Oh, one more thing before I present the concepts. The name may conjure up twee connotations but Love is actually Jo’s real name! So banish all thoughts of cutesy hearts within the O; this is oh so much more stylish and directional…

Concept One

We worked on this project alongside another for Love Interiors for a brand called Broom & Love. We treated each like a fashion design brand with diffusion range, with Love Interiors being the more playful and youthful diffusion brand. Broom & Love is currently on hold and Jo has asked me not to blog the designs (which I’m a bit gutted about as they are stunning) – hopefully one day you’ll get to see them!

I think this design perfectly highlights the diffusion element – the playfulness of breaking up the word as well as the stylish font. It’s very strong and aspirational isn’t it?

Concept Two

Categorically my personal favourite, I love the mix of colours and the font choices here. Oh, and the iconic logo as well as the handwriting font. Again, it has that very fashiony directional feel about it doesn’t it?

Concept Three

And the final concept. Jo is still thinking through which concept works best for her business so in the meantime I’d love to know what you think?

How gorgeous does the finished Pomegranate logo design look? The photo above is from our shoot for our new website with Matt Pereira and I styled it very quickly to bring out the essence of the colour and style.

We have all loved working on this project: from our initial concepts at the start right through to the finished result we’ve really enjoyed the challenge of creating something that is contemporary and aspirational whilst at the same time retaining some Arabic roots. I blogged a while back about why this project meant something to me personally and whilst this is most definitely not a Persian pastiche, I’m pleased that we managed to capture the essence of the Middle East whilst still making it very relevant to Britain today.

The team have worked so hard on this project and Nicole has been a pleasure to work with. I’d love your thoughts! Is it what you expected when you saw the mood board all those weeks back?

We have a full on week this week – no less than three days of exhibitions back to back! On Wednesday we’ll be exhibiting locally at Guildford Means Business before packing up our kit and heading up to London’s Excel Arena for two days at the Great British Business Show and Business Startup Show.

The show is packed with great speakers: from James Caan to Brad Burton and Bill Morrow, oh, and yours truly! I’ll be speaking on How to Make your Brand Irresistible on Friday afternoon at 2.45pm and Ian, Dani and Chloe will be on our stand (535) both days ready to meet you and answer your branding queries. I’m also running a series of expert clinics both days (I don’t have any details on that yet…) where I’ll be able to provide one to one advice on your brand. And best of all, it’s all absolutely free!

Do join us if you can, it promises to be a great show and it would be lovely to see some of you. Will you let me know if you’re planning on going and I’ll make sure I look out for you.

I’m delighted to be able to share these logo and brand identity design concepts for Essentialis. Remember Isabel Nieto from our introduction a few weeks back? Well we have been beavering away in the studio and created three very strong, elegant and confident logo designs for Essentialis. I’m going to share the initial three concepts with you and then I’m going to ask Chloe to blog the finished design as she has the inside track on the journey.

Remember the brief? Isabel Nieto provides a service to ambitious jetsetting executives looking to achieve their first international role. What these execs often find is that their lack of understanding of the nuances of the English language often means they miss out on opportunities either because they miss the subtleties in the questions being asked or they don’t present themselves as effectively as they might. As an ex City worker and expat herself, Isabel is ideally placed to help these candidates prepare their CV’s, job applications and prepare themselves for interview effectively and get that job!

We needed to create a brand identity that was highly aspirational, confident and also with a masculine edge to it. Here are the concepts…

Concept One

I love the strength and dynamism of the patterns here and the energy that comes across. The icon is perhaps a little controversial? But that’s something that can always be tweaked at the design stage.

Concept Two

More feminine but still strong and bursting with corporately ambitious energy!

Concept Three

This is my personal favourite: I love the pattern and the strength and elegance in the icons, although I think if this was the one for Isabel we’d need to add more colour.

Over to you. Which speaks to you the most? Which do you like and which do you feel is right for the brief?

This came through the post last week from Anthropologie. Beautifully designed and photographed and so much more exciting than another email newsletter.

I’m not saying that emails don’t have their place, they absolutely do. But nothing beats holding a piece of print in your hands for actually connecting with a business does it?

Are you using print enough?

As we’d already designed (and built) the Hanging Space website, once we had finalised the logo designs they slotted nicely into the space at the top. We’d designed the logos and brand identity to work with our new website design because when we design a website, even if we’re not creating a new logo, we still want to get to the heart of the brand and design something with the right feel, does that make sense? And so it all slotted together rather nicely.

You’ll notice a conspicuous absence of the crocodile skin texture on the website: that was deliberate! It’ll make a beautiful splash on the printed literature, but we really felt it best to keep things simple and elegant on the website itself.

The Product Pages

Simple, elegant and image rich, each product page is designed to create a feeling of desire!

This experience page is fully editable and gives visitors a glimpse into what they can expect.

And Space Magazine. We love this! Elaine just doesn’t have the time to write a blog, but completely understands the importance of great content and so we came up with the idea of creating an online magazine for her which she can edit through her content management system. A magazine doesn’t need updating daily or weekly, and so we are looking forward to this giving Hanging Space the perfect balance between current content and not too much work.

Remember the old website?

Quite a transformation I hope you’ll agree! We’re really looking forward to seeing the impact this is going to have on the business and can’t wait to start work on some of the printed collateral.

The Hanging Space rebrand was all about capturing the energy and creativity of Elaine Palmer, reflecting the high end and bespoke nature of their work, and the discerning Weybridge client base. Easy eh?

Concept One

I loved this concept: for me it was the perfect combination of Weybridge + Elaine. The glamour and elegance of the upmarket Surrey town combined with the flair and creativity of Elaine.

Concept Two

I love the simple elegance of this logo and it’s femininity. Chloe has played with the space in the letters to give a nod to the company’s business activities but the over riding feeling is upmarket, aspirational and glamorous.

Concept Three

Gorgeous. Elegant, upmarket and feminine. In the end, this was the right logo for Elaine and Hanging Space, and in my next post you’ll see how it all comes together.

Rebranding should be fun

We really believe that when you rebrand your business, it should be fun. It should be about reconnecting you with your passion for your business, inspiring you with what’s possible and giving you the strength and confidence to really move forwards.

I was thrilled to receive an email from Elaine saying:

Just wanted to say that thanks to you “I love my business again” ….and that is what you offer to people like myself…

Isn’t that lovely?

I’ve been looking forward to sharing this project with you for quite some time now and I’m just delighted to be able to reveal the Hanging Space rebrand and new website design. This has been quite an extensive project, with a rebrand, new website design and shopfront design so I’ll be splitting this out over a couple of posts just so I don’t overwhelm you!

Elaine Palmer is the creative force behind Hanging Space, a Weybridge, Surrey based company who design and build bespoke, fitted furniture. The Hanging Space product is incredibly high end and bespoke, and their original website design just didn’t communicate that.

The original website

Elaine originally came to us with a very cool and clever logo she’d just had designed with another agency, ready to have us create a gorgeous and commercial website design. After much planning we developed a stunning design for the homepage as well as some really cool ideas for the site structure.

Iteration One

Whilst the logo ticked many of the boxes, as time went on, Elaine realised that it just didn’t feel right. And I get that – Elaine is highly creative and very feminine, and is working in a very high end market and so whilst the logo looked smart, it made sense to look at the logo design. The funky logo you see above is certainly very clever conceptually (the font plays on the idea of space, as does the icon) but it feels very masculine and cold.

Our philosophy is that when you connect you with your business and your customer you create a brand that’s incredibly powerful. I always think there’s a lot that you can do with a brand identity without necessarily needing to change a logo, but as Elaine was having a new shopfit and sign it made sense to be sure that this was right. And so she invited us to create a new logo design for her. I want to share that with you next.

Whilst the Masterclass is beautifully designed and bursting with motivation I can guarantee you there is nothing whimsical about it and you will most definitely come out at the end of the journey with sheer drive and determination to better your brand.

We hope to film more videos in the near future so watch this space.

We’re really excited about Sugar Moon and I couldn’t wait to put pen to paper to create some initial sketches for the brand.

Rachel is inspired by so many different things and when we first met she brought in to the studio an assortment of objects, images and books which she felt best reflected her personality.

Rachel loves old fashioned wood block prints, so I wanted to capture the essence of this through pen & ink and create some small illustrations that show off some of the ingredients that will be used to create her amazing brownies (we luckily got to taste a special ‘Flourish Flavour’ batch that she brought in for the team!)

We know this will be a fantastic journey for Sugar Moon and we’ll definitely keep you updated with the progress!