In recent months I have been collaborating with the amazing and wonderful Ronald McDonald House Charities Australia on rolling out their new branding. The new look, created by the talented folks at Interbrand was all set up and ready for someone (me!) to apply to all the communications and promotional material that is required to run a charity organisation on a national scale.

In coming weeks, as things are completed, I will be posting more about the brand roll out. For now I thought I would share some images of a recent conference in Chicago for which I designed the stand graphics. This was the RMHC Global Conference and this stand represented countries in Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific Region where RMHC runs their programs. Each panel represented one of the 14 member countries and the words “you & us” in the respective language. The curved welcome desk below said welcome or hello in all the languages of the member countries as well. It was such a fun project to be a part of!

This was a very quick turnaround job, collating imagery from countries all over the world was a challenge, but I am SO pleased with the result!

Posted by Netra on Aug 24th 2011 | branding - commercial - corporate - design - graphic design - marketing
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Sarah is one half of the creative team behind Red Telegram along with Kim Selby. Sarah and I worked together on the Red Telegram brand and I must say some of our email exchanges between her and I have been filed with my selection of ‘best ever’ client emails. Emails from Sarah always elicit a reaction from me, from laughter, to drop jawed awe, to sheer disbelief – all in a good way.

The one that stands out in my mind was when we were discussing the relative heights of two letters in a word. I said they were even. Sarah said they were not. Kim was wisely silent. I insisted. So did Sarah. Kim was already in the underground shelter. So I zoomed into 300% and was about to draw a whopping red line to PROVE that the letters were even, when I choked on a mouthful of humble pie. Sarah was right!

Much abashed, I mailed her back and admitted my error and she very graciously has never brought it up again. I love that story. I love that my clients are just as pedantic (or even more so!) than I am. I love that we can have an email exchange about the relative letter heights of two letters, because you see, it shows they are as passionate about the logo, brand and design as I am.  I would much rather a client who looked at every single detail of the design and double checked me on 100 things, than one who might say, “yeah, whatever, that will do…”.

But I digress! This post is about Sarah’s new brand! Sarah had been throwing around some ideas for her brand but finding a few challenges along the way. She wanted to create the brand around the idea of a story, a fairytale with the photographer as the teller of the magical stories in each family she photographed. Sarah came to me with a font she’d fallen in love with so naturally that was an easy place to start.

It was when I was looking at the brief that I realised that Sarah Black and Story Book  have common initials. The idea involved a cheeky and hidden play on the words by putting her initials into a story book and using it as a logo. It’s clean and subtle, sophisticated but edgy, literal but contains a secret meaning and I love it! I felt the brand was so emotive and evocative that a quote or proverb would work quite well with it. Imagine my surprise when googling “quotes about fairytales” yielded a beautiful snippet from the story master himself Hans Christian Anderson so of course I had to include it in the proposal to Sarah. It’s really struck a chord in her too and she has some great plans to integrate it further into her brand, but my lips are sealed!

The image Sarah has used on her cards is one of my favourite images of all time. With two girls myself, the image (as I said to Sarah) represents so much of how I think their childhood should be. It encourages them to grow up with an imagination, to dream big dreams, to believe that anything is possible. I want my girls to live in a world where you can wear sparkly red shoes every single day, regardless of your age and its totally ok.

Make sure to visit Sarah’s website and check out her amazing and inspirational work.

Posted by Netra on Aug 11th 2011 | branding - corporate - design - graphic design - logo - photography
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Alex Castle was after a new look for her photography business, Jumping Jigsaws Photography. The challenge with this particular project was to find a way to express the fun, whimsical feel of her brand and style without resorting to jigsaws (too obvious) or anything that involved people jumping (I must admit I got stuck on the jumping people for a bit).

The business name itself had its roots in the names of family members, so changing it was not an options. Finally after some tearing out of hair (not me, I meant Alex!) we settled on the floral pinwheel. Once this was locked in, we began to see endless possibilities in the pinwheels as a theme to carry through the photography as part of her visual identity.

Working on her blog interface, Alex came up with the brilliant idea of the pinwheels spinning and coded the flash header herself!!! (Alas she is not giving up her photography dream to go into full-time Flash blog header animation as much as I pleaded).

So without any more waffle from me, here it is – the new look for Jumping Jigsaws Photography! 

Posted by Netra on Aug 7th 2011 | design - graphic design - logo - marketing - print design
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Anneke Green and I have been collaborating on the development of her brand for grown ups. She already has an existing brand for the younger folks, called Tummy to Toddler and was after a new look and feel for a more sexy, grown up market.

Anneke had chosen the name Capture Me Beautiful for her new brand. Being that the focus was on boudoir, couples sessions and other similar shoots – we started off playing with the notions of ‘capture’ and what it meant to be captured.

In a playful twist, the idea that by letting someone ‘capture’ a subject in an image, would be empowering and liberating – almost like setting oneself ‘free’. And so, the first symbolic icon was born, the cage and bird in flight. From there, the rest of the icon suite grew and grew. The idea is that Anneke can add more if she likes, swap and change them as the need arises.

They all sit within a framing device, much like a voyeur might peep through a window, or watch a reflection in a mirror, or someone might see silhouettes through a window late at night. It’s all very grown up, and very sexy!

Check out Anneke’s work at the Capture Me Beautiful blog.

Posted by Netra on Aug 3rd 2011 | branding - card - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - photography - print design
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Earlier in the year, I was contacted by the Australian Breastfeeding Association to ask if I would be interested in pitching for the design component for their upcoming International Conference. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to work with them again, in particular Susan Greenbank who is always a delight to collaborate with.

I submitted my proposal and waited a few nervous days before I found out that it had come down to the wire, but I had won the project. It was huge. The scope included developing the logo for the conference, extending this to a visual identity and branding that could be adapted across many different promotional pieces, and then the design of those pieces as well!

It’s always SUCH a pleasure and relief to be able to take a branding project from the logo right through to the end design. It let’s the designer really do what they are supposed to, and enjoy the process, work with the brand like a nervous mother might hover over their own toddler, and finally waving it off into the big wide world.

There are still a few bit and pieces left for this project before the conference at the end of October. But for now, here is the logo (complete with blocks to step up and concentric rings expanding and reaching out like a broadcast message) and the icons we developed to identify the key themes of the conference (community, innovation, discussion & support).

There is also the first couple of pages of the Sponsorship Prospectus hat was done as a print and interactive document, the 24pg Conference Proceedings and Registration booklet  (I especially love the form on the last page – I have a thing about making all forms look like tax forms) as well as the banner for the web page.

Make sure to check out the Step Up, Reach Out website and also make sure to have a look at the program.

Just wanted to say thank you for the marvellous work you have done with the design on our international conference materials. The conference program arrived from the printer today and looks fab. We are now at 620 delegates and I think that is of course due to the FABULOUS promotion we have done! I really have enjoyed working with you and thank you for all the weird hours you’ve had to put in. There will be many more projects to come so I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon!
- Susan Greenbank, National Marketing Manager, Australian Breastfeeding Association

Posted by Netra on Aug 2nd 2011 | branding - brochure - commercial - corporate - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - print design
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