Beautiful Backdrop for BDB Meeting

Palm Beach International Equestrian Center

We went to the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County‘s “Equestrian Luncheon” today, which took place overlooking the riders competing in the Winter Equestrian Festival.

Catered by The White Horse Tavern (a Wellington mainstay and provider of surprisingly good catered food) at the Wellington Club at Palm Beach International Equestrian Center, we listened to Wellington Mayor Darrell Bowen, the ever-poised Kelly Smallridge (the BDB’s President and CEO), and keynote speakers Mark Bellissimo and Hunter Harrisson.

The speeches were excellent, and reminded me that just three years ago I stood with my (former) boss in a ring that appeared to be in ruins, walking up into a grandstand that was literally crumbling, and listening to Mr. Bellissimo’s plans for world-class surroundings for this world-class festival of equestrian sport. The gorgeous weather, the amazing feat of  progress by Wellington Equestrian Partners, and the excitement of sitting in a room with three glass sides surrounded by jumpers who gracefully arced through the air behind the podium was a welcome change from some of our meetings, which tend to take place in hotel conference centers. Steve and I were tempted to ditch work for the rest of the day and just walk out the glass doors to join the spectators. That doesn’t happen very often.

Duty calls entirely too often when you own your own business, and we needed to come back to the office and answer emails, get artwork to printers, and continue editing a website that’s launching next week (it’s going to be so major). But we wanted to acknowledge how impressive the setting, how energizing the speeches, and just how proud we are to be a business operating in Palm Beach County and members of a group dedicated to bringing companies and jobs to our area, and helping existing businesses expand and create more jobs.  That’s what it’s all about in this economy.

The Burger Bros Opt for a Bit of Alchemy to Build Their Brand

Humor works for the Burger Bros.

Talk about a fun account. The Burger Bros — Peter and Nick Julius to their family and friends –  hired Alchemy to take its Fifties-esque logo and create a fully developed Brand Identity for its fresh-food franchise.

“We started by getting a feel for the Fifties style of the Burger Bros.’ logo, and everything else seemed to organically grow from there,” says Steve Owens, Alchemy’s Partner/Creative Director. “They’re serious about the old-fashioned freshness and quality of their food, but we felt that a sense of humor was an important part of the whole aesthetic appeal.”

Images of freshness, courtesy of photographer Barry Kinsella

One of Alchemy’s tasks was to educate consumers on Burger Bros.’ has to offer: Fresh-made burgers, nothing frozen except the ice cream in their hand-dipped milkshakes, hand-cut french fries, and their own private-label soft drinks. “We need graphical representations in keeping with the brand identity, but also conveyed a heaping helping of fun.”

Alchemy stared with photo shoot to capture images of the food for all of the necessary signage and collateral, including menus, posters, the drive-thru menu board, in-store digital menus,  the tops of the tables, and table menus that double as advert handbills. Once again, Alchemy called in photographer Barry Kinsella to work his digital magic, as well as food stylists Firepoint Productions.

The in-store graphics: wall posters, tabletops, and other representations of the Burger Bros. sense of playfulness

The brothers Julius opened their first Burger Bros. in downtown West Palm Beach last year, and have since opened a franchise in Stuart, with another soon in Deerfield Beach. Their plan for world domination? Franchising smart, which means staying involved with location choices, ensuring their carefully crafted look and feel are duplicated, and choosing the right people to be franchisees. The bros are picky.

Alchemy designed all the graphics, right down to the label on the iced tea pots.

Up next is a website, traditional and social media campaigns, and other branding efforts. Duncan MacDonald, the Bros first franchisee with the location in Stuart, is making the most of the collateral to attract business to a location that opened just days before Christmas. MacDonald intends to open more franchises, as do Peter and Nick themselves. What started as a single drive-thru-only location in West Palm Beach is sure to be a major player in quick-serve restaurant (QSR) industry in South Florida before the end of 2011.

The ‘Wall Street Journal’ Tells Us What Next Year’s ‘HOT’ Color Will Be. Uh huh. I Said ‘The Wall Street Journal.’

A Jonathan Adler Design in...Honeysuckle

<sarcasm>That bastion of all things fashionable, The Wall Street Journal, </sarcasm> reports that 2011 has a hot color all its own: Pantone 18-2120 TCX, or in non-artist-speak, “honeysuckle.” Yep. The Wall Street Journal. Honeysuckle. News.

I so love it when I get the basis of a post from the iconic newspaper read by dudes in suits on the train, and published by Dow Jones & Co. Earlier this year, the venerable business godhead presented me with another great story: how hard it is for bands to come up with great names. My first thought is inevitably, “Do hardcore Journal readers just skip over stuff like this?”

The original Pantone Matching System fan guide. As reflected in the colors on cover, the 60s were all about bright, bold psychedelia, Peter Max and the Beatles.

But, back to pink. Yes, because  Pantone 18-2120 TCX is pink. Hot-house flower pink. Mad Men pink. This passage reads as if penned for one of the glossy fashion tomes, not the paper where people check the Forex and read about grain futures: “A sherbety shade of pink, with a hint of red and orange zest, honeysuckle is seen by designers as a pick-me-up at a time when many people have had their fill of misfortune.”

Gosh, the layers in that one sentence. How poetic. How ironic. The paper that reports day in and day out on our financial markets and the crushing recession describes the color as having happy qualities that help when people are down. And this isn’t just a quick blurb — it runs 1,500 words.

What does it mean to us as designers, and you as consumers? Lotsa pink stuff, from food processors to throw pillows, from nail polish to chairs. “Some designers have chosen variants within the hot-pink family,” WSJ notes. “Crate & Barrel used both honeysuckle and a similar Pantone shade called “pink flambé” in everything from furniture to dishware. Nanette Lepore calls her orange-tinged version of the color “hot melon.” Ken Downing, fashion director for Neiman Marcus, referred to “orange coral” when he described his pick for the color of the spring 2011 season.”

Crate & Barrel's Pink Chair; is it Honeysuckle or Pink Flambe?

Also straight from the article: “It’s a very ‘Mad Men’ pink. It’s like the lipstick our mothers wore,’ says Tom Mirabile, head of global trends and design at Lifetime Brands Inc., the company behind Mikasa, Cuisinart and other houseware brands. “There’s a retro aspect to it that’s going to be very popular.”

“There’s an innate optimism to pink,” says Jonathan Adler, an interior and housewares designer who is using hot shades of pink widely in his 2011 collections. “As we speak, I’m wearing a hot pink shirt,” he says.

“The honeysuckle color evokes nostalgic feelings of summertime, says Leatrice Eiseman, a color psychologist who has been director of Pantone’s Color Institute for 25 years” — now THERE’S a job. “Strategically, colors of the year are supposed to help sell all manner of products and packages. ‘We also want [people] to stop and say, “Oh, neat color. Maybe I need to buy those plates,’” Ms. Eiseman says.

A Honeysuckle Dress from Cynthia Steffe

Here’s my hope for 2011: we can all go out and buy a bunch of cool pink stuff, cheer up, and watch the economy come back to life; we all have new clients who want to sell pink stuff; everyone’s happy, prosperous and unafraid to wear pink. I’ll take that pink Cynthia Steffe for starters. Oh, I mean that happy honeysuckle dress.

The more fascinating part of the article for us was the whole “color of the year” idea from Pantone, and the great background on how Pantone books developed, since we have four floating around here.

Capsule Collections: High Fashion and Low Prices. Hell, Yes.

All rights reserved by Daria Angeli

According to today’s Women’s Wear Daily, the latest addition to the sublime Vera Wang’s portfolio of  decidedly non-couture designer items is a cosmetics line featuring makeup and color, skin care, bath and body products, and beauty accessories Kohl’s plans to introduce by spring 2012. Her Simply Vera line debuted there in 2007, is a consistent performer, and a very important part of Kohl’s retail strategy.

As a female with an eye for Chanel and a bank account for discount, the proliferation of capsule collections by marquee couture designers and celebrity/designer-types makes me all warm and happy inside. Until I try to actually acquire these high-concept, low-cost gems and find that there are women who wait in line overnight to get their hands on these clothes the day they debut. My meandering path to the store means there’s exactly one item left, in XXL, and in a color that makes me look nauseated and/or consumptive.

H&M only came to my part of the planet last month, so I missed out on Karl Lagerfeld, Madonna, Viktor & Rolf, Stella McCartney, Jimmy Choo, Roberto Cavalli, Comme de Garcons, Matthew Williamson, Sonia Rykiel, and the just-unveiled Lanvin capsule collection.

However, I have a few pieces from Target that have held up surprisingly well, and consistently garner compliments: a Jean Paul Gaultier trench coat, an amazingly well-cut black sheath by Isaac Mizrahi, and a mesh wrap dress by McQ Alexander McQueen.  No luck even getting a glimpse of Rebeca Minkoff’ second handbag collection, William Rast, Zac Posen, and those early couture/discount pioneers, Stephen Sprouse and Fiorucci (I shopped both of these stores when they were NYC-only, ultra-hip boutiques, and I dressed like Debbie Harry).

The audience for couture has always been minuscule in relation to pret-a-porter, and utterly microscopic in relation to the majority: Women who regularly haunt clearance racks at TJ Maxx and Steinmart, or shop consignment. And while I see 7th grade girls sporting REAL Louis Vuitton bags in my neighborhood (I make it a sport to spot fakes, and I am GOOD, people), the rest of the fashion-buying audience has, by necessity, champagne tastes and Boone’s Farm budgets. So, I happen to  think it’s cool that the names and designs I see in Vogue, et al., that are only purchased by (or lent to) celebrities and socialites, trickle down to those who are fashion-conscious and a bit lighter in the purse.

I have plenty of female friends who either don’t give a s**t about what’s in style, take a feminist stance against clothes that are designed for male titillation (heh, I said titillation), or are too busy having lives to care much beyond, “Is this black shirt the same color black as these black pants?” I used to be embarrassed to admit I cared about fashion, but it became hard to hide my already half-decade addiction to both Rolling Stone and the fashion glossies when I showed up for the first day of high school in full-tilt Annie Hall. Yep, hat. Tie. Vest. Humiliation on an epic scale. I had to move to New York to start dressing the way I wanted.

Clothing is an expression of emotional and intellectual forces; not caring how you look or what you wear says just as much as if you obsess over the same. I use clothing as armor, as an expression of my (brief) moments of whimsy, to radiate feminine menace, to declare I’m a surf widow, to expose my tattoos for the shock value, to convey I’m a cool mom but not your friend, to reflect my inner life in an external and frivolous way, to be taken seriously in a room full of guys in suits. If it’s in you to follow fashion, why shouldn’t there be great stuff in your price range? Congrats to you if, in this economy, you can sweep through the name collections at Saks and not look at price tags. The rest of us will wait for the next announcement from H&M, and queue up accordingly.

Venerable North County Law Firm Debuts Brand-New Website to Peer, Client Accolades

Haile Shaw Pfaffenberger Home Page

The high-integrity, low-profile law firm of Haile Shaw & Pfaffenberger recently debuted a new website designed by Alchemy Communications Group. The firm challenged us to create something unlike other legal websites, and was especially keen on our idea of making the primary focus of the site the 15 attorneys on staff. Eschewing the typical corporate “headshots” against a neutral backdrop to introduce each attorney, Alchemy worked with Palm Beach Gardens photographer Alan Carlisle to photograph them in the firm’s North Palm Beach office in their own milieu, establishing the human element and warmth of the firm. Alan and Steve also spent time creating characteristic images of the office, allowing us to almost eliminate the use of the typical stock shots.

With 15 distinct personalities representing five specialty practice groups within the firm, the challenge of writing content for the site was to capture each attorney with a bio including all the expected vitals, yet also some more personal accomplishments, goals, or involvements with charities.

Individual attorney's page

Working from the individual to the collective, Alchemy then created content about the separate practice groups, the firm’s own historical timeline of notable cases since its formation in 1983, the firm itself, and its Core Values. 

The attorneys featured on the site's home page revolve in a Java slide show.

Senior Partner Robert G. Haile, Jr., shared with us just this week, while at the Business development Board of Palm Beach County’s first-quarter luncheon, that not only have they received very positive feedback from clients and potential clients, but also from peers and colleagues. For us, that’s the real sign that we created something both valuable and unique.

Loyalty: Huh?

I feel a rant coming on.

It’s a recession; it’s a tough market; everyone’s pulled back; there isn’t enough to go around; blah blah blah. We hear it every day from colleagues who lost a long-standing client to someone who claims they can undercut prices, from people who were fired and replaced by someone cheaper and less experienced, from former clients and employers who offer the sop, “I’m sure we’ll be referring you business.”

Yep. It’s every business for itself. The playing field has leveled and small agencies are competing with larger agencies for the same handful of clients with marketing dollars. Advertising is competing with public relations for the same dollars, each making the argument it can do more for the client than the other. Carpe diem, everyone. Grab all you can.

But there is also something more insidious going on. Recently, a former colleague said to our client, upon being shown a piece we’d done that received very nice accolades, that, “If you think their work is good, I really need to introduce you to the agency we work with…” More recently, another former colleague from a different firm tried to grab an ongoing client by offering to work in trade on a job we’d already been awarded and started preliminary design work.

That’s not a sign of the recession; that’s the sign of the utter lack of respect or loyalty those same people once commanded from us. It’s not hard times; it’s a personality flaw. The rule now is there are no rules. What high road? It’s a lonely place. We can only note how easily these former colleagues were willing to throw us under a bus to get the business, and never turn our backs again. Otherwise, there’s a target right about there between the shoulder blades.

Luckily, both of those scenarios played out in our favor, in large part because our clients are savvy enough to see right through to the empty space where these people’s principles should have been. Even better, there are plenty of us who understand that there IS enough for everyone; it just doesn’t LOOK like it used to. We’ve recognized that collectivity, and sometimes working as a co-op, gives everyone the best of the best – in pricing, in quality, in finished product.

We’ve come to realize how highly we prize the loyalty of some, and have a long memory for those who would rather play out underhanded little intrigues. We’re loyal, even though it appears to be somewhat out of fashion. And we’re cool with that.

Alchemy’s Transformation of Luka Mineral Cosmetics is Complete!

Luka Mineral Cosmetics' new brand imprint

Alchemy Communications Group started working with Luka Mineral Cosmetics earlier this year to create a new brand identity, which includes packaging,  labeling, product names, and other facets of  Katherine MacDonald’s professional makeup line, which she developed over three years until she found the right combination of mineral-based cosmetics with the textures and coverage needed for a makeup artist’s line, and also specifically formulated for post-treatment and post-operative skin.

Once the team decided on a logo, it was time for Alchemy to photograph all these new packages and create an e-commerce website that clearly conveyed Luka’s brand identity, and offered Katherine’s  dozens of products for sale to her regular seasonal clients here in the Palm Beaches who want to stock up back at home, plus new customers who will be finding the site through targeting marketing and social media campaigns.

Reflecting Katherine’s playful personality and love of color, the line eschews the usual pro-line matte black packaging for brushed aluminum and a magenta logo. This logo will carry throughout all of Luka’s identity, from media kits, wholesale packages, business cards, stationary, collateral materials and, of course, the website. The website opens with a Java advertising campaign, optimized so it can be seen on PDAs and Smartphones, and not just the web. 

Luka's new e-commerce website

In the upcoming weeks, we will be coordinating a still photo and video shoot of Katherine, with how-to segments and other clips that will be added to the website, and be used as further social media campaigning.

Another view of the Luka website and the Java ad campaign on the home page.

In the fall, Alchemy and Luka will begin ramping up for a PR campaign that will target beauty bloggers, as well as the traditional glossy fashion magazines. There will also be a debut of a special treatment line, known as Luka Rx.