Grow Creative

Why redesign your label?

Amy — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:20:00 +0000

As much as we would like to believe that the creating a high quality wine will be enough for consumers to purchase wine… many studies show consumers still make their decisions in the aisles by just looking at the label. Psychology plays a major role in how we interpret what we taste as well. When you are dealing with the average consumer, how they perceive quality is based on price, design, scores and descriptions.
The label can only entice a consumer once. If the wine isn’t good- there will be no repeat purchase, so the label needs to reflect the quality of what is inside the bottle. So many changes are happening with bottle weights and closures because of environmental and quality control, that the older standards of what an expensive wine should feel like or look like are being challenged. After spending so much time, effort and money on creating and promoting your wine, make sure your label is not holding your wine back.

Refugee Children in the spotlight

Amy — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:59:53 +0000

We were so proud to have a small part in helping this great organization spread the news. Lutheran Community Services Refugee and Immigrant Children’s Services came to us through my sister’s referral initially needing only a brochure. Once they received their colorful new flier, they needed their website for the Refugee and Immigrant Children’s Program to match the new look and provide helpful information for potential foster families. Luckily they had this all in place before receiving this publicity!

They just got a great news segment on Seattle News.

You may never have considered this option, but after hearing from my sister who recruits foster families, about the amazing positive difference adding a refugee child to your family can make for both the child and the family, I can tell you it is a wonderful program. Check it out!

Riesling is on the rise!

Amy — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:25:14 +0000

We just finished updating Pacific Rim’s website. Their amazing marketing director, Shawn Bavaresco had a master plan in mind to promote all things Riesling and enlisted us to help bring his vision to life. Pacific Rim is launching into social media by creating their own community on the web- “CrushPad”. There will be promotions, dialogs through Facebook and Twitter, educational information- including YouTube videos, it is bursting with content about why Riesling Rules.

We designed Facebook with multiple tabs to integrate completely with their website and latest promotion: the Riesling Rules Calendar Cube. We created this 6-sided piece exclusively for their new Facebook fans to keep on your desk all year long. It looks great and is fun, and we think it was successful in it’s mission. Since launching the Facebook page with the calendar cube promotion, Pacific Rim gained 10,000 fans within a week. There are currently 13,500 fans as word continues to spread.

Pacific Rim is keeping the momentum going with funny, interesting tweets on their new Twitter page, and a lot if interaction on the Facebook pages. It is so exciting to see their passion create so much excitement. They make great, affordable wines and are amazing clients. I plan to expound more on that in a future post. Check out their new look and get a cube!

Anam Cara Cellars new look

Amy — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:08:07 +0000

Sheila Nicholas leads a busy life. In addition to being the PR wine queen in Oregon with her company Nicholas Communications, Sheila and her husband Nick own Anam Cara Cellars, creating wonderful Estate wines from the Chehalem Mountains. In addition to these full-time jobs, Sheila is very involved with many boards and organizations dedicated to promoting and helping the local wine industry, including International Pinot Noir Celebration, Oregon Wine Board, Classic Wines Auction, and more.

Sheila hired us to update and refresh her website and add in an e-commerce solution. Keeping with the look of the wine labels and Andrea Johnson’s beautiful photography, we were able to create a fresh new look more in keeping with the Nicholas’ fine wines.

We’re in a stew!

Amy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:48:21 +0000

What a great surprise to see our GROW stationery used as an example in The Designer’s Graphic Stew. Published by Rockport, this is an industry book for graphic designers by Timothy Samara. It shows examples of different techniques and “visual ingredients”. We are happy to contribute!

Pacific Rim Wines is so hot…

Amy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:58:23 +0000

Wine Business Monthly awards Pacific Rim #1 Hot Brand of 2009! We are very excited about this very well-deserved honor for our client. Pacific Rim is an innovator all the way from their approach to wine making through the way they market themselves. In the past two years we have enjoyed an extraordinary collaboration with them over the past two years as their design and web agency. We love their spirit and they are a pleasure to work with. There are many exciting projects in the works which will be unveiled soon!

Congratulations! It’s nice to see the hard work paying off.

Welcome to the New Year!

Amy — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:36:36 +0000

Seriously, what is this decade called? Starting with the 20s it is fairly obvious, but the aughts and the 10’s? We hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holiday with friends and family. It is exciting to start a new year, and a new decade (if you view the calendar that way). 2009 had a lot of turmoil for many businesses and families, and a new year sounds very appealing and promising right now!

At GROW, we have a lot of big plans and goals for the year which we are excited about. Some changes that already have taken place in the office are having Jennie Thede share our space. Jennie owns Nimble Copy and has partnered with us in the past on website content. It is so great to have her talent and skills in instructional design and writing right at our fingertips! We hope you will come by and meet her.

We appreciate each and every one of our clients so much. Thank you for working with us in 2009, and we look forward to helping make 2010 a successful year for you!

Amy and Jonathan

Making a Statement

Amy — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:47:47 +0000

We were very excited to work with Chehalem, a long-standing client, to create a design for their most premium pinot noir. The wine is only sold directly, has received a 93 from Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar and has been featured as one of Oregon’s Top 50 wines in Portland Monthly. Amazingly enough, Chehalem will also donate $27 (approximately 10%) to charity for each 3-pack purchased of this glorious Pinot Noir. This year, the Oregon Food Bank will be the beneficiary.

For this design, we wanted a sleek, minimal sophisticated design so that the wine is the “statement”. After reviewing ways to minimize the paper’s visibility, we worked with Crush Creative Packaging to create a silkscreen label. We were able to actually see a bottle sample before having them produced which was very helpful to make sure the look reflected the premium wine, and for small quantities, it really was a great solution.

Chehalem Statement Pinot Noir

Introducing Canopy Marketing Network

Amy — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:38:07 +0000

We have joined forces with some of the very best local marketing professionals serving the wine industry. Many of these we have partnered with on label, PR and photography needs in the past. Each of us brings a specific skill set to the group and all of us are business owners. This network allows us to collaborate on larger projects and being diverse knowledge to our clients through one key contact. Our specialization in the wine industry differentiates us from other agencies, and the way we are organized allows us to form teams as needed- large or small. Take a look!

Making the most of an expert

Amy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:03:39 +0000

We have had a variety of experiences with clients in the last 8 years- not to mention the years before that within other agencies. Things are very clear to me now as far as the best relationships and how projects can be most successful. We are working on a remodel project now with a professional where we are the clients. I am shocked (and somewhat amused) to find myself falling into some of my own pitfalls. I am catching myself doing these same things, and learning along the way.

Here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Know who you are. It is essential that you have a business plan or all the information that is needed to create the materials for your brand. If you haven’t laid the foundation, it will harder to build anything around it.

2. Don’t be afraid to tell us what you like, want, your budget. Some people want it to be a magic curtain where we create an amazing solution for them without their input. Some want to tell us exactly what they want, some are afraid that if they tell us too much about what they want, we won’t be creative with the solution. We need to know a lot of information about your target market, your goals, your competition and your general aesthetics to then create the original solution for you. Instead of telling us exactly what you want it to look like, we’ll ask for information that helps us determine your best solution. We work as a partner with you, but also the expert in what we do.

3. The best projects have a strong need and a firm deadline. That is not to say things don’t shift due to external factors, but we have found that projects keep on track when they have momentum. Timely responses on both sides is key.

4. Outsource anything that is not an expertise. One of the hardest things to do is your own self promotion. Maybe it is being too close, or just the pressure. There are many websites that just need some writing or photography that the person in-house wanted to handle but just does not have time on top of their workload. Also, the quality of work you get from professionals is worth it. If you are investing in redoing your website or brochure, the additional cost of photography or writing is money well spent.

5. Let us guide you through the process. For example, unless you have created 100 identities, we probably know the best method for working through the project. No matter how much you want to jump ahead and see a color logo designed with the business card, trust us that the logo needs to start in black and white.

6. Have just one or two core decision makers. Too many cooks in the kitchen is never a good thing. Make sure that anyone who is critical to the decision is involved early enough in the process.

7. Finally, once you receive your style guidelines or brand spanking new website, please keep all that hard work and investment intact by adhering to it religiously. Be careful of corrupting your brand with new fonts, colors or adding things to your website in an unorthodox way.

That’s it. And if you recognize yourself in any of these, rest assured, I am probably not even thinking about your project- these are quite common issues.