Monday’s brainstorming session highlighted some interesting ideas on photography for me. As graphic designers we always appreciate a good image, and I consider us to be pretty good at giving our clients a steer on what will make a good photograph: great lighting, clear, simple and in a style that fits with the brand. But over the next month or so I’m going to be art directing a photoshoot for a bridal jewellery company, and I’ve started thinking a lot more creatively about how we can bring the brand and the product to life.

Great product shots don’t just show the product well, it’s not just about having a good photographer. Great product shots that sell will bring the product to life. And just like an exhibition stand that creatively brings out the essence of the product or service, so your photography should do the same.

Let me share a few examples with you.

The White Company is particularly good at this with their scented products. Take a look at their catalogue or website. We don’t, yet, have the capability to be able to smell through the web, but you can still get an evocatively clear idea of what you’re going to smell just by looking at the images. Why? Because they’ve thought about the ingredients of each product and photographed beautifully the ingredients. And take a look at the product shot at the top of this post. Just at a glance you know that those products are going to smell of Lavender. It’s not rocket science, but it is very powerful and it does take thought and care.

I love Diana Phillips’ quirky take on styling her photos. Not content with the standard “pose” of a chocolate (usually isolated on a white background or one in focus with the rest blurred in the background) Diana and her photographer have had a bit of fun. Each shot is a work of art and gives a bit of a feel for what you can expect. These have not just been styled, they’re absolute works of art. And they fit perfectly with Diana’s upmarket branding.

So next time you reach for the light tent for a bit of product photography, take a step  back and think about the content. How can you bring your product to life? How can you style it to really get people to engage with what you’re doing? And will your ideas fit with your brand? Happy snapping!

Sysco Guest Supply are a multi billion dollar business who supply amenities such as bubble bath and shampoo to hotel chains like the Marriot and Hilton worldwide. To say that they’re upmarket bubble bath suppliers probably doesn’t do them quite justice! They have an impressive portfolio of both clients and suppliers and are responsible for placing brands such as Hermes, Aromatherapy Associates, Bulgari and Kiehls in top end hotels. In addition to this they also design, manufacture and distribute both their own brand products and create branded toiletries for hotel chains as well.

They approached Flourish to help them create a brochure that would encourage new clients to pick up the phone and arrange a meeting. We’ll be doing the design work over the next few weeks and the first stage was a mood board session to establish both the look and feel and the structure of the brochure. I love working on mood boards with clients. It all seems a little random when we suggest them to clients – how on earth is a bit of cutting and sticking going to make a difference to their design they wonder? And is it really worth the money? Well the feedback from each and every client we’ve done this with so far is categorically yes.

Alice, Sysco’s Marketing Manager, and I started by focusing on what made Sysco Guest Supply unique and the impression we wanted to create. We then brainstormed how the brochure might be structured. Immediately we noticed that our quick response plan lacked customer focus, so we spent some time thinking hard about who Sysco Guest Supply’s clients are and what motivates them to buy. This is often a really valuable exercise for our clients as they suddenly realise that all customers are not created equal, and even in these times, not all are motivated by price.

Understanding who Sysco’s clients were and what motivated them to buy enabled us to prioritise them in order of who Alice wanted to focus her energies on with this brochure. Very quickly and simply we were able to come up with a strong angle for the brochure, and voila, with a bit of jiggery pokery we slotted in a couple of extra spreads into the plan which suddenly made a very company focused brochure suddenly very customer focused.

Even if you don’t have a brochure, do this with your website. You’ll be amazed at the number of websites that are company rather than customer focused.

Anyway, back to the mood board. Within an hour and a half Alice and I had a plan. We’d sketched out roughly the content and order of each page and Alice had a plan that she could use for when she writes the copy up this week. We can also use it to give to the studio when it comes to the design work.

Next up was the cutting and sticking. Armed with a pair of scissors and a stash of catalogues and magazines we cut out images that reflected the stylish, luxurious and professional image we’d like the brochure to have. With our shortlist we then weeded out those that didn’t fit, and with the help of Caroline, the Flourish Studio Manager were able to create the fabulous mood board you see below.

I do realise that this just looks like an effortless collection of images, but trust me when I say that each and every one of those images has been carefully considered and placed on that mood board for a reason. Sometimes it’s about being literal, but more often than not we use these mood boards to think laterally, evoke feelings and spark our creativity. It’s also a fantastic way for the Account Director, Art Director and Client to ensure that we’re all on the same page before we start a job, and the output is so much better for it.

Alice’s comments at the end summed up what was a really fun and very productive morning. She admitted that she’d been sceptical about the value in the mood board but now that she had done it, could absolutely see the benefits. She said it was one of the most fun mornings she’d had in her working life. Praise indeed!

Lisa Cox is a garden designer based in Leatherhead. We’ve been working together for the past three months on her marketing strategy – focusing on getting Lisa plenty of profitable clients to help her achieve her financial goals. We started in May by defining Lisa’s brand strategy and understanding who her most profitable clients would be. This really helped us target our marketing to some very specific groups of people. In June we looked at pricing – how much Lisa should be charging and how she might package up some of her services to make them easier to sell. We also explored a financial plan for the year and created her a set of sales targets. Finally in July we created Lisa’s marketing plan. Using the knowledge we had gained in the first two months we were able to create a really focused and targeted marketing plan that will help Lisa attract more of the profitable clients.

Lisa's current website

Lisa had recently had her brand identity created and was very happy with that but was unsure about her website. We both agreed that whilst the website could do with some tweaks – both in terms of content and design, it wasn’t the most important area to spend her budget on at the moment. It looks good (if a little technical) and there were more pressing issues that needed dealing with, such as the creation of a branded blog and newsletter and the implementation of a direct mail campaign.

Rob has taken much of the look and feel of Lisa’s brand identity and developed it further to bring out more of Lisa’s personality and create something altogether softer and more engaging.

I love the font he’s used which just softens the look and feel. He’s also kept the very structured images but softened them with an inset border which just feels a bit more classy. It should appeal to Lisa’s target market very well! You can see the blog at the top of this post – both newsletter and blog reflect eachother without being exactly the same, which I think is important.

Over the summer Lisa will be running a two stage direct mail campaign. She already has some brochures printed and she’ll be dropping a handwritten note into each of those before posting off to 300 select houses (we’ll be testing two different notes over 50 houses first to see which one pulls the most response). She’ll follow up that campaign with a very focused flyer aimed at encouraging people to book a consultation with her.

I wrote the copy and Rob has created this gorgeous design to really lift the words and bring them to life.

And here’s the back

So what do you think? We have one very happy Lisa, and I’m pretty chuffed with the results myself – even if I do say so myself…

Denise Allen has been a regular visitor to the flourishing blog ever since I met her at Grow Your Business in April of 2009 and we were delighted when a couple of weeks ago she asked us to create a new identity for her baking business. Denise currently trades her business as Cupcake and Cookie Central and has been working through the night to bake enough cakes to sell at Surrey and Hampshire Farmers Markets.

Having recently moved to Hampshire Denise is getting serious about taking her baking business to higher levels and is keen to stop the exhausting cycle of weekend farmers markets and build up the commissions.

Denise recognised that in order to stand out from the competition and attract the right sorts of clients she needed a professional and engaging logo. Her brief was to create something that was fun, professional and most of all, communicated the love and attention she puts into each and every one of her cakes.And so without further ado, I present to you Concept One.

Concept One

Personally I love the font, the colours, the spots (yes, probably too much detail when small, but it would work well without the dots too…) and the cute piping bag.

And here it is in context.

Concept Two

This one feels a bit more corporate and we’ve played on the idea of a doily framing the cupcake. It’s a much more slick take on what Denise has at the moment and the cupcake image and doily could be used elsewhere on their own.

Concept Three

This one takes a bit of a different turn. Denise was unsure about whether the company name should be Cupcake and Bake or Cup, Cake and Bake. Both have very different connotations and we promised her we’d try out one option with the comma. In our initial brainstorming we’d sketched out a few ideas with tea cups, but they didn’t make the grade. Instead a delicious font which just exudes the emotion that Denise puts into her cakes and a heart icon to reinforce the idea of love.

This logo would work just as well across two words: Cupcake and Bake as it does across the three, so don’t let that skew your judgement! And finally option 3 in context.

So now over to you. Denise has a clear favourite but we’d love to know what you think. Which one “speaks” to you the most? We’re aiming to move more upmarket than where Denise’s business currently is so it’s all about looking fun, professional and like the cakes have been made with care.

We’ve been creating a lot of blogs for people recently, and something I must sound like a broken record on in every briefing meeting is my insistance that bloggers work with a {good} photographer to get a professional headshot. I can’t tell you the difference it makes. Actually I don’t need to tell you the difference. You can see it just from the before and after above. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with you but I’m reminding myself that I’m doing it for the greater good…

Let’s start with the presumption that a good headshot will make you look your most attractive, professional and approachable. By attractive I don’t mean sleazy or sexy or like you’ve just stepped off a boudoir shot. I’m talking about a photograph that strokes your ego and makes you proud. But it also needs to look like you.

Before I met Matt Pereira my headshot was a picture I’d had taken in a studio in Birmingham several years before (see above). I was one of the female entrepreneurs invited to take part in a cover shoot for franchise magazine. They had hired a make up artist and after several hours (I kid you not) primping and preening we were wheeled out into the studio where we were draped over a chaise longue . To get us used to the camera the photographer initially took headshots of us on a bar stool. I looked attractive but nothing like myself. I limped on with this photograph for several years but I had to laugh when I met the lovely Shelly Van Litt from the Elmbridge magazine at an Elmbridge Women In Business event I was speaking at. Shelly said to me “I’ve been looking at your website today, I wanted to meet you. You look nothing like your photo! I wouldn’t have recognised you if you hadn’t introduced yourself”. That was me told.

Fortunately a couple of weeks later I had the most gorgeous shots taken by Matt and I’ve never looked back. Like I said, a good photographer will take photos of you that actually look like you. But they’ll be of your best self. He or she will capture the essence of you and present you as someone people want to get to know. A good social media photograph has got to be engaging and approachable. And so that means eyes to camera, smiling and saving those sexy pouts for the boudoir shoots.

And a good headshot isn’t just about helping you appear more engaging in your social media profile. It’ll also help your website and blog appear more attractive. Let me show you how. This post has been utterly inspired by a blog we created for Sam Jones (herself a fantastic photographer) for her Home Truths blog. I loved the makeover Rob worked up for Sam, but was blown away when I realised she’d changed her photo. Here was the blog with the old photo…

And here’s the new photograph. Personally I think there’s a dramatic difference between the two, and all Sam has done is changed the photograph!

Donna Pourtyemour of Cobham Pilates is so sold on the benefits of having great headshots that she insists that all new staff have a professionally taken headshot. This shows consistency on her website and ensures that all members of staff come across professionally. Something Donna has found is that by having her website revamped she’s been able to attract world class teachers to her studio and her business is now expanding at a rate of knots. I have no doubt that the professional and engaging photographs (along with the gorgeous new branding and design of course!) have a lot to do with this…

So next time you think you’ll just upload that holiday snap from two years ago, think again. Find a great photographer and get some professional headshots done. It will pay dividends.

I’m on a bit of a roll with my in the studio this week… posts this, ahem, week. So much so that I’ll be staggering them throughout the next few days. And what better a design to start off the week with than the MIB music blog. Sera Golding is one of those dream clients who tends to give us pretty much free rein on her projects (just wait till I share with you her latest band!!!) and plenty of encouragement and positive feedback along the way.

Sera attended my blogging workshop back on 17th June and fired up from that commissioned us to create her a fun and funky blog for her music management agency, MIB. I know I’m blowing my own trumpet but personally I think Rob has done a cracking job on this one. I love the font he’s used, the polished look and the overall cohesiveness that the design has about it. The pink makes a statement without being over the top (at least I think so) because it’s tempered by the white page background.

I know that Sera is over the moon and is already frantically blogging away. The feedback has been very positive on twitter, and we’d love to know what you think. Do also check out the blog, she has some great articles on there already and I’m loving her song of the week section!

Sam Jones is a superwoman. Not only is she a well renowned photographer, famed for making women look beautiful, she’s also a property sales consultant extraordinaire. Sam runs a very unique business helping people who are struggling to sell their houses achieve their maximum value – usually without dropping the price. As you can imagine, she’s pretty busy in this market!

Sam approached us to help her create a more engaging blog that would help her communicate her expertise and get the word out about her services. She literally is unique – she’s not an estate agent, but she helps people sell their homes. And she’s not a house doctor, although home staging does form a part of the service. Sam works with couples who have had their house on the market usually for more than 6 months, and she helps them get it sold for it’s maximum value.

Here’s Sam’s blog before we waved our fairy dust over it.

Ok so the design is wholly uninspiring, and you can see why she was keen to work with us on the design. But the content is fantastic and that’s the cornerstone of a great blog. Blog regularly, make sure your posts look great and write great content and you’re on to a winner.

Back to Sam’s shiny new blog…

The imagery gives it the upmarket polish her clients expect of someone at the top of her game and the colours add style and professionalism. Sam has only just updated her photograph and I can’t tell you the difference it makes (in fact, I feel a blog post coming on for the subject of headshots, but that’s another story…). The blog is now much easier to navigate – visitors aren’t forced to read posts in chronological order, they can click on the subjects that interest them in the “menu” bar at the top of the page. Oh, and just in case people want to get in touch, Sam’s contact details are there loud and clear.

What do you think?

So earlier this evening I finally hit “publish” on my post on our initial brainstorming of the Bisley Shooting Ground rebrand. I’ve always wanted to give you sneak peeks of a logo before we start the polished Mac work, but it always feels a little unfair on the client, so as soon as I knew that Shirley and the team from Bisley were delighted with the concepts I knew I could safely show you the beginning of the process.

Today Caroline and Chloe had the nailbiting task of presenting our four logo designs to the team from Bisley Shooting Ground before running a mood board session to help them take the online and printed collateral further.

Now I have a very clear favourite, but I will do my very best to remain unbiased. The Bisley team have two favourites currently, so your feedback would be very much appreciated.

Concept One

This simple, stylish and evocative logo was inspired by the Ground’s mascot, Oscar, the terrier. It exudes class, confidence and country but at the same time it’s beautifully understated. Chloe had a lot of fun researching the dog’s breed and illustrating him.

And here’s option one in context.

Concept Two

This upmarket and elegant logo takes inspiration from the shape of the cartridges and the intricate patterns on the guns. The stylish illustration is a nod to the heritage of the Ground’s lodge – a Victorian hunting lodge from the 1850’s.

Concept Three

The decorative B marks the idea of a well established ground that is a leader in it’s field. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the development of this one from Ian’s initial sketch in our brainstorming. He went away following the session and re-drew in much more detail and then Chloe re-rendered the letter on the mac.

Concept Four

Less of a concept and more of an evolution. I loved the “feel” of the original logo from Bisley Shooting Ground. It fitted perfectly with the colonial building and the characterful and warm environment. I was keen that we recreate that original logo in some form, if nothing else, as a bit of a control experiment. I’m not sure that it holds it’s own next to the others, but it’s good to see it. This is a bit of a bonus design as we’ll usually only design three concepts…

And in context…

So I have a clear favourite, but how do you feel about them? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

I have been sooooo excited about sharing this one. Venue stylist, trained florist, passionate cook and all round stylish-lady Colleen approached us a few weeks ago to help her create a new identity for her business Distinctive Elegance. I am especially excited about this identity because Colleen is offering Afternoon Tea Weddings (amongst other things), which is what Mr H and I had for our own wedding. And I’ve always loved that design style.

Anyway, back to Distinctive Elegance. Following the initial brief, Caroline and Colleen kicked off the process with a creative mood board session which gave them both a clear focus. We then brainstormed the concepts as a team (and frustratingly I photographed our sketches and mood board but have since lost both cable and charger for the camera) and Chloe has spent the last week or so creating these beauties…

We’ve only just sent across to Colleen so we’re awaiting her feedback, but we’d love to hear what you think.

Colleen’s brief was all about elegance, stylishness and creating a wonderful atmosphere. Romance, grace and distinction are also key.

Option One: distinctively elegant

I love this delicious and beautifully crafted badge. It’s pretty much exactly what I had in my head the first time I met Colleen, so it’s wonderful to see Chloe interpreting the brief so closely. And here it is in context

Concept Two: The stylish hand

This was inspired by Colleen’s stylish touch. And I am all over this font! Isn’t it just lovely? Loving the d, the t’s and the c’s. Just beautiful!

And the logo in context…

Concept Three: Strong and Distinctive

We’ve got to hand this to Ian. During the brainstorming the chandelier and strong colour was Ian’s vision, and we all had such a positively strong reaction to something that wasn’t another girly butterfly or tea cup, that we just had to show this one to Colleen. Her business is definitely of the Summer colour personality: graceful, elegant, organised and romantic. Although we suspect that Colleen herself is a much stronger personality (possibly winter/ autumn) so we suspect that she might well respond quite positively to this one as it probably has the most “substance” of the four.

And here is said chandelier in action…

And the bonus one…

Rob illustrated some beautiful butterflies for this concept, and after much discussion we’re pleased with the fonts we’ve combined them with. It’s fair to say that there was a little behind-the-scenes debate over this one, not in terms of what you see below, but the finished article has had some pretty exacting standards applied to it! That said, each of these are just mockups, so we’ll usually expect to adapt colours or perhaps revisit some of the fonts before the finished article.

And finally, the business card mockups.

So now it’s over to you (and of course the client ) what do you think? Which resonates with you the most and why? We love to hear your feedback!

I’ve been looking forward to blogging about this site now for several months, and I’m delighted to say that after much blood, sweat and tears, the Customer Essential website is now live <drum roll please>.

We have loved every moment of creating this website because of the freedom and encouragement that MD, Liz Machtynger, has given us to create something really special for her. Liz has had the foresight to realise that just because she’s working with corporate organisations, it doesn’t mean that she needs to strip out all semblance of her personality. And that’s really, really refreshing.

This is going to be a bit of an epic post because I’d like to take you on the Customer Essential rebrand journey and show you just how we’ve taken Liz’s brand identity from stark and soulless to emotive and engaging.

Here’s Customer Essential’s original website.

I don’t want to knock it too much; but you can see the dramatic transformation between the “before” and the after. The stark colours, clunky logo and overbearing passion flower do little to create a feeling or warmth or professionalism. Let’s just say it was time to move on…

We’ve already talked about creating the logo and stationery here. And the new logo was an important turning point in Customer Essential’s journey. In fact, since using their new logo on their email signatures and using their new style PowerPoint presentation for their proposals, the company have had a 100% success rate with proposals, and have even had to turn two clients down as they were too busy! Now that’s what I call a result.

But back to the website.

Creating a design with so much emotion, that really communicates the essence of the business, didn’t happen overnight. Initially we had discussed designing one page for Customer Essential which they’d be able to take to a web developer (one of the team has a family connection) for construction. To keep costs low we had spent half a day creating a smart (and much improved from their existing site) design. And here it is…

Now for many businesses this would be fine. It looks smart, it’s well structured and it has some clear calls to action. Liz was somewhat of a dream client because she accepted that this was a good design for the time that she had invested; but she wanted more, and was prepared to invest more to enable us to get there.

I hope you’ll agree that the investment has paid off.

The new design has heart and soul. It beautifully sums up the company’s integrity, passion and quirkiness. And yet despite encapsulating the true soul of the business; it still has credibility and professionalism. But getting there wasn’t easy.

I for one, found it very difficult to overcome the idea that the company works with customers, and yet we weren’t showing any people. And the reason for this was quite simple: it’s hard to find images of people that don’t look like “stock photos”. Both Flourish and Customer Essential wanted to create a look and feel that was better than corporate stock photography. We wanted to create an emotive reaction; and so the idea of journeys came about.

Through the brainstorming session we identified the “heart” of customer essential and developed this idea of journeys through nature. Each of the Customer Essential team are very Autumnal, with strong connections to community, history, academia and the outdoors. This really comes across in the style of illustrations and the photos we’ve used.

People often ask me where the frog came from on the contact form – quite simply it evoked such a positive reaction in all of us during the brainstorming that we couldn’t not use it! It felt like the perfect quirky mix of intelligence, earthiness and results.

I think you can really see how the mood board has come through in the final design.

Personally I love the welcoming and warm welcome, and the way that the images guide you around the site.

And I think the illustrations Chloe and Rob have created add a nice warm and approachable touch.

The fabulous Matt Pereira took photographs of each of the team, which look just stunning, and importantly approachable and professional at the same time. And Rob created “pinboards” for each team member with their favourite things (including their favourite music, which is a big passion for the group).

The site has taken a long time to conceive: in both the planning and the execution and build. And Liz has ensured that she has invested properly in this to get the very best outcome. Already the branding is paying dividends and I’m excited to see how the new website helps the company grow moving forwards.