What would you do if you are launching a new service, knowing you need to create a leaflet to reach potential customers but want to create something that stands out from the competition?
You hire a designer (me!) to help you with bespoke branding and thoughtful design!
This is what Sarah from Rook Botanics did. Sarah is an amazing florist, who loves colour and creativity (hello, perfect match!), and who also happens to be an incredibly wonderful and caring person. Which is what makes her new service of creating funeral flowers such a ideal service for her!
In this blog post you'll read the process of working together to create marketing material for Rook Botanics that is aligned and thoughtful, and sets Sarah apart from the competition!
The Query: A thoughtful design approach
Sarah recently launched a new service: funeral flowers. With this came the issue of how to advertise her new service and reaching the customers who need funeral flowers. After doing some research Sarah found that having physical leaflets at funeral directors would be the best place to start. When someone loses someone dear to them they just want a piece of paper that tells them exactly what to do, no searching Google for the answer.
So Sarah reached out to me, seeking a bespoke branding and a thoughtful design approach. Many of the funeral flower leaflets out there either look dated, boring with mass-produced arrangements. Rook Botanic’s values that funeral flowers can be joyful, fresh and colourful do not fit with this style of leaflet, not to mention that she creates very bespoke pieces.
The Brief : colourful, creative + timeless
When we chatted more about what Sarah was looking for and what she absolutely didn’t want from her leaflet we came up with a couple of points to keep in mind during the design process:
Non-bland, instead a colourful and creative design
Bespoke and luxurious branding
Timeless and thoughtful design
In line with Rook Botanic’s branding
Sarah created a file for me with Rook Botanic’s branding (logo, colour palette and fonts) as well as pictures of some of the beautiful arrangements she created and of course the copy for the leaflet.
The Design: Artistic + creative look
Creating a Pinterest board is such a brilliant way to give me a peek into my client’s brains of what they like and dislike. What their style is and what feeling they want to put across. So I asked Sarah to create one and her Pinterest board was filled with beautiful flowers overlaying text and simple but timeless designs.
From the start I was inspired by the flowers and text combo and this was the first thing I started with. To create a more artistic, creative and timeless look I used Adobe Illustrator to trace the photos of Sarah’s beautiful arrangements into a painted look, ensuring a thoughtful design approach.
Using several photos I created my own bouquet of flowers for the front cover of the leaflet. Making sure to overlap the flowers with the text where appropriate - we obviously don’t want to compromise on readability.
The first draft of the leaflet was an A4 - half-fold, giving us 4 pages to work with. Although all the text fitted nicely on it, it did feel very text heavy and there wasn’t much space for photos. Adding additional photos of Sarah’s arrangements was important to Sarah as this was another way to stand out from the mass-produced, bland designs of her competitors. There was also a worry that the painted, artistic look was too far from Sarah’s current branding - on her website she uses forget-me-nots on the funeral services page, something that wasn’t incorporated in my design.
In the second round of designing, we looked at resolving the points from the first round. So, I started playing around with the way we created the leaflet with the half-fold and decided a Z-Fold might work better. This gave us more space to display the text, upping the font size (very important when the audience is elderly) and extra space for additional images.
To be more in line with Rook Botanics branding I added forget-me-nots to the front cover. Keeping the creative and artistic feel.
This was exactly what Sarah was after and after a couple of small tweaks the design was signed off!
Conclusion
Creating a bespoke leaflet that stands out from the competition involves a deep understanding of both the brand and the target audience.
By working closely with Sarah from Rook Botanics, we created a leaflet that not only reflected her unique style and values but also addressed the needs and sensitivities of her potential customers.
Through thoughtful design choices, such as incorporating her branding elements and choosing a Z-fold layout, we were able to create a piece that is both visually appealing and functional.
If you're looking to elevate your brand with custom-designed marketing materials or need assistance with any graphic design projects, I'd love to help. Get in touch with me today, and let's create something extraordinary together!
Comments