5 New Ranges for Warwick Fabrics
We’ve had a busy few months over here at the Studio. Although we’ve kept you updated on a small handful of projects, we’ve kept a few up our sleeve. But with the passing of the infamous Decorex this week, one client in particular has had a big launch, which included distributing a number of our ‘unreal’ images. If you follow our social media accounts, you may already have an inkling which client we are talking about, because we have been releasing ‘Sneak Peeks’ (we are also well aware that the suspense building here is rendered null and void because we assume you have all read the title of this post…)
Since winning Warwick as a client, we have built five of their fabric ranges in 3D, with room sets and detail shots to complement each range. We’ll update you more on this when Warwick Fabrics UK launch their new website next year. You can bet that our imagery will be all over it! But this week, Warwick released their brand-new brochures for the launch of two new feature ranges; Heritage and Sequoia. And guess who designed, populated and printed them? Us. It’s us, in case you needed a prompt there…
It makes a lot of sense to get all of your marketing assets in one place. as we were already creating photorealistic CGI room sets and digital fabrics for Warwick, why not take advantage of our design team too? This way, there is no agency waiting on imagery from somewhere else, it is all dealt with in one place. A one-stop-shop if you will. While you’re at it, why not get the web team involved too?
But let’s focus on the brochures. We all know that preparation for a launch at a big trade show can be a headache at the least. Photoshoots to get right, brochure designs and printers to deal with. Warwick let go of that hassle. They just sent us a sample of every fabric in their new ranges, emailed some inspiration images, and sat back, waiting for the imagery to flood in. Next thing you know, images signed off, brand-new, on-brand brochures were delivered to their office in time for Decorex.
If you want a piece of the action, and to lose the stress of location shoots, outsourcing design, print and web development, get in touch. January furniture Show is just around the corner now…
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January Furniture Show: Get All Your Assets in Line
The January Furniture show is one of the UK’s biggest and most well known furniture trade show in the calendar. It boasts five halls from homewares to lighting, and everything in between. The 2020 show will run from Sunday 19th to Wednesday 22nd January.
Getting ready for JFS can take a lot of time, thought and preparation. Trust us, we know! But not only do we creaate photorealistic CGI images of furniture products and room sets We also specialise in design.
Our team come from a variety of backgrounds, and we have a handful of talented designers who love nothing better than to dissect the success of a brochure design. We are becoming something of a one-stop shop at Orbital. Initially, clienst come to us when they realise they can’t spot the difference betwen our imagery, and their long -winded photoshoots. But, when they realise we offer websites and print design too, it is hard not to resist hvaing your images framed into marketing assets by the same agency. You’d be amazed by the efficiency.
The January Furniture Show is the place to launch. New ranges, new brands or new looks. Making sure your marketing assets are updated is crucial. With buyers wandering past hundreds of stands, you want to make sure that yours is what they remember when they go to make orders, and keep on ordering from.
If you are wondering how to show off a large number of products in an eye-catching, on brand and sales inducing hand out. Call on Orbital’s Unreal Creatives. We would love to create a mock-up for your brand, so you can see the results for yourself.
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Combining CGI with Core Values: Made to Last
The name Made to Last seems very apt for one of our clients. Because that's what our imagery is, made to last. Saying goodbye to photoshoots, and saying hello to forever editable images, forever re-stylable locations at the click of a button, and forever reusable fabrics.
Made to Last are an online retailer with sustainability, durability and the British Manufacturing industry in its core values. Stocking solely British manufacturers, they provide everything home based from electricals to outdoor furniture, and everything in between. When they saw some realistic images that we were creating for one of their suppliers, and realised there were no photoshoots involved, they contacted us straight away. Removing the use of photoshoots also perfectly matches the sustainability factor of this forward-thinking retailer. Not only are they avoiding fast-fashion by supplying high-quality products, but cutting their carbon footprint and waste. Removing the idea of location shoots saves travel and delivery emissions, wasted prototypes, wasted fabrics, and on. Our images are completely recyclable. You only pay for a fabric, product or room set to be built once! so it is pretty gently on the long term budget too!
With a new selection of recliner beds, Made to Last needed a room set of a traditional bedroom, that could house a collection of six electric bed ranges, in a selection of colours and sizes. With traditional photography, this would have cost the Earth, in precious employee time as well as money. And that’s our cue!
We started by creating a mood board of images that matched their brief. A particular shot was chosen, and we went ahead with digitally recreating their dream location. We then got started on building each bed range and all the available fabrics in 3D. With this option, it allowed us to show the products in a variety of states. With the beds dressed, without the mattress, without incline, and showing off the electrical advantages of the recliner beds. Within a month, Made To Last had a package of images to populate their website, ready to upload, in their inbox.
This week, we were happy to see our images, live on their website! No matter how many projects we finish, the feeling of seeing our creation hosed on someone’s website always gives us that sense of excitement and job satisfaction. The excited responses we get from our clients also helps! We can’t wait to get started on our next project with Made to Last, so make sure you keep an eye on their website to see if you can spot which images are from a photoshoot and which were created from nothing in our Studio. We don’t call it wizardry for nothing!
If your business is in need of a website facelift or you want to say goodbye to photoshoots,, get in touch with us today!
Have a gander at Made to Last's website. Make sure you check out the new recliner beds, and try to spot any CGI...
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Steve Bristow Furniture: The Luxury Site With Imagery To Boot.
Some of you may recognise the name Steve Bristow from the hugely successful masonry company, but the stunning natural stone worktops now have a sister company. Last year, launching at the January Furniture Show, Steve Bristow Furniture appeared, with a luxurious range of hand-polished quartz furniture. But they needed an elegant website to match their new products and new brand. And that’s where Orbital stepped in.
As a new venture, Steve Bristow had a number of beautiful designs, but no photographs. No photoshoots? No problem. We were tasked with not only creating a new high-end website with growing SEO hidden within the text, but also creating all of the imagery to populate the new site. And that is what we did.
Steve Bristow Furniture are unique in the fact that they not only offer stunning quartz furniture, but the pieces are completely customisable. So how can they show each product in each variation and material? With Orbital’s product builder, that’s how.
We created a great hero lifestyle hot for each product, and then rendered each product in every possible material and shape so that the end-user can see exactly what they are ordering before making their purchase.
This is an ongoing project, as Steve Bristow Furniture are ever extending their luxury designs. So we are making more and more visual marketing assets for them, and consistently updating their website.
Now that these images have been created, they can be used across all marketing channels. Print ads, brochures, exhibition stands and more.
If your website is in need of a facelift, or you want to say goodbye to photoshoots, get in touch with us today!
Have a peek at Steve Bristow Furniture's new site. Don't forget to swoon over the imagery!
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IKEA uses CGI to recreate Stranger Things
So, by now you’ve all seen the magic we can create with realistic room sets. But to show the illusion behind CGI replacing photography in interiors, IKEA has taken it one step further. And we love it.
It’s just a still from Stranger things, right? Wrong! Just like the series itself, everything is not quite as it seems. The retail giant has used its own products in 3D visualisation to recreate the famed living room interior – alphabet and fairy lights included. But if we’re honest, we would have taken it one step further and made the set as if it was upside down, just saying…
But it doesn’t stop there. They have also recreated The Simpsons’ living room, and Monica’s apartment from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. It’s a clever little ploy. I mean, we’re not convinces that there will be a queue of customers ready to buy a clay orange sofa and paint their walls in pastel pink in homage to Homer and Marge, but it definitely makes you look twice.
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The Exchange: How the ‘Hub of the Furniture Industry’ is being realised
The Exchange isn’t just our studio space. It is a hub for the furniture industry. Which is exactly what was in mind during its creation. Based in the heart of the UK centre of Upholstery, the vision of the great, late, Matt O’Flynn, was to create a centre where industry professionals were constantly wandering the converted lace mills, opposite the infamous Harrington Mills. Easily accessible for furniture makers and suppliers across the UK. And we saw the latest example of this vision last week.
The Exchange was host to Sofa Workshop's annual sales meeting, with manufacturers visiting our studio throughout the week to deliver potential pieces to be shown in the Sofa Workshop showrooms across the UK. Staying for a coffee and a chat as always.
The Sofa Workshop team were here throughout the day, wandering through the dressed sofas, chairs, chaises and footstools made by some of the best UK manufacturers. Discussing the potential throughout the afternoon, only stopping for the (probably too large as usual) lunch served at midday.
There was method to the meeting, Sofa Workshop, as one of our largest clients, wanted their new pieces to be photographed and measured, ready for our Unreal Creatives to get them recreated in 3D as soon as the new ranges were decided upon. Having CGI fully integrated into their strategy means huge time and costs saved when it comes to new product launches. And, if we do say so ourselves, we are a great choice of agency…
We invite every new client to the studio to see how we work before taking on their project if possible. Learning how each other works and how we can integrate both working methods is the best way to develop a smooth process. We also just like having a natter over a coffee with new faces.
Edit: as I finish writing this post (with Rock the Casbah playing over the studio speakers), another client is leaving from his first visit to the studio, which lasted longer than he expected, mostly because the coffee is so good, and the doorbell rings again. Another hour, another visitor. An ode to the hub that The Exchange was built to be. Fabrics in and out, furniture deliveries and collections, business meetings and friendly visits. It’s a warm feeling to see this special vision come to life.
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New Burger King Ad Campaign Shows Cheeky Humour is PR Gold
Last week, The Cannes Lions Festival held its annual awards ceremony, honouring the most creative and successful marketing campaigns of the past year. It is always a great week to keep an eye on if you have an interest in marketing. And this year, it showed that when even the biggest companies take a risk, it can really pay off.
One of the biggest winners for 2019 was the almighty Burger King. Stepping up its smear campaign against McDonalds with a light-hearted twist saw the company scoop a whopping (don’t excuse the pun) three Grand Prix prizes.
The King of campaigns was this year offering customers their most popular burger for just a penny. But only if you ordered it from a McDonalds. Carrying on its ongoing anti-McBurger campaign, the new Whopper Detour App offered customers an almost free burger when ordered within 600m of a Ronald McDonald establishment. The app would then direct you to your nearest Burger King to pick up your 1 penny Whopper.
The award-winning campaign highlighted the importance of mobile when advertising. Linking the new mobile food order culture, as well as the age of gaming and the joy and shock that comes with bending the rules of sportsmanship, the Whopper Detour app was a mixture of creativity, cunning and comedy.
It is not the first time this year that Burger king has used McDonalds’ extensive advertising budget for its own gain. Flame-grilling has always been Burger King's signature cooking technique since opening in 1954, and in March this year, the burger chain used virtual flames to "burn" its biggest competitors. While it didn’t specify McDonald's by name, the pixelated imagery of billboards and print ads suggest that the app campaign was directly targeting the key rival.
Admittedly, many of us may not have the budget or brand significance for the publicity that these ad stunts have created. But we can take a leaf out of the burger giant’s campaign book. Burger King stays at the top of the awards list because they look forward. With this flux of new technologies, using mobile apps and AR is a sure-fire way to get strong engagement from your target audience. You may not be in the same industry, but the rules still apply. Always keep on eye on the horizon and have fun with your campaigns.
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