Each concept has been borne out of the idea of light or illuminating things. Some obvious, some more subtle.

Concept One

Love this colour palette and the beautiful brand patterns.

Concept Two

I love the chink of light that shines through the “window” in the logo. It’s all created as a vector file so would be fully scaleable and could also work as a solid colour (albeit without the light chink!) if required.

Concept Three

This was Laila’s favourite concept: strong yet feminine. We’re currently in the process of amending colours and tweaking bits here and there, so I will certainly share very soon!

What do you think? I love them!

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!

We are quote tastic this week aren’t we? I’m so inspired by my class on the Branding Masterclass that I’m feeling all high fives and inspirational mantras. And as this was one of my favourites I just had to share it with you.

So what’s holding you back? And more to the point, what are you going to do about it?

It can be so easy to listen to the wrong people can’t it? The naysayers, the doom mongers or general energy sappers?

Surely being successful in business is about having the energy and inspiration to find your way through when things get tough? And believe me I know how difficult that can be. But when things get tough, I think we often get into a downward spiral by listening to people who are going through a tougher time than ourselves and letting them drag us down.

What we really need to do is spend time around people who can help us get back on our feet, inspire us to reconnect with our businesses and just crack on with everything.

I was talking to a client last week whose business is going through a tough time. He is a tree surgeon and things are less than booming. He still has a full complement of staff, is working hard to generate more business and is finding as much for his team to do as possible. But it’s hard. It’s nerve wracking, depressing and draining. And it can feel like you’re working twice as hard as normal and you’re still sliding backwards.

Apparently other local tree surgeons are down to 3 days a week. They’re laying off staff and it seems inevitable to my client that things are on the decline. But this is precisely the problem with hanging around with the wrong people isn’t it? They encourage you to see the world through their eyes, you adopt a defeatist attitude and before you know it, your business needs to cut it’s staff back to three days a week too.

I’m not doubting the fact that it’s tough. And tough times don’t just affect us business owners financially. This is personal. But we have to find a way to stay inspired and make the most of the opportunities don’t we? And there are opportunities out there, even if we have to work that bit harder to find them.

What do you think?

I HATE supermarkets, they are filled with people meandering about, I simply want to get in and out. When I’m walking down the aisles the first thing that stops me in my track is packaging. I love nothing more than to see an exciting and intriguing brand that makes me want to stop and explore. I find myself reaching for the most captivating brand, for example I am really addicted to ‘innocent veg pots’ at the end of the day it is vegetables, rice and some sauce but the packaging makes it seem much more luxurious. I trust in the brand and rely on the fact that I am going to get a healthy, nutritional meal. I personally love their relaxed and informal style this is emulated throughout the logo and packaging.

I am however slightly disappointed by their website. Don’t get me wrong there are aspects that are brilliant and completely right for them. Such as the bright colours and playful, rounded spring-like text. I just feel much more could be made of top categories; the site becomes a little repetitive. I am a huge fan of their adverts though and the efforts that go into the advertising and packaging win me over.

In the new ad for the Veg Pots the lively videos are simple, to-the-point and easy to watch and this is replicated in the product they are offering. Their target audience are consumers that don’t have time to prepare their meals. After just 30 seconds, I know I am going to get a healthy, substantial meal that takes just four minutes to make. Well I don’t know about you but that has ticked all my boxes!

I guess my point being that it is integral to be creative and have the courage to be different.

Some of you may have come across www.graze.com, again an appealing brand. When Caroline receives her Graze box I am immediately jealous! I see the gorgeous box and want one for myself. Graze deliver a highly personable service that allows their customers to feel valued. The packaging adds to the exclusivity of the brand and gives that extra wow factor.

Not only is their marketing fantastic; they deliver what they promise.

It is all well and good talking about what you can deliver, but it is vital to keep those promises as consumers want to know they can depend on the brand that they are choosing.

We all know you cannot please everyone; so don’t attempt to, focus on your target market. More than ever it is important to eat sleep and live your brand.

These bright, crisp days are just what we needed aren’t they?

There’s a lot happening at Flourish at the moment which we’re all finding incredibly inspiring. Team promotions, new designers, some very exciting client projects, the launch of the branding masterclass, oh, and the small matter of a nip tuck to the Flourish brand identity (which I’ll share with you soon). Because of all this bright, new stuff, I’m feeling very fired up, very creative and very excited about the future.

I think this lovely, yellow mood board just about sums up our mood right now. Optimistic and inspired. How are you feeling right now?

Recently I’ve been spending 10 minutes at the start of every day on Pinterest. It’s a tip I picked up from Elizabeth Cairns when we were recording a video for the Branding Masterclass; Elizabeth encouraged us to spend time getting into our flow at the start of the working day: doing things that inspire us. For some of you that may be being relaxed, others may like to organise, spend time outside or exercising. For me it’s about being creative. And I’m finding Pinterest the perfect inspiration tool – as long as I limit myself to 10 minutes a day.

What do you do to get into your flow?

Ps the only downside to Pinterest is that it’s incredibly difficult to track back the image sources. None of the above are my images (apart from the colour palette) all via my Spring Optimism Pinterest board

Liezl Croft is an utterly lovely wedding and family portrait photographer. A force of South African fabulousness, creative, warm, friendly and with an eye for fun she asked us to create a brand refresh and blogsite that would reflect where her business is today as well as (of course) attracting and retaining lots of new clients.

And whilst we’ve been working with her on her printed literature now for several years, I was delighted when she asked us to give her blog a brandover. Having set up her business less than two years ago, Liezl had previously created her websites herself and felt that her business was at a level where she was ready to step things up a gear.

As well as being a cracking lifestyle photographer, Liezl is also very crafty and I think you’ll see that come through in the look and feel of the site.

We’ve worked on creating direct mail for Liezl in the past (which we won a design award last year for) but this project gave us the chance to really flex our creative muscles! We designed to create Liezl a WordPress based blogsite – a website and blog rolled into one which would give her the chance to showcase her photography without being too onerous to manage.

We put together a colour palette that created an aspirational feel, whilst plenty of texture and elements like the bunting creates a sensory quality and follows on from the work we did previously on the mailers. We all love the icons that Chloe created for each category, and the beautiful pattern that sets off the blog. I’d always known that Liezl’s work was beautiful, but what I hadn’t appreciated was the enormous difference the right surroundings make to her images.

If you take a look at the difference between the old blog and the new, I think you’ll agree they’re night and day apart.

Liezl’s old blog

I don’t want to embarrass anyone by going into this too heavily, let’s just say that the design of the blog had a long way to catch up with the quality of Liezl’s work…

And the new blogsite

Liezl has been so much fun to work with on this project and we wish her lots of luck with the new site and branding. It’s too early to measure the financial success of the blog – it’s been live for less than a month, but visits have doubled and the feedback to Liezl’s Facebook and Twitter page was overwhelming! Do hope on over and take a look (and do leave her a comment too, it’s so lovely to receive feedback when you’re writing your heart out and you know how lonely it can be when you’re first blogging)… You’ll find Liezl’s website and blog at www.liezlcroft.com

I’m often asked where we find our inspiration for our own brand and the brands we work on. The people that ask have clearly never seen our creative boardroom! At the heart of the room is a bright (flourish) green painted sideboard packed with magazines, catalogues and direct mail to inspire us.

We are also adept at using online resources: Pinterest, google images, design blogs and work from other agencies.

As well as using these resources for a bit of focused and structured inspiration, it’s also about having our eyes open at all times, because you literally never know where inspiration will strike. Packaging in a supermarket or department store, an old property, travel abroad or something as simple as the colours in nature. All of these elements have the power to inspire, it’s just about how you interpret them.

So how can you find inspiration for your own brand?

Start with your home. Most (not all) of the small business owners we work with run a business that taps into their passions; a business that is in some way a reflection of them.

If that’s the case for you, root through your wardrobe, your favourite items in your kitchen or the things that influence you in interior design. Is there a common theme?

Look at the magazines you have in your home and start to dissect them. What do you love about them? Is there anything that you can take inspiration from? Layout, treatments, typography etc.

Visit exhibitions and take inspiration from how other businesses brand themselves. Start to build up a mood board to help you articulate what you’re after.

Once you have a scrapbook or mood board of how you’d like everything to look and feel, you’re in a great position to talk to a branding company or graphic designer and they will be able to interpret this into something unique and very special

Images: All sourced via Pinterest

Sunny day, clear skies and fire in my belly. What’s not to be optimistic about?

What plans do you have for your business this year?

What would you be doing if nothing was standing in your way?

It’s something to think about isn’t it?

Image Credits: The Best is Yet to Come print Etsy, Kate Spade flats via Style Me Pretty, Neon Notebook, Vee, Sour Cherry Soup via Luxe Finds, Sparkly Clothes via The Collectione, Neon Flowers Sania Pell, Sparkle Quote ZsaZsa Bellagio, Ocean Quote, 

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.