It’s camp season and Mabel’s Labels is ready for it! Take a look at their new facebook page design and visit their site for all the labels your little camper needs.

If you would like to learn more about custom facebook pages, shoot us an email! We would love to chat with you.

info@kitestring.ca

Tune in to kitestring’s Facebook and twitter pages, Tuesday at 9pm, right after Glee to find out what that secret is.

Check out The Buddy Holly Story at Theatre Aquarius here!

And now, kitestring presents: The Evolution of a Brand.

Here we’re taking a long, hard look at our past and asking with a critical eye, “How should brands change?”

We all know that wondering why an organization should update their look after a long static state is like asking why did Kylie Minogue ever cover Loco-motion? Essentially, it was same song our parent’s parents knew and loved when Little Eva sang it in 1962, but Kylie made it a hit again in 1988 with a few tweaks, spandex and a perm. Or was it that simple?

With culture constantly nipping at your brand’s hip status with trend waves, paradigm shifts, impending art movements, and even the fluctuating of political parties, it’s good to look at your brand as a living, breathing organism.

So, if your brand is alive and well, it should naturally grow and evolve.

At the same time, if you’re considering every brand touchpoint correctly, it should still be balanced by consistent messaging and an overall familiar feel. It should also be timely and relevant while remaining authentic. That’s a tall order.

Let’s take a look at how kitestring’s brand has evolved over the past few years as an example:

When Jenn and I first started kitestring years ago, we looked at the competition around us and noted that trend in agency world was defined by seriousness.
In order to be authentic to ourselves, and to achieve our ultimate goal of creating a space where people would actually enjoy coming to the studio every day to create outstanding work, we knew that too “serious” was out of the question.

We intentionally branded kitestring to be unique then. But now, we have to continue to evolve authentically to remain unique.

With our new website, we’ve taken our CMS (Content Management System) to the brink of amazing by changing out colours, images and messaging easily without tons of complex programming.

So let’s take a look at the evolution of our website as an example of how brands should change:

Colour

When kitestring first opened, the colour palette was minimal, including the visual identity colours of green and charcoal. As kitestring itself has grown over the years, our colour palette has shifted from green and purple, to a combination of blue, orange, purple and blue to the bright yellow, turquoise, fuchsia and recognizable kitestring green you see on our website today.

Images

While the team has grown, and the locations have changed, our image style still remains a natural progression evoking the same fun, whimsical, “Punky-brewster-at-a-job-interview” feel. For those of us with keen eyes on our last site, the kitestring team represented as CMYK is still present, not as individuals, but as background colours (doubling as studio walls). that way we can still tell your brand’s story in any colour imaginable.

Words
kitestring’s communication style is still defined by rewarding the reader with toothsome goodies. Maybe a few of our followers have noticed that our tagline has changed. When we first opened kitestring, your passion. it’s our business. was a perfect fit. Now that we’re really starting to come into our own, we’ve opted for a more assertive tagline: what you need.

The Same Online as IRL (In Real Life)
We’ve never been afraid to show who works at kitestring; and I think that says something about who we are as a studio. Everyone here works together at kitestring every day as a team. We laugh a lot, and support each other. We hope that if our corporate culture makes us all smile, that there’s no reason we can’t show the world all of our pearly whites.

Also, on our refreshed site you can get a glimpse of our new studio location. It acts as the backdrop of the photoshoot. We love when clients and friends come to the studio for the first time and the first thing they say with a laugh at the bright colours, candy and toys, “This is exactly what I thought it would be like!” We’re conscious of looking at our studio as a branded experience, so we’ve made it creative space where our team and visiting clients can let go of some of our adult brain restrictions and tap into their creative selves.

Making Friends
When it comes to making friends based on our true selves, kitestring’s team is about as authentic as they can get. We are all collectively part of of kitestring’s online community presence by writing blog posts, participating on Facebook, and communicating together on Twitter.
What’s more is how our friends and followers on our social networks have given us helpful brand feedback, allowing us to constantly constantly gauge what makes them smile as well.

We hope this blog post helps explain a little about how brands should evolve naturally (with the help of a little TLC), and that you enjoy our refreshed site as much as we loved creating it.

Well, it’s time for a website update. HOLD ON THOUGH! That’s happening next week. But we wanted to give you a sneak peak at some of the pics you might see on our face-lifted site. : D

Every time we work with Mabel’s Labels our portfolio of awesome, fun work grows a little. That’s because these ladies know how to do it up right when it comes to online communications. The newest edition to this list is the video below for the Mabel’s Labels BlogHer’11 Non-Contest. Check it out…

From conceptual development, script writing, art direction and even acting, we had a blast working on this project. If you think you have what it takes to enter (it’s not that hard really) click here, join the facebook page and give it a go.

BIG thank you to Fenian Films for their awesome videography! You guys rock! : D

Can you find us? Chris and Jenn are up all over Canada as part of the CYBF campaign to get young folks out creating small businesses. If you see our ad up in one of the many locations, take a picture and post it to our facebook wall. The kitestring will then send you a candygram in the mail. Happy hunting! : D

Wanna find out more, start dealing, and help me buy some more flip flops? Click here!