Collaborating with The Conscious Lawyer – The Power of Female-led Business Collaboration

Plus, how to transform actions on Photoshop into on-brand photography with effects and filters…

We were very proud to recently work with the incredible The Conscious Lawyer founder Elaine Quinn providing design consultancy. It’s a great privilege to be a female led business empowering another one by sharing our skills through design training.

As an online positive law publication, The Conscious Lawyer tackles the subject of ethical law and covers topics as diverse as animal welfare and wellbeing for lawyers. They aim to provide a platform for those who engage in the practice of law through conscious, creative and courageous means. Through their publication they draw attention, recognition and support to the work of contributors, who are mainly lawyers or former lawyers, igniting inspiration and cause for action in readers.

The recent design training we provided formed part of a more comprehensive design support journey, and empowered The Conscious Lawyer team to create imagery that is in line with their brand guidelines. In an industry where so much of the news is negative, it is vital for The Conscious Lawyer to use imagery that accurately portrays the message that they are trying to spread – of hope, fulfilment and the power of positive action. It’s also important that photography on their website, magazine and marketing materials is consistent and matches with their brand guidelines to create a coherent message that resonates with readers.

The following client training video is a short presentation, showing how you can use actions in Photoshop to apply effects and filters to standard imagery and transform it into on-brand photography. Using actions in Photoshop allows users to download or create a set of procedures that can be reused to edit an image in a particular way. This will help to keep imagery consistent for a brand. Just by uploading the action and pressing play you can add multiple layers and transform your image.

Read a step-by-step overview of the video here:

1. Source an action. These can be purchased or found for free by searching ‘Photoshop actions’ on Google.
2. Using Photoshop select and open an image.
3. Double click on background layer to create new layer.
4. Select layer (copy) to work on rather than the original
5. You can bring up the actions panel by clicking Window then Actions. From here you can upload your actions to Photoshop.
6. Click on your chosen action and click play. This will give you the image with the action applied.
7. From here you can adjust opacity and density levels as you may wish to tone down the image. Not only can using actions on Photoshop help to save you time, but it can also assist you with creating a style and pattern for your brand.

Through this design training consultancy, we were able to collaborate with a company that believes in an ethical and creative approach to law. Not only were we able to assist The Conscious Lawyer through upskilling in their approach to design, but we were also able to empower each other. Two female led businesses working together to create consistent content that builds a brand.

The theme for International Women’s Day 2019 was #BalanceforBetter, expressing that a gender-balanced world is a better world. To create a gender-balanced society everyone has a role to play, and we think that one one of the best steps towards celebrating women’s achievement is female-led businesses working together.