HuntingTown

Ok, so first of all you should know this post is a bit of an odd one. Mainly because the tutorial isn't here, it's actually here.



Since I very first started Hunting Town my big inspiration has been a company in the US called Go Media. If I could emulate any company with Hunting Town it would be these guys, they absolutely have the direction and the work ethic that I want for my business, and as anyone who has worked with me will tell you, I'm am constantly looking to them for inspiration. Whether it's how to best lay out my portfolio, how to interact on my Facebook page or even the best way to write a tutorial, I always check to see how these guys have done it first.

One of the greatest assets these guys have produced is the GoMediaZine. A blog chock full of great articles on everything from how to use photoshop to how to do your taxes. It's a page I check daily and have pulled countless nuggets of advice from.

With that said, having an article actually published on the Gomediazine has always been one of my landmark ambitions for Hunting Town, up there with 'work with an international brand' and 'hire my first employee'. So hopefully you can grasp some concept of the absolute delight I feel in directing you to this tutorial writen by ME and published on the Gomediazine!

Hell yes.

Tick.

The tutorial covers a 'how to' from brief to completion on how I created the illustrations for The Northern Mist concept art project. There are loads of images, so even if your not a photoshop geek like me, you can quickly scroll through to get an idea of how a piece like is comes together. Happy reading.

Vlog: www.youtube.com/watch?feature=…

Earlier this year my fiancé; Ann Challenor came to me with the idea to start-up her own cupcake business. I happily took up the roll of developing and designing the branding, and as I was pretty much my own client on this job I thought it might be a good chance to write a guide through the whole brand development process.

USP

Ann has always made really great cupcake and I've often told her to try selling them professionally, however when she first told me that was what she intended to do, I quickly made clear that great cupcakes weren't enough. Whilst it's true that one of the best things you can do for your business is provide a quality product, you'd be naïve to think that there isn't someone out there that does it better (or if there isn't now, there soon will be!). The very very first thing you need to think of when starting a brand is "why?", or rather "why would a customer choose me?" in other words, what makes you unique? We call this a 'USP' (Unique Selling Point), basically it's what you have that nobody else has. In time your USP may be copied or imitated by rival businesses, but so long as you have a strong enough brand, the customer locks the USP to your company and nine time out of ten will always choose to come back to you. There's a reason Coca Cola hasn't been surpassed by another Cola manufacturer and it's because we inherently associate Cola with that brand. Think about it; you can type Coke or Cola into Google and it'll return Coca Cola products pretty much universally, but one is a brand and one is a product.



In the past Ann had made special gluten-free cupcakes for some of our friends and suggested that this might be a good USP for the business. Sure, gluten-free would be a great USP, there aren't many cupcake manufacturers out there that specialise in gluten-free cupcakes yet and there's definitely a market, however, you have to think about the size of the market. More often than not, it's not about how many people there are in a niche, but how many you can reach with your product. Getting the message out to all the gluten-free cake eaters of the UK would be a nightmare, but the idea did show us that perhaps Ann's USP lay in the way the cakes were made?

We decided to settle on a USP of using only fair trade products in the baking of the cupcakes. This was something that Ann already did for the most part and would be simple to implement. Fair Trade products are getting really great press at the moment and the appeal and demand for them is growing year on year. In fact, it's fair to say that the is a huge 'green' movement at the moment and so it would be good to associate the brand with being eco-friendly, recyclable, <wbr>rainforest alliance and organic.</wbr>

Business Name

The next step was finding a name. Ann had originally envisioned the business being called 'Cupcake'o'Clock' and whilst this was a fantastic fun name, it didn't really convey her new USP to the customer. Naming a business is so important as it has to covey not only what you do, but what personality your company has.

A great example of this is Virgin, the name originally came about because Richard Branson thought of himself very much as a virgin in terms of business expertise, however it's connotations to sex and risqué nature mean it sticks in your head whilst giving the impression that they are fun, fresh and modern.

The great Virgin logo however came a little later...

If your really stuck for ideas, then the natural thing to do is to ask your friends. However, in today's age of social media, that can mean hundreds of people. Announce that your starting a new business on your Facebook page and say that you need ideas of a name, this creates the dual purpose of getting you loads of fresh ideas and letting everyone know about your new enterprise without sounding like an advert. Just make sure you reply to all the responses you get! The last thing you want to do is to put people off by ignoring their suggestions, plus if you reply it counts as a comment and bumps your discussion higher up the Facebook news feed.



This is exactly what I did with Ann and she got loads of responses from people, not just about the name, but about the business in general, like how much would stuff cost and when she was launching! One of the name ideas we got back was 'My Fair Cakery', it was a fun play on words that got across the playful nature of the business, plus it had the word 'fair' in it which was a fantastic link to the USP. We tweaked 'cakery' to 'cupcake' to help define Ann's product and we were done, My Fair Cupcake it was!



Ann also took it upon herself to bake a special cupcake present for the person who suggested the name and posted a photo on Facebook, which was a really nice touch!



Once you decide on a name make sure you let everyone on your Facebook know about your decision, so that when you come to launch the Facebook page for the business, people are already expecting it and are more likely to respond to your invitation.

In part two of Branding your business we'll discuss the creation of a logo and branding standards.

If you want to know more about My Fair Cupcake, sign up for the newsletter here: myfaircupcake.co.uk
Or join their Facbook page here: facebook.com/myfaircupcake

2011, you have been a lot of fun, you have been a teacher, a compatriot, a lifeline and a kitchen sink. 2011 you shall be missed.

To simply list off all the fantastic projects I've worked on during 2011 would be a little long for a blog, but to leave them unremarked would be a worse crime still. So, with that in mind I thought this might be a worthwhile forum to mention a few of the more eventful ones. If your name doesn't pop up at any point then please don't feel blue, I cannot name a client that I haven't loved working with this year (much to the disappointment of www.clientsfromhell.com), this is mearly a snapshot of the projects winging their way around my head, and trust me, they all get a turn.

41


Probably the longest project I've worked on, which came to a close late last year was the graphic novel 41 by Bob Frantz. I won't sit here and make out I'm the next Jim Lee in the comics world, but I do have a soft spot for them and always do my best to have at least one story on my books at any one time. If ever there was a piece of work that showed the progression of an artist it was 41. Not one page was drawn where the following one wasn't its superior. Don't get me wrong, the pages were all good but by the close of the last issue I can safely say that I was a far more competent artist for having the opportunity to work on the book.

BigDog


Speaking of comics, how could I ever sidestep the stunning BigDog! I remember first reading the brief; I could barely believe my eyes. Joseph Bondaryk, creator of the real life quadruped robot BigDog wanted to produce a comic based around his creation! If you haven't yet seen a video of BigDog in action then please, get yourself over to YouTube right now! BigDog heralded my first foray into the land of the Comic Con as Joseph insisted I fly out to Boston to help him launch the first issue! Not only was Joseph gracious enough to let me stay in his home during my dip into the American dream but I was also treated to a guided tour of Boston Dynamics Robotics Lab where BigDog is being developed. Sometimes I really need to do a double take on what's comic book fantasy and what's real life!

Motovudu


Whilst we're on globe trotting it's well worth mentioning my mission to Andorra and Aragon with the team from Banter Media. Working as a storyboard artist I helped plot out the shoot for the Motovudu instructional Superbike video, with none other than Moto GP star Simon Crafar! Long days in the sun followed by great meals with the crew was a great way to earn a living, even Keith Flint from the Prodigy turned up to run a few laps Round the track! I'm planning to write another blog going into much more detail on the Motovudu job so watch this space!

The New Subalterns


One of my great great loves of this job is when I get the chance to create new characters. Clients come to me with briefs on how they want their characters to look and feel and I get to pull something great out of the ether and trap it on paper. There is nothing I love more than to not only capture what people were seeing in their own head, but also show them something new about the character, almost like they've just got to know them a little better. This year I did just that for Rikk Salamat's New Subalterns. A group of eight assassin style characters with a slightly comedic undertone, the illustrations I produced were to be the online counterpart to the Radio show that Rikk was producing. Author Joel Nafatli too contacted me to flesh out his Cyber Skunks characters and create a promotional portfolio that he could present to production companies in the hope of transferring his characters from his book to television!

To be perfectly honest I could go on writing this blog post for days, from the concept artworks I've been working on for Patrick O'Briens new film The Northern Mist to the range of t-shirts I produced for the MMA event Takedown, there isn't one project I've worked on that I wouldn't want to talk your ear off about. With that said, all good things must come to a close and I'll have to put the lid on 2011 at some point.



So here's looking to an amazing 2012. Anyone who has read my blog previously might recall that I share an office with a video production company called Banter Media, however these guys are moving in February to a pub of all places, which means that my office will be getting that much bigger! I can finally move in the death ray and start plotting. I've just agreed to work on a new project with Mark Aldridge, the producer from 51st State, so keep an eye out for that unfolding. I'm going to be helping a new cupcake company set up their branding and very first shop from the ground up. I'm also planning on producing my own range of t-shirts and other various items plastered with very cool designs after being thoroughly inspired by Jeff Finleys 'Threads Not Dead'...and that's just the tippy top of the iceberg.

2012, it's a pleasure to meet you.

Just a quick one to let everybody know that issue one of Big Dog is ON SALE NOW!!!

Big Dog is the story of scientist Devin Blake who gets mentally linked to his latest robot invention- the Big Dog with fantastic results, however his breakthrough does not go unnoticed by sinister eyes!



Big Dog is based on the real life the Big Dog being developed by Boston Dynamics and has been written by lead engineer Joseph Bondaryk.

I's pure gold people and available here!

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