WIN a new logo and visual identity with Netra

Enter the draw to win a Kick Start branding package – worth $1450!

Kick Start Package includes:
Logo design – includes 3 concepts with 3 rounds of changes (all digital files included as EPS Vector in colour, B&W, greyscale and pantone as required)

including complimentary:
Business Card - 2 layout options with 2 rounds of changes (supplied as print-ready PDF)
Postcard OR DL Flyer - 2 layout options with 2 rounds of changes (supplied as print-ready PDF)

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To enter:

1. go to www.Facebook.com/NetraChetty post your current logo to my wall and tell me what collaborating with me will mean for your brand. (f you don’t have a logo, just link to your blog/website)
2. leave a comment under this post stating which one of the logos designed by me in the logo gallery (link above) is your favourite and why.

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Winner will be decided by random draw based on the comment number on the blog. Decision of the winning entry is final.
If you do not require a logo or rebrand for your business, you may exchange your kick-start package for 15hours of design work instead.

Competition closes 10th November midnight, Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.
Prize cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer and is not transferable or redeemable for cash.
Prize must be redeemed (kicked off) before 31 March 2012.

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Posted by Netra on Nov 2nd 2011 | branding - corporate - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - personal - photography - pro bono
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REDefining, REDesigning Part III

If you have been following this blog over the past few posts you will know I have been on a journey of self-discovery. Or perhaps that should be ‘rediscovery’. Part of this was moving out of my dedicated home office, and into a commercial space. Part of it was reflecting on the journey to date, what I bring to my clients and who and where I want to be in five, ten and twenty years. Another part of it was the realisation of working for myself, means I can actually be myself without feeling that I need to conform to what I thought a corporate in-house designer should be.

And it’s the small things. Small things like the colours in my logo. The posts below explain it all, so I don’t need to harp on about it again. But here it is. My new look and logo. It’s red, its vibrant, its passionate and exciting and I love it.

My old logo was a series of rings expanding from each other. This logo is three simple rings coming together. No dotted or dashed lines, only solid linework. No shades or transparent colours, they are all solid. No random expansion and growth, it’s all focussed. It’s an evolution of the old logo, but it’s a visual representation of who I am and what I want to do going forward.

As much as the logo represents focus, it also represents vision. The same way you can look through a camera, or telescope, or microscope or any other instrument of vision, there is a dial that makes all the fuzzy bits clear – that’s what I want to do with the clients who come to me with a tangle of ideas in their heads. I want to help people focus and achieve their visions of their business and brand.

In terms of vision and focus there is a much more personal meaning layered under all of that as well. It’s essentially my name. I love my name – granted I have never ever found it on a keychain, or a mug – but I love how unique and unusual it sounds. I also love it’s meaning – as a word it means ‘eyes’ in Hindi and Thai (so I’ve been told). Within the last 2 weeks as I’ve googled, I have also discovered that as a name it can also mean ‘vision’, or a ‘guide’ (to be the eyes for another person). That has been a lovely way to be able to articulate all the hope that I have for the exciting journey ahead.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts with photos from my launch party. But for now, here is the new look.

Posted by Netra on Oct 8th 2011 | branding - card - corporate - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - personal - print design
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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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Gemma Higgins-Sears and Janet Palmer are the two creative brains behind Storytellers Photography. While they each run their own successful photography businesses, they found enough synergies between their two styles to come together in this joint collaborative effort.

Their brief for the logo was simple, they wanted something evocative, that would capture the imagination of their audience. It had to fit in with the idea of storytelling as well as ideas they had already developed for the imagery of their brand.

The tree was an obvious choice for me. It had to be almost like a print, or old-school botanical illustration with heavy detail, so that each time you look closer into the logo, you see a bit more detail down to individual leaves. That to me was symbolic of this collaboration, that while Gemma and Janet were individuals, but when they came together they made something beautiful.

The tree was also about being ageless and timeless. It is about growing and expanding like the stories and lives of their clients. It was about aged paper and rustling leaves, about rings enclosed in rough bark and children scampering about like squirrels on branches laughing and shouting. It was about childhood and adulthood and all the glorious crazy years in between.

So here we are, the final result can be seen below. Make sure to stop by the Storytellers blog and say hello!

Posted by Netra on Jul 26th 2011 | branding - card - design - graphic design - logo
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Tara Hawley from Sweet Little Birdy dropped me a line to give her a hand revamping her business identity and applying it to a suite of promotional collateral. Clearly with a name that included a bird, we were going to stay with the bird she had. We just tidied it up a bit, gave her an interesting shape to brand with and keep her existing colours.

Once that was done we started rolling out the new logo on her material. With a business that sells party and homewares, gift and event styling options, there was a phenomenal range of imagery to choose from – and everything was just so gorgeous! So far we’ve done a couple of adverts (keep an eye out for the Sweet Little Birdy advert in the upcoming issue of Donna Hay Kids) and postcard, flyers are just about done as well.

I just love having a strong identity that carries through all the accompanying material. When you take a step back and see it as a whole, you really get a sense that this is a business that has things together. Its looks so professional and I hope this really helps Tara take her business to the next level.

Make sure to stop by www.sweetlittlebirdy.com.au and check out her products – they are just fabulous!

Posted by Netra on Jun 9th 2011 | branding - brochure - card - commercial - corporate - design - flyer - graphic design - logo - marketing - print design
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I’ve had the distinct privilege of working with this brand since its inception and evolution over the past couple of years. What initially started out as NFE Design and then grew to require the specialty sub-branch Indulge has now shifted gear to evolve into a new sub-brand direction called Beloved by Renee Bell.

Renee has built a strong visual identity within her own personal and business brands over the past few years. Both each have their own equity and so all we had to do to leverage this equity was to tweak Indulge slightly and so… Beloved was born. You can check out more of Renee’s work on her Not For Eating blog at www.nfedesign.com.au or her website www.reneebellphotographer.com.au.

Posted by Netra on Jun 7th 2011 | branding - card - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - print design
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When Rana first contacted me she wrote me a message that simply said “I think there is no question. I need you!” And so began this branding  journey!

I would love to say I successfully get every single brief right the first time, every time – but that is just not the truth. This was one of the briefs where Rana and I both worked really hard to come to this solution and it took us a while but we got there in the end!

She was open, and honest and true to herself and her vision of the brand – that is what ultimately leads to a successful brand and a memorable visual identity. With this branding, Rana has so many colours and options to play with as part of her marketing and promotional material. The idea of the bunting is something she is trying to incorporate into her hero imagery where possible and it’s making for some fun images.  The whole thing is bright, cheery and a whole lot of fun!

Make sure to stop by her website and blog and read her post about her launch. Congrats Rana!

Posted by Netra on Mar 7th 2011 | branding - card - design - graphic design - logo - marketing - print design
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