Designer spotlight: modern branding studio mint102

Okay. You probably already know this. But I LOOOOOOOOOVE beautiful typography. And great design. And visuals you can swoon over. Follow my pinterest treasury if you like to dive into my world of inspiration {but don’t say I didn’t warn you: It’s crazy addictive}.

Warm compliments over to my designer colleagues at mint 102. I originally spotted them through this hot and bothered neon-kissed design suite:

event invitation design and event branding details by studio mint 102
for salon + beauty lounge flawless finish, Watkinsville, GA

Brand Identity Design – how to stand out from the crowd

• Deutsch

So you’ve done your branding homework. You have a unique offering, you know who your best customers are, you have your positioning, your brand emotion, and unique brand characteristics down… you’re ready for a unique brand identity design that really clicks with your audience.

You and your brand identity designers will be faced with a key question: how can your brand be visually presented so that it stands out, in today’s visually over-crowded environment? So that your storefront(s) will tempt passers-by to a second look, and intrigue them to come in? How can you leave a lasting impression so they’ll remember you next time they look for your offering?

How can you get into the minds of your ideal customers?

One of your options may be to work with illustrations in your brand communication.

brand communication concept sketch for Triumph {by Atelier Giselle}, with a feature illustration

concept sketch, showing a possible use for the key illustration visuals inside stores

fashion-inspired brand illustration concept for Triumph, a pitch proposal by Atelier Giselle

Illustrations are a great medium to evoke emotion. Think about Starbucks and how they use illustrations in all locations to create an inspiring ambiente with a feeling of warmth that invites you to relax, linger, and drink coffee.

I created the above brand illustration concept in a store concept pitch for the lingerie label Triumph. Goal of the illustration: be a memorable eye-catcher of the brand, convey elegance, fashion, and a sense of sophisticated sexiness. In this concept, the brand’s crown element from the logo was woven into the pattern of the illustration, creating a subtle repetition of the brand insignia, for enhanced brand-memorization effect. The pattern was a visual metaphor to lingerie lace patterns, and could have been used in additional communication elements such as packaging, shopping bags, as design accent on the website and more.

Illustrations are just one way to go, of course. Clever emotional photo use in the brand communication or puristic identity design solutions can have just as strong of an impact – it always depends on the brand. As with everything else: not everything is right for everyone.

Nonetheless, illustrations are worth considering for a moment – they hold many brand communication benefits, and in today’s very photo-saturated environment, they pose a great opportunity to make your brand stand out. Would your brand benefit of illustrations in the communication? If you feel the idea may be interesting, ask your identity design agency for at least one brand design concept that works with illustrations, to help you see how this could work for you. If you don’t have a brand designer yet, come stop by my brand design portfolio at Atelier Giselle and my identity design portfolio for wedding professionals – if you feel intrigued, I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you!

Unique invitation design accent – edge gilding

This post will be a little biased, but nonetheless sincere. Of course, all my branding clients have their own unique talents. But here’s one that may be interesting to you if you plan a special celebration or wedding in the near future, or need statement stationery for your business. Swoon moment! Curtain up for the Manhattan-based luxury print & and paper boutique print icon! Apart from heritage production techniques and a plethora of modern creative print methods, one of their unique specialties is gilding, also called edge-painting. A few inspirations from their portfolio:

wedding invitation with custom calligraphy and black edge painting

modern clean-chic event invitation with red gilding

black-tie invitation suite with gold crest and gilded edge

elegant contemporary Bat Mitzvah invite, letterpress printed and with lavender edge painting
all of the above stationery samples were designed and printed by print icon New York

If you love clean chic but like to make a fine design statement, edge gilding in your color can give your stationery the perfect special edge. Custom-colors are possible – in fact, print icon is passionate about unique and artistic productions and personalization. Call them for a personal consultation - ask for Vahid, founder and owner, and tell him I said hi! He’ll be delighted to hear from you and consult you personally.

PS – if you’re interested in the branding and identity design work I did for print icon you can read up on it here in this branding case study on Sage Wedding Pros.

Spotlight on Fashion Blogger Michelle Lara Lin

Join me for a special treat today: an interview with fashion blogger and entrepreneur Michelle Lara Lin. The moment I first laid eyes on her beautiful blog {L’Etranger}, I was intrigued. Immediately, I reached out to say hi, and boldly wondered if she was interested in collaborating on photo shoots with my young jewelry line possibility. Not only was Michelle (who is a respected blogger in the fashion universe and incredibly busy building her own start-up) kind enough to reply personally, swiftly, and with a very friendly email, but it turned out that we think very similarly when it comes to creating fashion photo shoots. The tentative thought of one collaboration has turned into several (see here, here, here and a feature on Teen Vogue!), and a friendship across continents.

model: blogger Michelle Lara Lin | photographer: Meagan Cignoli | dress: Yuna Yang,
from her fall / winter 2013 Collection | see full fashion shoot here

Please meet Michelle, Lara Lin, and enjoy a glimpse into her fascinating world in this interview!

You run the successful and very inspiring blog The Stranger. Please share with my readers your story – how did you start out with the blog, and what is your secret to being a successful blogger?

I wish there was a secret behind becoming successful at anything. These “secret to success” manuals demonstrate an inherent paradox: human beings want to accomplish things, yet we’re also extremely lazy. There’s a Bukowski quote that pinpoints it:

My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.
- Charles Bukowski

We want the easy way out of everything. But my experience with The Stranger allowed me to realize that the easiest way to succeed in anything, including blogging, is to (1) work on something you love and (2) work fucking hard.

Everyone tells you how they are going to be “special”, but few do the work to get there. Do the work.
-Mark Cuban

Is there anything exciting in your near future that we should have an eye out for?

I am investing most of my time on my startup, Quotesome. I think it’s the most exciting thing in the world. I actually spend most of my time on it– building it, and actually using it.

Next week, I’m also doing another exciting collaboration with a stunning and beautiful hotel in Taipei. I can’t announce which one yet, but the concept is going to be deep. You know me, I love shooting in old, classic, and occasionally regal settings. The environment ignites all the creativity in me.

{Note by Astrid: as I’m publishing this, the Taipei shoot has been released! See the full feature here}

If you could go back in time and do 1 thing in your career differently, what would that be?

Can’t say I would change anything. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I learned from them and moved on.

It’s good to make mistakes. It encourages you to doubt yourself, to question your judgment, and to be aware of your own cognitive biases. But most of all, it reminds you that humans aren’t infallible. What perplexes me is those who live under the illusion that their judgments are always correct, despite all the research done in neuroscience that disproves that.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
– Daniel Kahneman

If you could give other talented business women a recommendation, what would that be?

Ignore more advice you receive. Google is your advisor. Books are your mentors. :)

What motto/credo do you live by?

Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech. I cry every time I watch his speech. These two excerpts really resonate with me:

1.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

2.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

One of your favorite places in the world to travel to, and why?

Prague. It’s hard to explain why. I wrote about in a blog entry, but I actually found what I wrote about Prague through Quotesome:

One cannot claim that Prague is beautiful without abandoning generic notions of beauty. Prague’s beauty is unconsciously Romantic, encompassing the grotesque, the awe-inspiring, the foreign, and the unknown.

As humans, we tend to appreciate only generic beauty (what Alexander McQueen called “nicey-nicey”) and avoid anything that evokes darker emotions. But people love Prague, even though the art and architecture there is so grotesque. I think that’s the charm of Prague: people break out of their comfort zones.

There is no love of Prague’s art, architecture, literature, and beauty without loving the grotesque and sublime.

One play / exhibition / movie / concert / show that you really enjoyed recently, and why?
I don’t think I’ve told this to anyone but my brother: I never watch movies or TV shows anymore. I don’t think I have for over half a year. I’m unable to sit through any of them. It’s not even the I-need-to-be-working guilt, like most people think it is. I take breaks from work all the time. The thing is, I just don’t get much pleasure from watching movies or TV shows.

Work is more fun than fun.
- Noel Coward

I do read a ton of books though. This week I finishedDelusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. I highly recommend it. I’ve been reading a lot of neuroscience books lately. It’s so fascinating to learn how the mind works.

One woman YOU are inspired by, and why?
I decided to pick someone who is actually alive (or I might have settled for Simone de Beauvoir). Lea Verou. She’s programmer and brilliant frontend engineer. A friend of mine introduced me to Prefix Free, a nifty tool she developed. I’ve been following her ever since. She actually develops CSS– which makes her all the more awesome. But it doesn’t stop there. She has a very beautiful mind too. Check out this great piece on her blog entitled What is sexism?

 

Isn’t Michelle amazingly inspiring? Thank you so much Michelle, for sharing a glimpse into your world. We’ll be looking forward to seeing much more from you!

 

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