Thinking of Selling? We'll showcase your home on all of the top national and local real estate websites. This is a variable direct mail post card for use in the real estate industry.

Creating an engaging direct mail post card design can be a challenging task. Especially in the field of real estate where postcard designs are most often simply a photo of a MLS listing along with a brief description of the property on the back. The above design breaks the mold of standard real estate postcard designs.

The Thinking of Selling concept pictured above promotes Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty’s listing syndication through social media and real estate websites such as Facebook, Trulia, Realtor.com and Zillow, to name just a few. A stock photo of a laptop computer was used to drive home the fact that this message is about an information technology service that the company offers. The real estate websites logos were then assembled in Adobe Illustrator and warped to match the laptop photo’s perspective in Adobe Photoshop. The Laptop was also silhouetted in Photoshop so that it could then be imported into Adobe InDesign and placed over Rand Realty’s standard grass/sky background branding image. The text was also written and typeset in InDesign and the logo was placed in the top right corner in accordance with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s branding standards.

To ensure a cohesion between the front and back of the postcards the grass/sky image was used again as a background for the text. The body copy on the back further drives home the point to the card’s audience the significance of getting the potential lead’s home on as many websites as possible.

Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty utilizes a direct mail vendor with the ability to create postcards with variable text and photos. This gives their agents the opportunity to include all of their contact information along with headshot on the card. They also could customize the message on the back of the card to suit their needs.  This all ads up to an effective direct mail campaign. The postcard was so successful and popular with the real estate agents that the design was modified and resized to run in several of the Hudson Valley region’s publications as a branding ad.

Branding ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate has created a large number of videos for the purpose of attracting a web audience to their site. These videos are also a great opportunity for the company to increase brand awareness, so they opted to create some on-air marketing to promote them. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate then in turn syndicates the videos out to their Franchisee’s. Rand Realty used the opportunity to drive some more web traffic from their print campaign in a few local publications in Westchester and the Hudson Valley with the print ad displayed on the left.

The Power of Color certainly appeals to a graphic designer’s sensibilities. This video explains the basic principles of color theory and how to apply it in interior design. I also clearly used some color theory in the design of the ad. Three instances of Better Homes and Gardens green were placed over a black and white CAD rendered image adhering to the law of thirds. This has resulted in a logo that really stands out and text that is easily readable.

While working on this project I was both under time and budgetary constraints so I used my trusty flatbed scanner for the image of the fanned out Pantone book. This, of course, required some moderate retouching and color correction in Photoshop. The background image, Pantone book, logo and text were all assembled into the final design using Adobe InDesign. Certainly a fun project to work on and the end results make for a great looking ad.

Distinctive Collection Luxury Real Estate Branding ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty.

Working for a real estate company in the Northern Suburbs of New York City certainly gives you the opportunity to market a great deal of luxury homes. A big part of that, though, is convincing the area residents that you understand their needs. Here lies the importance of a luxury branding campaign. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate currently uses the Distinctive Collection brand to accomplish this.

The above ad was designed with the sole purpose of increasing brand awareness of the new Distinctive Collection Brand. The luxury market and need for an unimpeded prominent logo resulted in a rather simplistic ad design.

The copy for this ad concept was written by the Art Director. Since Distinctive Collection is a relatively new brand I felt that it was only logical and important to include the word “New” in the text. But, how is that accomplished? After some image research for luxury interiors I decided that I really liked staircases for a luxury real estate brand. With that direction and after a bit more brainstorming I came up with “Reaching New Heights in Luxury Real Estate.” A slogan that I felt was simple, to the point and not too kitsch.

It was decided that the first staircase I used for this project just wasn’t luxurious enough. So it was back to iStock Photo for another image search when I found the photo that was ultimately used. It’s perfect for luxury, wrought iron railings with a curved staircase concealing and baby grand piano. I can’t think of a room too much more luxurious than that!

The Explore. Play. Grow. HudsonHeartbeat.com Lifestyle Branding Ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty

It was decided that a major portion of the  marketing campaign for  HudsonHeartbeat.com branding would need to be focused on the Hudson Valley lifestyle. This ad was designed with the Luxury market in Westchester County in mind. After some exhaustive image research and a few other design comps we decided that we should down play screen grabs of the actual site. Instead Rand Realty’s owners wanted to present it as a lifestyle ad. This style actually ties in more with the typical branding ads produced by Realogy‘s Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate franchise branding.

Initially the design used an image of a laptop. However, the new iPad was so much fun that we though it would be more hip to use an iPad instead of a laptop and better reach our luxury audience. The main background photo of the Adirondack chairs, dock, and water is from iStockPhoto. Eric Ortner took a studio photo of an iPad matching it to the perspective of the iStockPhoto shot. He then superimposed a screen grab of the HudsonHeartbeat.com site into the iPad image in Adobe Photoshop. Mr. Ortner then used Photoshop to place the iPad image into the Adirondack Chair Image. Upon purchase of the Hi-Res Adirondack chair it became clear that additional retouching of the iStock Photo image was required. In addition to being distressed, the hi-res photos revealed that the chairs had a great deal of dirt and mildew on them. So Eric Ortner needed to “repaint” the chairs in Photoshop. Some careful selection, masking, feathering and layering eliminated the filth. The page layout’s, photo, logos and text were then all put together in Adobe InDesign.

This branding ad is being used extensively in local publications throughout New York’s Westchester the Hudson Valley. It has also been turned into a postcard and flyer.