Rebel Mumma

🖤Badass baby

I am teaching my daughter to be the most confident person she can be. I want her to truly be in touch with herself with what she loves. I will nuture her little spirit to know that she is amazing just the way she is.

And she is pretty damn cool 😆

What are you hoping to teach your tiny humans?

⚡I can call myself a Therapiser, Empowerer, Nurturer...
At the end of the day I'm just a damn good listener.

What I do in my 'therapy' sessions is to help my clients put their project into words by asking the right questions.

I listen and pick out the gems in what they say. Some of the best inspiration comes from throwaway comments that reveal a characteristic, value or sometimes even summarise a whole business perfectly they don't even realise what they've said.

I use these keywords to create design elements that match the personality and feel of the project - inspired by the creator themselves.

People love this process. They feel refreshed and pumped for their project with a brand new and concise outlook. And I feel tooled up and ready to do what I do best!

⚡Find out more on my website rebelmumma.co.uk

Finally some sunshine! ☀️

I love getting out and recharging in nature with my little family. One of my favourite places to go is Pensthorpe Natural Park.

Where do you love to go with your family?

I have too much to say on this subject for one post I could burst into a full on rant but I won't.

I believe that
⚡ Nobody should have to choose between their career and their children (or having children)

⚡ Having a child should not have any detrimental effect on a career

⚡ Workplaces should be flexible to accommodate the very natural and common phenomenon which is parenthood

⚡ Parents should not be forced out of employment because they refuse to spend almost their entire days wages on childcare to work the extra days their employers require to keep the job. (Childcare should also not cost as much as a whole salary!)

⚡ Being an entrepreneur should be a choice not a last resort or only way of working to be able to look after your children

⚡ People should have to complete tasks for their pay, not work a number of hours a week in a certain timeframe

This pandemic has shown us that workplaces don't (all) crumble if people work from home. Some people work better at home where it's quiet and they can focus. So many people have had to work around their children and they still worked. I worry that this will all be forgotten too soon.

I urge every employer to play to your employees strengths and needs. They will THANK you for it by being true and loyal to your company.

💗To the aspiring entrepreneur parents who like myself feel like they have no other option, I have your back. Even if it's just a chat I'll help you along your way.

Brand therapy & design for Root Minerals vegan, natural & safe makeup.

I've been working with Jay, the founder of Root Minerals makeup for 8/9 months now. We instantly bonded over being vegan and having babies, now toddlers the same age. We've helped each other on our business journeys and I'm proud to call him a friend.

It makes things so easy when you share the same values. So many things need not be explained. That's why I love working with vegan and ethical companies as I just get it, I'm on board from the off and want to see you succeed.

Check out rebelmumma.co.uk/rootminerals to find out more about how I've helped Jay with his business and go check out rootminerals.co.uk

If Rebel Mumma had a theme song.
Doo doo doo-doo doo 🎸

⚡️I'm not just a designer

When I work with my clients I am all in. I will do everything in my power to make them a success.

I know what looks right in a design for a project but for it to feel right for me, there needs to be logic and reason behind every decision which is where my therapising comes in.

My Design Therapy sessions enable me to deeply understand a project so I can design with purpose. This also means that my clients look at their project from new angles and ask themselves questions they would never have thought to ask. This offers them a sense of clarity which makes them feel validated and invigorated.

I only take on clients that I truly believe in so that means that I want everyone else including themselves to as well. My process empowers them to be the face of their cause so they can make the changes to the world that we so desperately need to see.

I am also a design disruptor. I have a firm belief that design is a tool that needs to communicate effectively - to instruct, to entice, to warn, to invite. I am not afraid to stand up and say when it is not. See my next post...

Hey! I'm Coral and the tiny one is Rei.
That's right! I'm a design at home mum.

💚 I'm a vegan, Dr Martens and Vespa lover. I'm into subculture and I dare to be different.

💪🏻I'm not good at much but I'm a bloody good designer, it's been my focus for 18 years.

👩🏻‍👧🏻I finally have a business where I am my true authentic self and that includes being a mum and I'm out here to tell everyone that you can be an awesome parent and have a successful career.

🌍I want the world my daughter grows up in to be a more tolerant, safer and kinder place - plus the planet not be buggered would be great too.

⚡️This is why I focus my design and consulting power on supporting people with great ethics, causes or messages that are making a difference.

We’re in full support of the German women’s Gymnastics team and the Norwegian women’s Handball team choosing to wear what makes them feel comfortable.

It should not be regulation in any area of life whether it be sport, school or work to have to wear revealing or uncomfortable attire. Too many times I see schools dictating that girls have to wear skirts and not permitted to wear shorts like their male counterparts.

All bodies are beautiful but it is up to us how we want to display them.

When the German women’s gymnastics team walked onto the competition floor on Sunday wearing ankle-length unitards, as opposed to leotards, they were setting an example for athletes “who may feel uncomfortable or even sexualized in normal suits.” https://nyti.ms/3zFeVVp

Something that is really important to me is speaking out against greyhound racing.

I rescued my boy Dexy in 2018 and he is the most gentle and chilled out dog ever. It was clear his spirit had been broken. He was not a 'real' dog full of love, joy and play.

3 years on, he loves a snuggle. He falls asleep with his head next to me and is becoming more playful which is lovely to see.

Although he is lucky to not have any physical scars, there are certainly mental ones.

He is so lucky to have found a home. In order to find us had to:
1. Be fast enough to race in Ireland
2. Be fast enough to be profitable to be purchased and brought to England to be raced at Romford, then Yarmouth.
3. Have kind enough owners to release him to a rehoming kennels - after pulling a muscle and was no longer able to race

At any of these stages he could have died. If he wasn't fast enough as a puppy he would be have been disposed of. He could have be killed through drugging or injury on the track. He could have been murdered at any point that he was starting to lag. He could have been sold to countries where there are no animal rights.

And that is without mentioning the atrocities that they experience in and out of the track.

What you can do is NOT BET ON GREYHOUND RACING! Bet on the Formula 1 where humans consent to racing. If there is no money and nobody watching the industry will die faster than it already is.

I have an etsy and instagram page where I have designed products to raise awareness and donate some of the profits to greyhounds in need.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed?

It can be a challenge to running a business in itself. For me, trying to run a business with a ever more stroppy 2 year old is TOUGH.

I always have those niggles in my mind. 'Am I doing enough - is the house clean enough, is my daughter happy, am I spending enough time marketing......' and the rest!

The answer is YES. For me, in my day with what I have to do I am trying my best and my best is good enough.

There are only so many hours in the day and I can plan to split them into work and parenting but the lines blur and things change and that's ok.

Parents often feel like we have to be superhuman but we can't be 100% parent and 100% business it doesn't work. Society certainly makes me feel like I have to be this.

The solution is to find a balance and find a way to give your whole focus to what is in front of you. Easier said than done!

COMMENT BELOW to share your tips on balancing parenting and business.

Looking for a tried and tested recipe for a baking beginner?

CARROT CAKE
https://www.thevegspace.co.uk/recipe-easy-vegan-carrot-cake/

BROWNIES
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate-recipes/vegan-chocolate-brownies/

BLUEBERRY CAKE
https://www.exceedinglyvegan.com/vegan-recipes/baking-desserts/easy-vegan-blueberry-cake

Not a bake but just as good...
PANCAKES
https://m.facebook.com/letsgobaaless/photos/a.875654819462118/1399403413753920/?type=3&_rdr

You've probably spent hours thinking about the name of your business and you've finally got one that you are happy being out there in the world.

The name is your business is often the logo. It's the person stood at the front of a shop greeting and enticing you into your business.

If you were choosing a person for this purpose you'd want someone with the right vibe - the right style, the right coloured clothing etc.

This is the exactly the same approach you should have with your logo. Your logo is often the first thing people see and the way it looks tells them so much.

One thing to consider is colour theory and the connotations people have with each colour. These even differ depending on the culture or country.

Like a previous post of mine explains, fonts have personalities too. Fonts can represent confidence, openess, strength and even have connotations of their own.

If you are reading this and you are unsure how to start creating a logo or if you don't think your logo is doing a good enough job for you then that is when you might like to speak to a designer. (Send me a pm!)

I love designing logos. My prices vary depending on what is required from each client.

A typical scenario is starting with a free consultation where I chat to you about your business and I ask a bunch of questions that helps your think deeply about your business values and the vibe you want it to give out.

My top package is £150-200 for 3-5 logos designs inspired by our conversation and market research of my own. They are presented in a PDF presentation each with a short piece of text explaining my thoughts.

After choosing your favourite design, you get a free set of changes included in the price if there are any tweaks you'd like to make. Additional changes are extra but none of my clients so far have needed it!

I then send you the logo in all of the file types I think you will ever need!

Send me a DM for a free chat about your logo.

Head to my website designkind.co.uk to have a nosey at the logos I've created for my wonderful vegan clients.

Some of my favourite quotes which explain what good design really does for your brand...

"Design is the silent ambassador of your brand" - Paul Rand

"Design is more than a logo. Design is strategy made visible" - Moira Cullen

"If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design" - Ralf Speth

"Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful" - Dieter Rams

"Colour does not add a pleasant quality to the design - it reinforces it" - Pierre Bonnard

"Design is thinking made visible" - Saul Bass

“No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held common by the people for whom the object is intended” - Adrian Forty

“Design is the body language of your marketing. Don’t slouch” - Mark King

“Design adds value faster than it adds costs” - Thomas C. Gale

“Bad design shouts at you. Good design is the silent seller.” - Shane Meendering

“When typography is on point, words become images.” - Shawn Lukas

💬 Send me a message or visit designkind.co.uk if you'd like to have a chat about your brand.

Fonts have personalities too 🤩

Using the right typeface in the right size, weight and style (a font) makes or breaks a design. They can say so much before you even read the word!

The shapes of the words give a very different feel if it is BOLD AND SHOUTY or subtle and quiet. They can make you feel warm and cozy or warn and put you on edge.

They also remind people of where they have seen something similar before. It’s super important to research the font the font *says* the right thing to ensure people make the right associations.

How I choose fonts 🤔
First I research research research. I need to know everything I can about what I am designing for before I can begin to look at styles. This is why I often ask a list of questions to my client at the start of a project.

I internalise all the information and then that’s when my design brain kicks in. It intuitively decides what *feels* good for the project and which one’s work well together.

🤫 Then again, sometimes we just want the design of the words to be *silent* to let the images do the talking. But that’s a story for another time!

💬 If you are not sure that your fonts are working hard enough for you, send me a message and I’ll take a look 🧡

#🌱

That time when I worked for

In a previous life I worked for a company as a magazine designer and my favourite magazine to work on at the time was HOG USA.

I really enjoyed engaging with the brand to design for the American, Canadian, Latin American and Mexican editions of the Harley Owners Group magazine. I embraced the design challenges of creating layouts that accommodated being translated into four languages.

For the design, I worked with grungy textures, bold typography, commissioned photography and created both hand drawn and digital illustrations to give the content a true Harley-Davidson feel.
I created templates for regular pages, designed creative content driven design for features and liaised with printers to create press ready files.

👉🏻Swipe to see some of my favourite feature designs.

💚I’d absolutely love to work on a vegan / ethical / eco magazine. Get in touch if you have a new magazine which needs a concept or pitch design, one that would like a new look or you would like a designer to lay out some pages within the house style.

I created a logo for Crystal from . Here is what she had to say about working with me...

“Coral’s thorough yet warm approach was a breath of fresh air. She took time to get to know my business and really listened to what I wanted for the logo. By the end of our phone call, I felt she was as passionate about my business as I was. She worked closely with me throughout the process and delivered ahead of schedule. Not only do I now have a playful and professional logo, I also have a clearer vision of my brand. Thank you Coral!”

I loved working on this project. Crystal wanted something playful but not cliche, something that said 'for children' without it being childish. I wanted the focus to be on the fun name of the business so I used a friendly font with a genderless, primary colour palette and accented it with a 'clap' symbol.

Check out the before and after 👉🏻
I also did her a version suited for square formats like social media.

💬Get in touch for to chat about how we can transform your logo

Living life as a full time parent?

Hey me too. I have a two year old daughter Rei who I look after every day so this very much shapes my day in terms of when I can and cannot work or do anything else!

The biggest thing that I have learned it that it can be possible to carve out time for things you need or want to do.

I sat down with my husband and mapped out the hours of the week (all 168 hours of them), blocking out time for things that has to happen - sleep, dinner, time with Rei etc - and took a look at what was left.
The way it works for me is that I have 1-2 hours first thing in the morning, 1-3 hours after I’ve finished cleaning up after dinner most evenings (my husband does bedtime what a hero!) and we divide up out weekend so we each have time to do our own projects/me time and spend time together.

The under 5 time is tough but like with anything else with children - everything is a phase and it will pass. We have to try and appreciate the time we are in and know that it is short and work with the time what we have to be ourselves outside of being a parent too.

I’d really love to supporting other parents in their business ventures and working together around our parenting needs. Becoming a parent does not mean we have to put our dreams on hold. We can use our experience to inspire and motivate us to make them come true.

Product photography too expensive and time consuming?

If you look around at billboards, magazine ads and even on TV, the perfect pristine images of your favourite products are mostly FAKE. You can spot them by looking for repetitive shine marks, creases or even the same food item repeated and rotated in the same image (looking at you KFC!). When you start seeing you can’t stop. Welcome to my world!

In my previous job, I taught graphic design university students how to convincingly fake their designs onto objects just like the pros. From wine bottles to crisp packets to posters on the side of a bus I can warp, blend and use lighting to create the perfect realistic looking images.

In this example for one of my clients I found one image of a lipstick texture and colour matched all 26 shades to create flawless swatches. This is very common practice for makeup companies. Take a closer look next time you shop!

I did the same for the 36 foundation shades and the 64 eyeshadows. A total of 126 shades which would have taken a long time to set up each shot and photograph each one to get a professional looking result. - I also added the shade name, finish type and a short description of the colour onto the image itself to create a simple and informative shopping experience.

So get in touch if you are on a budget and would like professional looking product or packaging images.

We work so hard taking care of our business, our home, our loved ones. What about taking care of just YOU.

At school I was taught about maintaining a balanced diet and the importance of exercise to look after your body but nothing was ever covered about self care, mindfulness or just plain ‘how to take care of your mental health’.

It is something that I am learning about and working on every day. I have found the importance of stopping. Stopping and being in the moment is something so alien to me.

I have worked my way through school, college, university, jobs all at 100 miles an hour trying to be my best at every given moment and putting everything I had into my next goal. It is great to be ambitious and driven but at what cost.

With my mind always being in the future I did not appreciate the things I had in that moment. Being content in the present is the calmest, cosiest, loveliest place to be.

It is something I am still trying to train myself to not let my mind wander into future thoughts and worries but to focus on here and now.

For me, meditation and breathing techniques have been invaluable. It can be a difficult thing to get into and make a habit of but it is so invaluable to be able to reset and rest your brain in the day. I recommend watching/listening to Headspace on Netflix. It’s a voiceover (I assume from the Headspace app) visualised by calming illustrations. It explains some principles of mindfulness and has exercises in each episode to introduce you to techniques. It’s a great way to start.

Being outside - especially now summer has finally arrived - gives me the biggest lift. I love watching water. I dream of living by a lake or the sea just to watch the movement and the colours throughout the day. But even just taking my dog out for a walk around the block can reset me so I can take on the next part of the day.

💗What things do you do to take some time to look after yourself?

The noise ideas make when I speak with clients about their brand. (And the end of the Hey Duggee tooth brushing song)

One of my favourite parts of working with clients is the initial consultation where they tell me about their business and I help them think deeper about their brand.
I have a list of questions that I like to ask people about their business. This is to help me to understand things like the position of the business in their market, what kind of feel or vibe the business has, who they are marketing to, what their values are etc etc.

The feedback that I get from clients is that I open their eyes to their own brand.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I understand how difficult it is to brand yourself. You are you. It’s impossible to step back and analyse who and what you or what the project you have been working on is as a brand.

This is where I can help because I know what questions to ask to get some ‘ding’ moments from which evolve to become a whole visual brand. I am a very good listener and I make notes of the gems that clients say to create something beautiful that truly comes from them.

I am INSPIRED by my clients vision and passion for their projects.

💬Ping me a message to see how we can work together to make your visual branding truly speak for you.

🌱Vegan graphic designer supporting vegan business people.

Over the last year, my house has become entirely vegan which I am really humbled by.

I became vegetarian in 2017 after reading David Duchovny’s (yes the X Files guy) book called Holy Cow. It is a mad book about a cow, a pig and a turkey escaping a farm and flying to countries where they think they won’t get eaten. It’s from the cow’s perspective and it is written in such a chilled conversational way. It’s by no means pushy but something about it changed my brain.

Fast forward to December 2019 when my daughter turned 6 months old - ready to start eating - and after watching the Netflix documentary Gamechangers with my husband we decided that a plant based diet would be the most healthy way to feed our little girl.

We had already been having soy milk and vegan cheese so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to switch out the last few bits that contained milk. I was so glad to find Bournville is vegan! Over this Covidy year my step son turned 18 and decided to be fully vegan too thus completing my vegan bubble.

As restrictions have lifted it is very strange to emerge from the bubble, visiting animal eating family and friends. It’s odd to be around people who don’t share the values you feel so strongly about. It is comforting to close my front door and be back with my nearest and dearest who I so gratefully share such a big part of my life with.

This is why I absolutely love speaking to fellow vegans about their business. It is something deep that we instantly connect on and that understanding filters into the design process.

💬Ping me a message so we can chat about your business.