If you’ve met Flourish at an exhibition recently or you attended our launch party then you’ll most likely have a packet of chard seeds. Why? Well more on that later… The point is that it’s time to plant them. I threw mine in last weekend in a rare moment of sunshine and I’m waiting expectantly to see some shoots. I feel a “chard-watch” post coming on soon.
If you haven’t sown them then it’s pretty easy. Rake your ground, clear it of any weeds and I scrape back a bit of soil a couple of cm deep and a few inches wide. Can you tell I’m not a gardener? If it’s proper gardening advice you want I highly recommend you take a skip and a jump over to my good friend Claire’s site: she will tell you how to do it the right way. Plant Passion’s Blog Me? I go for the “scrape back the soil, chuck ‘em in and hope for the best” approach.
So why on earth did a design & marketing company give away seeds?
We’ve given away more than 400 packets of rainbow chard, Bright Lights at various exhibitions and our launch party over the last couple of months. Giving away seeds has become a bit of a “thing” for us. It fits with our name, flourish, and it’s a nice metaphor for how we grow people’s businesses. The thing that I particularly like about rainbow chard is that it’s both beautiful and productive. And we make things look beautiful, but we’re also very commercial, we make sure it’ll get you a result. So there you have it!
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.
I’m mood-board tastic at the moment! It all started when Bernay Laity asked us to each prepare mood boards for our Colour Psychology accreditation. We all had a lot of fun cutting, sticking and mounting textures and images that represented our personalities. And as we presented our “selves” to eachother we learned a lot.
Mood boards have long been used in interior design, but they also have an important place in creating brand identities. One of the biggest breakthroughs I had when we were creating the Flourish identity was to create a mood board to show the team the kind of “feel” I wanted to create for the brand. You can see a part of the Flourish mood board above.
Mood boards are time consuming, so we don’t do them for every project; but they are invaluable as a part of brainstorming, sparking creativity and also streamlining your thoughts – not to mention communicating what you want!
I’m currently putting together a board for the flowers for the launch party. My PA trained with Paula Pryke, and I’ve done some flower arranging courses, and have a passion for flowers, so between us I think we’ll come up with something fabulous! I have an idea in my mind of what I’m looking for, but by getting it down on paper before I visit the flower market on Tuesday I can be sure I’m getting what I need.
Here’s how I’m doing it…
Step One: focus
I have a tight budget so I know I need to stick to flowers in season: tulips, ranunculus, anemones and greenery. I know my colour scheme should be purple, orange and green – the primary Flourish colours (but pink just keeps on creeping in!). And I know it needs to be simple to put together – so no crazy wired arrangements. I also know that I want a relaxed and informal feel (without too much primping and preening), but at the same time I want impact. Not too much to ask then…
Step Two: select anything that catches your eye
With my “brief” at the back of my mind I’m cutting from wedding magazines, home magazines and also scouting the internet for any images that appeal to me. I’m not editing too heavily at the moment. I know there’s a lot of pink creeping in – that’s because I love it! And I know I’ll need to edit that later, but for now I need to keep an open mind. There are also some gorgeous, tasteful, white arrangements that I would die for and I’m hanging on to them for now, but I’ll need to look at why I’ve included them later.
I love the “relaxed” feel of the white arrangement top right, that’s the “feel” I want. But I still need to get to the bottom of the look. I know that acid greens will look great with my bright colours. I also love the twigs in amongst the flowers in the bridal bouquet at the bottom right. And I think that’s part of the point with a mood board – you’re not saying “I want it to look exactly like this”, you’re creating a mood, setting the tone.
Step Three: Edit
Once I’ve gathered together my inspirations I can start to look for a mood, a theme and get a clearer picture in my mind of what I’m looking for. Some of the pink and white stay, but only because I like how they’ve been arranged, and that’s important for Rona (my PA) and I to bear in mind when we’re putting together the arrangements.
Step Four: Mount
Now I’m clear in my mind about where I’m headed I mount the images to provide inspiration. The finished board also helps me communicate so much more powerfully with anyone that works on this project with me.
I’m a huge mood board convert. So much so that we have run a couple of “mood board” sessions with clients to help them really get to the heart of their brand. A lot of fun and great for focusing the mind! And even if you don’t have the budget to work with a design agency on this, how about putting one together yourself?
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