A Dash of Whimsy: Branding for a Creative Duo

What do you get when a stylist and a photographer come together? Besides the obvious (a super-talented duo with decades of experience), clients who really understand the value, nuances, and power of brand identity. 

We met Stephanie Bohn and Meg Mulloy of then-fledgling Bohn Mulloy & Co at Creative Ladies Night, a popular networking event here in Austin, Texas. Creative Ladies Night draws women from every creative field imaginable – interior designers, artists, potters, graphic designers and, of course, stylists and photographers – for collaboration and community. So, the partnership between Bohn Mulloy & Co and Working Lunch Co was natural: we shared a mutual appreciation for autonomy, collaboration, and learning. 

Learning is at the core of Stephanie Bohn and Meg Mulloy’s new business. The pair combines decades of experience to bring photography + styling workshops to a city bursting with small businesses and startups, and leaders looking to market those businesses and startups with polished, cohesive brand imagery.

Our kickoff meeting revealed the duo aim to teach photography + styling in intimate, full-day workshops. Ready to start marketing their first workshop, Bohn Mulloy & Co wanted a brand that would communicate the differentiators of their workshops: an opportunity to spend a full day learning from professionals who have been honing their crafts longer than most in their field. The brand identity also had to be true to their approachable, fun-loving personalities. 

After working together to identify brand personality and values, we presented Bohn Mulloy & Co with three conceptual directions. The duo immediately gravitated towards a minimalist, modern, yet whimsical concept. Taking cues from minimalist wordmarks, our concept infused a lightness of spirit through simple graphic gestures and subtle imperfections to reflect their nuanced brand personality and values.  

Armed with the colors Bohn Mulloy & Co believed represented their personality, we created a palette of earthy and optimistic colors that would give them creative freedom on social media platforms, a key feature for our visually focused client. 

The result is a logo emphasizing the “o” in each word of the company name to symbolize the partnership. The juxtaposition of a streamlined modern typeface with a custom, curvaceous ampersand reads solid and professional, with the ever-important dash of whimsy. To provide flexibility, we also provided Bohn Mulloy & Co with a round badge (primarily for social media profiles) and multiple logo colorways. 

This design package has given Bohn Mulloy & Co the necessary visual components to design their website, create marketing materials, and successfully market their first workshop, which was a sold-out success! In the future, these creative ladies will be able to create consistent marketing assets and use their amazing skills to create a vivid, engaging social media feed around their hero colors to build brand recognition in the minds of their customers. 

We should also mention that we are now one of their customers, and we enjoyed a lovely working lunch discussing brand photography for Working Lunch Co! We couldn’t be happier with our new brand photography that resulted from this collaboration. Look for it to feature on our site soon! 

Small but Mighty: Branding a (Really) Small Business

There are so many great cliches that are tempting to use here. Good things come in small packages. Less is more. Bigger isn’t always better. Sorry not sorry, they all happen to be true in the case of this tiny project for a tiny shop in Orlando, FL. 

YAY! is a small business on a mission to preserve the joy of local shopping. They’re doing it by packing tons of artisan products into a jewel box sized store. With a background in gift buying for major art supply retailer Sam Flax, the owner knew how to create a compelling, one-of-a-kind merchandise mix, but was struggling with how she would attract shoppers into the store, which is set back from the street (and did I mention really really small?). 

To solve this branding challenge, we created a set of custom icons that build on the bold style of the existing logo and represent the various products the store carries. We had a set of these icons produced in vinyl to display on the storefront’s main window, so shoppers walking by get an idea of what they might find inside. We also created whimsical round business cards to help get the word out and drive traffic to the shop and its Instagram profile. 

“Hiring Working Lunch Co. was one of the best decisions I have made. Briana was skillful at listening to my ideas and melding them with her knowledge of brand identity to fashion a beautiful set of icons to represent what we sell. ”

— Stacy Coon, Owner of YAY!

YAY! came to us with a logo and a mission, but not much else in the way of branding. The great thing about how we work at Working Lunch Co. is that we can meet you where you are. We know not every client is ready for the full Brand Launch Pro (that happens to be better suited to our startup clients who are about to massively scale or need to get everything buttoned up to go raise their Series A). And many clients come to us with a few pieces of a brand in place. We can work with that! 

We used our initial working lunch with our YAY! client to understand where she was struggling and to articulate her brand’s personality, which helped us create the icons but will also inform every decision she makes about this small business brand going forward. 

“Working Lunch Co.’s communication throughout the process was impeccable. Briana was sensitive to our budget as well, which is important to a startup small business owner.”

— Stacy Coon, Owner of YAY!

We’re excited to help this tiny shop continue to grow!

If you’re in Orlando, be sure to stop by and check out YAY! for yourself at 1211 N. Orange Avenue in the Ivanhoe Village area. Or, follow them on Instagram @yaytinyshop. 

Do you need help branding your small business? Let’s do lunch! Get in touch to schedule a FREE consultation and learn how Working Lunch Co. can meet you wherever you are in building your small business brand.