Andrea Sproxton contacted me earlier this year to help her revamp her existing brand and identity. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with her existing identity. It was perfectly serviceable, decent colours – only problem was that she didn’t LOVE it.

She wasn’t over-the-moon in love with her brand. In my humble opinion (and not speaking specifically about Andrea, but rather more generally), when you talk to people about you business and your brand - if you don’t love it and aren’t passionate about it – then that creeps into your voice and clients pick up on it.

How can you expect clients to have an emotional connection to your brand, if you are ho-hum about it yourself?

I am sure there are perfectly successful businesses that run very well without this kind of logo-love, but for a small business, trying to do Big Things, surely it must come into the equation. In my ideal world, I want my clients to love their brand so much that they want to slap it on some toast and eat it for breakfast! Or better still, get it printed on a t-shirt and wear it out in public.

I’ll get off the soapbox now and leave you with the final designs for logo, business cards and email footer. Thanks Andrea, I hope this is the start of great things to come.

Posted by Netra on Mar 23rd 2010 | corporate - design - graphic design - marketing - photography
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The amazing, hip, cool team at Marque Lawyers asked me to come up with a graphic for their client page. I had previously captured profile photos for the team which were a heap of fun. At first I thought I could do a nice background image for the client list, or jazz it up with a couple of unusual bullet points… but I should have known better!

They said they wanted a cartoon illustration of a city skyline. So I went away and found some nice, sensible-looking, lawyer-appropriate line drawing illustrations and sent those back to them… I realllly should have known better!

The team at Marque are unlike any other lawyers you’ve ever met. As it turns out, they wanted a cartoon – a real cartoony-looking cartoon – with aiplanes trailing banners, a little man jumping out of a plane, billboards and skywriting to boot!

So after some design dialogue – they have uploaded the final graphic to their website and I can finally share. One of the more fun projects from this year. Make sure to take a look around their website too, it’s witty and entertaining – as I said, they are not like any other lawyers you’ll ever meet. Put simply – they just rock!

Posted by Netra on Mar 9th 2010 | corporate - design - graphic design - marketing
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Little Miss Audrey is the niece of a very good friend of mine Toni Southwell from Hyde Clothing. Toni and I worked together years ago and have kept in touch over the years. Michelle and Scott, Audrey’s mum and dad live in a gorgeous house really close to the city. They have an AMAZING park nearby and we took a stroll through a couple of urban settings to get there and back.

It was something different for me, so I got to play a bit with some cool graffiti backdrops and some urban landscapes. Audrey looks just a cherub – complete with blonde curly hair, chubby cheeks and an adorable pout. It took her a while to warm to me, but we managed to coax some smiles out of her towards the end. I know Audrey’s extended family will be waiting patiently to see the photos, so without further ado, here they are…

Posted by Netra on Mar 7th 2010 | adult - child - family - photography
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Bec Hall from Shoot the Family approached me looking for a new logo and identity for her photography business. Bec has a love of all things retro and as she was talking about her vision for the brand the song that popped into my head was Bryan Adam’s “Summer of 69″.

I wanted her look to be about scorching hot days at the beach, ice-creams that melt too fast and scratchy transistor radios. I really got into the retro groove with this project and was just about to don my afro wig and flares, when I came up with this concept. Bec said:

“Love, love, love!  It’s fun, it’s full of sunshine and retro, it’s all about summer… I just wanted to let you know that I am so, so happy with what you’ve done.  Thank you so much!”

  So without futher ado, here it is!

Posted by Netra on Mar 3rd 2010 | corporate - design - family - graphic design - photography
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Phillippa Smoker of Sweet Chilli Philly Photography approached me a couple of months ago to design a logo for her existing photography business. Her photography had evolved over the past year or so and her existing logo was not as relevant as it was when she first developed it.

With a business name like hers, there is a automatic gravitation towards making the most of the ‘chilli’ component, but Philly (as she prefers to be called) wanted to stay away from all things hot and spicy and tone down her brand to match her niche and target market. She wanted to maintain her name as she found it was working well and clients remembered her.

To be honest it was a very challenging brief and we didn’t want to use an icon that was irrelevant or random. So after much brainstorming I decided to focus on the initials of her biz name and develop a seal or crest somewhat like a cameo, that could be used as part of her packaging as well.

One of the very first concepts I did had included the notion of some dubious looking supporting brand elements in the shape of a few animal characters (dubious due to my dubious computer illustration skills). After much refinement, and a few epiphanies to boot, the final range of ‘sweet’ animals came to be. They include a puppy, a cat, an elephant, a solemn looking bear, a ladybird and an egg in a nest. If you didn’t notice, each of the faces of the little guys are based on the shape of the logo – in fact the outline of the logo was used to create their little heads. These little characters will support the SCP brand and appear in her marketing and promotional material.

Posted by Netra on Mar 3rd 2010 | corporate - design - graphic design - marketing - photography
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For those who don’t know, I am winding down the portrait side of my business. I have found it a challenge to produce my design work during the week and then photograph other families on the weekends. I end up working 7 days a week and my family misses me! So for now, I will only be doing commercial and corporate photography shoots – and will  do a handful of portrait sessions for friends and family throgh the year.

This family was going to be my last official portrait session (but I’ve scheduled another next week for a family who were given a gift voucher and of course I will still be honouring all gift vouchers).

I got to photograph Jed and Abbey whose gorgeous blue eyes you can see below. Abbey was a delight, such a bubbly and fun child to photograph. Mr J was a bit more serious, and it took him a while to warm up to me, until we started playing peek-a-boo and then it was all good!

Some photos from the session…

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Posted by Netra on Mar 1st 2010 | child - family - photography
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