The great Muhammad Ali was the inspiration behind this project. We were asked to design an invitation to an open studio night we conducted as part of the AGideas Conference. Projects like these give the studio an opportunity to engage in creative, for creative sake. Our audience was predominately design students who spend a lot of time discovering the discourse of design.
I recently received my first ever, personalised business card due the launch of our exciting new agency brand for Truly Deeply. Up until this point I have been representing myself in meetings without a business card, believing my personality and designs skills would carry the day. The difference is amazing. A business card is nothing short of an essential first contact when meeting a client, or anyone else you’re going to be doing business with for the first time. It is an expression of you and your brand. It also has an enduring role as a reminder for clients of who you are and what position you have within a company.
Here are our 4 key tips on the art of business card design.
As a brand strategy and design agency, we spend every day living and breathing brands. Whether we’re working with products or companies on their identity, packaging, brand definition, brand decoding and mapping the competitive brand landscape they work in — we are conscious that each of us also projects our own personal brand.
This week I had the pleasure of joining in the celebration of 50 years in the property development industry by one Bert Dennis, founder of Australian property group, The Dennis Family Corporation. I have always found Bert an inspiration and it was a delight to hear him in full flight reflecting on his time in the property game. He came from very humble beginnings and through his talents, resilience and integrity has created a very successful business turning over $300 million plus annually with an exemplary model of an enduring family business.
Over the holidays I indulged in a little self expression. The Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn accepted my proposal to stage my first solo exhibition. I wanted to explore convention and human interaction within an art space. The installation was to cover the gallery floor with canvas and then use pigment to write words and draw pictures directly onto the canvas. As people came into the space they would spread the pigment across the floor.
A New Model of Talent Management
Forum5 represents the next generation of artist and talent management company founded by Mark Richardson in collaboration with global media company; Fremantle Media. Mark’s background was in running some of the biggest record labels in the world, representing
many of the biggest names in music internationally. Mark’s vision for Forum5, was a new kind of talent management based on the understanding that in the age of shared and social technology, the talent creating the content holds the power, and the ideal management relationship is an entrepreneurial partnership. With Fremantle Media’s backing,
Forum5 was launched in 2008 and has found much success with the new model of talent partnership, quickly growing to represent local talent from the television, music, food and lifestyle industries.
A New Level of Brand Clarity
We worked with Mark to help Forum5 develop absolute clarity around their brand definition and differentiated market proposition. We designed a brand story book and helped form a new language to communicate the new Forum5 offer to market, staff and potential talent partners. Forum5’s brand essence of ‘Partnering to Build Talent Equity’ focused on Marks unique value proposition and formed the starting point for our creative brand expression.
A New Brand Identity
The Forum5 brand mark locks the number 5 within the word ‘Forum’ to illustrate the focus on talent partnerships in a simple and memorable form. The word-mark is simple and graphic allowing it to work across many different applications and to be ‘dialed-up’ or ‘dialed-down’ in prominence depending on the piece of communication and the talent brands it would be appearing with.
I have never experienced the pull of an authentic brand quite like I did years ago when I purchased a pair of riding boots. At the time I was an Economics teacher at a Melbourne High School, commuting to school on a motor bike and feeling the need for some foot wear that was a little more robust. I have a few frugal genes in my DNA (you would only have to have met my father to understand where they had come from) and as I ventured out on a buying excursion for some boots these genes kicked in. I arrived home with a pair of elastic sided riding boots that I had purchased from an Army disposals store – they appeared well made, looked a lot like the famous Australian boot brand RM Williams and were, you guessed it, a lot lot cheaper than RM Williams boots.
However, from day one I new that I had made a mistake. The boots I acquired were simply a cheap imitation of the brand I truly aspired to own. They made feel like the great pretender, when what I really wanted was to share in the romance of the rugged outback image of the RM Williams brand. The boots I had purchased delivered functionally, but they stood for nothing at an emotional level – in fact worse than that, each time I pulled them on I felt emotionally depleted. In branding there is no substitute for authenticity, no matter how good the imitation the wearer always feels a little second rate!
I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the front cover of the January 2010 edition of Golf Digest in light of everything that has happened to Tiger Woods in the last few weeks or so – and I quote Geoff McClure from The Age newspaper “surely the most excruciatingly ill-timed front cover ever”, with the main headline reading 10 TIPS OBAMA CAN TAKE FROM TIGER.
Word on the Web
Given the flood of blogs, tweets and mentions on the latest chapter in the Tiger Woods saga, it’d be remiss of us to not take a snapshot of current social sentiment. As Tiger announces he’s taking a break from golf, we’ve created an illustrated cross section of current sentiment on Tiger Woods’ personal brand. As always, it’s worth reading between the lines (literally) — the smaller words tell the true story of the current sentiment — the deeper you look, the more intriguing the narrative.
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
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Peter Singline, Brand Scientist with Storm BrandDNA, comments on Tiger Woods’ personal brand on 9 News
