I am so excited I think I may actually burst. We have finally cracked the update to the Flourish brand identity and I cannot tell you what a thrill it is to be so close to launching our gorgeous new website.

It’s not fair to call this a “rebrand” because I think that implies you’re making fundamental changes to the essence of the brand focus and brand identity. And that’s not what this project has been about. It’s more about taking the Flourish identity to the next level whilst retaining all the things that make us who we are.

So the energy, colour and quirkiness stays, but elements of the design have moved on, and our focus is now on styling brands and all the communication that goes with that – from the websites and blogs to the printed brochures, postcards and other pieces of direct mail. We create irresistible brand identities and help our clients communicate with flair and passion, simple as that!

So the design emphasis is less on growth and all the associated images that come with that – from the leaves and flowers to our lovely packets of seeds (sob!). That’s definitely still a lovely side effect of what we do for our clients but we hope that the emphasis on brand stylists gives us a very unique space in the market and one that truly plays to our strengths.

I can’t pretend that the journey to get here hasn’t been tough. I think I speak for us all when I say it’s been incredibly tough to gain the clarity, objectivity and inspiration we rely on for all of our design work. It’s always difficult doing your own stuff, and I thought this time might be easier than when we first launched Flourish in 2010, but I can honestly say it hasn’t been. It’s been really hard work.

We’ve definitely broken the back of things now. We have our slightly modified colour palette, we have a lovely new range of fonts and we have some utterly gorgeous icons. We’ve developed some new patterns and we’re working on a few more. We’ve printed up some beautiful gift packs for our current and prospective clients as well as a whole lot of printed literature.

The last few pieces of the puzzle are the website and eventually the blog too.

Caroline’s putting the finishing touches to the website design and that’s going to be built over the next couple of weeks. Once it’s live I’ll be giving you an insight into a journey that’s been littered with false starts, wrong turns and dead ends, but that I’m now confident is very Flourish.

I don’t want to show you too much until everything is in place, but I did think you might like a little sneak preview of some of our bespoke Flourish notebooks, illustrated by our fabulous James… Would love to know what you think!

We were getting so stuck, going round and round in circles trying to create something that looks better than the website we have, but with the spirit of the original brand identity. I think we were all really struggling to move forwards whilst building on what’s working. It feels a little like baring my soul showing you one of our early ideas, especially since it’s not finished, but we’ve moved on fairly far from what’s below and I think you need to see the context of why we’re struggling so much!

An idea that isn’t working…

This website mockup (unfinished by the way… just look at those icons at the bottom of the page and the signpost all over the place) had the gravitas and wow factor we wanted, but as Bronwyn, our Brand Strategist pointed out, if you cover up the logo it doesn’t look like Flourish. And it doesn’t feel like Flourish either. I guess that’s part of the journey. Working through what’s working and what isn’t is twice as hard when you’re the designer, creative director and client isn’t it?

Moving forwards

I’ve found the last couple of weeks really frustrating. Knowing what I wanted to achieve but not really being able to give any specific direction on how we get there. And I think the team have found it equally annoying because they want to get this as right as I do. It felt like we were continually taking two steps forward and one back.

And then just like I have all my brainwaves in the car, I had a lightbulb moment this afternoon when I realised that if we break down the current brand identity, and remind ourselves of why we did what we did in the first place, that we might just be able to move forward. Simple when you put it like that isn’t it? Why we didn’t do this two months ago I’ll never know

The starting point

Here’s our brand identity as we launched it in 2010.

Rosewood (the circus font) in particular captures the quirky exhuberance of the brand. It’s distinctive, engaging, warm and energetic. But it’s been overused lately and we need to move on. Personally I never loved Mepp but it was very “of the moment” and as I suspected back in 2009, that moment has passed. And that’s ok…

Perec was all about us being taken seriously. It’s beautiful, legible and a great body copy font. But we have since cheated on Perec with our new font and it’s wonderful.

Purple: quality, vision, purpose was also about us being taken seriously. I love the colour and I think it still has a place, but I don’t think it should feature as highly in our palette as it did two years ago. I think we’ve ticked the “take us seriously” box now.

Green: fresh, energetic, approachable and reassuring. This is still a core part of our brand colour palette.

Orange: creative, abundant and sociable it’s there for all the right reasons. I wonder whether (thank you Tracy!) it’s too masculine for us?

Pattern adds texture, approachability and warmth. We are going to be using pattern moving forwards, but we need those wobbly lines that work so well for us now.

Illustrations add a quirky personality and still get me in the heart. I love them. But I worry they look a bit scruffy. And I think we can do better than that too… So we need illustrations that communicate the warmth, energy and engagement of those old line illustrations whilst continuing to inspire us. I still love that magic wand though…

It’s interesting because breaking down what we did before and why makes it much easier to evaluate why what we’re doing to move things forwards doesn’t feel right.

I mean, I can see the website at the top would look fabulous if we tidied up the design, but it doesn’t feel right, and with what we do, our brand needs to feel as good as it looks. It’s too Winter as well isn’t it? And it’s missing all the great bits that worked so well about the original Flourish identity. And in trying to move forwards from an identity that we feel isn’t doing us justice any longer, we lost sight of what worked so well about it.

We finished our meeting feeling very optimistic and (I hope) clear on what we need to do. We’ve agreed on the colours (in comes a more optimistic and friendly yellow, out goes purple); in comes a much more fabulous font which I hope will add the much needed exuberance and energy of Rosewood and in come icons with energy and movement. I’m excited! Really excited!

Do you want to see the new brand elements as they stand? I’m not sure I’m ready to share them with you. It makes me feel a little bit sick…

We’re currently in the middle of trying to redesign the Flourish website and I can honestly say that it is a nightmare! For quite some time our own website design hasn’t reflected the level of work we’re doing for our clients. But here’s the challenge: creating something with the level of energy and approachability of our current site, with the level of design and creative flair we want: that’s hard. Really hard.

We’ve been working on it, on and off, for a couple of months now and whilst we’re definitely making progress, designing your own stuff is the hardest thing in the world isn’t it?

I’m going to start sharing a few snippets of it with you soon because we just need to get some stuff out of our heads! We’d love your thoughts and input too…

Introducing… The Brand Stylists

What we are incredibly excited about is our new strapline: Brand Stylists. I think it sums up what we do beautifully doesn’t it?

A stylist takes someone who needs help in presenting themselves, accentuates their best bits, waves a magic wand of marvellousness and transforms that person into someone that looks great and feels fabulous. I think that’s a pretty strong analogy for what we do, don’t you?

And of course, beautifully branded websites, printed literature and blogs are all part of the package, but it all comes back to the brand at all times. What do you think?

We’ve already installed our beautifully hand painted signs and next week the studio gets a makeover. Exciting times!

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.

Earlier I explained some of our thoughts behind the final design for the full bloom blog. And I thought it might be fun for you to see the journey we took. It’s worth bearing in mind that some of the early designs would never have made it to an external client – we’d have intercepted before that! But since I have a few mockups, I thought you might like to see them.

There were lots of bits to like about the first concept but ultimately we felt it was too monotone, too cool in colouring and that the yellow banner at the top was just too deep.

V2 was much better. We preferred the colours, the header banner was less deep and we’d added in a “Flourish presents” bit at the top to overcome the challenge of how we communicate that a design agency is behind the blog without plastering it everywhere!

We still felt that the strapline could use some work, and I was unconvinced about the colour. The social media bugs were also taking up a lot of unnecessary space so for V3 we wanted to tighten things up. The menu also still needs working on as it’s not right (but that’s easily sorted in WordPress).

And the final design. As I say, still some details to be finalised on WP – such as what goes in the menu at the top {services by flourish needs to go… replaced by categories} but in the main it’s looking gorgeous and ready to be built!

Do you remember a long time ago I asked for your help in naming our blog? Well after much deliberation and cogitation we settled on the name Full Bloom. We love the connotations of Full Bloom following on from Flourish – the concept of this being the place where businesses are thriving!

So why change the name from the Flourishing blog? Well mostly because we need to think big. We often receive lovely feedback from people who read the blog who see this as a place for creative inspiration and brand and marketing advice. And it really got me thinking. Why shouldn’t this be the place that people nationally, maybe internationally, turn to for inspiration for their small business?

But if that’s what we want, then we’re going to need to think much bigger. And we all agreed that we need to remove the direct link to Flourish from the name. Hence, Full Bloom.

Above you’ll see the final design. We went through quite a number of iterations to get to this point (and see my next post for the journey…). Either way it’s quite a change from our current design (below).

Back to the new blog design…

I love the creative orange-bordering-on-red (reflective of the passion, creativity and ambition) we wanted to inject. Orangey yellow for abundance, positivity and optimisim. We’ve tried to scale back the multi-colours from the current blog to give our designs a bit more space to breathe – but at the same time we didn’t want to go all grey and lose the life from the blog.

You know I love Californian design, and I think this feels just a little bit Stateside, do you? What with the serif font and the lovely kerning (space between the letters).

Eagle eyed visitors will also notice a couple of other changes. Firstly I want to put photos of the blogger next to the post (as long as it’s not me writing – you don’t need to see my face every time I post!) – so Stu will be setting the theme to automatically add the user’s photo as long as it’s not me. Secondly we’ve added in a second column for advertisers. Our readership is steadily growing and we are getting to the point where I would like to start thinking about introducing ads for businesses complimentary to Flourish and useful to the ambitious small business owners that read this blog. More details to come when we launch but do get in touch if you’d like to know more in the meantime…

We plan to get the blog live over the next week or so and I would love to hear your thoughts to the new design. And if you give me a few hours, I’ll share the journey with you too.

It was just meant to be a small token to say thank you, but we were blown away with the response we had, both online and via the telephone and email. And I was genuinely impressed that people knew it was us!

In less than a year the Flourish brand has become firmly implanted in our clients minds and is easily recognisable with or without our logo or company name.

We received a few tweets and emails and then I was knocked sideways by Nicky Parker’s very flattering post

“…because this company’s branding is so good I knew straight away that it was from Flourish. And that’s why the branding is so great. There was no mention of them anywhere, but the green velvet ribbon, the uncoated paper of the gift tag, the font and the message: “Just a note to say that we LOVE working with you”, was just so Flourish it had to be them.”

It really got me thinking. How many of you have a distinctive enough brand that twenty of your most loyal customers would recognise something as your business without your company name or your logo?

So many of us make the mistake of thinking that your logo is the be-all and end-all of how your customers recognise and identify with you. Your logo is just the beginning – it’s everything else around your logo that makes a difference too – your colour palette, your house fonts and also your voice.

So go on, I dare you to send out a piece of communication without your details on it – do people know who its from? If not, come and have a chat with us and let’s help you create a powerful brand identity that extends beyond your logo…

Image: Not on the High Street

And 2010 has been quite a year for us: in more ways than one!

Launching Flourish in February has been an absolute revelation: and it’s paid off both financially as well as lifting and reinforcing team spirit and my motivation around the business.

In a year that has been tough for many creative businesses flourish has well and truly flourished. Do you remember my post at the beginning of the year with the launch party? You can catch up here…

I’ve been really proud of the creative work the studio have produced this year. Some gorgeous looking websites and blogs as well as some truly stunning brand identities – we’ll be giving you a round up of some of our favourites over the next few weeks.

On a more personal level this year has also been quite a big one for us. Rob, our Senior Graphic Designer became a dad for the first time (I’ll leave him to share the full story with you another time), Ian became a very proud uncle and Chloe moved to Nottingham (and by default expanded the business ooop North!).

Please don’t misunderstand me. We’ve also had our share of tough times this year, both personally and professionally. The snow hit us hard and by April we were way behind budget (thankfully that’s a distant memory now…). Difficult team circumstances (of which we will share more in the coming weeks) also meant that our firepower was seriously reduced during our busiest time on top of whatever impact that was having on our home lives.

But despite all that this year has been great for the business because it feels like it was the year we grew up.

When I started my business I did so because I needed a job and I wanted to be my own boss. There was no burning entrepreneurial desire: just a stubborn need to do things my way, on my own terms. This year feels like the year I took control of my own business and started making truly authentic decisions. I’m so proud of Flourish: of our work, of the business success, and most importantly, of the team, who have done a fantastic job this year and become almost totally self-sufficient.

And so with a tear in my eye and a swell of pride in my chest I raise a glass to 2010, to the fabulous clients we’ve worked with and the enriching projects we’ve worked on. Here’s to a fantastic 2011!

Glass of mulled wine anyone?

The Flourish website has been live for a little under six months now and we’ve reviewed and tweaked it twice in that time – once after three months and again this week. Tweaking isn’t about chucking everything out and starting again, it’s about making small changes that will make a big difference. Things like putting your “bestsellers” prominently on your homepage.

Here’s the very first design

Logos, websites and blog designs are the three things we sell the most of, so it makes sense to have those most clearly on the homepage. The initial design didn’t include blogs and did include marketing strategy. A quick check with Google analytics Site Overlay tool showed me that people weren’t clicking on the Marketing Strategy button – so it was binned! We also found that no one wanted to find out how colour psychology could help their business (button on bottom middle) so that was changed.

We replaced the buttons that weren’t working with our bestsellers and the click through rates have gone up. This is less important with a serviced based business, but utterly essential when you’re selling product online.

I’ve tweaked the copy several times as we’ve settled into our own skin as a bona fide design agency. I look back at what I wrote even six months ago and see how far we’ve come. It’s exciting!

Here’s the homepage as it stands as I write…

Recently we’ve tweaked the homepage to make way for the arrival of the new video. The video will get people thinking about some very specific things, so it made sense to have them just a click away to the right of the screen.I also wanted to simplify the “bugs” (call to action buttons) because we figured that if there’s a lot going on with the video everything else should take second place – otherwise you won’t know where to click first.

Here’s the new design

It’s a bit cleaner and simpler but hopefully still has the character and essence of Flourish. So what do you reckon?

The team are doing the final edit over the next few days and I’m hoping to get it on the website as soon as possible. In the meantime, for those of you that are as impatient as me I thought I’d share a few of my favourite bits with you on the blog. So excuse the slightly self indulgent post today but I know that many of you have been asking how we’re getting on… I hope you like it!

Now there is one massive caveat in me doing that – and that is that I have completely butchered Alex’s beautiful editing in my iMovie. So please don’t take the clips below to be indicative of the editing quality – that’s just my quick and dirty extraction of a few of my favourite things.

A massive thank you to the wonderful Sera Golding and Donna Pourtyemour for saying the lovely things about us that they did. I had no idea what they were going to say, and in fact only found out when I got the video back.