Unique Ideas in Brochure Design

Brochures are an effective marketing tool. Used for many decades and are still very efficiently effective. However with the arrival of other mediums and the fast paced lifestyle that is becoming a norm. It is becoming difficult for marketeers to make people pick up and read the brochures.

In some industries brochures are still very effecive, for example real estate, travel, insurance, etc. Clients there need information and the canvas of a brochure allows you the space to creatively provide the information that clients needed to make a decision.

With the arrival of desktop publishing tools many small businesses has started to believe that they can design their own brochures which of course they can. This saves them cost and money they would pay to a designer. But the question is that are these brochures which are created using some templates provided by your desktop productivity suite supplier are any effective?

Research has proved that people like to see at unique designs, using a brochure design agency to create brochures for you has proven to be more useful than designing your own brochures.

Finding New Online Marketing Options for your Small Business

People are using web in innovative new ways these days. Mobile internet is becoming popular and people are searching the web on the go. Web also offers great opportunities to small businesses. Not only you can setup your web presence you can also sell and market your products online.

There are many ways to approach new audiences on the internet. First step is to get your self a small business website. You can do it yourself or hire a professional web design company to create a small business website for you.

Your small business website will become your information center on the web. So provide as much information about your business and products as you possibly could. Remember that a website is not something like a published brochure. You can always update your website with new and more up to date information.

Secondly, you might want to consider advertising your business on the web. It is way cheaper than other advertising platforms. Also it gives you the power to target people who are already interested in the products you are offering. Advertising solutions such as Google Adwords and Facebook Ads allow you to target your audiences in new innovative ways.

Target Social Media Markets

Social media marketing is all the buzz now days. Small businesses, start ups and professionals are all jumping in together to get most benefits out of this new way of communication. However, most of them get soon tired and bored of it. You will often hear them complain that they didn't get any response from social groups they were posting. Why?

Because using everything that is labeled as social media is not marketing. This is not how smart businesses should approach their clients. This is actually spam to force your messages upon people who may not be willing or even considering for such a thing.

Social media marketing needs a strategy just like your other marketing campaigns. You need to find out what venues are good for your business. Identify your target markets and analyze what social web platforms your target audience is using. Focus on achieving your goals. Make good impression on people you interact with on social platforms. Instead of chasing every one else in a race to be the most influential on the social web, consider your goals and stay focused on achieving your goals. Be polite and kind and do not get involved into flame wars. Get yourself a logo design and a web design before even considering social media marketing. Redirect interactions to your website. Use your logo to create awareness about your brand, products or services and your business on the social networks.

Top 5 Tech Corporations and Their Logos

Google is the world's most popular web destination. It started as a search company and it still calls itself primarily a search company but Google has transformed just as seemlessly as their logo design. 

Yahoo offers search, mail, news and many other services. Including solutions for small businesses such as website design and hosting services. 

Microsoft releases the world's most commonly used Windows series of operating systems. It also offers a large variety of solutions for businesses, large corporations, schools and governments. 

IBM is among the pioneers of computing in the world. Today they offer solutions for almost any organization educational, government, small or large businesses. 

Facebook is social networking website and most probably the largest social networking website. It offers advertisers solutions to reach their targeted audiences. 

Brand Identity - Colors, Logo and the Web Design

Smart small business owners are taking full advantage of the internet to learn new ways to promote their business, products and brands. Thanks to the internet today's businesses are more aware of the importance of brand development and marketing than they ever were. However with so much knowledge and different kind of opinions on the web, it is likely to get confusing.

In order to strengthen your brand identity what are the things that matter the most?

How you need to move on to your marketing by maintaining a balance in your brand development process and effective sales pitches?

These and many more questions are still topics of heated debates among entrepreneurs and business experts.

I will make it real simple for you. Your brand image consists of colors, images and style of your promotional material. So in order to maintain a brand development strategy you need to make sure that your logo design, website design and other promotional materials use the same color schemes and same design approaches.

Simple wasn't it?

Texture and Logo Design

We have previously talked about logo design, branding and marketing. Today I would like to talk about printing. Most often your logo design gets printed on many mediums and many formats. There are little things that can be done to improve the presentation of your logo on these different mediums and formats.

One of the most important things when printing your logo is the texture and how people are going to handle the medium that will carry your logo design. For example lets say you are priting your logo design on your business card. With texture you can emboss your logo design on your card so that people can touch and feel it. You would be surprised how many people would rub their fingers on the embossed logo design.

With texture change you can add feel to your logo design which would have other wise felt flat and non-significant on a paper. Talking of paper, when you are deciding about printing your marketing material choosing the right kind of paper on right ocassion is also an important decision to make. Things to consider when selecting the paper include the kind of market you are targeting.

Brand Identity - How US States Use Branding For Tourism

Marketing has become so essential to survive into today's competitive world that even government agencies are realizing the importance and significance of branding and marketing. Department of Tourism in all states are using logo designs, promotional registration plates for vehicles and other marketing techniques to establish a brand identity for their State's tourism department. In this post we will share with you some fabulous logo designs used by departments of tourism for various US states.

Logo of Arkansas Tourism department

Logo Design Texas tourism Department

Logo Design Wyoming State tourism

South Dakota tourism department Logo

South Carolina Tourism Department Logo Design

State of Illinois Logo Design

State of Ohio

Brand Identity - Lessons for Small Businesses

During the recession we witnessed a boom in many kind of small businesses all across the United States. Many of these small businesses are making smart decisions to build their brand identities. However, some of them fail hopelessly, not due to lack of passion but due to lack of knowledge.

To understand brand identity you need to understand what brand identity means. Corporate Brand Identity, is the persona or characteristics of an organization as it intentionally adapts and tries to promote using their marketing campaigns. It is implied by using coporate logo designs, web design, and other marketing created in synchronization with other design elements of the brand or the product.

A company, business or organization's brand identity promotes the business, describes its objectives, displays the values and culture behind the organization. With effective marketing it becomes symbolic to how your brand is generally perceived. From the visual appearance of your products, to the corporate logo, and from letter heads to all communications every things help businesses establish a brand identity.

Since most small businesses cannot afford a elaborate marketing campaign, still they can strengthen their brand identity by following some basic practices. First of all, hire a professional logo designer to create your business logo design. Getting a professional custom made logo design is not that expensive. Also if you need (well every one needs) a website you better give it to the same designer. That way your logo and your website will compliment each other better.

Once you got your logo design, use it well to promote your business's brand identity. You can use your logo on business cards, office stationary, banners, brochures, and every thing else you can think of.

Indian Identity Authority in Search of Logo Design

Indian government has recently formed an agency to issue a unique identification number to each and every Indian. The agency is called Unique Identification Authority of India or UIDAI. Imagine the enormous task this agency is assigned to achieve. India is the world’s most populous country and the second most population in a country after China. It has a population of roughly about 1.13 Billion people, and registering all of them and giving them a Unique ID is a gigantic job.

UIDAI, which is going to issue an Identification number to all Indians, is also looking for an Identify for itself. Recently the Agency launched a logo design competition to select the best logo design for the Agency and received 3000 submissions from all over the country. Again, keeping India’s population in mind this is a very small number of submissions, most probably because the prize money is not that significant (INR 100,000 $2200 USD). UIDAI recently got RS 19 Billion from Indian Government so it’s kind of cheap that they are offering just 100,000 to just one design.

While speaking to Press Trust of India a UIDAI official told that:

“The official said it is important that the powerful idea behind the project gets communicated to its recipients in a way that is motivating. He said the logo will act as a visual shortcut that communicates what the brand stands for”.

He further added, “It is our constant Endeavour to involve as much public as possible in this Endeavour. The selection of the logo will take place by April”.

Popular Ways to Promote Brand Identity With Logo

They say a diamond is forever, I would tell you that a good logo is also going to stick with you and your next generations for decades if not centuries. There are so many businesses out there with such beautiful logos, I mean even your competitors might get a logo much better than yours. So how do you beat them all? By using your logo for promotion of your brand identity and doing it more effectively than any of your competitors.

Get your logo printed on these China mugs and sell them to your clients. Or simply give them away for free. People love free stuff and each time they are drinking coffee in this mug they are thinking about good things in their lives coffee, comfort, and your business logo.

Print your logo on T-Shirts and distribute them on some special occasion or simply give them away for free.

Get your logo printed on Paper Bags. If you already use paper bag at your workplace thats good if you don't then you should start using them now as these bags are more environment friendly than plastic bags. Also make sure that the paper used in your bags is the recycled one and no trees get hurt when you promote your brand identity.

Print out I heart Stickers and distribute them to your Customers. I love such stickers and I love many things for example I love the book shop around the corner of my street if they distributed such stickers I would gladly display them on my car's bumper.

HowTo Prepare a Social Media Marketing Plan

Small businesses are realizing the importance of online marketing and are exploring new ways to promote their business on social media platforms. Marketing on social media needs a lot more than just shouting on yours and other people’s wall or retweeting anything you get your hands on.

Without proper strategy online marketing could become ineffective and a waste of resources and time. But, what exactly is the proper strategy to promote business on social media and on the internet?
Social media and the World Wide Web are about interacting with each other. Unlike traditional media, web is not just listening, reading, watching and absorbing. It is about interacting with the content via hyperlinks, forms, images, and videos.

The first think that any social media marketer needs is a landing site. Where do you want to send people to? It is impossible for a social media marketer to make people leave their office seats and go buy something from the physical location. However, if there was a link to a place where people can go and make purchase with clicks then it is not that difficult. So, the first thing that any effective online marketing plan needs is a website design.

Secondly your website and your business should have proper branding. If you don’t know about brand identity go look up at it. For proper branding techniques you would need a logo design.
Then to promote your message on the social media you will need a lot more than just text. Text is less appealing and you can say a lot more if you use images or videos instead. Using banners and videos on your social media website can be very effective. Get some proper banner designs in all shapes and sizes to use on various social media platforms.

Small Businesses - Internet Marketing - Web Design

Gone are the days when only large corporations considered maintaining a web presence important. Today it is important for each business to not only have a web presence but to also make great use of internet for better marketing. Marketing over the internet is more effective, more target oriented and much cheaper. 

The first step to the Internet marketing is to launch a professional website. Launching a professional website could be cheaper but it could also be expansive, depending on your plans to expand it. Most small businesses start with a shared web hosting, they hire a web design company to design their website, and then they start using it as their marketing headquarter over the internet. 

The big question that all small businesses face is how to hire a professional web design company to do their website. The answer to this question is that you hire a web design company that fits your budget, has the expertise to do the job and offers other value added services such as graphic design, logo design, stationary design, etc. 

Hiring such a company would help you with your future marketing needs. Also a company capable of doing all that would fill your new website with beautiful logo design and graphics. You can use this logo as your brand identity. 

When searching for the right web design company for small and medium businesses, you should always check out their portfolios and read their client testimonials. While you are it, don’t forget to drop down email to other small businesses who have previously hired this company to do their web design. 

You not only need a web design, you would probably want to have a content management system so that you can update your website on your own without paying the web design company for that. 

The next step in your web and internet marketing strategy is to use the tools such as social media. We will talk about the importance of social media in the internet marketing in our upcoming posts.

Lessons in Brand Identity - Energizer and Duracell

Studying the logos of Duracell and Energizer, the first impression one gets is that how similar these two logos are. Whats more interesting in the study of these two brands is that they represent two similar products. Their marketing campaigns are similar and they even use similar mascots to represent their brand.

So what kind of marketing is that where you follow your competitors strategy almost religiously? I am sure that if they each try to market themselves in different ways they would both fail to make an impression. However, I have this feeling that using the similar tactics to reach the same markets actually divides the consumers instead of converting them into favor of one. I think the consumers like them both equally and if they don't like either of them then they wouldn't buy the opponent instead they would buy some third brand. 

So what is your take on this matter? Do you think that any of these two can work out a unique and different strategy or you think they should stick to this approach and why? 

Duracell Bunny	Energizer Bunny

Graphic Designers - From Hollywood to Uncle John's Flower shop

Graphic design is a multibillion dollar industry. You will find graphic designers everywhere.  From Hollywood studios to suburban concession stores, graphic designers work with almost each and every business you can think of.

Their work is diverse and there are many specialized categories of what a graphic designer can do. Some specialize in computer generated imagery (CGI used in Hollywood movies), some of them create graphics for TV and advertising industry, some of them design posters and banners, and some of them design logos and web or print graphics.

The skills required to do different graphic jobs have many levels. For example, a CGI expert would have a university degree and related experience in the research field to generate sophisticated visual effects. Designers working with Advertising firm might be college graduates with electives related to marketing. Designers working with small businesses designing websites or logos may not have a college degree but certification from some community college or specialized graphic design schools.

Working with graphic design is an artistic job, not only it requires knowledge to use advanced graphic tools, it also requires a certain creativity and innovation too. If a graphic designer is really talented then it matters very little what degree or certification he/she holds.

If you visit the websites of these graphic designers or the company’s they work for. You would see a section called portfolio there. This is where the company or the artist shows their talent by displaying the work they have previously done for the clients. Looking at the portfolio you can get an idea of how good they are and who their other customers are. You can then contact their other customers and ask them how they liked their services.

Graphic designers who work for small businesses should also have a little knowledge of marketing and brand identity. Artistic merits may sometime create a conflict of interest with the business interest of the clients they are working for. Most graphic designer realize the importance of this and keep themselves updated with the latest developments in the marketing. With the increasing competition faced from the graphic designers of other countries, these graphic designers also keep their prices lower and try very hard to satisfy the customer needs.

So even though it is a multibillion dollar industry, anyone can benefit from the services of a graphic designer. The real trouble is to find a good one. 

Logo Design - Creativity vs. Customer Satisfaction

As a design artist, more specifically as a design artist who designs other people’s brand identities, you might often face this dilemma when you kill your creativity for customer satisfaction. The symptoms of this dilemma might range from mild unhappiness to extreme frustration.

You will be asked to redo an extremely good and absolutely unique logo design idea just because your customer thinks it is girly, or masculine, too heavy on eyes or so easy to ignore. You would feel angry and you should. But, anger does not bring you any jobs. So you hide your anger and you redo the design keeping in mind your clients feedback and changing it to meet their needs. It kills your heart the way you are destroying an astonishing piece of work to satisfy some non-design person who does not even know what “tint” means. 

This half heartedness takes the focus away from you and the end product is something neither you nor your client can look at. 

They key is to take client input seriously and consider it as a creative challenge. For example you have done a logo with bright sun drowning in the horizon and your client asks you to decrease the orange and add more blue to the horizon. You can get frustrated and create a purple horizon, or you can take this as a challenge. Don’t get upset over how silly this sounds; instead think of ways to add more blue. If you put your creative mind to it you will definitely find out ways to use blue.  

To some very successful design artists customer input has helped them create some of the most memorable logos of all time. Raymond Lowey was considered father of the Industrial Design. Below is an example of sketches he did for the Exxon Logo. Most of his ideas were rejected and the one that was selected was not Lowey’s first choice. Below is a photograph of his suggested ideas and then the picture of the final logo. 

National Brand Identity - UK a case study

In the late 90s and early 2000, Britain became the first nation to aggressively attempt a re-branding campaign. The campaign never actually took flight but the nation was set in mood for a rebranding which later affected government’s image and eventually Britain’s image in the world.
The rebranding campaign was handled by the tourism ministry. It was called “UK’s Ok”. The purpose of this new slogan was to present Britain as a cool modern Western nation. The globalization was causing the traditional government-run departments to get privatized and there was an immense sense of change that needed to be addressed. The new tourism campaigns started projecting Britain as a modern vibrant economy with cutting edge, hi-tech industries and a diverse society of people from many ethnic backgrounds.

Even though the British government gave up the idea of persuading a national brand identity, but they still worked on it in the tourism ministry. The tourism ministry’s marketing campaign then started focusing on creating new image of the nation. A logo competition was announced and many graphic artists submitted their ideas. The purpose was to come up with something like a slogan, something that becomes as iconic as I heart NYC sign.

The tourism ministry's efforts sparked a controversial debate. Many conservatives and even some moderate liberals were furious over the idea of hiding the traditional image of the country and emphasizing more on modernism. Many of them claimed that the ministry’s efforts look like they are ashamed of Great Britain’s historical and cultural heritage.

This campaign was so inspiring that after this tourism ministries of many countries adapted  similar approach of national branding. Today we see iconic logos of Qatar Airways, Malaysia Truly Asia, Thailand and many more countries using national branding to bring more tourists.

Brand Indentity Design - Hire A Professional

Everyone can design things for their own little campaigns. But not everyone can design a brand identity that speaks of a mission, a brand identity that is designed to be good looking, attractive and which can be run anywhere in the print, on the web, or even on electronic media. That is why it is important for any individual or business, whether it’s a small business or a medium sized corporation to take this matter of creating a brand identity as a serious concern. Once you have decided to take your image and your brand identity seriously you better hire professionals to take care of your Professional Logo Design needs.

Marketing is a complex battle ground and to win in this fierce and hostile environment companies and businesses need to work with a multi dimensional strategy to create themselves brands that stand out of the crowd. The easy availability of desktop publishing tools and their ease-of-use is a common knowledge. This makes people believe that any one can now design their own marketing campaigns and designs.

There are so many companies offering design services and promising to build you a great brand identity. Now let’s suppose if using common desktop publishing tools was such a piece of cake then why would anyone hire these companies? It is not that easy to be creative; yet at the same time to come up with unique ideas for your brand identity. You may have Microsoft Paint installed on your old Windows XP machine but it cannot beat the creativity and brilliance of a professional designer with an aesthetic sense of graphic designing. Honestly, most business minded people lack this aesthetic sense but they don’t realize this fact and try those tools, which is something we don’t recommend. So if you are worrying about your corporate image, stop doing things on your own, instead hire a professional to do the job.

Hello World

Hello World,

This is the first post on our brand new blog about branding and logo design. We will be discussing and sharing ideas about the importance of a logo design for branding and marketing. Please keep us posted with your ideas and do let us know how we are doing.