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.

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.

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.