An Eco-Friendly Identity for PURE Inspired Design

Designing the eco-friendly identity for PURE Inspired Design was an ideal job for Perceptivity Studio. Part green, part fun & modern, I am so happy with what we came up with for this new company!

Interior Designer Samantha Cobos, an established interior designer in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, became so interested in "green" interior design that she decided to start a new company dedicated solely to environmentally conscious interior design. PURE Inspired Design will officially be launching to the public in the next issue of SPACES Magazine, and we've been busy shaping the identity for its public unveiling.

We started with the logo design for PURE Inspired Design, which has a modern, organic feel with bright colors dominated by a vibrant lime green to signify that this is a "green" company.
















The business cards came next, and the two-sided design features the company's tagline, Environmentally Conscious Interior Design, across the back on a bold, green background. We printed the PURE Inspired Design business cards with a green printer, using 100% post-consumer fiber recycled paper.




















As I mentioned before, the company will officially be launched in the next issue of SPACES Magazine, and we created a full-page ad to introduce the company. Readers are already familiar with Samantha's existing interior design business, INTERIORS by Samantha Cobos, so we used the same picture so they would recognize her face, and explained why she started the new company. Future ads will feature her exclusive line of eco-friendly furniture and rugs, which are currently in development, but the main purpose of this ad was to draw a connection between "environmentally conscious" and "interior design" which we did with the various images in the ad. The Robin's nest image was perfect, since many people associate a "nest" with their home, and the blue eggs perfectly picked up on the turquoise in the logo.

























Finally, we developed a fun website for PURE Inspired Design. The home page features the same images as the ad for brand recognition, and the site also features a portfolio of Samantha's interior design work and a product gallery of the furniture and rugs she is currently developing. Visit the site, www.pureinspireddesign.com, to see more, and to learn more about this awesome new company.



















While PURE Inspired Design is currently operating in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, they will also be offering a "virtual" interior design service worldwide in the near future. We wish Samantha Cobos and PURE Inspired Design the best of luck as the company is launched next month. Thank you for letting Perceptivity Studio build your new identity!

Top 10 Holiday Eco-Tips

How scary is this? An estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold each year in the United States, enough to fill a football field 10 stories high. It is estimated that between Thanksgiving and the New Year an extra million tons of waste are generated nationwide each week. In fact, 38,000 miles of ribbon alone is thrown out each year--enough to tie a bow around the earth!

Needless to say our society tends to get more than a bit wasteful when December rolls around. Since being environmentally friendly is very important at Perceptivity Studio, I did some research to find out how I could be more "green" during the holidays. I decided to share this information in our holiday card this year to encourage our clients, associates, friends and family to join my efforts, and thought that those of you whose addresses I didn't have might still enjoy reading them!

Here are our top 10 holiday eco-tips for a greener Christmas:

10. Consider purchasing a live tree from a local Christmas tree farm and then planting it in your yard. It’s beautiful during the holidays, and then you get to watch it grow!

9. Give gifts that can be experienced, like tickets to a baseball game or a homemade dinner, to minimize waste from wrapping gifts.

8. Find out what services your family and friends are already using and pre-pay for them as a gift, like a month at their gym or their Netflix subscription.

7. If it’s time to replace your holiday lights, consider replacing them with LED lights—they’re 90 percent more efficient than traditional incandescent lights.

6. For holiday dinners and parties, use non-disposable utensils and dishes to reduce waste.

5. Save your gift boxes, ribbon and even wrapping paper each year and reuse them. If it can’t be reused, separate the leftovers and recycle what you can.

4. Instead of using traditional gift bags to wrap presents, buy reusable tote bags. They’re only 99 cents at most major stores, and the recipient can use them again and again.

3. Designate a certain hour every night to turn the holiday lights on. That way you can gather and enjoy them together and save some energy—and money—in the process.

2. Send holiday cards printed on recycled paper. The Perceptivity Studio holiday card is printed on paper made from 100% post consumer fibers, meaning it contains no new trees. Please recycle it (and your other cards) after the holidays.

1. Make a New Year’s Resolution to “go green” in 2009, and start making your home and/or office more environmentally friendly.

Need help making your marketing efforts more eco-friendly or green? Eco-friendly marketing is one of our specialties, and we would love to help you accomplish that #1 tip in 2009. Read more about our eco-friendly, "green" marketing services, and contact us to learn more about what we can do to help your company!

I wish you all a very safe, happy and "green" holiday season, and a wonderful 2009! Thank you all for helping make 2008 such a great first year for Perceptivity Studio!

Anatomy of a custom holiday card

I just finished a fun custom holiday card project for one of my clients, and thought it would be fun to share the process we went through to create it.

Elizabeth, one of my clients from Tanglewood, was looking for a custom holiday card to send out to friends and family this year, and saw my $99 Custom Holiday Card design special in my fall newsletter.

We tossed around a few ideas, but she mentioned that a friend had done a really beautiful line drawing of their home, and maybe I could "Christmas it up" a bit to use on their custom holiday card.

Here is the original drawing, done by Rosemary Williams:




























I also requested a photo of Elizabeth's gorgeous house:





























I took the drawing into Photoshop, sampled colors from the photo, and "painted" the line drawing to mimic her home. I also added Christmas lights to the roofline and the sailboat in her window, some snowflakes falling through the air, and the little topiary trees on her porch.

After I was done "Christmasing up" the artwork, I created the custom holiday card layout in InDesign, adding the background, design elements and typography that matches the Tanglewood logo I created for them earlier this year.

Here is the final custom holiday card:

























































Thanks for letting me work on this project, Elizabeth, and I hope you and your family have a very happy holidays!

If anyone else is interested in taking advantage of my $99 Custom Holiday Card design special, contact me soon! The holidays will be here before you know it! Running short on time? A New Year's card can also work well. And we can also help you be eco-friendly with either a custom holiday card printed on 100% recycled paper (like Perceptivity Studio will be sending out this year) or even a custom e-card like I'm currently designing for Bacon Group Architecture.

Perceptivity Studio & Bacon Group Architecture win two Awards of Excellence at the IABC Bronze Quill Awards

Bacon Group Architecture entered two categories in the IABC Tampa Bay Bronze Quill Awards, and we attended their banquet in downtown Tampa last night to find out the results. We are excited to announce that we won two of their four highest awards, Awards of Excellence, for our entries! Our customizable trade show displays were recognized in the design category and the campaign as a whole was also recognized. It was such an honor, and I am so proud of what we accomplished!

It's been a long process re-branding Bacon Group Architecture from start to finish, but we finally finished their whole campaign, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results! While I've posted bits and pieces of the Bacon Group Architecture work in this blog, I've never posted it all in once place, so here it is, including the logo, corporate identity (letterhead, envelopes, business cards, labels, notepads), niche market brochure, corporate brochure/pocket folder, website, signage, proposal template, trade show display and trade show advertisement.









































































































































































Again, we are so honored to have our hard work recognized by the IABC, and it makes me so happy to see how consistently Bacon Group's brand is presented across all of their different marketing materials now. (When you're a marketing nerd like I am, these things are exciting!) It has truly been a pleasure working with Mindy Bacon, the Director of Marketing at Bacon Group, to create and implement a new, professional image for their company.

To learn more about Bacon Group Architecture, visit www.bgarchitects.com or call 727-725-0111.

Notes on Efest and the Eco-Friendly Marketing Booth

As I mentioned last week, Perceptivity Studio exhibited at the Efest Green Living Festival this past weekend at a booth with our green signage partner, Precision Digital Greenworks. I am exhausted from a long two days, but energized by the positive energy from the festival.

Not only did Efest meet my expectations, it far exceeded them! There were over 10,000 people there over the course of the two-day festival, and we met so many wonderful people looking to make a difference, many of whom I hope to work with in the future to make their marketing materials more "green" and environmentally friendly.

Here are some pictures from our butterfly-themed booth:



















We had a raffle to win a trip to the Butterfly Rainforest in Gainesville to go along with the theme of our booth.



Sarah from Precision Digital Greenworks (left) and I had a great time at our booth on Sunday.

















I definitely plan on going back again next year!

If you're a new reader from Efest, welcome to our blog! Feel free to subscribe via the RSS feed if you use a reader or via email if you don't. (The links are in the top right corner.)

Eco-Friendly Marketing: Less is More

I read about this billboard in Denver here and wanted to share its brilliance with you:
















What a clever idea! While this message is specifically referring to the conservation of water, it applies to so many other things, and I think it's great of Denver Water to also use less billboard vinyl--and thus be kinder to the environment in the process--to get their message across. It's a great example of eco-friendly marketing, and how you can be more environmentally responsible while still using that consciousness as a marketing advantage. Instead of noticing the message less, I'm guessing most people will actually notice it more.

I'm off to exhibit at the Efest Green Living Festival tomorrow in Sarasota, so eco-friendly marketing is heavy on my mind. I just got the Perceptivity Studio "Eco-Friendly Marketing Services" brochures (printed on 100% post-consumer fiber recycled paper, of course!) back from the printer, and am co-exhibiting with my clients at Precision Digital Greenworks, an eco-friendly display company (read about their new marketing materials here), so our whole backdrop and banner stands are made from eco-friendly materials...including biodegradable PVC in lieu of nasty vinyl, and renweable bamboo for the banner stand hardware. Our booth has a "butterfly" theme to symbolize the transformation of our products and services to be more eco-friendly. I'm excited to see our whole booth set up in the morning!

If you'd like a copy of our new brochure, which features descriptions of our eco-friendly, "green" marketing services, as well as examples of some of the "green" projects we've completed thus far, leave a comment here, or send me an email and I'll get one out in the mail to you.

Eco-Friendly Identity for Precision Digital

As a marketing company striving to be more eco-friendly, it's important to have a strong network of vendors with the same mindset to support the efforts I'm making with my clients. So I was thrilled to team up with SKL Marketing to help Precision Digital, a local display company, develop an identity and marketing materials for their new "green," eco-friendly line of product offerings, and to be able to offer their products to my clients as well.

Precision Digital Greenworks, as we named this new division, offers "green," eco-friendly banners, trade show materials and signage using new products designed to have less of an impact on the environment. Their industry traditionally uses some pretty toxic materials, including vinyl, which takes 500 to 700 years to biodegrade in landfills. Now they offer biodegradable PVC, which only takes 3 to 5 years to biodegrade. This and other similar materials, paired with eco-friendly inks, mark quite a transformation for a display company.

The logo for this new division uses the globe and "Precision Digital" type treatment from their existing logo, while changing to a color palette of lime green and brown and adding a handwritten script for the word "greenworks" to give it an eco-friendly flair.






























The tagline I developed for the company, "Transforming the way you display," touts their main brand promise. To quote the brochure we developed, "Just as a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, Precision Digital is changing something ugly into something beautiful." Likewise, all of their materials feature a monarch butterfly against a vibrant orange background.

Here is the tri-fold brochure, which includes a caterpillar, cocoon and flying butterfly to symbolize the transformation the company is making. It also includes samples of a banner design, banner stand design and sign design.
















The business cards also features the Monarch butterfly.
















And their temporary website also plays on this concept.
























We wish Precision Digital luck as they launch this new product line to the public!

If you're interested in learning more, please contact me and I will coordinate your new eco-friendly banner, trade show materials or signage with Precision Digital.

Tampa Bay Green Business Survey

As I've posted before, Perceptivity Studio is trying to be an environmentally-responsible business, and I've teamed up with a few other local Tampa Bay businesses to start a new group called Green Initiative Tampa Bay that will hopefully help me (and you!) do just that.

We're still in the planning process, so we've developed a survey to help us understand how other businesses in Tampa Bay (and elsewhere if you're not local!) feel about "going green" with their businesses with questions involving opinions, eco-friendly business practices and more. I sent a link out to many of you this morning, but if you didn't get it, here's a link to the survey:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228CHSLD6YQ

The more feedback we can get, the better, so please take a few minutes (it's quick, I promise!) and let us know what you think. I will post more information about the group once we get it going. Thank you in advance for your help!

Perceptivity Studio will be exhibiting at Efest!

Perceptivity Studio has been focusing on eco-friendly marketing with our clients for a while now, and we're excited to take that focus one step further--we'll be exhibiting at this year's Efest in Sarasota on November 15th and 16th.

Efest is "a major green living music and arts festival that unites hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals that care about our environment," and we're hoping to reach like-minded businesses who are looking to make their marketing efforts more eco-friendly with our green marketing materials (like business cards and brochures), green promotional items (like recycled pens and water powered clocks), green display materials (like banners, signs and trade show materials), electronic media (like websites and email newsletters) and eco-friendly identities (logos that reflect eco-conscious companies).

Want to read more about our eco-friendly, "green" marketing services? Visit our website and click on the "green marketing" button at the bottom of the page. Want to check out Efest? Their website is www.efest.us.

A New Logo for Natural Baby Source

Betty Cortez is super-mom. With a handful of kids and a handful of entrepreneurial conquests, she talks a mile a minute and is constantly on the go, go, go every time I see her. So it's no surprise that she's saving the world one cloth diaper at a time with her new company called Natural Baby Source, which sells eco-friendly baby products like cloth diapers to moms around the country.

Natural Baby Source tapped Perceptivity Studio to design a new logo for their revamped e-store, tasking us to come up with something that was fun and whimsical while still projecting a professional image to customers and emphasizing that the company focuses on "green" products. Given our commitment to eco-friendly marketing and the "green" movement in general, we were excited to work with a company whose main goal was providing eco-friendly alternatives to families.











The logo that Betty chose features a baby hanging from a tree in a green sling. It's sweet and simple, and looks great on the website that Betty had already put together for the company. The new identity and e-store look very tailored and professional and really make Natural Baby Source stand apart from their competitors.




















We're glad to have been able to help Natural Baby Source develop a professional identity to differentiate their company, and we look forward to hearing updates on Betty's success with this and other projects.

To learn more about Natural Baby Source and the whole cloth diapering phenomenon (which is a whole lot less scary than it sounds!), visit their website, or contact Betty Cortez at betty@naturalbabysource.com.

Eco-Friendly Marketing

I just took the Design Can Change pledge to make Perceptivity Studio a more eco-friendly design studio. There’s nothing particularly strict about the effort, it’s really just a set of guidelines that gets the ball rolling. It's something we've already been moving toward, but today was an official commitment to making it happen. Over the next few months we're going to make an effort to not only make our business more eco-friendly, but also to help our clients produce more eco-friendly marketing as well. Stay tuned for more blog posts on eco-friendly marketing topics you can think about on our next projects together.

We've already started helping our clients be more eco-friendly with their marketing efforts. We've talked a bit in the past about our efforts in green printing for Tanglewood and Accelerated Momentum. While it does cost a bit more to print with a green printer, it's wonderful to see tangible results of the actual difference you're making by spending just a bit more money.

Of course the "feel good" aspect can only take you so far, and eco-friendly marketing can also be a smart marketing decision, especially in an industry where being "green" is becoming more important, like construction, architecture and engineering. Perceptivity Studio has been helping our clients in these industries explore different ways to promote their LEED (which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a designation by the U.S. Green Building Council to signify sustainable building practices) services.

• We already mentioned printing Tanglewood's business cards with a green printer, and we just recently printed their letterhead and envelopes with a green printer as well. This development and construction company is part of the USGBC, and spends extra time and money to incorporate green building practices in their historic renovations and new construction. It was important to them to produce eco-friendly marketing materials, and we added a "100% Recycled" symbol to each piece to let their customers know that they'd made the effort to be more responsible.

• Bacon Group Architecture is also a member of the USGBC, and principal architect Rick Bacon is a LEED Accredited Professional, meaning that he's passed the test to prove he has the knowledge and skills to successfully steward the LEED certification process. Bacon Group has mentioned their sustainable architecture services in their company brochure and on the home page of their website, and we're working on a cut sheet for their brochure to explain the LEED certification process to their customers, since it can be a bit confusing. Bacon Group's eco-friendly identity package was all printed on recycled paper as well.
  

• Engineering Matrix is also a member of the USGBC, and a good chunk of their staff has obtained LEED AP status. Many of their projects have obtained or are in the process of obtaining LEED certification. We highlighted their Eckerd College Iota Complex project in a direct mail campaign a few months ago, and we've developed a very "green" sustainability page on their new website, launching soon. (Stay tuned for more on this fun project!)
  

We're very lucky to have clients who share some of our sustainable philosophies, and we really look forward to helping you all learn more about the small steps you can take to be more eco-friendly with your marketing and business over the next few months.

If you have any specific eco-friendly marketing questions you'd like answered or topics you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or email us. In the meantime, consider visiting the Design Can Change website. Their Resources section has all kinds of good information to get you started being more eco-friendly with your business!