Oh, one more thing before I present the concepts. The name may conjure up twee connotations but Love is actually Jo’s real name! So banish all thoughts of cutesy hearts within the O; this is oh so much more stylish and directional…

Concept One

We worked on this project alongside another for Love Interiors for a brand called Broom & Love. We treated each like a fashion design brand with diffusion range, with Love Interiors being the more playful and youthful diffusion brand. Broom & Love is currently on hold and Jo has asked me not to blog the designs (which I’m a bit gutted about as they are stunning) – hopefully one day you’ll get to see them!

I think this design perfectly highlights the diffusion element – the playfulness of breaking up the word as well as the stylish font. It’s very strong and aspirational isn’t it?

Concept Two

Categorically my personal favourite, I love the mix of colours and the font choices here. Oh, and the iconic logo as well as the handwriting font. Again, it has that very fashiony directional feel about it doesn’t it?

Concept Three

And the final concept. Jo is still thinking through which concept works best for her business so in the meantime I’d love to know what you think?

How gorgeous does the finished Pomegranate logo design look? The photo above is from our shoot for our new website with Matt Pereira and I styled it very quickly to bring out the essence of the colour and style.

We have all loved working on this project: from our initial concepts at the start right through to the finished result we’ve really enjoyed the challenge of creating something that is contemporary and aspirational whilst at the same time retaining some Arabic roots. I blogged a while back about why this project meant something to me personally and whilst this is most definitely not a Persian pastiche, I’m pleased that we managed to capture the essence of the Middle East whilst still making it very relevant to Britain today.

The team have worked so hard on this project and Nicole has been a pleasure to work with. I’d love your thoughts! Is it what you expected when you saw the mood board all those weeks back?

I’m delighted to be able to share these logo and brand identity design concepts for Essentialis. Remember Isabel Nieto from our introduction a few weeks back? Well we have been beavering away in the studio and created three very strong, elegant and confident logo designs for Essentialis. I’m going to share the initial three concepts with you and then I’m going to ask Chloe to blog the finished design as she has the inside track on the journey.

Remember the brief? Isabel Nieto provides a service to ambitious jetsetting executives looking to achieve their first international role. What these execs often find is that their lack of understanding of the nuances of the English language often means they miss out on opportunities either because they miss the subtleties in the questions being asked or they don’t present themselves as effectively as they might. As an ex City worker and expat herself, Isabel is ideally placed to help these candidates prepare their CV’s, job applications and prepare themselves for interview effectively and get that job!

We needed to create a brand identity that was highly aspirational, confident and also with a masculine edge to it. Here are the concepts…

Concept One

I love the strength and dynamism of the patterns here and the energy that comes across. The icon is perhaps a little controversial? But that’s something that can always be tweaked at the design stage.

Concept Two

More feminine but still strong and bursting with corporately ambitious energy!

Concept Three

This is my personal favourite: I love the pattern and the strength and elegance in the icons, although I think if this was the one for Isabel we’d need to add more colour.

Over to you. Which speaks to you the most? Which do you like and which do you feel is right for the brief?

I’ve been looking forward to sharing this project with you for quite some time now and I’m just delighted to be able to reveal the Hanging Space rebrand and new website design. This has been quite an extensive project, with a rebrand, new website design and shopfront design so I’ll be splitting this out over a couple of posts just so I don’t overwhelm you!

Elaine Palmer is the creative force behind Hanging Space, a Weybridge, Surrey based company who design and build bespoke, fitted furniture. The Hanging Space product is incredibly high end and bespoke, and their original website design just didn’t communicate that.

The original website

Elaine originally came to us with a very cool and clever logo she’d just had designed with another agency, ready to have us create a gorgeous and commercial website design. After much planning we developed a stunning design for the homepage as well as some really cool ideas for the site structure.

Iteration One

Whilst the logo ticked many of the boxes, as time went on, Elaine realised that it just didn’t feel right. And I get that – Elaine is highly creative and very feminine, and is working in a very high end market and so whilst the logo looked smart, it made sense to look at the logo design. The funky logo you see above is certainly very clever conceptually (the font plays on the idea of space, as does the icon) but it feels very masculine and cold.

Our philosophy is that when you connect you with your business and your customer you create a brand that’s incredibly powerful. I always think there’s a lot that you can do with a brand identity without necessarily needing to change a logo, but as Elaine was having a new shopfit and sign it made sense to be sure that this was right. And so she invited us to create a new logo design for her. I want to share that with you next.

Pomegranate will sell contemporary homewares and gifts initially online but also in the future through their own shops in some very glamorous parts of the world. The brief was to create a contemporary brand identity with an Arabic twist, take a look and see what you think.

Concept One

Bold, iconic and simple.

We created an icon that represents a flourishing pomegranate, showing the petals of the flower as well as the seeds within the fruit. We then paired this illustration style with a very distinctive font that hints gently towards an Arabic feel without being blatant, and introduced tactility through woven imagery and a simple weave pattern.

The safest of the three, this one has a definite Arabic feel without being too much of a pastiche doesn’t it?

Concept Two

The wild card of the bunch!

Tactile, honest and playful, we wanted to show an alternative layout for the logo that played on the ‘O’. There’s a gorgeous quirkiness to this design that explores the pomegranate as a sumptuous and rich fruit. The inside of the pomegranate has a jewel-like texture that we were keen to explore in this illustration style.

Concept Three

Creative, energetic, distinctive and sensory.

We’ve worked with the concept of the pomegranate flower again for this design but in a very different, hand-painted style. A very sensory brand style that captures your imagination and explores an adventurous mix of the vibrant colours from the palette.

Now it’s over to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Which of these logo designs resonates with you the most?

Lisa is a fabulous Garden Designer based in Leatherhead, Surrey, but whose flair for creating gardens that suit their owners has meant that she works both throughout the UK and internationally. Lisa has been blogging now for several years, and you may remember our initial blog design? This latest iteration reflects where Lisa’s business is right now and works with her blogging style just perfectly!

Chloe has made sure that Lisa’s new blog fits within Lisa’s brand style and website design, whilst at the same time giving another dimension to her brand. I think it’s really boring when your blog looks the same as your website: it’s supposed to have another voice, another take on your business. So we’ve used the distinctive handwriting font and the same colour palette but introduced some new texture, pattern and illustrations.

Redesigning the Flourish blog is one of the next jobs on our list, and so I’m incredibly jealous of the small details on Lisa’s blog: the customisation of things like the Link Within box and the way the comments box has been styled. Just gorgeous!

Lisa takes beautiful photos of both her own garden designs and also gardens that inspire her, and I really think the new blog design shows them off in their full glory. I saw lots of lovely comments on Twitter yesterday about Lisa’s blog and I’m really looking forward to seeing the impact it has on her business.

Oh and isn’t the name fab? Lisa and I brainstormed a lot, as I know did many of her friends! I forget who came up with the name, but I think it perfectly encapsulates what Lisa creates for her clients: a room outside they want to spend time in. And I think the strapline “Grand Plans for Outdoor Spaces” just builds on that nicely.

You can see Lisa’s new blog, The Room Outside, at blog.lisacoxdesigns.co.uk I’d love to know what you think…

Remember the mood board from this morning for interiors and giftware company, Pablo Blue? Well I am delighted to say that we have just presented them with their brand identity concepts and they love them! They (and we) have a favourite and Chloe is currently making some tweaks over the next week before we send them round 2.

I’m not sure whether or not to tell you which the favourite was – would love your thoughts too!

Concept One

Strong, iconic and with a gorgeous artisan feel this concept really lets the product sing.

Concept Two

Such beautiful colours together! OK so there’s quite a different twist from the mood board but that’s often how things work. The mood board is our inspiration, our jumping off point. We often land up in some quite creative tangents, and I think that’s half the fun!

Concept Three

Perhaps the safest option of the three, I think the execution still keeps this classy and I have a really strong emotional reaction to those flowers, I love them. Whether it’s right for Pablo Blue though is another question but we do always like to show a safer option as well as some that are more out there.

Over to you

What do you think? Which do you respond to the most? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Ta da! The brand, spanking new website for the Branding Masterclass is now live, and with the next class less than four weeks away, I wanted to share the design with you.

I’m not one to hang about (as my team will testify) and so when I made the decision to launch our first masterclass back in late November 2011 I knew we had our work cut out preparing the “classroom” (aka the blog), the brand, a promo video, writing the content and the sales copy as well as all the back end admin it takes to run a course. We did a LOT in that two-ish months and fitting in a stand alone website was always going to be impossible. But I did want to pull one together for the next class.

Both James and Stuart have worked incredibly hard to pull this together before Easter, and I want to say a very big and public thank you to both of them (and Caroline) for making sure the site was ready. I know it wasn’t easy, especially with your current workload, but it is very much appreciated.

The Designs

The designs are very much rooted in the brand identity James created back in January for my masterclass classroom. I wanted everything to feel clean, easy to read and welcoming but also with some substance. This isn’t airy fairy stuff, despite the prolific use of flowery pictures! There’s real, commercial meat behind what I’m writing about, even if much of it is delivered in a light and easy to understand way. And so I love James’ use of type, colour and white space.

There’s a bit of work to be done after the Easter hols on the about page – I wanted to put a quick showreel together of our work for anyone that hadn’t come via our website or blog, so we’ll add that in over time. We also plan to integrate our event booking system into the website and be done with the horrible shopping cart once and for all! But I think that realistically that’s going to need to wait until after May…

We wanted to bring the testimonials to life and as they’re such a photogenic bunch, the social media avatars work quite well don’t you think?

You can see the website in action over at brandingmasterclass.com

I’m really excited to share the new Branding Masterclass video with you. We recorded it last Friday and I spent much of Wednesday editing it all together, with James working frantically behind the scenes to put together the fab stills with all the lovely student testimonials.

I never thought I’d say this, but I really enjoyed creating this video, and I think that was mostly down to the team that worked on the project. James, one of our Graphic Designers, worked on the visuals, and I just love how they look. Remember the video from before Christmas? We hadn’t formalised the brand identity back then, and I just love the fresh, clean look James has given the testimonials. Dani, our Account Exec was a real trooper. She did the recording as well as charging round styling the “set” (aka a corner of my kitchen!) with me and cheering me on! And Adrian Kirk, who you’ll meet next week properly, who helped me get a bit more of my sparkle onto the camera.

I wouldn’t say that I struggle to speak in public (what am I saying? Those of you that know me well know that I love it!) but I’ve never been one for am-dram. I was never in any plays at school and I have zero to none experience of performing on camera. So even though I felt pretty happy with the original masterclass video, I hope you can see a difference in this one?

Adrian was amazing at getting me relaxed, helping me focus on my message and get more of “me” across on camera. I know I have some way to go, and I’m not quite ready to be a TV presenter yet (ha ha!) but I think he achieved great things in just a few short hours. I’ll definitely be working with him when we produce our next video for Flourish.

Behind the scenes…

The “Set” and Adrian and I discussing the next take

We spent the morning practicing in the studio which was great for practice, but the light is pretty dreadful, the dark, tudor beams make it a difficult set to work with and most of the rooms have phones in, so we were convinced that we’d end up with a great take that was ruined by a phone ringing halfway through. Our studio is so lovely and charming when you’re actually there, but it’s really not great for the camera. So we decided to up sticks and relocate to my house, which has lovely light and a few more props on tap to make things a bit more beautiful!

I was a little concerned that a home setting would look a little unprofessional, but ultimately this is a class that most people work through from home, so we felt it made sense. Hey, if I had a funky loft studio that might have done, but I did feel very relaxed in my own home.

We had to do a little shifting around and remove all of my personal photos but I think it worked out quite nicely. And it was a real shame we couldn’t have got my pretty tissue paper pom poms in on the shoot, but they were a little out of context! I’d made them for my daughter’s birthday and they did look lovely, but maybe a little irrelevant for the video?

I loved the excuse to rush out and buy a new dress (well obviously?!) and get my hair done (not sure that you’d know it especially but it felt nice to be pampered ). Is it just me, or do you do that before a photoshoot as well?

And the music…

Oh, and one last thing. The music. When I bought the music before Christmas I fell in love with the emotional feel it had to it, it seemed just perfect for the masterclass. Uplifting and a bit spine tingling at the same time. But it really bugged me because I knew that it reminded me of a pop song, and I couldn’t work out which one. Nor could anyone else I spoke to. And then I realised, it’s Mika! And it all makes sense…

Ok so the sentiment of the song isn’t quite what I’d have chosen but I think the melody is perfect. What do you think?

And the thank you’s

Thank you so much to some of the lovely Branding Masterclass students who supplied such fabulous words. I really appreciate it And so in order of appearance…

Lisa Whitty

Emma McLaughlin

Vicky Tipton

Tracy Stonard

Isabel Nieto

Gabriella Buckingham

Chrissie Slade

And if you’re tempted to join us, do! You will love it. And I would love to have you. Registration closes on 6th May and you’ll save £30 when you book before 23rd April so just do it now before you forget Booking and full details here… 

We have some really exciting projects in the studio right now, and one that I’d like to share with you is the very beginnings of a rebrand for Love Interiors.

Jo Love is a highly successful interior designer who works mostly in high end residential and commercial practice. Her firm is based in Cobham, Surrey and works mostly in London and the South East, as Jo herself says “although we recently completed an eco house in Cornwall, a private residence in the Bahamas and a boutique hotel on the South Coast. “. How lovely is that?

Jo’s current website and brand identity betray the directional nature of their work and the success of her business and we’re thrilled to be creating a brand identity that reflects that.

Even more excitingly, we’re creating not just one, but two brand identities: Love Interiors and Broom & Love. Love Interiors will rebrand what Jo is already doing, whilst Broom and Love will sit at the very top end. What excites us about this, aside from the thrill of giving Jo something that really reflects what she’s doing, is that we’re treating these brands as designer and diffusion range. And we’re having a lot of fun experimenting and researching how to give each one it’s own distinctive but compelling brand identity.

I’ve included some snaps from the mood board and Caroline will share more over the coming weeks, but for now, it’s heads down on this project… (any ideas what season this business is?!)