About Us

MANIFESTO

Since 1993 Foundry Zero have been serving business as a marketing and communications brand development and support agency for the Triangle area, as well as nationally and internationally. We provide the types of services that create memorable brands, develop re-brand synchronicity and will extend the personality of your company throughout your corporate structure and beyond. Foundry Zero has been a proving ground for longevity, helping many small-to-large companies over years, on many projects, and in various markets.

Specialized markets include, but aren’t limited to:

HISTORY

Begun in 1993 as Gallant Studios in Raleigh, NC, the studio evolved its specialty from an energetic but broad-based graphic design and illustration firm to the more accomplished niche of providing blanket branding services. Over this period the studio also found increasing success at using its services to produce larger projects over a growing list of media services such as: silkscreen, offset printing, tradeshow, business class presentations as well as various web based services. In 2001, Paul Smith of Acme Communications joined founder Daniel Gallant in his downtown offices to create Foundry Zero. The merger was an effort to embrace the ever-growing technology revolution and to extend the companies ability to deploy its branding services more effectively over the web. Met with mixed success, Paul left the company a few years later to join Capstrat, but not without creating a solid technology base that, thanks to support staff and a knowledgeable network of specialists, continues today.

DANIEL GALLANT—PRIMARY

Born Canadian, at the age of 10, Daniel moved to Raleigh NC with his family. He’s pretty much been here ever since. After attending East Carolina University, he was recruited by a small agency, Bleu Aura in 1988. Five years later and after working for several other studios, he had developed a tool belt of computer and design related skills that helped him decide to make a go of it on his own and he began Gallant Studios.

On Branding

Over time Daniel’s growing depth in his expertise along with the continual exposure to companies and how they sold in their markets helped him realize that his skills in service to message and marketing meant branding. It became apparent that without understanding a company’s brand strategy, creating work for them would not fulfill his function as a graphics professional. This fueled an intense investigation and application of brand marketing.

On Web and Internet-Based Applications

The Internet revolution of the mid-to-late 1990s also opened up new avenues of business for Daniel and increased his skill set. But, most of his initial knowledge developed around working with larger company’s internal IT departments. Without closer quarters experience to learn from, Daniel felt that this new business was increasingly slipping away from him. In an effort to address this issue, in 2001, Daniel merged Gallant Studios with the technology company, Acme Communications, to become Foundry Zero. Unfortunately the business model faltered when Paul left the company a few years later, but his expertise served its purpose. This vital addition to the company gave Daniel and now Foundry Zero the technical fuel injection that helped play catch-up with his peers.

On Comics and Illustration

Met with initial success in 1986 with the publication of his comics in Scream magazine, Daniel eventually garnered commercial illustration work from the exposure. But, for the following few years he put aside his interest in drawing comics to pursue a career in illustration and graphic design. This helped create a market for Daniel doing both technical and editorial illustration work. Daniel returned to comics in 1995 by started Alternating Crimes Publishing (AC) as a continuation of Daniel’s mentor, Russell Boone’s original vision. The company published several issues of its comic anthology “Alternating Crimes” before spinning off “Hell Car” comics with Paul Friedrich. Together they received critical acclaim for the effort and was picked up as the primary component of a marketing package for a large independent music store cooperative. At that point Daniel withdrew AC from the project sighting that it committed too much time away from his primary company Foundry Zero. Daniel continued creating comics and shortly afterward he won recognition for his “Danny and Chrissy” story that was published in the 2000 SPX Anthology. Today, Daniel enjoys the continuing efforts of commercial illustration and working on his humorous mildly-political dystopian comic strip Concrete Jungle.