Caroline, the Flourish Studio Manager and I had a fabulously productive Friday afternoon brainstorming session with super-stylish social photographer Matt Pereira. Alongside large slices of homemade mocha cake, Matt’s trademark heart cookies and plenty of cups of tea we managed to make a lot of progress on the Matt Pereira Baby and Family brands.
There’s a lot of love for the work we’ve been doing on Matt’s Wedding photography brand but as resident photographer on Baby Surrey magazine it was time to pick up the pace with the family and baby brands (as well as working out just how they all fit together).
Step one was to define exactly what impression we wanted to create with each brand. We selected three keywords for each (baby: innocent, natural, uninhibited; family: fun, connection, energy) which guided us throughout the session.
We then got to work cutting. We’d all brought in inspirational books, magazines, paper and fabric swatches and ribbons. We also had our Pantone books in the office for colour planning. At this point we weren’t editing too heavily: just cutting images, objects and words that represented each brand best.
Step Three was the debate. Editing out choices down into a cohesive look and feel. Thankfully it didn’t get too heated! You can see the full cut on the left – baby to the foreground, family at the back. We pretty much took every image and discussed how it fitted with the brand keywords. Those that fitted got to stay, those that didn’t were binned.
What the finished result gave us was a really clear picture of how we’d like the finished collateral to look and feel. It’s not a template for design, more a spark for creativity and inspiration.
And here’s the finished baby board, complete with colour swatches. The colours most certainly took the longest as once we’ve found the right summer colours we then needed to make sure that they all worked together. I think Matt was a little surprised at quite how long we spend perfecting a particular hue of purple!
Our final step, once we’d completed each mood board, was to come up with a wish list of collateral, finishes, textures and ideas to promote each brand. Of course not all will be implemented straight away, but at least we have some clear direction for the year ahead.
And here’s the finished family mood board (complete with a family you right recognise bottom left!).
I know Caroline and I found the session invaluable in short-cutting and enriching the process of building a visual identity for Matt’s baby and family brands. Of course there’s a lot more work to do: we now need to start artworking the logos, brochure and websites. But importantly, both the Creative Directors and client are in agreement about the overall direction of the brand, and we both have an incredibly clear understanding of where we want to take the image.
{ 3 comments }
