Quick note for those looking for Valentine’s inspiration, our lovely client Lily Lolo are offering 10% off for today only. Click here to see our HTML mailer with details of the offer.

Town centres at Christmas are something I dread and having managed to do 95% of my shopping online this year was a big relief. However this decision wasn’t mainly down to avoiding the crowds but more to do with the lack of interesting gift stocks on the shelves of most retailers.

Some great online stores have been gaining popularity over the last couple of years especially those specialising in products not readily available on the high street and made by independent artists and craft makers. Whilst I have neither the time or inclination to go all Kirsty Allsop and crochet soft furnishings, some great hand made crafts can be bought online and for a lot less than some of the bland high street options.

While independent stores continue to get pushed out of the high street unable to compete, and the UK’s town centres continue to be homogenised, I for one won’t be rushing back. The spirit of independence does live on however online, below are a few links to my favourite stores that offer something different.

Folksy has 1000s of UK sellers offering unique clothing, home wares, arts and crafts

Not On The High street, is prob the largest and most well known online store for independent sellers

Red Bubble specialises in great art, design and photography posters & prints at an affordable price (there really is no excuse for buying wall art from Ikea).

Made is fantastic for modern ‘designer’ furniture with lower prices having cut out the middle men

Threadless is still hard to beat for unique t-shirt designs, though the US importing has been known to cause problems with extra duties to be paid

Another recent project completed last year we forgot to tell you about is this packaging for Lily Lolo’s new lip gloss range. Gloss-ary is a 3 piece gift set available in 3 different shade collections ranging from vibrant pinks to clear gloss, all available from the newly re-designed Lily Lolo web store.

Phenomenal looking book sculptures. More images and interview over at It’s Nice That.

In late December Into The White completed the new branding and website launch for theatrical costumiers Parkinson Gill. The site aims to provide a simple to navigate, highly visual showcase of the company’s varied client work, for a specific audience of industry decision makers across the globe. The clean, minimalist design gives little distraction from the costume photography, while the large image slides can be easily added to over time. We also set up an integrated WordPress blog and provided training for the company directors so they can easily upload news on the move, via the Android WordPress App.

The the new branding design and colour palette has also been implemented across the company’s core business stationery and documentation templates. Feedback from the site has been very positive and has already help secure new US contracts for the company.

Clients comments:

‘Into The White provided the whole package. They took time to understand the nature of our business and designed a stunning website and branding for us. We have already recommended them to others and we will definitely be back for future projects.’ Jane Gill, Company Director 

Busy times here at Into The White, so a quick update on some recent projects is well overdue. We completed two large scale collage artworks for Brmband Mercia FM’s offices at the end of last year. The 4 & 5 metre long marketing walls comprise of highlights from both stations on air promos and live events over the last two years. The aim is not only to brighten up the office space but also provide a strong visual aid of the stations marketing output for any visiting prospective commercial advertising clients.

Having just updated our core graphic design software to the latest Adobe CS5.5 it’s interesting to see the CS Review options built directly into InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Whilst often simply emailing PDFs to clients for comments and approval is the quickest/ easiest for all parties, when it comes to multi page, text heavy documents or work that needs to be approved by a number of recipients this looks like a top draw solution. Especially with the ability to see comments within the document workspace and amend directly on the artwork files.

It was not long ago I was bemoaning the closing of Backboard (online service very similar but without the direct editing capabilities) so hopefully this will serve as a better replacement. The litmus test will be, as with all reviewing software, how easy and intuitive it is for clients to use. Be interested to hear if anyone has experience good or bad with it.

Following on from our recent brand analysis work, and production of refined brand and photography guides, the website has been given a complete visual overhaul. The build  for the site was provided by Sanderson who have also incorporated a brand new e-commerce and stock management system.

The new site features a much cleaner and intuitive layout throughout. Drawing focus on the products and making shade choice easier and colour representation more accurate.

The main product pages utilize large clean photography and tabbed information boxes above the fold to keep all core information easily accessible. This is then followed by YouTube video tutorials of how to apply the product and user reviews.