I admire home-based entrepreneurs who are prepared to take on the risks to carve a space for themselves in the market and succeed through vision, bravado and hard work.

Often working solo and without a large amount of start-up capital, home industries usually find professional marketing services to be well out of reach.

So while they may produce or sell a superb product, home industry is short-changed when it comes to perception as they rely either on grainy photographs taken with cellphones and compacts or, unaware of the legalities surrounding copyright, generic imagery scraped off of a Google search.

I’ve launched ShootCake with the vision to provide quality promotional photography for home industries based in Gauteng, South Africa.

My solution will include a selection of high quality photographs that can be used across print and web media and, as an add-on to the basic package, training on setting up and maintaining a web presence for the home business.

I’ll soon be uploading ShootCake’s rate card and T’s & C’s.

In the meantime, queries can be sent through my contact page or via the email listed above.

View the gallery below for a working portfolio:

AFRICA: “Ideal for the Development of a Real Economy”

WESTERN SAHARA: Africa Should Slap Sanctions on Morocco

Imperative Libyans Decide Their Own Future

Q&A: Sudan and South Sudan Will Resolve Oil Issues

I submitted this book cover design concept for the Burnet Media Young Visual Designer Cover Competition 2011 and it made the short-list.

Christoff van Wyk’s design went on to claim top spot.

Click here to view his winning cover and the other short-listed designs.

I won last year’s round with my cover concept for Zuma’s Bastard by Azad Essa.

Click here to download the pdf of the brochure.

Urban suave meets rainforest relaxation with the BlkCherry range of poly rattan furniture imported from Vietnam and the Far East…

www.niqi.co.za is the online presence of niQi Living Luxe; a lifestyle brand encompassing the design sensibilities of Naqiyah Mayat.

Naqiyah is a freelance graphic designer and event stylist who’s launched a range of luxury tea towels as well as a line of ready-to-wear Moroccan-inspired clothing.

Her strong photography, culinary and paper crafting skills make for a constant visual delight.

Along with content generation and management, ColourNoun maintains all aspects of the niQi Living Luxe website and Facebook fan page.

]]> http://colournoun.co.za/2011/09/content-management-niqi-co-za/feed/ 0 http://colournoun.co.za/2011/08/free-printable-eid-cards/ http://colournoun.co.za/2011/08/free-printable-eid-cards/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:11:38 +0000 saaleha http://colournoun.co.za/?p=678

Preparing for Eid and maximising one’s ibaadah in these final moments of Ramadaan can be quite the juggle.

If Eid gifting is on your lengthy last-minute-to-do list, here’s one less thing to occupy your head-space.

I’ve put together these Eid Mubarak cards for you to download and print.

Assemble the cards by printing each one on an A4 sheet of paper.

Follow the grey line and trim off the white border.

Orientate your paper so that it’s print side up and in landscape position.

Fold the paper in half horizontally. If you’re familiar with origami, this would be a mountain-fold.

Fold the paper in half again; this time the crease will be vertical and you’ll have the printed image on the front of the card which will now open from left-to-right.

The card will be blank on the inside, leaving you plenty of space to pen in your message and aadiyah for a loved one.

Click here to download the printable Eid cards pdf file (includes all three versions of the card).

Incorporating a digital paper design from Nicole Seitler’s Sugarplum Paperie, I designed an invitation and a few printables for the party’s decor.

The family wanted to keep the sex of the baby a surprise and the minty candy colours worked well as a neutral scheme .

Here are a few pictures Aasia took at the baby shower:

I will always associate a part of our time there with the scent of cooking fish and laundry baking off in the sun.

This design is my abstraction of the view from the guest-house’s terrace.

Click on the image to open the wallpaper to its full resolution of 1024×768, then right-click on the image to save.

The revised logo:

Label designs for packaging:

Business cards:

The cards arrived standard issue from the printers.
To customise them, I used corner-rounder and craft punches on each card, positioning the teardrop punch shapes so that when I use the card on a package, they would allow for a ribbon to be threaded through.