage or stock glass-tower skylines. Some of it does not exist for these assets, and some of it is not worth staging. Overhead and aerial shots of many of their buildings honestly just read as office complexes, so leaning on those tends to flatten the story.
That is not meant to limit the creative team. It is a prompt. Renderings can be genuinely exciting and worth exploring, and there is room to be inventive with typography, editorial layout, detail shots, and the few strong real images that do exist. The one through-line worth protecting is the investment-enterprise feel: quiet, grounded, and confident rather than a flashy CRE marketing site. Beyond that, the creative team should feel free to run.
Six primary items. Everything supports the "confirm legitimacy, then go to portal" path. No news/blog.
Note: "Legacy & History" needs its own page with a timeline component (Colton flagged this). Naming options: Our Story / Legacy / History / Since 1938. Recommend "Our Story" in nav, "Legacy" as the emotional label on the page.
Follow alongside a possible wireframe, one direction rather than a mandate. The order shown is one deliberate option: identity, then proof, then clarity, then depth.
Lead with the identity, not a service list. A flat list of services is exactly what created the confusion ("a leading provider of real estate services"). Open with "A vertically integrated real estate investment enterprise," then make the integration the point: TMC develops, manages, and invests in the real estate it owns, and advises the partners and wider community who build alongside it. The services are proof of alignment, they own what they run, not a menu. Advise is the one outward-facing service and the bridge to the community and legacy story.
| # | Section | Job & contents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hero | Header image, one confident headline (recommend the tagline "Built on unconventional wisdom.", or the bolder "We don't just know this market. We helped build it."). Sub-line with the 75-year / three-generation frame. No portfolio button, keep the hero clean (optional quiet link to How We Invest). |
| 2 | Brand / explainer video | 60-sec to 2-min video, TDK-style, no single talking head. Voiceover states plainly what TMC does. This is both a homepage asset and the Phase 2 video deliverable. It carries the clarity load emotionally. |
| 3 | What We Do | The hardest-working block. Lead with the identity line: "A vertically integrated real estate investment enterprise." Then the integration logic (they develop, manage, and invest in what they own; they advise partners and the community). Icons for Invest, Develop, Manage, Advise. Asset-class chips. Plain language. |
| 4 | Proof bar | Scale at a glance: years, generations, sq ft, assets/AUM. Figures pending confirmation (section 09). |
| 5 | Investment Philosophy | Replaces the portfolio grid. Explains what kinds of projects they pursue and why, in their own language (lasting value, community, historically sensitive). Less promotional, more understanding. Draft copy below the table. |
| 6 | Asset Classes | TMC's own term for what they invest in: Office, Industrial, Retail, Multifamily, Mixed-Use. Categories, not a named-building parade. Optional quiet link to representative work / case studies. |
| 7 | Legacy teaser | Short timeline preview → dedicated Our Story / Legacy page. "Much of Nashville was built here. And so is what comes next." |
| 8 | Investors / portal | Partnership philosophy in a line, then the Juniper Square login handoff. Fix the broken link. |
| 9 | Closing CTA | "We build what we'd stake our name on." Tagline lockup, contact CTA. |
| 10 | Footer | Logo + tagline, nav, contact, portal login. No blog. |
Section 5 carries TMC's investment philosophy. Not invented: the ideas are lifted from their strategic plan (Purpose, 2030 Vision) and info packet, then shaped to Hutzel's voice. It answers "what kinds of projects, and why," without a promotional portfolio parade.
Verbatim source anchors: "lasting, positive impact... for the benefit of those who live, work, and shop"; "a sustainable... enterprise that produces lasting value"; "an environmentally and historically sensitive developer." Flagged as new phrasing (not in their docs): "calculated risk," "honor character."
Four custom line icons, restrained and geometric to match the institutional tone. Lead with Invest (the identity), then the owned-asset services Develop and Manage, then Advise set slightly apart as the outward-facing one: Invest (partnership / growth mark, not a dollar-sign cliché), Develop (building / massing mark), Manage (stewardship / hospitality mark), Advise (compass / judgment mark, pointed outward to partners and community). Plus five small asset-class marks: office, industrial, retail, multifamily, mixed-use.
All client-provided source material lives in the publicly accessible "TMCO: Client Provided Assets" folder. Logos, brand colors, templates, photography, investor decks, press, and info packets are all here.
Katie shared a "Websites" doc in the client folder. Her clarification on what it holds: the first list is their local peer set, included so we can see who they measure against. Everything after that is sites they like, useful as directional reference for look and feel, not a mandate.
Included so we can see who TMC measures against locally. Reference, not necessarily admired.
Per Katie, everything outside the local peer list is a site they like. Directional for look and feel, not a mandate. Grouped by what they are.
National peers
TMC's own project sites (they like these)
Other TMC properties
Separating fact from claim, since the sources disagree and the site is a credibility instrument. Confidence noted.