BCR Creative

Happy belated birthday to BCR Creative! - I might be a month late but wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate and thank all my awesome clients, suppliers, family and friends for their support along the way. You're all superstars.

It's been a hectic few years with no sign of letting up, but love what I do and am so happy and grateful for the opportunities this has bought me.

Here's to many more!

Vikki - ☁️🌈

😁 Happy to see a Joint Venture (JV) identity I created as part of a bid out in the wild! 🦁

✌🏼 When there are many parties involved in a project, it's SO important to show your client that you are united as a team. ⚽️

When you and your JV partner sync up, magic happens! 🪄 Your clients see a harmonious, professional front that screams trustworthiness. It's like wearing matching outfits – you stand out! 💃✨

Mindful Monday - NOT another BS post, I promise!

I've always wanted to start a regular Monday post off, starting the week as I would like to go on and having a bit of perspective but the usual posts are full of saccharine positivity it just seems a bit inauthentic to me - I want to share something of my outlook - what I know and have learnt, to remind me of advice I rarely take myself and maybe make a Monday a bit easier for someone out there... cause they suck sometimes!

As this one is going out on a bank holiday here in the UK some of us might have a bit of time to reflect today - what is it that is stopping you from feeling your best? It might be something tiny you can change right now or something that is a bigger, scarier challenge. My tip? Name it. It might not be easy but that is the first step, recognising what it is - THEN you can take action, feeling stuck is crap but if you don't start somewhere things will never change. You are more powerful and capable than you realise.

Big loves

Vik - ☁️🌈

💰 Colour by subscription or ransom? - Reading the latest on how Pantone are moving their colour libraries behind a subscription wall in Adobe products - I was disheartened to say the least.

💸 Many are saying with good colour management etc, it won't be a huge issue. Yes larger studios will just lump the cost, it's easy for them to do so. It's also easy for them to rework artwork if they choose not to subscribe, they have the capacity to send time on that.

🏧 I get that stress when a font isn't installed, imagine if your ENTIRE artwork turns black overnight... with no way of linking back up - well, without a fee.

🤐 Who they are stepping on and hurting will be smaller studios and freelancers who already pay the huge sub fees - I love my subscription and am lucky enough to be able to pay for it easily, I wince for those that can't. Those starting out with stacks of talent and stuff like this being flung in their way, making it impossible to compete. This hurts the industry on the whole - barriers to learning and experience stinks on so many levels. I understand business is business but I don't believe colours should be held at ransom.

One comment on a recent post I read says "creativity will evolve" - now that I DO believe in.

🎈So good to round off my "year end" with a lovely testimonial from a client and collaborator. If you want a designer that relishes a challenge, loves their work and values honesty, give me a call!

❗️I won't fib, its been a hard but rewarding 2 years, running a business and working FOR the business isn't always easy, but the autonomy and freedom I have now is worth the hard work.

🎉 A huge thank you to all of my clients, I am so excited to see where year 3 takes BCR Creative, new sectors and hopefully getting some trainees on board are on the cards for sure!

Happy Monday peeps! - Hope the week is as good as can be for you all. I know its a bit of BS bingo to do the old stuff - but honestly, helps me out when the reserves are running low maybe it will someone else. I love these books by Austin Kleon - "Keep Going" in particular. Check out more amazing work including blackout poetry on his account!

❓Bionic Reading - What do you think?❓

🗣"Typography expert Renato Casutt from Switzerland has been working on the new approach, which guides readers through text using “artificial fixation points”. By bolding or highlighting the letters at the beginning of a word, a reader’s brain can identify them with less effort and concentration. In theory, this speeds up how quickly you read as you don’t need to focus on the whole of every word." - Article link below.

📖 Working with vast chunks of text in bid submissions and proposals for clients I am always after anything to help aid accessibility - I can see how this would make skim reading much easier, and especially help neurodivergent folk but it's important to realise it isn't a one size fits all.

📖 From the design nerd perspective, it would certainly take away the beauty of typography and power of using weights to pinpoint or emphasise elements too. But to work WITH this, there could also be some middle ground to employ this method in an interesting visual way to excite all readers.

📖 One comment used in the article was incredibly ableist, but remove the yuck and the point on making reading soulless and an exercise in efficiency is valid. With an increasing focus on attention grabbing, making things automated and faster being all consuming, there is a potential the joy can be sucked from spending time getting lost in your book's world of words. There is a simple remedy - If you don't need a tool like this - fine, don't use it!

⭐️ Overall, hurrah for more interesting methods of making information more easily accessible!!!

Let me know what you think... is the paragraph easier for you to read or does it give you a headache?

Vikki - ☁️🌈



https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/what-is-bionic-reading-does-it-work_uk_628749a3e4b05cfc268a59ff

Happy Monday friends! :) Bit of gorgeous advice from - highly recommend taking a look at his feed, artwork and related merch if you have the funds.

His latest book "You are here (for now)" was the most comforting read as a bit of a lost in the wilderness creative. Seeing where you are, what you have survived and just BEING (and being kinder to yourself in the process of life) instead of forcing yourself into a cycle of 'must do better' to the point of self destruction has allowed me to get out of my own way, and use my strength to set out on a journey I wouldn't have thought possible a few years ago.

Whatever you are going through this Monday, please remember you have gotten this far and you can get through this.

All the love ❤️

Vikki - ☁️🌈

🗣"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” ― Stephen R. Covey

⭐️ In these increasingly polarising times, more than ever we need to be better listeners. It's so easy to be focused on getting points across you don't give the other person time to speak, or simply wait for your turn to speak what is racing through your mind.

⭐️ After a particularly cringe-worthy exercise on a course recently I realised that, my fear of "getting it right" and making sure I am prepared has the potential to make a conversation very one sided.

⭐️ Am I prepared? yes. Am I willing to listen to a client? ALWAYS.

💥BUT💥

🙁 I have learnt that this style doesn't actually give the space for conversation which is so important. Time for a change!

Loved this talk from Celeste Headlee on how to have a better conversation, some really good tips on how to be a better, more mindful listener.

Vikki - ☁️🌈

Celeste Headlee: 10 ways to have a better conversation | TED When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations -- and that most of us don't converse very well. Celeste...

“The epic battle of our generation is between the status quo of mass and the never-ceasing tide of weird.”

Really interesting insights from this book by Seth Godin. "We are all Weird" impresses the importance of the tribe, decline of "normal" and how increasingly we seek authenticity on our own weird paths.

What "Weird" have you appreciated recently? - Something that has broken the norm that has changed your perspective or made you feel part of something a little bit special?

Happy Friday wonderful people! 🎉

It's been a while since I posted over here and since I want this to be more of a behind the scenes, interest piece kind of a page I wanted to know...

What is the best/worst band merch you have ever seen?

Off to see my chemical romance with many elder and new emos alike this weekend and this one of the shirts on offer. It is simultaneously the worst and best merch I've ever seen IMO, Hillarous, gaudy like all those magazines me and my friends had as pre teens .. with actually (if you want to go there...) a bit of a deeper message but I won't be pretentious here. 🤣

Huge kudos to the designer, takes skill to make chaos look good!