Branding and Positioning have always been my favorite reads. I have read few books on them but could always relate to the subject matter. Every time I watched a TV ad or newspaper or any other Media AD, I would often ponder on the creativity, the storytelling, the visuals and more.
The world of branding, communication, and marketing is maddening yet highly addictive. To me, it was more about those colorful pages, glossy designs, and global brands. To me, it was also about the unspoken words that brands used to target, communicate and engage with their audience, consumers and businesses alike.
Who doesn't love great visuals?
If there is anything that speaks volume about a product, other than its superlative quality, it is the impression the brand creates with their advertising, packaging, and other such visuals. Ahoy! this ain't an article on the concept of positioning, designing and merchandising. This is a post on an insider perspective of how "Haute Kutir" was conceptualized and goes behind designing this blog that we consider "Birth of a Dream".
Birth of a Dream- Haute Kutir
I have coined Haute Kutir from the word "Haute Couture". Simply cause the latter was not available and we were neither planning to build just a fashion blog. Hence, we Indianized the phonetic French beauty replacing "Couture" with "Kutir". Besides, we are not all about Fashion you see. There is an element of Beauty, Fashion, Style, Luxury, Food, and above all, all amalgamating into "Lifestyle".
Haute Kutir, a name in Beauty, Food & Lifestyle
When we started certain brands took us lightly saying that we are not complete "beauty-beauty" blog. We refused to narrow it down to a limited label as for us, beauty has many elements that often traverse with each other like makeup, skin care, accessories, leading to fashion, styling and to food and to lifestyle.
After we listed the objective, we needed to work on the design. Having a different idea is not sufficient enough, the way you present is also important. We skimmed through various templates and narrowed down a "pink and girly" shopping theme. Here's a quick preview-
That was October 2013 And the design was quite loved by few. However, we faced some technical issues and given our limited technical and coding abilities, we could not plug different tools and wanted to change
In 2014, somewhere around march, we found a unique template that echoed our sentiments and we had this re-born-
White Background, open spaces, a unique slide down pictures on a page view, neat design with social media icons on top and more. It has an "enter to see more" functionality attach to it, which kept all detailed layout inside while giving you a clean and neat front page.
I remember we had some of the best content there and irrespective of it, brands and readers wanted to have a more elaborate page with more widget and plug-ins on the front page. The original template design was surely an eye-catcher and no wonder, we saw many fellow bloggers adopting the same template. Flattered? Off course, we were. By the end of December 2014, we felt worn off with this template and much against the time and technology constraint, we re-modeled our blog.
In February 2014, we redesigned the blog into one of the most visually stunning and classy looking templates that we still love. The advertisers, Brands and PRs loved this template and inundated us with great feedback. It was unique, chic, visually appealing, photo focussed and simple to maintain.
We designed our first logo too.
And made it brighter too. The design concept was simple, classy and inclusive. Being my favorite colors, the classy black and white found their place in my logo.
My self-brief to the logo was clear. It has to be classy, contemporary and different. It also has to concur with the fact that - I do not know Photoshop or any other such design tools/ software. Hence, I need to use my imagination, my taste, and website ethnicity and my limited skills. I was indeed happy with what I got, so were some business that liked my design and had incorporated the same for their sites. Imitation is the biggest form of flattery and, flattered we were, we continued with our logo
As time moved, Haute Kutir earned a decent name in lifestyle sphere.I tried to incorporate some magazine style template which did not work and we reverted back to our "kamera" free version. And then we found some design limitation and bugs in our template that we could not fix. I almost bought the template and then changed the mind. Back from our Goa holidays, I re-worked on the logo and gave it a "holiday and new year festivity" twist. After lots of permutations, combination, and our limited design tools, Here's what we finalized-
It replaced the current logo at website banner/ masthead. We continue to use the previous logo in our pictures. Happy with our logo, we moved on to the design and further worked on our template and changed it into present day's template as you can see on this blog. Maybe one day we shall write about what we loved in this new template and what you too should see. As of now, it has remained one of the unique templates around. I worked day and night to make this template work rather outsourcing it.
Why do we not outsource our Design/ extra?
We have a simple funda, if you can not own it up, do not work on it.Haute Kutir was not just another Blog but was born out of my passion, my extensive interest in lifestyle that made me travel and live across different parts of country/ culture/ Lifestyles. Hiring a designer is easier than customization. Notwithstanding the pain of "outsourcing", I have kept the design baton in our hands so far.
New Logo/ Mast Head
Time has come to wear that creative cap again.I have re-designed our blog banner/ logo head and thought of unveiling it here. Here comes our new banner/ logo head for the blog-
Hope you will like it. As usual, the design principal was to "keep it simple and classy". We added a dash of Olive Green to it, keeping with our thrust with the environment.
Important to note-
1) The new logo is original, self-designed and under patent
2) Re-use, reproduction without permission is not allowed
3) This is the masthead and logo at photos, or other such documents may vary [ we will update them soon]
4) The old logos will not get change/replace them from old posts/ socials
The world of branding, communication, and marketing is maddening yet highly addictive. To me, it was more about those colorful pages, glossy designs, and global brands. To me, it was also about the unspoken words that brands used to target, communicate and engage with their audience, consumers and businesses alike.
Who doesn't love great visuals?
If there is anything that speaks volume about a product, other than its superlative quality, it is the impression the brand creates with their advertising, packaging, and other such visuals. Ahoy! this ain't an article on the concept of positioning, designing and merchandising. This is a post on an insider perspective of how "Haute Kutir" was conceptualized and goes behind designing this blog that we consider "Birth of a Dream".
Birth of a Dream- Haute Kutir
I have coined Haute Kutir from the word "Haute Couture". Simply cause the latter was not available and we were neither planning to build just a fashion blog. Hence, we Indianized the phonetic French beauty replacing "Couture" with "Kutir". Besides, we are not all about Fashion you see. There is an element of Beauty, Fashion, Style, Luxury, Food, and above all, all amalgamating into "Lifestyle".
Haute Kutir, a name in Beauty, Food & Lifestyle
When we started certain brands took us lightly saying that we are not complete "beauty-beauty" blog. We refused to narrow it down to a limited label as for us, beauty has many elements that often traverse with each other like makeup, skin care, accessories, leading to fashion, styling and to food and to lifestyle.
After we listed the objective, we needed to work on the design. Having a different idea is not sufficient enough, the way you present is also important. We skimmed through various templates and narrowed down a "pink and girly" shopping theme. Here's a quick preview-
That was October 2013 And the design was quite loved by few. However, we faced some technical issues and given our limited technical and coding abilities, we could not plug different tools and wanted to change
In 2014, somewhere around march, we found a unique template that echoed our sentiments and we had this re-born-
White Background, open spaces, a unique slide down pictures on a page view, neat design with social media icons on top and more. It has an "enter to see more" functionality attach to it, which kept all detailed layout inside while giving you a clean and neat front page.
I remember we had some of the best content there and irrespective of it, brands and readers wanted to have a more elaborate page with more widget and plug-ins on the front page. The original template design was surely an eye-catcher and no wonder, we saw many fellow bloggers adopting the same template. Flattered? Off course, we were. By the end of December 2014, we felt worn off with this template and much against the time and technology constraint, we re-modeled our blog.
In February 2014, we redesigned the blog into one of the most visually stunning and classy looking templates that we still love. The advertisers, Brands and PRs loved this template and inundated us with great feedback. It was unique, chic, visually appealing, photo focussed and simple to maintain.
We designed our first logo too.
And made it brighter too. The design concept was simple, classy and inclusive. Being my favorite colors, the classy black and white found their place in my logo.
As time moved, Haute Kutir earned a decent name in lifestyle sphere.I tried to incorporate some magazine style template which did not work and we reverted back to our "kamera" free version. And then we found some design limitation and bugs in our template that we could not fix. I almost bought the template and then changed the mind. Back from our Goa holidays, I re-worked on the logo and gave it a "holiday and new year festivity" twist. After lots of permutations, combination, and our limited design tools, Here's what we finalized-
It replaced the current logo at website banner/ masthead. We continue to use the previous logo in our pictures. Happy with our logo, we moved on to the design and further worked on our template and changed it into present day's template as you can see on this blog. Maybe one day we shall write about what we loved in this new template and what you too should see. As of now, it has remained one of the unique templates around. I worked day and night to make this template work rather outsourcing it.
Why do we not outsource our Design/ extra?
We have a simple funda, if you can not own it up, do not work on it.Haute Kutir was not just another Blog but was born out of my passion, my extensive interest in lifestyle that made me travel and live across different parts of country/ culture/ Lifestyles. Hiring a designer is easier than customization. Notwithstanding the pain of "outsourcing", I have kept the design baton in our hands so far.
New Logo/ Mast Head
Time has come to wear that creative cap again.I have re-designed our blog banner/ logo head and thought of unveiling it here. Here comes our new banner/ logo head for the blog-
Hope you will like it. As usual, the design principal was to "keep it simple and classy". We added a dash of Olive Green to it, keeping with our thrust with the environment.
Important to note-
1) The new logo is original, self-designed and under patent
2) Re-use, reproduction without permission is not allowed
3) This is the masthead and logo at photos, or other such documents may vary [ we will update them soon]
4) The old logos will not get change/replace them from old posts/ socials
-------to be continued
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