Graphic Design

It’s a long time since my mum ever uttered those time honoured words “You’re going to attract the wrong sort of attention in that“. Well times move on and it’s going to be less than a decade (much less than a decade, scarily) than I’m saying those things to my own daughter. But have you ever thought that you might well be attracting the wrong sort of attention for your business through your design?

Poor design won’t stop you getting enquiries to your advert or leaflet drop. It won’t even mean that your website fails. But it will mean that you miss opportunities. It will attract the wrong sorts of potential clients (you know, the ones who don’t value what you do and don’t want to spend what you want to charge) and unless your brand position is based around you being “the cheapest” then you’re going to be selling yourself short.

When you’re shopping for a new website please, think carefully about the message you’re sending out. Sure, budget is important. But what really matters is the return you get on your investment. And the quality of design is essential in this. Creativity, attention to detail, vision – all these things take time and years of expertise, and that means that they won’t come cheap. But like everything in life, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.

We’re currently working with a very talented, utterly lovely and very inspirational photographer on her website and marketing strategy. Her photographs are just beautiful, but her marketing literature is sending out mixed messages at best.

The challenge is that she has a well designed website, but she’s mixing that with self-designed leaflets and advertising. And sadly the company that designed her initial branding didn’t give her any brand guidelines, which means that she’s now mixing Lucida Handwriting with Times New Roman for her advertising. Not a good look

The advert will attract attention, but as my mum would say, it’s going to be the wrong sort of attention. It’s going to attract brides looking for a cheap wedding photographer, which means that my client will waste her time on a lot of enquiries that simply don’t have the budget for a high end photographer. She’s making life very difficult for herself. Happily, we’re going to redesign the advert, and I promise I shall share the before and after story with you very soon… Keep your eyes peeled!

Tagged as in Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing

If my post yesterday remotely inspired you about the art of letterpress then I thoroughly recommend you rush out and buy yourselves a copy of Reinventing Letterpress: Prints by Contemporary Practitioners by Charlotte Rivers. Caroline and I discovered the book at our field trip to the Design Museum a couple of months back and I have kept the book at home ever since to browse through when I get a spare five minutes. Only recently did it make its trip into the studio…

I’m a bit of a book a holic. I’m sure there’s a better word for it than that but I love to collect books. Our home is full of them. Thousands of books on design, gardening, cooking, crafting and novels, all neatly colour coded or stacked in nice piles with flowers on top. I never leave a school fair without a book or two under my arm, and I’m often caught with Amazon parcels arriving at the house. I always think online shopping is a bit like eating straight out of the fridge (you know how the calories don’t count if you’re standing up?) – well I always think it’s not real shopping when you buy online. But I digress…

As books go this one is a corker. Beautifully photographed, reassuringly tactile and page after page of pure inspiration. There’s also a bit at the front on the history which I confess to skipping over…

Each page includes details on the designer/ printer as well as some of the thought behind the design. There’s also a really useful sourcebook at the back with printers/ type etc for reference.

We will certainly be using this book in the studio for many years to come. It’s utterly stunning and packed full of inspiration. You can order from Amazon (note: this is an affiliate link) or pick up at your local bookstore. It’s a cute little book that would just as well double up as a coffee table book although I think it has plenty more substance than that.

If you have this book, I’d love to know why you bought it and what you think of it. Would you recommend it as enthusiastically as I have?

Secondly if you have a book that you think would be useful to Flourishing Blog readers then I’d love to hear from you…

Tagged as in Graphic Design, Logo Design, Recommended Reading

I’ve been going to bed late a lot recently. Audrey has been a bit poorly and we’re getting her back into her normal uninterrupted sleep pattern. So I’m tired and consequently inspiration seems that bit harder to find on occasion, the old creative juices fogged by mild fatigue.

But I can always turn to the old trusty favourites; music, film and books, to give the right side of my brain a nudge. A film I watched recently, and which I urge EVERYONE to see is Valhalla Rising. I can’t remember the last time a film affected me in such a profound way; I watched it twice in as many days and it simply wouldn’t leave my mind. Most reviews I have read are completely polarized; it’s the film equivalent of marmite. And its cause hasn’t been helped by a totally mismarketed publicity campaign. The poster depicts a horde of raging Viking warriors behind our brooding hero, along with a melodramatic strapline, implying the film is a testosterone-fuelled slug-fest in the vein of 300. Anyone watching with that expectation is going to be sorely disappointed when they’re presented with a quiet, thoughtful and utterly mesmerizing piece of cinema. There isn’t a single Viking horde in evidence, the art department should hang their heads I shame!

I generally buy a couple of CDs a month, other than that I don’t shop much (I honestly wonder what I’d purchase if I won the lottery, a house I guess…maybe a new shirt) and my most recent find is Scottish post-rockers Mogwai’s latest release ‘Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will’. I haven’t heard much of their previous stuff, and bought this on a recommendation, but I’ll certainly be plowing my way through their back catalogue if this album is indicative of their usual output. My mum picked the CD up and commented that ‘those song titles sound like they’re a thrash metal band’ and with names like ‘Death Rays’, ‘How to be a Werewolf’ and ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ (best song title ever?!) she could be forgiven for thinking that. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. This is quiet, thoughtful, mesmerizing music… wait, I can see a pattern emerging here… with the first track ‘White Noise’ jumping straight into my top twenty all time best records. It’s properly spine tingling. In a good way, not a scary way… When I hear music like this it can transform my mood instantly, changing my lazy, supine form into a ball of creative energy. Well, it’ll encourage me do something productive, maybe after dinner… I am very tired.

Other than that, I’ve been pretty inspired re-reading ‘One of Us’ a novel by one of my favourite authors, Michael Marshall Smith. He’s best known for crime thrillers (dropping the ‘Smith’ from his name), but his first three books were surrealist science fiction thrillers with quite excellently designed synergistic cover artwork. His novel ‘Spares’ was adapted for screen and resulted in the film ‘The Island’ (by which I mean the barest thread of premise was taken and then the rest of the story completely thrown away). His writing gets the synapses firing, with down and dirty characters struggling through byzantine plots, in vividly realized near-future worlds, complemented by a host of oddities such as talking white-goods and lamp posts which compliment you on your choice of tie. It’s all bizarre and brilliant. And not remotely quiet or mesmerizing.

So that’s what’s been interesting me in May. Obviously my little girl is a constant source of inspiration… but that’s a given.

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Graphic Design, Inspirations

Finding a good design agency to work with on your logo design, rebrand or website isn’t easy. Even if we start with the premise that no one sets out to do a bad job (I really believe that’s true), there’s more to finding a good design agency than randomly picking the company that tops the [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design

Sysco Guest Supply provide amenities for hotel rooms. To you and I, the plain English version of that is that they supply all the fancy bubble bath miniatures you get in your boutique hotel (amongst many other things). You might remember me blogging about our mood board session with the lovely Alice from Sysco back [...]

Tagged as in Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design

Powerful design enables you to connect with your ideal clients. It’ll help you attract, engage and seduce them into buying from you or working with you, and of course, it’s a wider thing than just design. It’s about your powerful design fitting into a powerful brand strategy. Next week I’ll be sharing with you how [...]

Tagged as , powerful branding, powerful design in Branding, Colour Psychology, Graphic Design

Drum roll please… Over the past couple of months we’ve been working with the utterly lovely and very talented Kathy Ashdown, a wedding and lifestyle photographer based in Norfolk. We’ve created a gorgeous new logo and brand identity, beautiful website and engaging blog to help her truly flourish this year. We’ve had lots and lots [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Branding, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design, Websites

Ta da! Rachel Golding is an utterly fabulous, very up and coming singer-songwriter with whom we have recently had the pleasure of working. You know we love an ambitious client and Rachel is a very down to earth, very lovely and very ambitious young lady. I think she’s set to do big things this year [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Branding, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design, Websites

Last week we sent twenty or so of our most loyal customers a small valentines gift to thank them for their loyalty. I handmade some very lovely bathmelts which we celophane wrapped, tied with a green velvet ribbon and enclosed a small note. In true valentines tradition we deliberately left off the Flourish name and [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Colour Psychology, Flourish Stuff, Graphic Design, Logo Design, The Flourish Identity

I’m delighted to be able to share with you the delicious blog design we recently created for Rona Wheeldon. Rona will mostly be known to you as The Organised PA -a prolific tweeter and superbly organised virtual assistant. I was delighted when Rona confided in me that she was thinking of setting up her own [...]

Tagged as in Blogging, Branding, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design