Flourish Stuff

I’ve done it and I am so excited! I have just booked my tickets to Holly Becker and Leslie Shewring’s Day of Color, Styling and Photography on 4th March… In New York! I’ve long admired Leslie’s approach to colour and photography and with my book manuscript nearing completion, I know that now is the perfect time to up my game when it comes to styling (even though I plan to draft a pro in to take the photos).

I’ll have what she’s having

Leslie has the knack of putting together the most stunning photographs and I just love her creative, light, fresh approach. Just take a look at these beauties to see what I mean…

All images: Leslie Shewring/ Holly Becker

So add to that creativity the amazing Holly Becker, the woman behind Decor8 and the author of the book Decorate I think we have a pretty irresistible class. In fact, so much so that I’ve been trying to talk myself out of going for the past three weeks but I just had to give in and book today!

It’s all part of my mission to create something really big and exciting this year.

It feels like we’re all thinking very big at Flourish right now. So many positive things have happened over the past six months that this trip really feels like a big part of the journey. I can’t wait to spend the day immersing myself in creativity and meeting the other class delegates. I’m also looking forward to getting back to New York and just taking everything in.

I was last in New York almost 12 years ago just after my graduation. I fell in love with the busy, chic and vibrant city and I’ve always wanted to go back but the time was never right. It feels like it could be now.

So I have one question for you. I’ll have a couple of days to just mooch about before the class starts, and I’m already making a little list in my head of places to go (Anthropologie, Purl and J Crew for starters) but I would love your advice. Where should I go? I’d love your New York shopping, eating and general amazingness tips!

Ps. Thank you to Karen and Suzanne for making going to the USA for a workshop not seem like a crazy thing to do Enjoy your time with Yanick Silver!

Tagged as , decor8 eclass, holly becker, leslie shewring, NYC color photography styling workshop in Big Thinking, Fiona's Book, Flourish Stuff

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

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:

1. Staying ahead of the game. You can never, ever say that your brand is “done”: markets move on, competitors spring up out of nowhere, your skills grow and develop and customer needs change. You need to be able to respond to that quickly and I’ll show you how in Week One.
2. Developing your brand identity to keep it fresh and inspiring. Whether you have a lovely logo and website or not, you’ll gain oodles of value from our forays into colour psychology and the mood board session in Week Two.
3. To ensure you get maximum bang out of this year’s marketing buck. This year is going to be tough, no doubt about it, but that doesn’t mean you need to slink back into the undergrowth and wait until it all passes. Get yourself out there and take advantage of the fact your competitors are shrinking away! We’ll create a powerful marketing plan in Week Three.
4. Because I’ll help you blow your clients away with every communication. We’ll map out your customer journey from the first enquiry to the last invoice and make sure you create a wow at every stage. You’ll love it!
5. Ratcheting up the effectiveness of your website. Because unless you have created your website in the last six months and you know there is nothing you can do to improve it you’ll get loads of value out of the website planning/ overhaul sessions in Week Four.
6. Reconnecting with your business and inspiring you to really get out there and make the most of this year. So it’s going to be tough? Well then let’s get focused and get ready to flourish! We’ll give you a number of exercises over the course of the four weeks to help reignite your passion for your business (even if you don’t think it’s waned), re inspire you and build your confidence.
7. It will help your business thrive this year. Not just grow, not just get your name out there. But really thrive. I’ll help you identify how to attract more of the profitable clients, communicate with flair and passion and inspire people to want to work with you.

A masterclass to inspire, motivate and reconnect you with your business

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

Whether you’re sharing my fighting spirit and optimism from my last post, or you’re feeling a bit jaded after the seasonal festivities and a lack of direction I would love for you to join me on my Branding Masterclass. It’s an online class that starts on 6th Feb and runs for a month. You can [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Fiona's Book, Flourish Stuff, Inspirations, Marketing, Workshops

Are you all fired up and ready for the new year? I have to tell you, I am just bursting with creative energy right now and optimism for the year ahead. I think it’s going to be a really exciting year and I can’t wait to see what the future unfolds. We all had a [...]

Tagged as in Five Minutes to Focus, Flourish Stuff

I’ve been meaning to do a bit of a “roundup of the year” post for some time now but life keeps getting in the way. And then what do you know, the lovely Holly Becker at Decor8 blog posted her List Your Accomplishments post where she says: “Rather than think about what you didn’t accomplish [...]

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year. Thank you for all your support this year, both with the business, the blog and the workshops, we have really appreciated it. We’ll be back in the new year with a whole host of exciting goodies for you. In the [...]

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff

Are you thinking of updating your logo, website or blog next year? We get it – life is hectic right now! And setting time aside to plan and implement your marketing for 2012 is slipping further down the list as we hurtle towards the big day. But here’s the thing: taking action this side of [...]

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Marketing

I class myself as one of life’s impatient. Once I’ve made a decision to do something, I want to get on with it right away. I struggled heavily with the concept of waiting six months for the right builder to be available to work on our house (especially as I’d been super organised and waited [...]

Tagged as in Flourish Stuff, Marketing, Websites

A few weeks back we invited multi-award winning photographer Matt Pereira to take some team photographs of Flourish for our website. I’ll share the actual images with you next, but I thought you might like to see some of the shots that I took “behind the scenes”. Matt and I decided that we’d use the [...]

Tagged as , matt pereira in Flourish Stuff