Branding

I’m often asked where we find our inspiration for our own brand and the brands we work on. The people that ask have clearly never seen our creative boardroom! At the heart of the room is a bright (flourish) green painted sideboard packed with magazines, catalogues and direct mail to inspire us.

We are also adept at using online resources: Pinterest, google images, design blogs and work from other agencies.

As well as using these resources for a bit of focused and structured inspiration, it’s also about having our eyes open at all times, because you literally never know where inspiration will strike. Packaging in a supermarket or department store, an old property, travel abroad or something as simple as the colours in nature. All of these elements have the power to inspire, it’s just about how you interpret them.

So how can you find inspiration for your own brand?

Start with your home. Most (not all) of the small business owners we work with run a business that taps into their passions; a business that is in some way a reflection of them.

If that’s the case for you, root through your wardrobe, your favourite items in your kitchen or the things that influence you in interior design. Is there a common theme?

Look at the magazines you have in your home and start to dissect them. What do you love about them? Is there anything that you can take inspiration from? Layout, treatments, typography etc.

Visit exhibitions and take inspiration from how other businesses brand themselves. Start to build up a mood board to help you articulate what you’re after.

Once you have a scrapbook or mood board of how you’d like everything to look and feel, you’re in a great position to talk to a branding company or graphic designer and they will be able to interpret this into something unique and very special

Images: All sourced via Pinterest

Tagged as in Branding, Powerful Branding

Would you like a sneak preview of the Branding Masterclass branding? Oh go on then…

With less than two weeks to go until the launch of the fabulous online Branding Masterclass the team in the studio are working incredibly hard dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the brand identity and blogsite. You can see the brand elements below.

You’re going to see a bit of a nip tuck to the Flourish brand identity over the next couple of months as we prepare for a very exciting extension and refocus on our own brand. I’ll be sharing more about the story behind that soon, but in the meantime, this gives you a flavour for where we’re headed. The Branding Masterclass needs to reflect and work with our brand, but it’s also a brand in it’s own right, with it’s own attributes and characteristics, so we needed to keep it all similar but not the same.

The colour palette focuses on creativity, communication, logic and clarity. The graph paper gives a nod to work (yes, it will be a lot of fun, but I will be working them hard too!) and the icons give direction around the site.

The class will be held online via a password protected blogsite, so we needed to create a clean and easy to navigate design that  inspired the participants to focus, reflect and take action. Here are a couple of screengrabs:

The login page

We wanted to keep this simple – it’s about getting people to do what you want – login or register for details of the next class. For the people that aren’t registered, obviously this is all they’ll see…

And the class pages themselves

I was in two minds about whether to show you this, but it just looks so beautiful that I couldn’t resist! I am desperate to overhaul the Full Bloom blog design now (yes, I know again but there is so much I’d like to change…). There are still a couple of changes to make but what I hope you can see is how light, airy and neat everything feels. The perfect setting to the inspirational and powerful nature of the content

Registration for the masterclass will close at midnight on Sunday 5th February so if you’d like to get involved, then don’t forget to book – go on, do it now, while you remember… Full details on the website.

Tagged as in Branding, Case Studies, Flourish Stuff, From The Studio, The Flourish Identity, Workshops

I love this quote, don’t you?

‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass it is about learning to dance in the rain’

I love it because it continues to remind me that whatever is going on beyond our control, we have the capacity to be able to choose our own destiny. None of us can stop the ugly economic times we’ve been facing for the past four years, and are likely to continue to face this year, but we can choose how we respond to it. There is literally nothing to be gained from hiding under your proverbial umbrella, waiting for this to all go away, because it’s not about to any time soon. Instead we need to dig deep and make the most of the opportunity.

And yes, I really do think there is an opportunity to be had here. When times are tough, many businesses batten down the hatches and stop marketing. It’s counter intuitive but we do it because we think it’s safe. And yet what happens is quite the reverse. We stop communicating with our customers and so they forget about us and go elsewhere. We start the nasty cycle of cutting prices. And our business retracts.

By contrast, if you continue to market your business when others are holding back, your message is amplified, your business will grow and you can use these tough times to propel your business ahead. I know which route I’d rather take!

To continue to grow you need to invest in your business. And that takes balls I know, but that’s why we’re in business isn’t it? Because somewhere, locked away in the deepest recesses of our soul, we have balls.

So come on, let’s get inspired, think big, get out there and make the most of the opportunity. And let’s focus on dancing in the rain rather than waiting for the storm to pass.

Image:  ’Learning To Dance In The Rain’ Print by Hello Monkey, NotOnTheHighStreet

Tagged as in Big Thinking, Branding, Inspirations

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve shared with you some of the brands that I love, and the reasons why. We’ve also looked at some of the learnings you can take into your own business and I hope that I’ve started to inspire you about how you can make your brand more engaging, more [...]

Tagged as , jasmine star in Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Powerful Branding

Shameless plug alert! We have some wonderful business owners signed up to join me on 6th Feb for the Branding Masterclass but as the Early Bird Offer ends on Sunday I thought I’d give you a quick reminder of the reasons you need to book your place if you haven’t already: Staying ahead of the [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Flourish Stuff, Powerful Branding, Workshops

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably can’t fail to have noticed the meteoric rise to fame of Jasmine Star, Californian photographer for “fabulous people”. Jasmine’s story is a great example of how talent matters, but not nearly as much as powerful marketing. I’m always completely wowed by Jasmine’s website: high energy, high [...]

Tagged as , jasmine star in Branding, Powerful Branding

I LOVE Joules. I love their sense of fun, their style and their quirky touches that bring everything to life. I blogged last summer about how inspiring I find the Joules brand and whilst they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, I think they’re fabulous! This seems to be a common theme in branding doesn’t it? [...]

Tagged as , joules, joules brand identity, joules branding, small business branding in Branding, Powerful Branding

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while it’ll probably be no surprise that I’m a big fan of Cath Kidston. Between Dani (our lovely Account Exec) and I we must own half the shop. And whilst I accept that she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I can’t get enough of her cheery colours [...]

Tagged as , Cath Kidston, Cath Kidston branding in Branding, Powerful Branding

Powerful branding is something we could all use a bit of within our businesses. Powerful brands really add a tremendous amount of value to your business, make your working life a more fun (and frankly, profitable) place to be, and mean that you don’t have to be constantly looking over your shoulder at what your [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Powerful Branding

Welcome to my new series: Powerful Branding. Given that from next month I’ll be working through my Branding Masterclass with many of you, I thought that now would be the perfect time to focus the blog on what we really mean by Powerful Branding. And so over the next couple of weeks, expect a series [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Powerful Branding