We are One – a year of Designer-makers, Press Releases and a Fun-luxe lifestyle.

November 6, 2011

In a flash, with an honorary sparkler this Bonfire Night we celebrated our first anniversary.  A whole 12 months have passed and in the life-line of this small consultancy it’s fantastic to report, it’s still going and growing.

In the past year, Laurakatri consultancy, or Laura as a consultant for creative business – has worked with emerging designers and new creative businesses alike.

A few highlights include:

Marketing and PR support and development for Victoria Delany Design – Laurakatri helped Victoria understand, how by identifying her markets, and ‘speaking’ to them in the right way she could add professional business values to her designer-maker talent.  The consultancy’s business development support service, in the form of copywriting for marketing materials, public relations advice and copywriting helped Victoria gain media exposure in the run up and after her exhibition at London Design Festival 2011.

A great selection of magazine editorial and design blog coverage for Victoria Delany Design

Supporting a new online retail brand over a 6 month period, Laurakatri is helping launch a lifestyle and homewares business.  I Like It Here Boutique will be aimed at the luxury market who appreciate fun designed elements, social enterprises and objects from foreign lands.  Drawing on experiences gained in retail and design business, Laurakatri has up to this point provided the business owner with copywriting for web and web development advice and will go on to provide public relations and social media management, encompassed in a holistic business support service.

The new lifestyle business Laurakatri consultancy is supporting - I Like It Here Boutique

To add a twist to work going on behind the scenes, Laura is currently studying for a Masters in Design Management at Birmingham City University.  This established course helps the non-designer and designer meet in the middle, and draws in a cohort of students from international backgrounds who have previously worked in industry for an average 5 years.  Laura is using this course to develop deeper understandings of relationships designers forge with business; how businesses can use design to increase value within their product; and how to promote the return on investment business can draw from using well managed design processes and strategies.   Updates will follow throughout the year!

Watch a video about Victoria Delany Design – filmed by The Cafeteria, as part of her multi-media approach to marketing materials, which was launched as part of her new brand and materials at London Design Festival this year.

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Client News: Press, PR and Publicity for Designer-makers

September 12, 2011

After a busy summer developing proposals for creative businesses, I can update you on what’s been going on at Laurakatri consultancy.

I’m happy to announce some brilliant press coverage for my client Victoria Delany Design. Victoria is a silversmith and designer-maker, trained at the Royal College of Art, who is currently gearing up to exhibit at the first time at Origin – the Contemporary Craft Fair, and at the renowned London Design Festival.

Launching new product ranges for dining and table wares, Victoria Delany Design has seen publicity in some of the biggest design and interiors publications in the UK over the past few weeks, including Elle Decoration, Homes and Gardens and House and Garden magazines.

Alongside this, we have seen Victoria’s objects written about in Lifestyle Blogs and trend analysis websites including WGSN.  Spreading information across both digital and print media has been a great way to multiply opportunities for buyers, journalists and retailers to see what this business is all about, and excite interest in the brand.

Here’s one of the press releases written for Victoria Delany Design

View this document on Scribd

And here’s a selection of the press coverage

Press Coverage for Victoria Delany - designer-maker

Laurakatri consultancy has helped this designer-maker secure publicity through writing press releases, co-ordinating mailing lists whilst identifying marketing strategies to reach clear client and stakeholder sectors, set out in a business development strategy devised and agreed with the client.

Part of the marketing strategy included developing a coherent and consistent social media presence.  This has shown people more about what Victoria Delany Design is up to on a daily basis, with behind-the-scenes blogging and the usual propagation of social media platforms of personal and business profiles on twitter and facebook in a professional yet informal manner.

New projects for the consultancy include work with a new lifestyle business, where I will be working to deliver marketing, web development co-ordination and digital media management services to help launch a high-end international home-wares and accessories enterprise.

If you’d like to know more about marketing and PR services available to designers and creative businesses, please do get in touch and tell me about your plans.  Taking the next steps to develop your creative practice is what laurakatri.com aims to help you do.

Visit Victoria Delany Design at Origin – the Contemporary Craft Fair, between 22nd and 28th September 2011 at Old Spitalfields Market, London.  See her work also at ‘Silver-where?’ an exhibition at   Gallery S O, Brick Lane, London from 9th Sept until 10th October.

For any further information, please email:  enquiries@laurakatri.com

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Trend Report for Luxury Interiors 2011 and 2012

June 13, 2011

Interior Trends for 2011 and beyond: A consumer report and 4 Themes for inspiration

Trend Theme 1 – Sober Luxury

Trend Theme 2 – Mixed Up

 Trend Theme 3 – Homelife

 Trend Theme 4 – Utility Revival

Click to view and download the full report for luxury interiors  from Laurakatri – consultancy for creative business

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Visioning workshops for creative business: a review

May 27, 2011

In Spring 2011 I attended a visioning workshop delivered by Interiors and Lifestyle Futures, a project supported by Birmingham City University’s Design Knowledge Network.  Working with diverse community of West Midlands creative companies, a team of academics and consultants aim to deliver support services to help develop new business opportunities in high value niche markets from furniture, to furnishings, ceramics to jewellery. 

Delivered by a team from Interiors and Lifestyle futures together with Professor Richard Snell, the workshop brought a variety of designers and artists together to address business planning. A product designer, Victoria Delany, established glass artists Jo Newman and Jaqueline Cooley, Interior and furniture designer partners Rita Semedo and Thomas Slack of Cubed3studio and Sue Guthrie, public artist.

Honey Jar by Jo Newman Glass Artist

Honey Jar by Jo Newman Glass Artist, engraving Nancy Sutcliffe. Photo by Simon Bruntnell, Northlight Photography

Squirple 1 by Sue Guthrie

'Squirple' by Sue Guthrie

When you talk about planning for business development in the creative industries, it’s sometimes like reading French Vogue, the pictures look great and the products are to-die-for, but your schoolgirl French means you’re tempted to only read every third word of the article and skim over the real meaning.

Luckily, the ‘visioning’ element of the workshop meant looking at your business in terms of a narrative or story, and with an illustrated video-story, narrated by Prof Richard Snell of BCU, we took inspiration from the Design and Craft industry’s development to approach our own businesses strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. And what that meant was a visual and talkative way to approach to the entire event.

From my point of view, as a consultant to creative business, it was interesting to hear about the challenges and barriers faced by designers, makers, craftspeople and artists in a changing economic environment, and how people are coping with this.

The things I observed are:

1. You never stop learning.  Opportunities like the Visioning workshops are taken up not just by emerging designer and RCA Graduate Victoria Delany, a silversmith and product designer by training, but also artist-craftsperson Jo Newman, who after 22 years working in higher education whilst also producing her own work in art, is now working full-time in her own studio in the Ruskin Glass Centre, Stourbridge.

Victoria Delany tableware Product Designer Silversmith

Bespoke tableware and 'Candlestacks' by Victoria Delany

2. Everyone’s needs and expectations are different. Some designers wanted to focus on network development, others had identified their markets but wanted help planning how best to communicate with them and keep their business sustainable. A common thread, however, pulling the best participants together is that practicing creatives want to be taken seriously as professional practioners in their field.  Taking a creative business to the next level is equally about producing good work, but also about delivering good service to its clients.

3. Breaking down a business into stages is a good approach. Act 1 became the overview, Act 2 the strategy, Act 3 the implementation plans. I was impressed by this, and whilst it’s not new, using these terms seem to make the dry subject alot more juicy and easy to comprehend.   I’ve used this in my work, and implement proposals for consultancy based on this approach, with good results.

4. Planning usually involves taking a step back from your work and putting it on show.  Reluctant designers who don’t want to call themselves a designer, or artists that feel the word is somehow too grand for them to use to identify themselves as one; it’s not going be easy to gain recognition for your work if you can’t say “I’m a textile designer and this is my work”.

5. Creative work is often subjective but objectives always matter.  It’s encouraging to see dedication to life-long-learning, and an element of the workshop made you step back, look at your practice, and identify strategy; and help set out plans to tackle business planning and market development.

A Summer update from the designers and artists met during the course:

Jo Newman and Jaqueline Cooley are exhibiting at Wightwick Manor and Gardens, Making Art History Exhibition until 30th May

Victoria Delany will be launching a new range of products for dining at Origin Contemporary Craft Fair, London, in September 2011

Sue Guthrie is working on a new product line launch later this year and open to partnership collaborations.

If you’d like to get in touch with any of the artists featured, please comment on the blog with details and they will be forwarded on.

You can find out more about the Visioning Workshops from Interiors and Lifestyle Futures here

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Build your Creative Business through creative content and digital marketing

March 14, 2011

Not very long ago the service website was an extension of a firm’s print collateral. It was little more than an online brochure, presenting basic information about the company. More recently, however, the function of the website has begun to shift from providing general information to generating qualified leads.

This excerpt from Sean McVey’s guest article on the marketing website Valuable Content sums up really well how a high-performing website is now a rival to the traditional golden word-of-mouth referral; a long-built standard for even the small and micro business today.

Adding creative content to a website that implores the reader to re-visit for more tid-bits, is a device being used by successful business websites.

To translate into jargon-free terms, for a creative business and individual, if you want to generate more sales through your website it’s important to allow your visitor to interact with it, maybe download a research article as Sean McVey suggests, or read an guest blog post you’ve submitted.

 

A guest blog submission to Created in Birmingham Website

Another area would be to consider how your professional profile and your overall businesses digital presence feeds into your new website.  When approaching a digital marketing project it’s easier digested by breaking the creative content into three stages;

Analysis and Research: The basis of any time and resources invested in developing a brand, it’s status and digital presence should start with a good foundation of research.

Creative consultancy can help identify where your product sits in the marketplace and how will this be established by a new web design and social media networks. There are going to be key marketing activities, such as tailoring any social media profiles, writing copy that fits each market sector, helping build a stronger identity for your creative business.

Implementation: To fulfil your website’s sales destiny it’s important to produce consistent brand, product and personal messages for business to use in all marketing outputs.

Information can be added to your new beautiful creative website that allows it to be found easier by search engines, identified correctly, and viewed as reputable by it’s visitors.  Adding a social media network to your digital presence, approached with the same creative content strategy, lets you monitor, listen and correspond with your clients, consumers, suppliers and the media.

A business Facebook 'Page' is a good way to communicate about your activities

Monitoring and Measurement: It is important that you can use, monitor and see who is using your new website and digital marketing networks, what areas are popular, where it needs tweeking and identify how well it is running in terms of driving sales.

Even better is to see how the new measures against the old: in conjunction with starting social media activities such as a Twitter account, its possible to measure a return on your investments, where visitors ‘land’ into your site, and how any social networks feed traffic to your site, and in turn how any of this correlates with increased orders.

Creative content for creative business is a mouthful, but as part of consultancy services to creative business, it’s very possible to add value to your web presence and grow your business.

Let me know if I can propose some digital content for your business – Laura K Pollard.

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Trend Theme for Interior Design: Homelife

March 11, 2011

 

This trend represents a focus on habitat, leading to design that encourages the user to create their own interior design; the homemaker becomes their own architect.

Products are simple solutions to modern living.

Part of a larger consumer report for creative retail, design and product development industries, this theme is an excerpt from ‘Interior Trends for 2011 and beyond.  A consumer report and 4 Themes for inspiration’ published by Laura Katriina Pollard consultancy for creative business.


A theme concept board by Laura Katriina Pollard

COLOUR: reflect those found in nature: Terracotta, burnished orange, Yellow ochre.

TEXTURE: Natural linens imperfect organic patterns. Wools and furs, unfinished timber. Ceramics are basic, robustly made home accessories that show irregularity and imperfection.

Pallet Chair by Nina Tolstrup

PLACE: interventions of home life and art ‘555 Kubic’ by http://www.urbanscreen.com – ‘How would it be if your house was dreaming?’

 


Image Credits:

Theme 3: Homelife

Colours: RAL reference system, Predictions from Reconnect, Heimtextil.

Texture: ‘Wilderness’ at ‘Reconnect’ Heimtextil 2011, Frankfurt. Laura Pollard.

Texture: ‘Sobriety’ at ‘Reconnect’ Heimtextil 2011, Frankfurt. Laura Pollard.

Product: ‘Plumen’ by Hulger, Photo: Tom Mannion http://www.hulger.com/

Product: ‘Vaeterverk’ Teapot by Maaike Roozenburg for Moooi. Contact: www.moooi.com

Product: ‘Stump’ Stool by Ubiquo Studio, Photo: Sahar Tamir www.studioubico.com

Product: MT masking tape, Kamoi Kakoshi Co Ltd, Photo: Laura Pollard http://www.masking-tape.jp/en/


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Report for Luxury Interiors: trends, themes and design.

March 4, 2011

Trends for Luxury Interiors: Presenting a view of European market luxury trends, in interiors, homewares, furnishings and accessories.

Based on analysis of economics, social change, design consumption and human behaviour a Consumer Report for designers, manufacturers and retailers identifies how the creative industries are tackling the developments in a global consumer society, the talented individuals creating products, providing solutions to an educated luxury market consumer.

The Shows: read about what trend forecasters are saying at International Trade fairs, what’s the basis of their predictions.

The Themes: reflect on 4 themes – Sober Luxury, Mixed Up, Homelife and Utility Revival.  See colour predictions for the coming 2 years; based on 4 identified themes based on analysis of consumer behaviours, and trend forecaster’s predictions.

The Talent: the emerging designers and artists influencing the creative business industries.

Excerpts from the report can be seen on my portfolio pages.

Please get in touch if you’d like to see the whole report.

enquiries@laurakatri.com

Trend Theme: 'Sober Luxury' for Design

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Branding for Creative Businesses: a case study of John Evans Interiors

March 2, 2011

Branding, Marketing, Copywriting for Creative Businesses is about tailoring your content to the target market.

Be it a creative business that supplies to consumer or business, it’s a question of using the right language, tone and mix of visual and written content.

In a project I completed for John Evans Interiors, I was asked to create, research, design and write new materials to publicise the practice’s strong style, 30 years of experience and knowledge, to it’s existing clients and new markets.

Marketing Materials for Interior Design

Producing renewed marketing materials was the first task:  identifying the target markets, and subsequently deciding which kind of materials to develop to reach those markets, without spending excessive money on too many different items.

2 printed items were developed: A brochure for prospective clients and interested organisations, and a folded card Leaflet, easy to push into envelopes to send to press, clients, suppliers.

A brochure was developed, to act as a professional profile.  What resulted was a 35 page A4 Spirobound brochure; which pulled together the vast folio of work amassed over the practice’s history.  This is a very professional, heafty document for an Interior Design practice, focused on not just visuals of work but the information to back up the practice’s claims of professional practice.

Resources, services and a large section dealing solely with Working Practices were added; the stages of work a client could expect to go through with their project.  While it can seem a little dry or uninteresting, showing that as a designer or craftsperson, you follow guidelines, codes of conduct and a strategy, really does reinforce a reputation!

Additionally, a smaller A5 trifold leaflet was produced to insert into letters and to be sent out with press releases, christmas cards, project updates and correspondence.

This project is featured on my portfolio page on Behance - click to see more Branding work.

Brochure and Leaflet for John Evans Interiors

Brochure and Leaflet design and copywriting for John Evans Interiors

Digital Content for Design Companies

I have written about this website before and the services I provided, but wanted to share more about the project in the context of copywriting.

For John Evans Interiors, the brief asked for a content managed website, which held a large portfolio of photographs, visualisations and sketches associated with sectors of work, and inidividual projects completed for clients.

The Home Page from http://www.johnevansdesign.com changes every few seconds to another background image

Copywriting for Interior Design

Copywriting was integral and important to the website; not only to describe the visual content to viewers; but to add value to the website’s content, it’s optimisation and attractiveness to search engines.  It was essential the site was designed to be future-proof, with blog RSS feeds, and any social media activities undertaken by the business.

Tailoring the content to the businesses brand meant learning to talk and write like the principle designer, in this case John Evans, I quickly realised that as the design practice was his enterprise, it would be important to use language that he would in normal business life, (a combination of technical, architectural references and direct description).  Injecting creative writing into the mix, gives the website and brand a professional vigour; softening the technical aspects of design to make written content understandable and enjoyable to read.

See more of the website project on my Behance portfolio

A project portfolio page from http://www.johnevansdesign.com

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Live Blog – Coventry Conversations: Working the Media

January 17, 2011

Update: Thank you to readers who joined us virtually for this event – you can re-read the commentary here

John Mair, Senior Lecturer in Broadcast Journalism at Coventry University, chaired topics covering tackling and generating media interest in academic research, with Professors Chadwick and Bailey offering stories from their backgrounds as sports and business research respectively.  How starting with brief interviews, snowballed into further media interest in their work, helping cement reputations as opinion leaders within their fields of expertise.

Join the Conversation!

As part of Coventry Conversations – ‘Working the Media’ event at 1pm, on Thurs 20th January 2011, see the Live Blog, direct from the event at Coventry University by clicking this link

Also set a reminder for the event on the Coveritlive.com site; so you won’t miss out on the discussion.

Notes:

Read more about my views on the media event series here

See press release event listings here

Commentary from Working the Media: a transcript from the Liveblog

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Know your Media and collaborate – Coventry Conversations

January 11, 2011

Coventry Conversations; a series of speaker programmes at Coventry University, celebrated its 4th birthday last year. 2011 will take the scheme forward again.

The Bull Yard - a Coventry postwar Shopping Precinct

Upcoming events include, Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4), Channel 4 News Broadcaster, and social media advocate, will talk about his journalistic story on Feb 1st, and on March 9th The BBC College of Journalism will talk Investigative Journalism as part of the Fourth Cov Con.

Founder and Inventor John Mair (@johnmair100), brings together renowned and respected Journalists, Academics and Entrepreneurs offering advice, questions and direction for students of media and broadcast journalism. It strikes me that the events appear to be an example of an open-data approach to media education.

I will be attending, tweeting and live-blogging from the first discussion ‘Working the Media’, led by Professors David Bailey (@djbailey) and Simon Chadwick (@prof_chadwick) of Coventry University, on January 20th.

Over 2.5million people worldwide have downloaded recordings of the media debates by podcast which are available through Coventry University’s website, and Mair is quoted as saying he is keen to take the events global as a brand, driven by a world-wide “appetite and intelligent talk about the Media by serious movers and shakers.”

The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh writes that ‘collaboration is the third part of the equation‘ to be added to creativity and commercialism in order to achieve journalistic success.  Designers, businesses and artists in the fashion industry for instance, have long found success through collaboration and it’s a trend that seems hard to ignore.

What about emerging Creatives, Writers and Designers? I would advocate and promote a collaborative approach to development, support and business mentoring for graduates working in creative industries; to fill the gap left by the closure of public bodies being closed under government cuts. But are there other approaches and what are the effects of our current economic state to this process?

The funding crisis affecting Universities is also felt in the business support services for the creative and media industries. I understand from media reports that Business Link will close this year, and when speaking with Birmingham office I was told Creative Launchpad, a scheme funded by the organization to help startup creative businesses, has already been terminated due to funding cuts.

It is clear that getting the mentoring or support that would have once been available to business startups or enterprises will be more difficult in 2011. However, the optimist in me says, success will be found in those that engage, converse and excite their audience and market, and these events are exactly how information and ideas can be fed to graduates; and knowing how to work the media isn’t optional if your business or scheme is to succeed in a multi-platform, digital world.

What do you think?

I’d be keen to hear from any students and/or graduates, about their experiences of the events, or their views about relationships with media and communicative digital technologies.

See Coventry-Conversation-lineup-for-2011 for a full diary of events

Information about live-blogging from the event will follow, get in touch if you wish to participate.

Follow my Twitter feed for more information and discussion of international media, design and culture

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