One Year Today...

Today is a very special day at Lovers’. TIF, it was a year ago today that we started to get our blog up and running. We hope you have enjoyed what has been a fantastic journey for us so far, we couldn’t have done it without your continued support, plus all our great contributors and anyone else that has mentioned us to someone, you all deserve a hug from us.

We couldn’t have got this far without you, so we thank you and keep supporting us for another great year ahead!

Svea and James xoxo

List Love

Hey guys, I've got some awesome links to share with you this month!

1. This list of books to read in 2014 - I'm definitely going to try to squeeze some of these in between my books from ABM book club!
2. And speaking of ABM, this article from Elsie about working in a young industry
3. The 6 item challenge - this would definitely help towards clearing out my wardrobe!
4. This great post about Green Skincare from Elise of Elise Joy,
5. I'm dying to make this Croque Monsieur at home, I'm a sucker for them!
6. I love the sweet (pardon the pun) graphics for Laura's Little Bakery website
7. This article about living and working purposefully really caught my eye
8. I'm still sceptical about internships but this scheme sounds interesting

And finally…

I like this efficient delivery process! I like to have a good structure set in place when I'm working so this process is perfect for me.

Svea xo

Relaxation & Positivity

This month I've been trying really hard to see through all of the changes going on around me to get to the other end of it all. It's been difficult, but I have to say that the work I've been doing around my word for the year (challenge) has really helped. I think I'm finally seeing some light. 

This board reflects some of the sentiments that I want to incorporate more of into my life. I like the positive messages and the idea of getting back to nature to have a more relaxing time of things. And also pie, I love pie.  

Svea xo

1//Van Gogh Quote 2//Say Yes to Things 3//Child's Pose 4//Woodgrain Texture 5//Yay Flag 6//Honey & Buttermilk Pie

Brand Spotlight: IKEA

Things have changed around here - we're going to do things a little differently with Brand Spotlight from now on. We'll be looking into how brand communicates itself to its customers and how they do it so effectively, sound good?
So without further ado, for our first brand we'll be looking at those kings of home furnishing IKEA.

With 345 stores across the planet, IKEA was one of the first brands to embrace the digital age. Making maximum use of social media and also shifting people away from catalogues to it's digital version with ever increasing apps for both Android and iOS made people sit up and take note on how to market a worldwide business.

According to figures, the IKEA catalogue app has been downloaded over 10 million times making it current and fresh to modern shoppers. Especially when you bring augmented reality into the picture.

Social Media

Facebook: The USA page has the highest following measuring about 3,411,985. The retailer's social teams pose questions, links to photo albums, and post YouTube clips to increase engagement.

Twitter: IKEA has separate twitter feeds for all its country-specific twitter pages. The US page alone has 2, 22,000 followers while IKEA Canada page has 6, 66,000 followers. Ikea makes these pages engaging by tempting its followers to indulge in campaigns such as celebrating 'Bring your Own Friends Day (BYOF).

Pinterest: This is an obvious choice for a retailer which deals in home furnishings, as this claims to be the official 'visual discovery tool'. Making best use of Pinterest, IKEA visually presents its merchandise to local markets in the UK, USA, Canada and other countries.

Google +: IKEA's USA page entered Google + only recently (January, 2014) and has the lowest following out of all of its pages. The retailer has apparently not been able to make much use of this platform even though the main page was launched in December 2011.

Outdoor campaigns

While promotion of its catalogue through online mode constitutes almost 70 percent of its annual marketing spend, IKEA creates highly engaging outdoor campaigns.

Indoor Garden: IKEA took to the indoor environments of Waterloo and Liverpool rail stations in the London, to show to commuters that they could 'make more of their outdoor spaces' - a.k.a their gardens. A pop-up shop invited commuters to sit down and observe the wide range of outdoor solutions available in the IKEA store that could help them transform their outdoor space.

Billboard-fitted wardrobes, Vienna: IKEA advertised the advantages of its particular flexible wardrobe by "dressing" a billboard with a PAX door that passers-by could slide open in order to discover IKEA's solutions that help fit anything into a wardrobe.

IKEA has really pushed the boundaries in what a furniture retailer should be. It is more about just selling furniture, showing how it helps benefit your life is something IKEA strives towards and by using all these channels, it presents itself as current, cool and at the forefront of it's market. What IKEA will do next, I don't know but I'm excited to find out.

James xo

5 free software for your design needs

Getting a hold of some decent software or applications is always a tricky one. Sometimes you have to pay through the nose to get a best bit of kit out there. But, if you trawl along around on the internet you can find something just as good. So, I saved you the time and picked out some of the best software to use that you may just need.

GIMP

If your a fan of Photoshop this open-source free graphic design software stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Today it’s available in versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac. GIMP's interface differs somewhat from Photoshop, but a version of GIMP is available that mimics Adobe's look and feel, making it easier to migrate over if you’re use to using Photoshop.

The full suite of tools is available here - everything you’re accustomed to is within easy reach, including painting tools, colour correction, cloning, selection, and enhancement. The team that oversees development has worked hard to ensure compatibility too, so you’ll be able to work with all the popular file formats without any trouble at all. You can download it here

Google Fonts

Google set up a service that lets you use a trust bit of code that let's you embedded a number of cusomt fonts directly onto your site.

Google Fonts - recently did a deal with font service Monotype to make its free fonts available for desktop use. Monotype's SkyFonts software is normally used to rent commercial fonts for short-term use. But the new deal means you can access desktop versions of hundreds of Google Fonts - previously only available for use as web fonts - via SkyFonts, for as long as you want.

Blender

No this ain't for food, Blender is a highly impressive 3D rending tool Blender is a free, open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems.

Started by Blender Foundation founder Ton Roosendaal in 2002, Blender is now largest open source tool for 3D creation. Its makers are constantly working on its development, but you can pretty much do anything 3D related with this software, including modelling, texturing, animation, rendering and compositing. This little video should give you a taste about becoming the next Pixar animator.

SVG-Edit

If you’re looking to quickly output SVG, or edit an existing SVG file, there are a few online editors that will do the job just as well as Adobe Illustrator. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an open format that allows you to reproduce your Vector drawings programmatically, and one of the nicest projects is SVG-Edit.

This is built entirely on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript without requiring any server-side processing. So not only can you use it to create and edit documents, but as it’s open source you can also download and modify the code - making your own version if you want.

Behance

With all this free software you need somewhere to showcase it and that's were Behance comes in.

With millions of views each month, online creative community Behance is quickly becoming the place to be for artists of all disciplines. It's a fantastic way to see what your peers are up to as well as finding new work and creative inspiration from top web designers and agencies. Find the best ways to get your work noticed on Behance

So get cracking, you never know where this software could take you.

James xo

5 Minutes with...RAJE

Welcome to April one and all! James' birthday month and a mere five weeks until we hop on a plane to Mexico, I can't wait!

We're kicking of the month with a re-brand of our Brand Spotlight posts, they're now going by the name of Five Minutes With...I hope you can forgive us the confusion. Now, onwards!

This month we're talking to the lovely Roanna Price of design collective RAJE. RAJE is made up of four fabulous women who are working together to create an ethical fashion brand. We'll leave it to Ro to tell you more...

So tell us about RAJE...how did it come about?//

Back when we were all young, Innocent girls we entered the Make Your Mark in Fashion competition. We went on to become finalists, show at LFW and won some funding. This was the push we needed to go ahead and try and make R~A~J~E happen.

How have you found the process of setting up your own business?//

Challenging, formative and very very time consuming. Since I was 17 R~A~J~E has been my focus. Uni, jobs and friendships have all come and gone in that time. When you run a business you realise you can only have relationships with very secure people who understand when you can't do anything for the next 8 weekends! 

Ethical fashion/design is the cornerstone of RAJE - do you ever find that this conflicts with any other aspects of the business?//

I think it's better put as, as designers we don't believe a product can be beautiful if it's origins are in bloodshed, exploitation and damage. So, rather than ethics being our cornerstone, true beauty is our cornerstone - the two are inextricably linked. And yes, it causes conflicts - but it all depends on your priorities. It conflicts with straight forward, money making goals. But we didn't get into this to make money. We want to provide beautiful, well-made, sustainable clothes that boost women's confidence and provide business for healthy supply chains. So in that way, no, there is no conflict. 

Have you ever felt the need to compromise in order to stay true to your wish to remain ethical?//

We know that "being ethical" is a journey and one of the first things we all agreed on was that we would always, no matter how big we are, re-evaluate our production process, our employee contracts and our social responsibility. So while we don't feel like we've compromised, we also know that this is just the starting point. 

The four of you come from different backgrounds within the creative industry, do you feel as though your separate disciplines merge well together? Do you enjoy mixing your talents?//

Definitely. Our different disciplines, passions and strengths make us an incredibly strong team. What one of us isn't good at, the other will excel in. And yes, a R~A~J~E day is always a fun day - we are four incredibly opinionated, stubborn, driven and talented people. I would say that J, A and E are three of very few people in the world who can take me on when I'm fired up, and the same applies to them. Uniting all of our passion and drive to run R~A~J~E really is a remarkable thing.

And finally, what does RAJE have up it's sleeve for the future?//

Many many things! But it's safe to say a limited edition range, second collection, online magazine and swanky studio space are all in the pipe line.

Thanks to Ro for chatting to us, we loved hearing about RAJE!

Blog, Website, Twitter.

Svea xo