BUSINESS STRATEGY + brand development

Creative Strategy

WHAT & WHY

Lantern Press is known for vintage illustrations of travel destinations such as National Parks, the Golden Gate Bridge, and city skylines. Their impressive portfolio of over 100,000 artworks combined consistent art styles with thousands of outliers, commissioned by customers, watering down their brand. 

In addition, when looking at sales data, creating customer requested artwork with these inconsistencies caused a high amount of rework and non-standardized internal processes which resulted in a higher cost to the company, when compared to artworks with consistency.

To meet the business goal to add to their art portfolio regularly, efficiently and at a profit, while building brand clarity, it was imperative to come up with a strategy to achieve these goals. This was not a project but a company-wide strategy that took place over years.

BRAND

Lantern Press

MY ROLE

  • Leadership

  • Business Strategy

  • Creative Direction

  • Art Direction

    • Art Directors: Ronnie Bates, Jordan Kay, Dan Schlitzkus

    • Entire in-house & freelance illustration team

ABOUT THE WORK

CHALLENGE

To create a strategy for their art assets based on sales data when the portfolio of 100k+ artworks had never been clearly structured to access the data.

To create a custom artwork strategy that met sales team and customer needs while adding guardrails for business & operational success. Change management that comes with rolling-out processes company-wide, when they were not a part of the company DNA, but necessary for next-level business growth.

GOAL

  1. The ultimate goal was to build the brand and business by regularly and efficiently creating high-performing artwork that customers could recognize as Lantern Press.

  2. For wholesale custom artwork requests, to clearly articulate art styles they could choose from, the sales team could have enough options to meet goals, and creative could execute efficiently.

  3. To create individual styleguides for art styles, so art could be created consistently and efficiently by a variety of artists.

  4. To categorize 100,000+ artworks into art styles to determine which were top performing through sales data and determine a path forward: 1) keep what works and develop styleguides for greater consistency, 2) refresh the style for relevance or to create more consistency, 3) develop new art styles based on gaps in the portfolio, or 4) sunset the artwork.

RESULT

  1. 100,000+ artworks were categorized into art styles and internal systems built to accommodate this data. Sales data was pulled and analyzed, which helped us gain clarity on the brand. We created an illustration brand book to solidify these findings and serve as a north star.

  2. From the sales data, “core art styles” were determined for the brand to create consistency. Guardrails around custom artwork requests were built, while testing and adjusting what worked best for the company over time.

  3. Styleguides were created for art styles, resulting in a balance between efficiency and excellence. Internal art reviews resulted in effective and actionable feedback.

  4. Artwork that was low-performing was sunsetted while outlier artwork that did not fall within core art styles, were difficult to execute within the promised timeline, but still performed well individually, were not offered as a custom choice.

  5. Core art styles adapted over the years based on sales team feedback and sales data.

  6. New art styles were added yearly to keep the brand relevant and provide new offerings to customers.

  7. By categorizing artwork and reviewing sales data, it became apparent that many top locations in the USA were not included in the portfolio. This gave the brand the opportunity to proactively create these artworks which resulted in new customers and millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

The Work

How do you evolve an art house of a well-known brand, while staying true to its heritage and what customers love about it?

It all begins with defining what the brand is about at its core. What it stands for and is known for. What’s working, and what isn’t. Then create a strategy that incorporates that clarity, stay true to those North Stars throughout the business, and ripple it through your offerings.

*All artwork © Lantern Press. All Rights Reserved.

The Illustration Brand Book

Here is what is included:

  1. Mission, Vision & Values – Show how creative work ladders up to these.

  2. Design Pillars – Identify what all artworks must have to make it ‘Lantern Press’.

  3. Customer Archetypes – Ground the team in who the customers are and how to uniquely serve them with mood boards and color palette examples. This is especially helpful when creating new art styles. Also showcase which core art styles fit within each archetype.

  4. Clarity on the Shift – Articulate what the brand is moving away from and where it is going.

  5. Continue & Stop – Show examples from the current library of what will continue, what will not, and why.

Artwork Sampling

Here is an artwork sampling of how the Lantern Press brand evolved and leaned into it’s pillars with artworks for: national parks, city & states, local flora & fauna, and outdoor activities.

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Product Collection – Protect Our National Parks