Piction Media is pretty new. We’re nearly two years old. However, Piction is actually the re-branded, re-organized, re-thought-out version of us. Before Piction there was KDimension. So technically, we’ve been going for over a decade. In fact, we received a pen in the post today (a marketing stunt from someone selling pens), with a ten-year anniversary rosset on it. Ta da! Being self-employed for a decade; we must be doing something right.

We’re not exactly a design company, although we do get involved in design. We’re not exactly a marketing company, although we do get involved in branding, communications and social media. What we are is a visual media company. We supply high-end visuals and communication visuals to branding, design and marketing departments, agencies, and interpretation and education departments. We’re a blend of artistry and cutting edge software application; combining good old illustration training with Cinema 4D, Strata and of course the full Adobe suite. Producers, Art Directors and Senior Designers bring us on-board to add the wow factor for pitches, work underway, assets (if you speak the lingo) and final artwork and content. This means we have a lot of tight deadlines and jobs are a bit like buses – they all arrive at once. Fortunately, over ten years we’ve got used to this, along with all the confidentiality agreements.  Of course the latter makes the blog a bit of a challenge because there’s so much stuff that we can’t tell you… or, as they say in the movies, we would have to kill you.

So here are a few things that we can tell you: Since transmogrifying into Piction Media we have worked on both the SUSO and Relentless campaigns and the recent GFT cross-media campaign, providing 3D visuals and marketing images. A lovely bit of character development for English Squash and Racket came our way, as did more cover work for Global Witness magazine. We added new clients to our books including: Cai & Kyn, ECHO Brand Design, Anthem Worldwide, Designforce, March design, House and The Wash to name but a few. Wild about Words gathered our passions together (illustration, design and typography that is!) and was a truly inspiring undertaking for Dominique Vari. Similarly, our digital arts consultation brought us into contact with Royal Academy artist Natalie Turner. Regular clients from our former life as KDimension continued to keep us busy too, especially Armadillo Medical Group, Biles Inc., Meridian Trust, Turner Duckworth, and Studio AE. We also managed to squeeze in quite a bit of micro-branding under our knew ‘Creative Profile’ wing. Clients included Footprint Scenery – set makers for Spooks among other successful TV dramas, along with various independent photographers, artists and designer-makers. Currently we’re working with the hip and happening: Brand Opus, Purple Creative, We Are Him + Her, Darkhorse and Lother Böhm.

Occasionally people even remember to include us in their D&AD entries and we’ve got a growing wall of pencil certificates to make us feel special. Anyway, there’s a nice little cross-section of our creations in our folio and you can find our full client list on our website. So click away!

We’ve moved! You can now find us recycling until our hearts are content in MediaCityUK‘s very eco complex for growing creatives, The Greenhouse. We’re just a couple of doors down the corridor from Steve Coogan’s Poor Cow Productions and around the corner from the BBC (and a rather fabulous Booths that has a hot pie counter – yum). Needless to say we are feeling a little star struck.

PRESS RELEASE

What better way to launch into New Year than with a new brand campaign for our client Footprint Scenery. See our earlier blog post: ‘Building worlds within worlds’.

Footprint’s new visual identity really comes together in the thinking behind the design of their new website. Our goal was to find a clean and simple solution but yet project a look and feel that captured the impact of the magnificent sets and scenery that Footprint is so famous for in the the TV, film and exhibition market.

Our brief was to create a website with a strong visual identity, almost cinematic in its communication of the wow factor created everyday by Footprint’s creations. After experimenting with various web format, we all agreed that a Flash website was the route that would best deliver a feeling of dynamism and depth. The website is fully blog integrated and with scaleable but discrete SEO content.

Danny and Agnes picked the logo because they wanted to move away from an industrial look that some competitors favor. Instead they wanted a softer looking logo that emphasizes their skills in collaboration, interpretation and creativity. Overall, a more media-friendly feel was required.

Ali Kay, 2011

One of our favorite collaborators is ‘Design and Purpose‘ Art Director, Alison Eddy. She brings very varied projects to our studio, including some really interesting magazine cover work. These visuals from Global Witness are examples of how image manipulation can transform some simple key photography into an impactive front cover visual message. NGOs often need to react quickly to events but face the obstacle of sourcing appropriate images and illustrations at short notice. Working together, combining our illustration and image manipulation skills with Alison’s art direction, we have been able to deliver editorially-driven images to tight deadlines, without compromising on either the quality of the visual or best-fit between visual and article.

Alison Eddy, Art Director, Design and Purpose:

“Sometimes a cover image, especially when it’s to head up a serious issue, needs to have a fairly literal visual solution. However, as any designer will know, photo libraries dealing with business or political issues, often have the ‘whiff of cheesy’ about them!

If the budget doesn’t stretch to a shoot, then using a retoucher can solve this issue. Knowing Piction Media is there allows me to imagine how images could be transformed.”

“So it becomes a bit like art directing a shoot, but with Matt behind a computer rather than a photographer behind a camera.

Sometimes retouched images can become over produced and loose a certain freshness. With a retoucher like Matt, who knows how to draw, it retains an authentic quality, even when the images aren’t scaled realistically.”

“Working together in this way means we can merge, rescale, remove or add sections to these found images, giving a more contemporary feel, whilst keeping the message strong and unmistakable”.

Ali Kay, 2010

In case you missed it on our Facebook page, we’ve recently started supporting The Watermark by creating feature blog posts about its fabulous creative sector business residents.

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Reproduced from: http://thewatermark.co.uk/2010/10/2d-tales-chog-zoo-animation/

Take 2D: Chog Zoo Animation

Sitting alongside Vivienne Westwood and hanging out on Oscar-winner Gabriel Byrne’s sofa – It’s a glamorous life for the silk cushions designed by The Watermark’s Judy Holme. Featured in The Sunday Times Style magazine, Woman & Home, She, Glamour, the press inclusions list goes on and on.

Judy’s Graffiti range has basked in telly-glory on 60-Minute Makeover and her fabulous Mannequin collection has been taking on a life of its own, featuring in the essential guide to all things hip Retro to Go and interior design blog Dotmaison. Harking back to the glamour of the 1920s, these 100% silk cushions feature the distinctive print of a model dressed in the high society fashion of the period. This design has so hit the interiors mood-of-the-moment that Judy has now extended the range to incorporate lampshades, wall art and table decoration, creating that stylist’s delight – a connected interior.

Everything available at Judy Holme Ltd is produced in the UK. Judy experiments with new techniques and technology to superb effect but doesn’t compromise on ethics. Her digitally printed wallpaper, Wood Block features a random selection of letters made from traditional wooden typesetter’s blocks. Like Mannequin, this innovative design hasn’t escaped the media lens and has even been featured on the design and decoration blog of the moment Domestic Sluttery in its popular Wallpaper Wednesday feature.

Judy possesses that precious combination of creativity, innovation and business sense. Understandably, we’re proud to claim her as one of our own. Joining The Watermark back in 2001 with her partner at One Box Productions, she brought the first audio-visual and creative sector business through our newly renovated doors. Attracted to “the creative vibe that you just don’t get in other office environments”, they’re still here and going strong.

You’ll have gathered by now that Judy is the epitome of multi-talented but then she is a graduate in multi disciplinary design and can turn her hand to photography, graphics and 3D design as easily as she can textiles. After surviving a brief stint as a darkroom assistant, she’s built an impressive 25-year-career portfolio in audio-visual design and for the last seven years this has been accompanied by her interior design studio Judy Holme Ltd.

Inspired in her design by the work of Magnum and innovations in typography, Judy also draws her inspiration from philosophy, poetry and calligraphy. We asked her about her favorite piece of work (always a tricky one for designer-makers):

“My ‘Eyes’ design on silk cushions and wallpaper because of the time invested in the artwork. I love the quirky appeal of eyes looking out at you…From a distance the eyes are not clearly discernable and so the effect looks like it could be feathers or squiggles which adds to the surprise and intrigue when you get closer.”

An exhibition of Judy’s work opens next month (October 26, 2010 to January 8, 2011) at Lancaster’s Gallery 23.

This is a Creative Profile by Piction Media

www.judyholme.com

judy@judyholme.com

These Alice-inspired images were created for Armadillo Medical Communications to illustrate an evolutionary hypothesis known as ’The Red Queen Effect’ Its name is of course inspired by the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. The hypothesis refers to the constant evolutionary arms-race between competing species.

Penny MacDuff, Director of Armadillo:

“I have no doubt that Matt’s illustrations of concept helped us to marry a complex theory with clinical data as well as creating an unforgettable series of images that people still use and refer to.

Our client was looking for a novel and engaging way to present scientific and clinical data to an international medical professional audience and we chose this concept of constant evolution and the race for a medical education lecture series: The battle between our immune system and treatments versus the virus.

We engaged our faculty to develop case histories to depict this battle, each to represent a character from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and asked Matt to capture their features and characteristics in developing caricatures to illustrate the lectures.

The bespoke illustrations were eye catching and created a lot of interest and conversation – yet they were relevant, well executed and therefore successful and acceptable for the medical arena. We needed a careful balance between visually impact and conceptual integrity – essentially not dumbing down because it’s an intellectually demanding audience. The lecture series is still referred to by those that attended as innovative, eye-catching and educational.

Matt captured the brief and give us back exactly what we wanted.”

by Ali Kay, 2010

Personal branding has never been more important for independent creatives and niche small businesses. You know that you need to have an on-line presence but the virtual marketplace is a busy one, so how do you avoid being crowded out? How do you communicate your originality before someone else claims it as their own? How do you take some control over the way people perceive your work, product or service, on-line and off? The answer is that you need to address your personal or micro-brand and communicate your professional or business philosophy. I know! This sounds awfully egotistical but it isn’t really. It’s communicating about yourself in words and pictures. It’s giving people an insight into what you do, how well you do it and why your creativity, innovation and inspiration is worth buying into. It’s not the whole you. It’s part of you – the bit that you stick above the business parapet.

Press pause for a minute and reflect on how you make your own purchasing decisions. Other people are going through that very same process when they are assessing whether your art, product, process or service will meet their need. At its heart, your personal or micro-business brand is a ‘show and tell’ of how you solve a problem other people may have and how you can make their life or business better. What is your marketplace profile? Do you have one? Is it consistent? Does it work?

Why is Piction Media suddenly flinging itself into this ball pool? It isn’t. We’ve been helping people promote themselves for a long time. Over the years, friends and clients who were keen to promote their creative ventures kept asking for our help to get their personal and business profile out there. Of course the big branding agencies were out of their financial reach but they knew we already worked in branding, supporting the leading agencies with their global brand campaigns.

Our micro-branding service has grown by word-of-mouth because we create visual and verbal identities with artistic and philosophical integrity. All too often, we’ve picked up the pieces when people have come to us with very un-bespoke, bog standard template web sites – impossible to manage themselves and aesthetically not in keeping with their identity as a professional creative. We’ve helped creatives write about themselves for their on-line presence, which is a difficult hurdle for anyone. We’ve rescued them from truly awful logos and supported people to leap the writing-hurdle of press releases and biographies for galleries and exhibitions. Recently someone whispered: “Is this side or your work a secret on purpose?” It isn’t. It’s just that what originally started as favours has taken on a life of its own as the the need for people to manage their online identity has grown. It’s part of what we do everyday now and so we’re giving it a name. So, prick up your ears chaps and chapesses because it’s official – Creative Profile is a branding service for creative individuals and small businesses. It’s very bespoke, very friendly and very ‘right now’. But you know that already or you wouldn’t be reading this. I’ll leave you with the following questions to mull over your tea-break:

Who are you? What do you do?

Who is your audience?

What do they know about you?

Ali Kay, 2010