THE BLOG

04
Sep
The Entrepreneurs Loft, Service List

The Entrepreneurs Loft, Service List

Shameless plug alert!!

Sorry just this once, we’re going to go down the slightly more direct route.

We’ve finally got our working service list and landing pages together for The Entrepreneurs Loft.

Check them out…

Brand Marketing
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-marketing

Marketing Strategy
https://entrepreneursloft.co/marketing-strategy

Marketing Support
https://entrepreneursloft.co/marketing-support

Brand Strategy
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-strategy

Brand Culture
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-culture

Social Media Marketing
https://entrepreneursloft.co/social-media-marketing

The Entrepreneurs Loft is the big brother/sister of the loft, a new agency-offering exclusively supporting the growth journeys of High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs.

In-line with our lightweight approach – everything’s pretty minimal for now, used as much for learning as it is for gaining business, will almost certainly be improved in due course (yes we will add some pictures & graphics) but most importantly done, out there and hopefully strong enough to get this bit of the job done. For Now!!

Let us know your thoughts?

All comments welcome…

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 

To check out The Entrepreneurs Loft >>>

10
Aug
The Entrepreneurs Loft

The Entrepreneurs Loft

Working with High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs has always been one of the most enjoyable, rewarding and fulfilling parts of our journey at the loft – over the years we’ve been lucky to help high growth companies and impactful leaders in technology, software, food and drink, charity organisations. The work is always challenging, tight for time and a little chaotic but as mentioned it really does help us to bring the best out of ourselves…

The Entrepreneurs Loft is a new sub-brand offering created by the loft to serve High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs – to help them build businesses of scale with fast, imaginative and a completely personalised service. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned in 10 years in business, all our wins, all our losses and most importantly the lessons we’ve learned along the way and packaged them to create a unique service.

We can’t wait to share more about The Entrepreneurs Loft but for now, this is the link to the new microsite. https://entrepreneursloft.co

Drop us a line, let us know your thoughts and as always, if there is anything we can help with – please don’t hesitate to let us know?

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 

To check out The Entrepreneurs Loft >>>

08
Jul
Looking for Freelance Designers/Web-Designers

Looking for Freelance Designers/Web-Designers

Hi folks, due to lots of lovely creative projects, we’re looking for designers/web-designers that can help us out over the next couple of weeks.

If you know your way around WordPress (and possibly Elementor too) give us a shout, we’d love to hear from you…

Thank you please.

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

17
Apr

Maximising Creative Budgets, 6 Quick Tips…

‘Making Every Penny of Money & Every Second of Time Count’

Throughout the years, it’s been our mission to make sure that our clients (and ourselves for that matter) maximise every single bit of time and money we’ve got when taking on creative projects… Exceeding expectations is always the goal, here are a couple of quick pointers on how we do this.

1. Be Unashamedly Commercial
Sometimes we’re bombarded with choice – what kind of project? Website updates, infographics, social campaigns, etc. Do we enhance what we have or start again? At the loft, we start with a budget, write a list of activities and then prioritise the ones that deliver the most benefit first . The more commercially valuable a project, the more bought-in the management team will be and the more you’ll enjoy the process.

2. Being Organised Delivers Better Results
If you’re having quality case-studies written by a professional copy-writer, have them spend a tiny bit more time re-formatting the content for your social channels. If your photographer is on-site doing individual pics of the team for the website – again see if you can have those pics re-formatted for social media, for brochures, or even for future press-releases, etc… Also, when you’ve got a professional on-site look to get as many activities as possible in one visit – your provider’s set-up and travel times will eat into your creative budget so best to take a full-day packed with great activities to get more high-quality content than 2 x half-days, etc… Just make sure you provide a good lunch and lots of good coffee. However, and this is a big proviso, this is all dependant on you being organised from the outset, so every time you’re engaging a creative professional or agency. Think what else their time could be used to give additional value. In all honesty, good providers should be making you aware of these value-adds beforehand.

3. Become Invaluable To Your Provider.
The company that can give more work to one agency, one photographer, one designer, etc will undoubtedly become more valuable to that provider which should allow you to command better rates or terms.

4. Direct is Fine
Seriously. Most creatives love working with decisive, no-nonsense types of clients that know exactly what they want and who may even be quite blunt with their feedback. Almost, the yin to their yangs. It saves so much time for everybody involved. I’m not saying be deliberately mean but clear about what you’re looking for.

5. Fast Deadlines
Fast deadlines are wonderful for maximising efficiency – everybody just has to be focussed, concentrated and on their game from the get-go. Also, most good creative providers are usually quite happy to know that there is a deadline to protect against spec creep and therefore their profit margins. However, proceed with caution, be reasonable with your requests and consider using this tactic sparingly. There is a line and it’s best not to cross it – you’ll know from the provider’s reaction when you’re close.

6. Ask For Reference Images Or Even Sketches
If you’re not entirely certain of what you want, then simply ask the agency/creative provider to take a very small amount of time to provide some reference examples from their folio, some other examples from other providers or even a quick series of sketches, etc… This will help you to more quickly understand what you want, respect your relationship and to de-risk the project for both yourself and the provider.

Just six quick tips from many years maximising creative budgets for our clients and ourselves.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to 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 thrilled to manage a great team, work with brilliant clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

 

 

19
Nov
Quick Wins!!

Quick Wins!!

More pings from the contact form, unexpected calls from new clients, offers of collaboration, bigger re-orders, greater recognition, fresh possibilities, new opportunities, big wins, small wins and best of all – quick wins… (A must for any great marketing strategy.)

Quick wins are good for the soul – they give little jolts of excitement, fresh doses of motivation and much needed vindication. They help to build crucial momentum for those big and lofty goals you’re chasing.

At the loft we get determined, sometime obsessive about the tiny wins – those little momentum shifters that get everything moving – one new customer, one more enquiry, one more phone call, one more view on social. We know those tiny wins compound over time and deliver real value.

Over many years, we’ve developed countless super lean action plans (these are our kinds of marketing strategy) – single pages of A4, presented like scrap-book pages, put together in an hour or two, presented in about 15 minutes, approved, put into action and delivering value for the client in a matter of days.

No days lost to unnecessary consultancy, no time lost on laborious presentations, no 22-point strategic plans and no Return-On-Investment that is so far into the future you lose interest.

What’s brilliant about the leaner approach is that it gives the client a quick win, some immediate value, a reason to get excited – something to build on. Brilliant for people that are time-poor (almost anybody scaling a company) and most of all – their success stimulates new and more exciting ideas giving everybody something to build on.

More weighty plans will always have a place but we’re big believers in keeping it light, being a bit more outcome-focussed and getting as much early momentum as possible.

“Go as far as you can, when you get there, you’ll see how to go farther…”

Brilliant for rapid growth with brand, marketing and creative services. If you have ideas in mind or would like to chat to us, give us a shout, we’d love to hear from you…

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

 

Useful Links

The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries >>>

<<< Accelerate by the loft

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

14
Nov
Undercover Billionaire

Undercover Billionaire

Very little matches the sheer thrill, excitement and emotion of start-up entrepreneurship – backing yourself to do something special, taking a chance on a new product/service, winning those first customers, creating teams with little or no experience, building systems, exploring new paths, finding their limitations – all done at pace, usually done with a fluctuating bank balance and fluctuating sleep patterns too. I have a serious respect for anybody who has been able to build a business from nothing into something sustainable and of scale- which leads me to Undercover Billionaire.

Undercover Billionaire is a programme which explores all of the above and so much more. Released in the United States by Discovery, where they send an entrepreneur to an unknown place, take away their identity, their contacts, their wealth, etc and give them an old phone, a truck and $100. They have to take on an alias name and are tasked with creating a $1,000,000 business in just 90 days. This second season sees three incredible entrepreneurs take up the challenge – tech investor Monique Idlett, real-estate developer and designer Elaine Culotti and The Founder of the 10X Movement – Grant Cardone.

Safe-to-say, it is a brilliant watch, I don’t spend much time in front of the TV but I’ve already been through this series a couple of times. There is just so much to learn from three entrepreneurs who are well past the start-up phases of their careers do what they do best – the sophisticated-yet-genuine way that Monique is able to build relationships with others, her ability to plan and create value too, the just awe-inspiring drive, determination and can-do attitude of Elaine Culotti who also possesses something rare and special in the way she puts together teams of people who just love her despite her pushing them all to their absolute limits. Finally, Grant Cardone, the reason I got into the show in the first place, Mr10X’s salesmanship is definitely something to admire as well as his infectious enthusiasm and ability to deliver. Without giving too much away, all three of them achieve something spectacular not only with the businesses they build but the relationships they create throughout the process.

We’ve had entrepreneurship programmes on the telly for a while now but there is definitely something quite special about Undercover Billionaire. All three of these outstanding individuals are tasked with the challenge to see ‘if the American Dream is still alive and well in the 21st century.’

What you see is that although they each have unique talents – there is nothing there that can’t be learned and done by any/all of us – Undercover Billionaire, well worth a watch…

Benedetto

Useful Links

Watch Undercover Billionaire >>>

Monique Idlett >>>

Elaine Culotti>>>

Grant Cardone >>>

<<< The Loft’s Entrepreneurial Approach

 

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 P3

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

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

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 >>>

 

26
Oct
A More Connected Scotland!

A More Connected Scotland!

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.

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 >>>