When passion meets work, work becomes a hobby!

Ever since I was a young child I loved creating things.

Drawing pads, colouring pencils, glue and scissors were my best friends. I was one of those kids that was never bored and always felt like there weren’t enough hours in a day to do everything that I wanted to do and bring all my crazy ideas to life.

I was keeping myself occupied making cardboard furniture for Barbie dolls, big cardboard houses, cars and trains for me and all the kids living in the apartment blocks nearby. I even made sure that each of them had a name and badge like real cars did, except they were all made up by me. When I think of it now, they were very similar to the cardboard colouring houses that a lot of supermarkets were selling lately to keep children busy during the lockdown. If there was such a thing as Covid back then I would have made a fortune on them!

When I was 10 I started making exercise books for young children. They included colouring pages, crosswords, handwriting exercises and anything else I could think of. I used to “design” and draw every single page of the book by hand and get it photocopied so that I could give a copy to all my neighbours with young kids.

When I got older I got more into drawing, painting and writing. I have a collection of short stories and poems that I wrote as a teenager. My creativity had no limits and I had this never-ending urge to express it in every possible way.

My brain never takes a break and is always “on the go”, constantly coming up with new ideas. I wish my body didn’t need any rest so that I could work on them and bring them to life as soon as the light bulb lights up in my head. It’s so frustrating when you want to do so many things and your body refuses to cooperate!

When I was finishing secondary school and needed to pick a career path, I had no doubt about what to choose. I picked the Visual Communications course in Cork Institute of Technology and loved every single minute of it and when I say every single minute I really mean it… that also includes all the sleepless nights that I spent working on college projects in order to meet the deadlines. Nothing beats the feeling I got the following day when I was treating myself to a delicious hot chocolate, minutes after handing in the project that I worked on until 5am that morning! It felt good because I knew I put all my heart into it and the satisfaction I got out of it was stronger than the tiredness. 

I always knew that whatever I end up doing in life, it will have to be something creative, and so, the exercise books that I used to make as a child turned into brochures, annual reports and all kind of booklets. The cardboard cars turned into innovative signage solutions and the made up car badges’ turned into powerful and professional brands that serve clients for years. I turned my life-long passion into a way of living and the fact that it brings me money is like winning a lottery. 

I love bringing clients’ ideas to life and seeing their excitement when what I’m giving them is exactly what they needed and more.

Graphic design is a combination of art, creative thinking, problem solving and a little bit of mind reading!

As a designer you really have to tune into the client’s thoughts to figure out what they’re looking for, and a lot of the time they don’t even know what they’re looking for until you show it to them! Getting it right the first time is the best feeling ever and to get it right the first time you have to truly love and enjoy what you do. If you put your heart into something you can never fail.

Make sure that whatever you do in life, it sparks your soul and makes you feel alive.

#WinHappy

Martyna

Martyna Potocka is a Senior Graphic Designer with Fuzion Communications who provide a full range of creative services to clients from offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland,

An Innocent Rebrand?

Innocent’s social media team is back at it again, with their genius PR stunts.

After their ‘Pancake Tuesday‘ craze encouraging the public to use their lemon and lime sparkling drink rather than lemon on their pancakes, Innocent have hit us with a branding stunt. In terms of social media engagement and key messaging innocent hits the nail on the head with this stunt.

Posting on their social media platforms, the juice brand announced new shiny labels for their smoothies, claiming the drinks are now boosted with even more vitamins than before. What looked like packaging created from WordArt, followers were left rather confused about their new, unoriginal designs.

As the online community often does, individuals quickly became critical of the new packaging, pointing out obvious errors.

Between the misuse of upper and lower case letters and simple spelling mistakes, not to mention the use of the comic sans font, the new labels were a complete disaster.

However, Innocent used the increased engagement to their advantage. Responding to one commenter ‘We wanted a fun font with a lot of energy. It might not be for everyone, but we think it really packs a punch, like the extra vitamins in our drinks.’ They were promoting their key messaging in their replies.

As more opinions flowed in, Innocent continued to announce more rebrands and new labels, exaggerating the comments they had received. When one individual said there weren’t enough pictures on the labels, Innocent came back with packaging with only pictures. Several joked that there wasn’t enough comic sans so Innocent went full throttle with the font and so on.

Innocent re-branded a total of 12 times within 24 hours, with each rebrand as ridiculous as the next. 

While Innocent’s designs continued to receive a bashing, followers were delighted their opinions were being considered. The social media team continued to respond to their audience and made fun of the rebrand in the process mentioning over and over that their smoothies contained more vitamins, again reiterating their key messaging.

The stunt was completely genius! 

Some LinkedIn followers also copped on to their clever strategy “Looking at their Twitter, the Innocent team are responding to the hate with even more terrible designs, generating even more engagement. They know people love a moan and are quick to share their dislike so well played, as always innocent drinks! Great way to showcase the brand and flavours and get people talking!”

Both rebranding and PR stunts can be risky business and are often open to backlash however, Innocent executed this stunt perfectly using the wit and satire, they are typically known for as well as running a clever experiment that showed them how people felt about their brand!

Niamh 

Niamh Lawlor is an Account Executive with Fuzion Communications, a full service PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork.

Fuzion Design and The Importance of a Great Soundtrack

A classic tune may be something most of us can agree on but as much as we have in common, we all have different tastes and different ways of selecting our music.

I spent years building up an extensive music library and had a well-honed recommendation algorithm through Apple, to feed me exactly the tunes I like. I had always had an aversion to radio – partly the advertising, partly an avoidance of what was “popular”.

So, when I heard I was going to be part of the Fuzion Graphic Design team I only had one worry. This wasn’t to do with any aspect of the role, as I was over the moon with that, it was because I knew the Fuzion design department work was accompanied by the dubious melody of a radio.

I couldn’t imagine how anyone could have that racket on and get any work done, because in my book good music leads to great focus as every designer knows, so the opposite must also be true!

I needn’t have worried!!

Very shortly into my first week, I discovered the advantages of a carefully curated up-to-date playlist.

BBC 6 Music is the channel of choice, the chatter is smart, the music is excellent and the ads non-existent.

Within weeks my own library, which was stagnating around 1998, was refreshed with The Knife, Pigs (x7), Oh Sees, Mattiel, The Comet is Coming and the slightly “pretendy” but brilliantly loud Dublin band, Fontaines DC (Coley knows all the words!!).

All of this new music led to some greatly refreshed recommendations too.

It pays to have an open mind and to remember that a recommendation algorithm is only as good as the information you feed it. Read Hannah Fry’s excellent Hello World for more on that.

Sure, we still go on archaeological digs through Greg’s spare circa-2004 iPod from time to time, but when we strike gold there, it takes hours off the day. A good soundtrack allows us to focus on moving from job to job, designing everything from visual identities to web sites, from large social media campaigns to exhibition materials.

With a good soundtrack we can improve our productivity, better our mood and measure our day on the off-beat, to really #WinHappy.

..I get extra brownie points for typing that!!

Mark

Mark Kenny is part of the Graphic Design Department in Fuzion Communications, who have offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

The Future!

I spent this weekend at The Future Conference in Dublin, with about 2000 of my peers, and a few of my heroes.

Like most design conferences, it was set on a range of stages, each with a difference agenda and mechanic, ranging from Q&A style platforms, individual presentations, staged interviews and a pop-up artist’s studio.

And like many design and creative conferences, there was a stellar line up (more about this in a bit) crammed into a packed schedule. Unlike any conference that I’ve been to, this one had an agenda, where the speakers were to talk about “The Future”, and what it meant to them, to our industry and our work, which largely meant that rather than the standard portfolio review, we got to have deeper insights into where things are going in the design world. 

Usually I come away from these events with a sense of both love and hate – a love for the work I’ve seen and a hate for my own work, but with a resolve to do more, work harder and be a better designer, and The Future was no different – but this time, as I watched the speakers talk about our collective futures, I found myself looking back and examining why I had chosen design as a career in the first place. 

The Why?

There are various routes into design – many of us start out with either a flair for art, or an unhealthy obsession with pens, pencils and paper.

Mine was no different, I remember one particular art set I got in 1978 and the hours obsessing over colouring in, and I remember spending hours drawing band logos on my school bags. And looking back on it, it was really quite clear that there was only one industry that I was going to end up in!

And (long story short!) this has brought me full circle to thinking that I am so unbelievably fortunate to be part of this creative industry, one that keeps me awake at night trying to figure out solutions to projects, one that gets me talking about crazy sounding intangibles about why we chose fonts and colours, one that makes me passionate about other people’s businesses, sometimes in an almost obsessive manner, but one that rewards me, because as one speaker said “When I do my job well, my clients can do theirs better”.  

The Future was brilliantly illuminated with speakers such as international superstars Sagmeister (of Sagmeister & Walsh), Paula Scher (as seen on Netflix’s Abstract series, a must see!) and Steve Espo, and the incredible homegrown talent such as Brian and Paul from Detail, designers and educators Lara Hanlon, Bob Grey and David Smith who collectively showed us that design is a huge range of things: it is a partnership, solution building, a shared collective experience. It is informative, it can be beautiful, and it is a vehicle for ideas, profit, emotions and humanity.  

If you want me to tell more about some of the things I saw, or if you want to know how I can apply my learnings to your project, just get in touch.

The future is very, very bright!

Jonathan

Jonathan Leahy Maharaj leads the Graphic Design Department in Fuzion with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland 

‘Great Taste’ and all the other things that flavour what we eat or drink

The Great Taste awards, described as the ‘Oscars’ of the food world are organised by the Guild of Fine Food.

They are the acknowledged benchmark for fine food and drink, and when a consumer sees the Great Taste logo on an item it is a sign that they will be buying a great tasting product.

This year (2017) Food and drink producers entered 12,300 products with 4,347 earning 3, 2 and 1 star ratings of which 444 originated from Ireland.

Overall just 165 products earned a 3 Star rating and 1,011 a 2 star rating with Irish products well represented in both of these categories.

The Golden Forks (the big winners) will be announced at a celebration dinner at the International Park Lane Hotel, London on the 4 September.

Great Taste, values taste above all else, with no regard for branding or packaging. Whether it is gin, biscuits, sausages or coffee being judged, all products are removed from their packaging, wrapper, jar, box or bottle before being tasted. Furthermore the judges have no idea the price that these products normally retail at.

It’s all about the taste!

The judges then savour, confer and re-taste to decide which products are worthy of a 1, 2, or 3 star award.

As you can imagine the judging panel is very illustrious and this year it included; chef, food writer and author, Gill Meller, MasterChef judge and restaurant critic, Charles Campion, author and Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen chef, Zoe Adjonyoh, baker, Tom Herbert, and food writer and baking columnist, Martha Collison, as well as food buyers from Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges, and Harvey Nichols.

These esteemed palates have together tasted and re-judged the 3-star winners and will finally agree on the 2017 Top 50 Foods, which will be announced in August, with the Golden Fork Trophy winners and the Great Taste 2017 Supreme Champion unveiled on the 4th September.

Just Taste!

Judging the food and drink products on their taste seems very fair and as you would expect – the packaging and branding is removed so that the judges are able to experience the products in their pure, true state, without any interference or bias.

When do we ever, truly taste anything?

The minute that award winning cake goes into a wrapper, it changes the taste for the consumer.

• Once we see the packaging, the colours, the type of paper and the visuals, it changes the taste.
• Once we see the brand name, it changes the taste.
• Once we read where the product is made and we see the ingredients, it changes the taste.
• Once the product is placed in a retail outlet, it changes the taste.
• Once we see where it is placed in the store, it changes the taste.
• Once we see some POS and the product displayed on a promotional stand, it changes the taste.
• Once a price is put on the product, it changes the taste.
• When the product is on special offer, it changes the taste.
• When a well dressed sampling person invites you to taste a thumbnail of the product, it changes the taste.
• When we see that the brand is endorsed by a well known personality, it changes the taste.
• When we see adverts for the product in a newspaper, it changes the taste.
• When we see adverts for the product in a glossy magazine, it changes the taste
• When a respected food journalist tells you the product is superb, it changes the taste.
• When we open the pack at home and we are in a great mood, it changes the taste.

Today’s consumer is influenced by everything they see, hear and taste. We are also influenced by a lifetime of experiences, good and bad, by our peers and we all carry with us a lorry load of biases.

With great products our job and the job of everyone else in the chain that brings the product to the consumer, is to make sure that person can actually ‘taste’ the product.

The Great Taste Awards and that big round logo that you will see on products will also help!

Congratulations to two of our clients, James Whelan Butchers and Simply Better by Dunnes Stores who scooped up Great Taste Awards, once again this year.

James Whelan Butchers are Great Taste 3-star winners with their Pork Lard, a natural and clear lard made from slowly rendered back fat, with a “fabulous long lasting and clean pork flavour” – it’s all about taste!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full-service agency that offers Marketing, PR and Branding  services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Don’t Think Outside the Box

It’s a term we hear all the time in business, and especially in the creative industry –  ‘”Think outside the box”’.

I see it in briefs, job descriptions and I hear it said in meetings.

I hate it!

The term has become meaningless, if everyone thinks outside the box then all you do is create a larger box!

The fact is there is no avoiding the box. Everything we do in business and in life has boundaries. There are laws on the street, marketing campaigns have a budget and designing a billboard always has size constraints.

The best way forward is to be creative within the box – Use the boundaries, work within the limitations and show people that you are still, more than capable of being different and creative.

I love the box!

Paul Wade

Paul Wade is part of the Graphic Design team at Fuzion Communications who have offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Creative block

 

Creative block– It, quite simply, sucks!

Not just for creative people, we all encounter that mental block in life at some stage. For some reason you do not know how to take the next step. Being a graphic designer, creative block is a demon I know all too well. Something you do for a living, that comes naturally to you all of a sudden is the most frustrating thing in the world.

Facing the issue over and over again throughout my career, I came up with little things to try and break the barrier. I cannot guarantee that any of these will work but what I can always recommend is get up, go out, take a short walk, grab a coffee – just take a few minutes!

Hopefully you will unblock the block..

Paul Wade

Paul Wade is part of the Graphic Design team at Fuzion Communications who have offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

Boojum Mania

Our client Boojum is due to open in Cork this week…and the excitement is Cork is well and truly building.

Late last month the Boojum team came to town and caused a major buzz as they travelled around in their branded cars filled with Boojum goodies.

While I knew Boojum was popular I didn’t quite realise how popular it was and how much people wanted it to open in Cork!

I can’t believe the buzz and anticipation in Cork City for the award winning Mexican restaurant to open its doors. With stores already in Belfast, Dublin and Galway, Cork will be the first new city for Boojum in 4 years, and their 3rd new store to open in the past 12 months.

Boojum addict t-shirts have become a highly coveted item belonging only to the most loyal of customers and Boojum Cork have commissioned special edition t-shirts especially for the Cork customers designed (and modelled!! See below) by our very own Paul Wade in our Fuzion design department.

Since they were revealed we have been inundated with calls from people looking to get their hands on one.

The t-shirts will be available exclusively from Boojum Cork so keep an eye on the Boojum Cork Facebook and Twitter accounts where they may just give away a t-short or two!

The new store, which will be located on 7 Winthrop Street, is approximately 2700 sq ft over 2 floors, seating 50 people.

Will one of these be you?!!

Edel Cox is a Senior PR Account Manager with Fuzion

Fuzion Communications are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm with offices in Dublin and Cork

Two heads are better than one!

A few years ago I worked in a company where I was the only designer.

This was nice in a few ways – I had creative control over everything and there is a lot of satisfaction to be had from fixing a problem by yourself. But on your own you can only take things so far – there is always someone who will think of something you won’t, know something you don’t and see things from a different perspective.

This is something that Fuzion does incredibly well. Whether it is design or PR – everyone attends a brainstorm.

Every idea passes through many minds, gets questioned, gets analysed, gets pushed. For an idea to be truly great, it needs to travel different avenues. Even if the idea comes back to where it started, it needs to make the journey. I genuinely believe some of the ideas the team have come up with could not have been created by a single person, but needed a group to help them develop and grow.

I am a big fan of brainstorming. Check out some ideas I use whether in a group or on my own:

Paul Wade

Paul Wade is part of the Graphic Design team at Fuzion Communications who have offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

Fuzion Fast!

Hello!

My name is Marianne and I’m the Intern. It’s been 4 months since I started at Fuzion and the time has literally flown. That’s a common theme in Fuzion. I call it Fuzion Fast!!

One dreary Thursday morning after trawling online looking for work in graphic design I decided to narrow my search. I typed in ‘marketing’ ‘PR’ ‘design’ and came across Fuzion. Their work spoke for itself but it was really the Fuzion blog that held my attention.

I spent an hour reading entries by everyone who worked there, the tone of each one was warm and friendly and personable. I fired off a quick email, asking if they had any intern vacancies with only the smallest hope that I would hear back. 3 whole minutes later I got an email, from the co-founder herself who informed me they had a vacancy and that the Creative Director would be in touch. 8 minutes after that email I had an interview date for the following Monday afternoon. The Friday after I had a job offer.

Fuzion Fast!

At this stage I should point out that although I’ve just graduated, I returned to college as a mature student. Before that I had a steady career in Human Resources and experienced the usual highs and lows that working life entails.

What I found working at Fuzion was a new experience. Perhaps it’s because it’s a smaller company than I’ve worked in before but that still doesn’t necessarily explain the sense of comradery that I’ve found there.

Everyone supports each other and most of all the client is King (or Queen!). There are times when pure alchemy is at play as we literally make miracles happen to meet the needs of our internal and external clients.

‘No’ is not part of the Fuzion vocabulary. Don’t get me wrong there are times when we’re under the pump and the vocabulary can get quite colourful but there’s always a workaround or alternative solution to any given problem.

I work with the graphic design team who are more affectionately known as the ‘Colouring In‘ team, which isn’t a fair assessment of what we do – we also outline!

No two days are the same and I’ve been lucky enough to work on a variety of projects that have actually seen the light of day and received some pretty positive feedback from my boss and from clients. Each day is a new learning experience and I’m even learning to overcome obstacles such as quick commands and working with a Mac (#PCGirl).

Not only am I learning about the design world but because of where I work there’s exposure in marketing, PR and social media activities that are current and exciting and ultimately about people which is what Fuzion is all about.

My favourite weekly event is our ‘brainstorm’ meeting that gives everyone an opportunity to throw ideas into the pot about upcoming projects. No idea is a stupid idea. Even the humblest idea gets a hearing and can start a whole other conversation that might trigger a fantastic marketing or branding concept.

The experience is the closest analogy to any episode of Mad Men except that it’s lead by a larger stronghold of women and far less alcohol than you’d think!

As I sign off I’m reminded that 2016 is coming to a close and our Christmas party is about to begin. Of course it’s a Fuzion party and our pre-dinner hi-jinks will begin after lunch with what I am told are some fun and games to get us into the festive spirit.

I’m not sure what to expect which is par for the course but I’m hoping it’s the one time of the year that’s not so Fuzion Fast.

Marianne

Marianne Tierney is part of the Graphic Design team at Fuzion who have offices in Dublin and Cork