Bolton Design Creates Compelling Referral Piece

Over Valentine's Day, I received this gorgeous marketing piece from my trusty graphic designers, Tracey and Nat, at Bolton Design. I was blown away!! So much so, that I immediately called Tracey to get the full story on the concept.

Happily, she was willing to share the whole story on the creation and execution of their "Refer Your Love" marketing campaign.

"For the past couple of years we had been toying around with ideas on how to ask our Clients for referrals in a creative and fun way. But, it wasn't until reading a case study about a Refer Your Love promo campaign in The Designer's Guide to Marketing and Pricing, by Peleg Top and Ilise Benun that our idea really gelled.

Since Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year fell on the same day this year we combined themes from both traditions into a unique seasonal promotion. We selected the color palette, hot pink and white. We found hot pink take out containers and filled them with custom fortune cookies. The raspberry colored and flavored fortune cookies perfectly matched the containers and were stuffed with custom messages we crafted ourselves:

Bolton Design hearts you.
The first step to a better brand is to imagine it.
You will find great success in creative endeavors.
The perfect solution is closer than you think.

Then, we took this simple promotion one step further. Each of our clients also received a custom card that said, "Refer Your Love" on the front. Inside we wrote a witty and gracious message that conveyed our appreciation for their business and our desire to work with more people like them. Enclosed was a custom designed reply card with a SASE. In keeping with the theme, it was stamped with Chinese New Year postage. To really highlight the hot pink of the packaging and envelopes, all pieces were placed in a plain white box and cushioned with white paper shred."

-Tracey Bolton, Bolton Design

Tracey and Nat are the branding experts I have trusted for the past five years - they have been the source of several marketing and design solutions for me, including www.sarahsloboda.com, and the identity for my photography brand. We'll be working together again in the very near future so stay tuned for what they do for me next!

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the cookies were delicious. Thanks, Tracey and Nat!

CD Design - for Sputnik Sweetheart

I was extremely lucky to be given the task of designing the new EP album art for Sputnik Sweetheart, with pretty much full creative freedom.

First, under the band's art direction, I took one of my shots from Vegas, and created the front of the album - the image was of the curtain in the hotel room at the Bellagio, with the pool dimly sparkling behind it. The curtain made a lot of sense because of the band's album, called "This Drama." (It refers to a snippet of song lyrics that go, "This drama is just like a cop show.")

Next, on the inside, I used the same curtain shot for the front of the actual disk. For the inside insert, I used a shot from the same Vegas series - this time a shot of the pool without the curtain in front of it. For visual continuity, I adjusted the color so that it was similar to that of the curtain shot.


For the back cover, I wanted to make a further play on the line, "This drama is just like a cop show." So I took the image of the curtain and burnt it onto a DVD. Then we took the DVD to our friends Caleb & Laura's very hip apartment, and played it on their flatscreen, and I photographed the shot on the screen in the living room with some fun props, including a globe, a can of Spam, and Caleb & Laura's cat, Fattie.

Finally, I used a font the band selected to add all of the album details to the layout. I had to give myself a refresher in Illustrator, but it was a lot of fun, and I am proud to say that I have officially conceptualized and designed a CD! (In addition to shooting the photos.)