Tag: Graphic Design

28
Oct

New Design & Branding Projects P3

Part 3 of a new series showcasing some of our exciting Design & Branding projects launched  in the last few years…

Practical Steps to Better Mental Health

One of the clients we’ve found most fulfilling to work with over the last few years is the TRC Group, an organisation which provides integrated therapeutic support to individuals in both London and Edinburgh. With a new website launched just before lockdown in early 2020 – their large, experienced and diverse therapeutic team began creating short posts to help people with the emotional toll of lockdown.

Posts included relaxation techniques, coping mechanisms and other free tools/techniques/thought-pieces to help people better cope with everything that was going on. Useful at the best of times times, priceless during the several phases of lockdown we’ve had during the last 18 months.

We were more than happy to work with the TRC Group to help them put together all of this outstanding content into its own digital library with collated blog posts, resource centre and press articles.

https://trcgroup.org.uk/library>>> for more info.

A tremendous function that I’m sure we can all gain some value from…

 

A More Connected Scotland

‘Technology as an enabler’

‘A vehicle for providing fresh opportunities’

‘Creating ways and means to improve the quality of life for the people of Scotland – all of Scotland.’

These were just some of the ideas that we were asked to communicate when creating an infographic for Seric Systems several years back.

Our magnificent team put together a wonderful visual of a Scotland re-created as nodes and links, imaginatively including several icons to communicate important ideas such as diversity and inclusion, all underpinned with the stunning blue brand colour of Seric Systems.

Thrilled to recently see this infographic still being used many years after it was originally designed, slightly re-purposed on this slide-presentation for SmartSTEMs, as well as Seric, with the sister’s charity’s stunning brand wings now included.

 

Welcome to Glasgow

Delighted to welcome friends from Norway, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Singapore, Germany, Australia, China, Canada, USA, Indonesia and so many other nations to Glasgow…

In the next couple of weeks the city of Glasgow will be proudly welcoming delegates from all over the world for COP26. As a proud Glasgow-based company we were thrilled to be given this opportunity to help our friends at the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce extend the international hand of friendship with this special COP26 graphical skyline – each of the participating countries recognised with one of their country’s most famous landmarks mixed in with traditional Scottish elements, icons of sustainability and our very own Nessie making a guest appearance…

We hope all involved enjoy their stay and once again, a very warm welcome to Glasgow…

If you’d like to find out more about our Design & Branding services contact us to find out more…

Benedetto

 

Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

<<< To see more of the loft’s brand solutions 

For more information on brand-building by Benedetto >>>

28
Oct

New Design & Branding Projects P2

The second part of a new series showcasing new Design & Branding projects launched by the loft in the last few years..

 

Edinburgh Marketing

Multiplying The Reach Of Scotland’s Capital

Greater investment, a larger digital footprint, a more globalised presence, effective actions designed to support more people living in Edinburgh, studying in Edinburgh, working in Edinburgh and investing in Edinburgh. These were just some of the many stories that Edinburgh Marketing wanted to communicate when creating an infographic to showcase the impact of their agency over the previous decade or so.

A last minute-project created in double-quick time – we kept it super-simple letting the words, numbers and stats speak for themselves, each metric re-created using the ’This is Edinburgh’ brand colours, wrapped around a tight gridded structure and finished off with a Seth Godin inspired outline of the city re-created with its citizens – present and future.

A super-fast piece created to represent the great work of a great agency.

 

Impactful Introductions

One of the client’s we’ve absolutely loved working with over the last few months is PMA Recruitment Services. A new-start recruitment company which specialises in the construction sector. They believe in positive, personalised and sustainable recruiting – and as we’ve recently found out – making impactful introductions too.

We’ve been thrilled to help them make a splash with an incredibly bold new identity, some stunning letter-pressed business cards (more about these later) and this beautiful new website complete with this most impactful of introductory images.

If a pictures does speak a thousand words then this one really is priceless – beautifully captured while the PMA team were on-site, walking towards their work and messing around by the ever-aware Stuart Nicol (Nobody was watching him.) A beautiful photographic introduction to the company as well as the website.

PMA Recruitment Services have only been in business for a matter of months so far and are already moving incredibly quickly, we are sure you’re going to hear plenty more about them in the future, this is just the start. Check out their site >>>

RESOLVELOCK

Resolvelock is a new locksmith service coming soon to Glasgow, Scotland and eventually the rest of the UK.

Their mission – to deliver the most responsive, agile and lightning fast locksmith service possible in the space that they operate.

We absolutely love branding at the loft and this project just reminded us at every stage why. We worked tirelessly with their team to create an identity which reflected all of their values, we used every tool possible to enhance our designs and we agonised over even the finest details to ensure that the finish was of the highest standard possible.

Bolder fonts selected, typeface weights ramped up, characters brought closer together, little cues of the service brought in, all overlaid with the most intelligent of vector motion patterns – each and every cue designed to make the logo look like it’s moving even as it sits stationary on it’s card.

And of course – the acid green, all of this given an almighty additional shot with the acid green colour, beautifully contrasted with jet-black as can be seen from these business card mock-ups.

Each and every detail, each and every action being used used to create a powerful brand identity for what promises to be an exceptionally exciting start-up – we wish them luck…

If you’d like to find out more about our Design & Branding services contact us…

Benedetto

 

Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

<<< To see more of the loft’s brand solutions 

For more information on brand-building by Benedetto >>>

 

28
Oct

New Design & Branding Projects P1

We are delighted to present a series of exciting and new Design & Branding projects created by the loft in the last few years..

 

A DECADE OF SUCCESS

Visual of Portal Security Timeline Infographic

We’ve been really delighted to be working with Declan, Michael and the rest of the wonderful folks at Portal Security for a number of years now…

A few weeks ago they celebrated their 10th birthday and what a 10 years it has been – innovative new products, set-piece client wins, offices in both Scotland & England, accreditations of excellence in their operations and a real attitude of giving back to the communities they serve through countless hours of charity work and so much more. All of this has been at the heart of this decade of success for the organisation..

Of course we were more than happy to wrap all of these outstanding achievements into this special timeline infographic (hey it’s what we do..) Ascending timeline showing the growth of the company, a special hybrid mix of photos, icons, words and most of all cloaked in the most Portal of Portal Blues..

Happy birthday folks….

THE LOFT

 

 ‘HELPING TO REDUCE VIOLENCE IN SOCIETY TODAY’

One of the projects that has given us the greatest satisfaction in recent times is our creative work with The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. The SVRU are responsible for thoughtful, practical and ultimately effective actions reducing violence in our society today. They have made a significant difference over the last 15 years or so in Scotland and a similar body is now being set-up in London.

There is still much work still to do here in Scotland but one of the real successes of the SVRU has been the ultra-targeted method with which different projects are used to incrementally and effectively reduce different types of violence in our homes, streets & public places.

We were delighted to be given the opportunity to help this exceptional organisation bring these different programmes to life with these graffiti-inspired illustrations – Street & Arrow, Mentors in Violence Prevention, Navigator, Ask Support Care (ASC) and One Community.

Each illustration looking to summarise what these exceptional programmes does in the most imaginative and captivating ways possible.

 

 

 

We hope you like…

 

WORKING TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

‘Working towards a more sustainable future…’ Or ‘Andare avanti verso un futuro più sostenibile..’

We’ve been busy bees at the loft in the last couple of months creating new identities, websites, campaigns and in this case infographics…

One of the things we’ve been most proud off is this lovely little visual we created alongside Letizia Macri, the Vice President of the ESG European Institute in Rome, Italy. Letizia and the ESG’s vision is to help create a more sustainable, accountable and socially responsible form of commerce across Europe and beyond.

A lovely little project (and with strong Italian roots,) a great little project to be personally involved in…

Infographic is available in both Italian & English languages, but we thought we’d go for Italian for this particular post..

You can find out more about Letizia and the ESG at… https://esginstitute.it

A presto…

Infographic of a more sustainable future

If you’d like to find out more about our Design & Branding services contact us…

Benedetto

 

Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

<<< To see more of the loft’s brand solutions 

For more information on brand-building by Benedetto >>>

 

24
Oct

Practical Steps to Better Mental Health

One of the clients we’ve found most fulfilling to work with over the last few years is the TRC Group, an organisation which provides integrated therapeutic support to individuals in both London and Edinburgh. With a new website launched just before lockdown in early 2020 – their large, experienced and diverse therapeutic team began creating short posts to help people with the emotional toll of lockdown.

Posts included relaxation techniques, coping mechanisms and other free tools/techniques/thought-pieces to help people better cope with everything that was going on. Useful at the best of times times, priceless during the several phases of lockdown we’ve had during the last 18 months.

We were more than happy to work with the TRC Group to help them put together all of this outstanding content into its own digital library with collated blog posts, resource centre and press articles.

https://trcgroup.org.uk/library>>> for more info. A tremendous function that I’m sure we can all gain some value from…

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

<<< To see more of the loft’s portfolio 

Find Out More About Benedetto >>> 

 

13
Sep

Aillie & Jade, The Future In Good Hands..

It’s always great to work with new designers – they always offer super-interesting perspectives, new ideas and essentially make us think twice about what we’re doing and if we could do it much, much better. This week we had the pleasure to work with, not one but, two exceptionally talented young ladies – Aillie and Jade.

Aillie has just graduated from Glasgow Clyde College and Jade is in her final year at The City Of Glasgow College. Both did an absolutely phenomenal job this week bringing some great new energy to our currently digital studio, wowing us with some incredibly exciting ideas and helping us get on top of a rather heavy workload with just a little bit more flair.

Of course we’d love to share with you what they did, but all creative work is schtum for now as we show our clients first, but here are a couple of arty images from their folios…

We’ll definitely share their great work with you in the next couple of weeks.

The Future is in Good Hands…

Benedetto

27
Apr

The loft is 8….

It’s 8 years to the day that I finally decided that I was going to fully commit to that freelance project that I had been doing called the loft. Somehow, and looking back I have no idea how I managed it, I had kind of made the transition from being a car designer to a graphic designer to a branding guy. There would be no going back to full-time employment, no return to car design, it was time to make a decision and get on with it and 8 years later – hey presto – we’re still here. I am delighted to report that we are doing better than ever, and despite the craziness of the current moment – I am more excited about the future than ever before…

So to celebrate, I thought we’d take a very quick swing through memory lane and celebrate 8 of our finest moments…

1) Thank you PSYBT

One of the greatest things about 8 years in business has been the peer-to-peer support from so many different people/organisations – The Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Entrepreneurial Exchange, E-Spark, etc, etc… However, it was The Princes Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) which really helped us get going. The PSYBT Growth-Fund as well as the mentoring support I received in 2013 was, and still is, completely invaluable. For that we remain incredibly grateful.

2) First Designers, Ruth and Alejandro

By 2013, we really were on the move and during the most incredible weeks ever in October – we moved into our first premises and hired our first designers. This was their first day at work, picking up their I-Macs from the Apple Store. Our new studio was fully-operational by the end of that crazy Friday. Ruth and Alejandro have moved onto pastures new but did an incredible job and retain a very special place in the company’s history.

3) Altia Solutions, the start of something special. 

It would be difficult to talk about our company history without mentioning the amazing folk at Altia-ABM, or Altia Solutions, as they were known back then. We began working with them in 2013 and to date have carried out more than 100 creative projects together. They are all wonderful people but their CEO Ian Watson remains one of the company’s and my own personal best friends. (Here’s a little photo of me sketching some ideas for their old logo.)

4) Early Mornings, Late Nights… 

This isn’t one moment in particular, but a quick nod to those countless, countless early mornings and late nights that characterise our studio’s work ethic. We are proud that we road-test so many concepts, go into more depth to get it right and simply put more into each and every single project than many we know. Our version of creative chaos.

5) A 3-Year Chase of bus company, Alexander Dennis

Anybody that knows me will know that I can be pretty persistent – in fact, very persistent. After hearing the amazing Colin Robertson, CEO of Alexander Dennis, give a brilliant talk during a business dinner, I decided we would one day work with this exceptional bus company. We somehow managed to get his phone number, chased him down, sent him ideas for a company Christmas card, ideas to celebrate their 10th Anniversary. (Anybody that knows us, knows that if you ignore me too long – I will just start sending you ideas anyway,) talked to his Marketing Director, talked to his Group Corporate Affairs Director, talked to a new Marketing Director. Not entirely sure now how it happened but 3 years later we finally managed to work with them on a creative project. It was, and still is, a great honour to have worked with such a fine company and definitely a lesson that Persistence Pays.

6) First Creative Provider of PETEX

Petroleum Experts are one of Scotland’s finest technology companies with a world-class team, leader and product. They had been going for 25 years without ever using a marketing/design/creative/brand agency and we were truly honoured to be the first that they would work with to bring their ‘Digital Oil Field’ software concept to life. Receiving one of their little glass statuettes of the visual we created for them remains one of the happiest moments of 8 years in business.

7) Obesity Action Scotland, First Big Pitch Win

Winning a pitch – either big or small – is a special moment and we were thrilled that our ‘Organg’ concept was selected by Obesity Action Scotland to raise awareness of the potential dangers of Obesity. Four years on – we still love this creative idea.

8) BBC

We have been so lucky to work with some great organisations and some wonderful people – one of these is the BBC who we worked with a few years ago. We’ve worked with lots of great organisations – big and small – over the years but there remains something quite special about working for ‘Aunty.’

9) MCR Pathways

We can’t really celebrate 8 years of business without briefly mentioning the amazing MCR Pathways. We’ve loved each and every one of the 11 Talent Tasters we have carried out, the creative work we’ve done together and the immense personal support Iain MacRitchie has given myself during my business journey.

Ok, one more than we really should have, but at the loft, we have a motto of always doing more than we’re paid for so 9 it is. To be honest, we could have spent all day listing them. Thanks to all of the wonderful people that have supported us, you know who you are, and here’s to another tremendous 8 Years…

Benedetto
BB

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

‘Design with soul’ may be the company tag-line, but to Benedetto, it is a way of life. He believes that creative and commercial enterprise is about purity of thought, honesty of construction and boldness of execution.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder and Creative Director of the loft, a branding consultancy in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business

04
Mar

In Celebration of Great Mood Boards

At the loft, if there’s a part of the creative process we truly believe in, it’s the creation of mood-boards. We love mood-boards because they take us to a different place mentally, they give them an almost infinite source of creative ideas and they also help to guide in the process further down the line.

This week we were having a chat about mood-boards in the studio and stumbled across a few crackers..

Both were for car-design projects and both are absolutely brilliant.

Industrial-Mood-Board

The ‘INDUSTRIAL’ board by Kevin Roy shows old abandoned factories and warehouses as the main inspiration. What’s so brilliant about this board is the way the images aren’t just industrial but have been treated in an industrial way too. Mainly black and white with flashes of colour, some of them are horribly low-quality and the line-tracing is rough too but all that adds to the desired emotion being chased by the designer. Ken goes further by experimenting with typefaces that are similar in style too as well as inserting the bold ‘YELLOW and BLACK’ striped caution signs. Finally, the acid-feel of the album cover on the top-right of the page completes an outstanding board.

Art-Deco-Moodboard-720x405-2

The ‘ART-DECO’ board by Nick Turner (https://bit.ly/2MgJN6l) is equally as impressive. We have a beautiful exploration of shapes, patterns and rich colours which are all key to the ‘ART-DECO’ look. We have subtle nods to Futurism and Art Nouveau in there as well but what’s really lovely is the subtle vector lines over the top of the entire board.

Both are amazing mood-boards and what makes them so good is that they completely describe the themes they are covering in the purest, most expressive and honest way possible.

For us, inspiration is vital to any creative action, it’s what makes it all worthwhile. If a mood-board’s job is to inspire, then both of these would give any designer of any type the richest source of inspiration to get going.

Bravo!

Benedetto

BB

Benedetto is an ideas-driven Creative Entrepreneur. He is on a mission to unleash the power of creativity to create a better world – for people, business and society. He is the founder of the loft, a design and branding house which operates worldwide helping companies bring their brands to life in the most imaginative and effective ways possible. A real man on a mission. Benedetto likes to make things happen fast and in a big way.

16
Jan

Laura Campbell | Design Highlights 2017

Last week we were delighted to kick off our series in celebrating the achievements of our creative team in 2017. We started with Reiss McLeod and this week we are delighted to be taking a look back at the exceptional work of his ‘partner-in-crime’ Laura Campbell.

Laura Campbell, a graduate of ‘Gray’s School of Art’ in Aberdeen, joined our team in March 2017 and what an incredible year she has had. Laura quickly became a go-too person for creative ideas, managing the ever-intricate print process and finally adding some much-needed video to the loft’s social media presence. Such was her deftness with social media that the young lady, we once thought was quiet, became our ‘Director of Noise.’ A role she has led with absolute distinction since.

Laura is multi-talented – a person who is comfortable at all stages of the design process, a keen developer/illustrator and somebody who the clients often rave about, she is one of the most trusted members of our team and is also great fun to be around too.

These are Laura Campbell’ highlights of 2017.

Tradeprint

1. Tradeprint ‘People Behind The Print’

One of Laura’s biggest successes of 2017 was her fantastic work on the ‘People Behind Print’ campaign for Tradeprint. Tradeprint is one of the country’s largest providers of online print where their team helps large companies, organisations and agencies with their printing requirements. They have incredible geographical reach, an extremely wide variety of products and most importantly their print coaches – Laura very skilfully acknowledged the value of the ‘print coaches’ in a commoditised market flooded with competition.

She built on this by creating a range of beautiful concepts with the print coaches being at the heart of the campaign, they were captured with simple portraits, expressive poses and then some beautifully creative mixed-media collages using Tradeprints own stock. The concepts were all Laura’s while working with Tradeprint brand Director James Barrett Bunnage and photographer Malcolm Cochrane on a range of materials spanning print advertisements, social media posts and beautiful landing page micro-sites. One for each of the print coaches. Top work indeed…

VRU Scotland

2. VRU Scotland ‘Street & Arrow’ Display Stand

Laura, with her cohort Reiss, played a pivotal part in the development of this unique and very special display-stand created for VRU Scotland’s ‘Street & Arrow.’ ‘Street & Arrow’ is a programme led by The Violence Reduction Unit to help people make the transition from leading lives of crime back into employment. As part of a wider creative project and the opportunity to do something different for a trade show, Laura captured the chance to bring this incredibly interesting piece of work to life. Created in record-quick time, you will see the transition of the individual from criminal to worker in the artwork, the spray-painting of the characters carefully produced on actual chipboard and Reiss and Laura celebrating a remarkable day’s work. All carried out from the warehouse of a good friend. Not your typical trade-show stand. Not your typical day at the studio but a wonderful result.

Scottish Leather Group

3. Scottish Leather Group Sustainability Report 2017

This was the second Sustainability Report we created for Scottish Leather Group after a successful 2016. The team were asked to take the concept of sustainability forward and Laura duly obliged. Her concept of ‘using less ink’ with the text, graphics and mainly the images of the brochure was seen as very fitting for a document celebrating some remarkable achievements by the company regarding its sustainability. The image of leather off-cuts on the brochure shows this concept to beautiful effect – once again with the exceptional photography of Malcolm Cochrane.

Geckotech Calendar

4. Geckotech Calendar

One of Laura’s biggest achievements of 2017 was the design of the 2018 Geckotech Calendar. Geckotech Solutions are a company which supplies clients with access engineering solutions including industrial rope access, confined space entry and the installation of temporary working platforms. She worked closely with Nancy Pearson from Geckotech Solutions and Ruth McFarlane of Exactaprint where she selected the most eye-catching images available, sensitively developed them with a ‘Black & White’ theme with very dramatic orange accents and once again managed a very intricate print process. The final calendars were wonderfully received by the client, their clients and all involved. Yet another exceptional outcome for our Laura.

Research Scotland Infographics

5. Research Scotland Report on the 14:19 Fund

Infographics have been round a long-time, starting with everything from the pie and bar charts used in office packages on original PCs, they became more widely popular in recent years to tell longer, more complicated and intricate stories in an easier, friendlier and more digestible way. They are seen everywhere today from business plans to product instructions to the communication of complicated financial information. At the loft we have been very much at the heart of the development of the infographic and how they are evolving, particularly with motion graphics. Laura took the original infographic concept and gave it a new lease of life with the combination of high-impact visual photography to create images of tremendous effect. The infographics Laura created for Research Scotland’s reporting of ‘Inspiring Scotland’s 14:19 Fund’ are some of the freshest and most exciting that we’ve seen and been involved in a long time.

It’s safe to say that it’s been an absolutely incredible year for Laura and we could easily have created another week’s worth of materials.

Looking forward to seeing what she creates in 2018!

08
Jan

Reiss McLeod | Design Highlights 2017

2017 was a big year for Reiss. After a summer internship and a year of working part-time, Reiss became a full-time member of the loft team once he finished his studies in July. Anybody that knows Reiss knows he is an incredibly talented guy with exceptional basic skills, an uncanny ability to generate ideas out of no-where and he’s a great wordsmith too. His puns are quite the thing of legend in the studio.

As expected Reiss eased into his new role and quickly became a pivotal part of the team adding the role of ‘Director of Client Happiness’ to his design responsibilities. Already an exceptional creative-thinker and problem solver, he added some real weight to his development skills throughout the year culminating in several exceptional pieces of creative work which we’d love to celebrate.

Although we always work as a team at the loft, we wanted to take a moment to value individual contributions to creative projects and Reiss really delivered tremendously in 2017, these were some of his highlights.

CashBack_HD-PNG

1. Cashback Infographic for Inspiring Scotland

Quite possibly the highlight of the year for Reiss was his interpretation of the positive information for ‘Cashback for Communities’ for Inspiring Scotland. The programme involves taking the proceeds of crime and re-investing it back into local communities for young people — £20,000,000 has been re-invested into improving life opportunities since 2014. The programme is led by the Scottish Government alongside Inspiring Scotland and Reiss took an incredibly large amount of information and alongside his cohort Laura developed a beautiful illustration-infographic hybrid depicting a wonderful tale of the programme. The interpretation of the individual mini-stories where Cashback has made a difference in the community is a real highlight. The infographic has been such a success that it adorns the walls of the offices at Inspiring Scotland as well as The Scottish Government.

SOCEX - Financial Crime Conference

2. SOCEX Financial Crime Conference Brochure

The loft has worked with the event organisers for The Serious & Organised Crime Exchange (SOCEX) since 2015 and have since created a number of set-piece conference brochures. Reiss took the lead with the latest instalment — The 2017 Financial Crime Conference in November. Reiss built on the visual frameworks of previous brochures but where his creativity really shone through is with the imaginative, purposeful and almost iconic design of the front cover which cleverly shows two people exchanging ideas – ideas that are all emblematic of themes being dealt with by the conference. A beautiful, abstract and fitting depiction for the newly formed financial conference. We can’t wait for the 2018 events…

Arcman-Making Christmas Campaign

3. Arcman Winter Campaign Image

Our Reiss is an accomplished wordsmith and real creative thinker. Never was this more beautifully brought to life than with his campaign image and advert for the winter edition of print magazine ‘Urban Realm.’  Building on the Christmas theme – Reiss cleverly realised that the ad created for Arcman was going to be seen just as much in January as December so beautifully saw past the obvious Christmas theme and instead brought the sentiment of ‘getting back to wor’k to life. A Christmas calendar with the various services of Arcman as windows remain in place but are all secondary to those strong words ‘The Holidays are over. Let’s Get To Work.”  In-keeping with the company values and a real success.

Client Top 5 FAQs

4. Introducing ‘the pigs’

Reiss has an absolutely wonderful imagination and a real ability to creatively communicate information. Part of his role as ‘Director of Client Happiness’ is to share best-practices with others in the team. His creative ability was on full-display when he introduced a series of odd-looking creatures to us as his way to demonstrate his ideas for ‘Client Happiness.’ These little creatures which we affectionately christened ‘the pigs’ have since found their way into many parts of the loft’s brand presentation in 2017.

Arcman-Making Metal Work

5. ‘MAKING METAL WORK’ for Arcman

Once again Arcman were looking for a series of print ads for the Urban Realm annual, something which would demonstrate the high-energy nature of their service, commitment to clients and desire for excellence. Reiss came up with a rather simple concept but one which really shone. He mixed the excellent photography of Malcolm Cochrane with an exceptionally well-selected typeface to bring the vibrancy of the Arcman message to life for print, digital and everything in between… The campaign advert was so widely liked by the company founder Jamie Doak that it proudly adorns his I-Phone and is mounted on the front of the Arcman workshops.

Reiss was a huge part of the loft’s success in 2017 and we can’t wait to see what ideas, graphics and even puns he has up his sleeve for 2018.

 

27
Oct

Clients: A How-To Guide (Part 6: Building Relationships)

Clients How To Guide

We’re not just talking about secret handshakes here — having a sustainable relationship with a client solidifies the aspect of trust and results in many more seamless projects.

Here are some top tips to going the extra mile…

  • Memory Game — Note any interesting points about the client that you can bring up in conversation, i.e. they have mentioned that they are hiring within the company, ask how the hiring process is going and show that you are genuinely interested in their business. Remember names; we will be interacting with many different clients so knowing exactly who you will be speaking to may seem like common sense, but it is something that can have a big effect on client confidence in yourself and the team.
  • Make An Appearance — Jump at the chance to meet the client face to face. The difference this makes to the relationship is big, clients will feel much more comfortable talking to you in the future after your first encounter.
  • Match Their Energy — Are they excited? Copy this behaviour, and then some; if a client is excited about a project, match their excitement, plus 1. This goes for if they are quieter too; don’t bounce around the room with excitement if the client is more introverted — match their tone of voice plus 1 in order to build trust and rapport.
  • Our Business — Treat their business as your own; learn about the product/service beforehand and show a genuine interest in what they do. Not only will this bring your passion forward for the client to see, but it makes it easier to work on a project you have an interest in.

Remember that when it comes to relationships, it takes two to tango.

Now that we’re done scratching one another’s backs, we’re well on our way to working harmoniously with our clients. What a journey! Try to remember these little tips and your passion for graphic design will shine through in every project you star in.

It’s been a pleasure,

Client How To Guide

Reiss, Designer & Director of Client Happiness.

staff_170502_0542

Reiss is a multi-purpose designer with a broad range of skill-sets.
He loves being a part of any creative activity — whether it’s mapping out a user experience, getting his hands dirty with some copy or even re-building bits of his motorbike.
A born people-person, Reiss is never happier when showcasing ideas from his vividly wild imagination and working with clients to see them through to completion. Once an architect, he has a keen eye for conceptual ideas and never tires of learning new things.