The Flourish Studios Blog » Flourish Foundation

The Flourish Launch Party

Fiona — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:55:39 +0000

A huge thank you to the 80+ guests who braved torrential rain to support Flourish at our launch party at Loseley Park last night. After months of planning, designing, cutting, sticking, glueing and sourcing, I can’t believe that it’s all over!

We had a fantastic evening, including surprise entertainment from the Undercover Superstars (more on that later…), gorgeous Magenta cupcakes and plenty of blinis and bellinis to make the evening go with a swing!

Clients, my family and some of our biggest supporters were at the party which we held to celebrate the launch of our design and marketing company, Flourish, which we’re running alongside printing.com in Guildford. Flourish will build on the design, branding and marketing work that we’ve always done as a printing.com franchise; but the new name and brand identity allows us to communicate so much more powerfully the true message of what we do.

After just three weeks I can’t believe how many doors it’s opened for us (I feel a proper blog post on that subject coming very soon…).

Back to the party… Wow! Don’t you look lovely!

You may have noticed that we use a gilt frame illustration in our branding, and we thought it might be fun to invite guests to have their photos taken in the frame. They then hung them on a velvet “washing line” along with a message on one of our Flourish postcards. It was a fun icebreaker and has meant that we have a permanent installation for our meeting room now.

The flowers in my kitchen… and below, Rona turning them into something spectacular…

Rona, my multitalented PA created the most stunning flower arrangements. I had trekked up to Covent Garden Flower market on the Tuesday to buy flowers that were “on brand” and she put together the most perfectly vibrant, relaxed and generally gorgeous bouquets (including one for my mum and one for Caroline in my emotional speech!).

The entertainment

I never get nervous about public speaking, but there was something about a room full of my most inspirational clients, colleagues and family that meant that the pressure was on!

Suffice to say that there were plenty of tears and voice cracking moments as I talked about Chloe’s Count the Kicks Campaign (the Flourish Foundation charity of the month), and the support I’ve received from my mum and dad, Caroline and the team, and my lovely husband.

After that I was rudely upstaged by “Geoff Baintree”, success coach who insisted on singing me his rendition of Simply The Best and telling the audience about his business. Embarrassingly he’d been pushing his (free and badly designed) business cards on the guests all evening. A waitress had to ask him to leave, and the Chef got up to apologise… And to show us all how it was done. He burst into a rendition of “I feel good” – little did the guests know that all three were the Undercover Superstars! They gave a fantastic performance, and anyone who was under the mistaken impression that the night was a “networking event” soon got into the party spirit once the Undercover Superstars had performed!

Video courtesy of Karen Skidmore‘s iPhone! Thanks Karen

The whole room was jigging, and Sarah from Open Door even managed to get up for a dance with Geoff!

The going home presents

Guests were handed goody bags packed with a signed copy of my book, rainbow chard seeds (because they’re beautiful and productive), Chocolate Alchemist organic chocolate and one of our fabulous Flourish folders.

I had also planned to make 80 cupcakes myself, as I like to think of myself as a bit of a domestic goddess, but thankfully I realised that this was one job too many. And thankfully the fabulous Tracy from Magenta Cakes stepped in to bake and ice the cupcakes which went down a storm. Keep an eye out for her newly branded website very soon…

Thank you so, so much for all your good wishes, encouraging words and general support. It really means a lot, and it was lovely to see so many of the inspirational people that have supported us on our journey there last night. There are far too many to mention, hopefully you know who you are.

Starfish Greathearts Foundation Christmas Campaign Artwork

Fiona Humberstone — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:05:00 +0000

Here is the flyer for the Starfish Greathearts Foundation Christmas campaign. We've designed it as part of our pro bono charity work and kept very much within the rigorous brand guidelines.

What do you think?

This month’s Design Grant is awarded to… Starfish Greathearts Foundation

Fiona Humberstone — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:10:13 +0000

Every month we pick a very deserving charity to benefit from a grant of up to six hours of graphic design time from our Charity Foundation. This month we've selected the Starfish Greathearts Foundation to be the benefactors of our grant.

A bit more about who's benefitting this month.

Starfish is an
international development charity which aims to bring life, hope and opportunity
to children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by the HIV/AIDS pandemic
in South Africa. They provide the children with support delivered by grassroots
organisations which have been established through community led responses to
the crisis.

Starfish helps with day crèches,
food parcels, schooling, care giver visits and training as well as other areas
of care.

In the UK office they fundraise to support the
project in South Africa, where they have an office to deliver the funds on the
ground.

What we're producing.

A flyer, poster and thank you card design to support the Christmas fundraising campaign.

How it will help the charity.

"This will give the campaign
a more professional look. We have previously produced our literature for this
campaign on publisher and using a colour printer. It’s a little limiting in
terms of professionalism! "

Pro Bono Charity Work – 6 hours a month up for grabs!

Fiona Humberstone — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:03:29 +0000

I was having dinner with a business colleague a couple of weeks ago when she asked me:

"So what charities do you support?".

"Erm… well… we work with a lot" I flustered around. Feeling rather put on the spot and a little unprepared. I walked away that evening feeling very guilty for not doing more. For not doing the big Mount Killamanjaro climb or the bath of baked beans or all the other things that many of my friends and colleagues are doing.

And then I thought about all the pro bono design work, and print work we do for many charities that often goes unnoticed, and unaccounted for by us. We generally work on something for a charity at least once a month so I have decided it's time to formalise things.

It's a rare week when I don't get approached by at least one charity to provide some 'sponsored' print or design, and over the years we've helped raise money and sponsored design and print for charities such as The Brigitte Trust, The Raleigh School PSA, Clandon School and ForDementia. We especially love local charities, but we're open to ideas.

Every month we'll give up to 6 hours a month of design time to a charity we feel would most benefit from our help. That's worth £449 a month, which over a year amounts to over £5,000. Who do you know that could benefit from some professional design input?

It's most likely that this time will be used to create leaflets or flyers, but we're open to suggestions.

In addition to this, when you buy Christmas cards from us we'll donate a percentage of the print cost to four chosen charities – details in the festive season!

If you have a charity you feel would be deserving of some design time from us then please get in touch with me: I'd love to hear from you!