David has spent 15 years honing his craft as a master felter and wanted to leverage his felting magic into a custom product brand. But he was up against a very tight deadline to meet a potential sales agent in just a few weeks with nothing but years worth of material samples to show. He needed a proper brand identity and business model fast, and it needed to be authentic. For someone like him, no other kind would work.

A graduate of SCAD, his work goes deeper than the average wool artist. Obsessed with his sourcing and inspired by the work of Claudy Jonstra, everything he does is focused on sustainability. His cliffside garden contains many plants from which he harvests, boils and extracts dyes using the same centuries-old recipes used by Old Master painters.

It was obvious his process was totally unique, completely holistic and connected. The personal vibe matches completely: his spirit is fully merged with the natural world, he posesses sophistication in spades, and he has a mind containing vast yet deep historical knowledge. He possesses the hands of an alchemist, transforming raw matter and homemade elixers into wondrous forms of beauty.

In addition to the alchemical connection, I discovered David was a Nordophile. He has a vast collection of chic Scandanavian cookbooks and can cook you a meal that would make you cry. The remote corners of Sweden and Norway are regular travel destinations, cultivating a deep respect for the region’s natural habitats and values, as well as the people’s tranquil, rooted ways of life.

If you met David, his attraction to Scandi culture would pour out of him as he rattled off some encyclopedic knowledge about migration patterns of Norweigan reindeer, all while maintaining a gentle stillness. His soulful earthy and soothing personal qualities, his connection with rural agrarian Scandinavia, and his alchemical wizardry would become our places of inspiration.

We aimed to position the brand as grounded, artisanal, sophisticated, soulful, and integrity-focused. MAHA collaborated on a brand concept, styled and creative-directed a photoshoot, and finally designed a lookbook that David still feels proud to show. And in keeping with our mission of full-circle, integrative business thinking we devised a functional internal sales and operating structure that works for DCF, to support the strong outer visual messaging.

The book was designed to be flexible and used for various marketing needs positioning his authority as an artist, custom collaborator, and product designer of everything from accessories to large-scale felted lighting installations. As a young entrepreneur with more limited resources, your efforts and content should be multi-functional.

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Maha does more than get the job done. She provides tools that are self improving and guides you in making them self evolving. Her knowledge is vast and she integrates everything she has learned, coupling it with masterful organizational skills in innovative mind-bending ways. With her by your side, she makes the unsurmountable feel digestable, helping you see the bigger picture as well as all the minutiae in order to create cohesive total solutions. ~David Charles Frank

© Maha Mamish 2023