If you haven’t heard of Home Cookin’ Hunter – where have you been?? Joel Lickliter is the personality behind the new movement and Stacy, his wife, is the camera. The two of them make a great team – and even better – they make great videos on YouTube for all to enjoy. (Check out their videos!)
When Joel and Stacy approached me about Home Cookin’ Hunter’s branding and image – I was delighted! I’m an avid supporter of anything organic and knowing where your food comes from – so to be a part of this movement in a marketing capacity was totally intriguing.
Joel and Stacy already had a picture in their mind. But all our communication was on Facebook Messaging. They sent me the following hand-drawn image to work from and definitely wanted something “manly” – Joel’s words, not mine.
They wanted to build a complete branding structure using that hand-drawn image – a deer skull coming out of a skillet with a knife and fork crossing behind it – all in “hunter orange”. Fitting, isn’t it?
After scratching a couple versions together and going through a few edits, we established his color palette pretty fast. If you haven’t used Colour Lovers before – it comes in quite handy when clients have an idea of a color in there head and want to build complimenting colors around it. A quick search there led us directly to the perfect “Hunter’s Orange” that Joel was picturing and we were able to find a complimentary gray.
After a few renditions of “Try it this way” and “How about if we did it like this” – our Facebook conversations came to an end. We finally had it!
Sometimes Facebook gets it right! Thanks to Facebook and the genius behind social media, I was introduced to Olive Egg Farm simply because they were located around the corner from my house.
If you’ve ever scrolled through your Facebook news feed, you’ll see everything that is going on around you – company and business pages you follow, friends’ updates…and every once in a while Facebook throws in a suggestion of a page that you may be interested in. That’s where the genius of social media stuns me sometimes. I’m not sure what I have searched on recently that would have Facebook thinking that I’d be interested in an olive egg farm – but all I can say is that Facebook is a genius!
I checked out their Facebook page and instantly fell in love. I actually shared their page with a neighbor of mine that has her own chickens. I figured we all could get together one day to talk about farming (since my husband wants to start becoming move sustainable on our small acreage).
Then I scrolled down…and…well…I emailed her immediately. I wasn’t sure if she had just launched her site and I simply got to it too soon – because there were tons of sample text in widgets on the side bar. Every page was a post page – including her home page. (This means anyone could leave a comment and that comment could be seen by all her other visitors…so having this feature as a part of a homepage seemed odd to me.)
I found out that she was attempting WordPress, however, understanding the ins and outs wasn’t her specialty. Of course it wasn’t – she focuses her day on her business – Olive Egg Farm! Why would she ever need to know WordPress – that’s MY job!
Even though she and I have never met in person – she trusted me. And I’m so glad and grateful she did. I fell in love with her philosophy – “Permaculture, Not Agriculture. [Their] philosophy underpins everything we do. It determines how and what we eat every day. It determines how our animals are treated and how we treat each other.”
Shannon and Olive Egg Farm went from tech-support-junkies to back to focusing on their business and driving toward success in a matter of days. Their Facebook page went from around 400 likes to close to 1,000 after the relaunch. And they have a waiting list of almost 50 customers for their Egg CSA, which is currently sold out. Like almost everyone, their focus is on their business…not on understanding the back end development of a website. That’s where Given Wings Design Studio enters…
So, what exactly did Given Wings Design Studio do for Olive Egg Farm?
Just about everything from rebranding of their logo design with a set color scheme, web design, content marketing and a bit of advice. I was very fortunate that Shannon already had copy – so simply inserting her copy into my page builds was super easy and made her website launch time next to nothing!
I redesigned their logo – chalkboard design with some olive green coloring.
I cleaned up the back end of their WordPress dashboard and loaded one of my favorite themes, Divi. This theme is one of the best themes I’ve used – fully responsive (able to use and view easily on mobile devices), clean and fully customize-able so that no two are alike.
Here are some before pictures of her old site.
Freshly Picked Vintage was started by Jennifer Latshaw in early 2013. Jennifer is a former teacher, turned “rehab addict” – so I really wanted to capture the essence of her journey in her new endeavor’s branding. Using the chalkboard as her “shtick” seemed to capture her essence quite well – and give her a neutral pallet to work from in the future. With the neutral dark chalkboard background, the white Freshly Picked Vintage logo really pops. Jennifer can now use her logo for anything, really, and dress up her displays with holiday, seasonal and any trending colors without clashing with her branding. It’s quite versatile.
When I started working on the design for her branding, she wanted to start small – a Facebook banner and icon, along with her Etsy shop’s banner. We wanted to make sure her two online presences had an identical design, look and feel…creating a consistent design at both locations so her customers made the connection between the two sites. (Too many times you see small businesses think they only need to update their most popular online presence…when, in fact, it’s so important to make sure your visitors get the same experience wherever you’re located online.)
We will be launching her website soon – www.freshlypickedvintage.com. Stay tuned for an update and be sure to “Like” Freshly Picked Vintage on Facebook and “Favorite” her on Etsy Shop.
About Freshly Picked Vintage
Freshly Picked Vintage, a start up company out of Rochester, NY, that handpicks vintage finds and turns them into a fresh new spin. Jennifer Latshaw, owner of Freshly Picked Vintage, has been rehabbing and repurposing vintage furniture and collectibles for as long as she can remember. After filling her own house with these treasures, she decided it was time to turn her passion into something bigger! She started Freshly Picked Vintage as a side project, helping her friends rehab old furniture to give them a more updated feel.
As Freshly Picked Vintage gained popularity in Rochester, Jen decided to launch her Etsy shop – showing her talents and displaying all her treasures.
Jennifer is a long-time friend of mine and we’ve worked together on rehabbing a couple different pieces of furniture. Her attention to detail is amazing – so obviously she asked me to help her with her branding.
When I worked for a large Fortune 500 company, I truly honed in my expertise with email marketing and newsletter templates. We kicked off utilizing internal newsletters for the IT department. When the word spread throughout the company that we could track read-rates, see what our employees were truly interested by watching what they clicked on and could custom our next message based on the popular items – departments across the company wanted their own newsletter template.
Between Naptimes is a blog site that was started by two cousins (more like sisters) – Rachael and Jessica – who take pride in being Stay-At-Home Moms…but wanted to showcase that it’s far from boring. This was their first endeavor together and this site was really to showcase all the projects they get done between their children’s nap times.
I started off designing the logo. The coloring – smokey purple – was seen to be relaxing and inviting…and a perfect contrast to the gold stars. The baby snuggled up on top of the “Naptime” is using the E’s as the baby blanket.
While the branding and logo have been finalized – the two cousins have yet to launch their website. Just as the site was ready to launch, Jessica had her second child. Both Rachael and Jessica are waiting now until after Rachael’s third child is born and they’re both ready to roll with the official website launch.
Stay tuned for the launch of the Between Naptimes website launch and be sure to “Like” Between Naptimes on Facebook!
