Jul 8th, 2011 | Advertising, Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing | Comments Off
Logos are the quickest way to identify your brand.
Consumers can recognize brands on which logos are imprinted. Your company’s logo should be eye catching, unique, memorable, and evoke positive emotions.
Before you create or change your logo, keep the following in mind:
1. Your logo must reflect brand value. Logos are macros to an elaborate brand strategy. Logos support your brand identity and should reflect your business. For example, if speed is your brand’s value, make sure your logo reflects that value by, say, depicting motion. Likewise, depending on the nature of your product or service, your logo can reflect strength, time, characteristics of target audience, etc.
2. Your logo must convey the intended meaning. Logos can range from highly abstract to simple. While both types tend to acquire meanings, you have to work harder to create awareness for abstract logos, and it takes longer for the target audience to retain a memory of the logo. In general, keep in mind that consumers understand the intended meaning of logos and recognize them easily if the logo designs are concrete, natural and simple. What comes to your mind when you visualize the following brands: Pepsi, Coke, Ford, Nike, Reebok… You get the picture! In other words keep it simple.
3. Your logo must evoke positive feelings. In addition to being readily recognizable, logos must convey a uniform meaning and evoke positive feelings. These positive brand-related emotions reduce uncertainty among customers and help them avoid a myriad of unfamiliar brands. Logos acquire emotive power over time, especially with good integrated marketing, advertising and public relations support programs. The same logos you visualized a short while ago (Pepsi, Coke, Ford, Nike, Reebok), also tend to evoke positive feelings for the consumers of those brands.
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Jun 10th, 2011 | Graphic Design, Sales and business development | Comments Off
How to manage free in tough times.
I passionately believe you should always give back to the community when owning a business — or even just because you should. I am a professional graphic designer who on occasion has been asked to donate my services. I do donate, but must be careful not to give too much away.
I have been told several times that I could use free services as a tax write off. My tax attorney is adamant that there are NO tax write offs on a service. My services of design are most certainly free unless I can barter.
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Jun 17th, 2010 | Graphic Design | Comments Off
As a graphic designer, I find (many times) clients have specific thoughts about their visuals and what they see the project looking like. This can be both a good thing and also create awkward situations.
The client that has ‘no idea’ what they want or where they want to go can turn into a frustrating client, but the client that knows EXACTLY what they want can be equally challenging. This type of client can become so close to their vision of a project, that they fail to see the larger picture or open up to an alternative interpretation – resulting in missing their target audience or promoting themselves in a less-than-professional manner. → continue reading
Jun 11th, 2010 | Graphic Design | Comments Off
The graphic designer and copywriter or client often work closely to develop the final marketing product, and following several guidelines can help get your project out the door both quickly and effectively – without anyone going (too) crazy or any dreaded errors in the last minute rush.
If possible, copy should always be 90% approved BEFORE it gets sent to the designer. Have your client get all feedback from their staff before the designer becomes involved. Most don’t understand the often tedious work involved in laying out text, kerning headlines/subheads/captions, wrapping text around images within a designed marketing piece. → continue reading
