Visual Language LLC

Writing and Design by Ellen M Shapiro

Capital for the Real Estate Industry

A three-generation family business, M. Robert Goldman, founded in 1932, has arranged financing for many of the most iconic office buildings, industrial properties, shopping centers, and multifamily housing developments in the New York tri-state region. CEO Jon Goldman came to us with a portfolio of photographs of buildings he’d proudly shot himself. The identity we developed was based on animating those photos against stark, glossy black backgrounds that set them off and communicate broad industry and regional expertise.

The result: the definition of the term “capabilities brochure.”
Only eight pages plus cover, the brochure makes a bold statement. The pocket on the inside back cover holds “deal sheets” describing the most recent financings.

The client has outstanding capabilities in photography and in-house printing and binding. This deal sheet template in Adobe InDesign gives them the ability to insert photos and text and print on glossy cover stock.

We developed a newsletter format that, like the deal sheets, could be produced 100 percent in-house.

Before and after. Perhaps most important to the success of the company were the redesigned proposal formats, including providing MRG with engraved front covers cut back to show key information printed in-house on the first page.
Make it pop. This is the same 6 x 4.25-inch ad space before and after. One of our initial goals was demonstrating how to use space efficiently and focus the reader on the most important information, whether the space is on a brochure page, proposal page, deal sheet, and especially in advertising space in paid media, such as Real Estate Weekly. The client’s original MRG monogram was not changed; everything around it and supporting it was.