Tag: branding

So you are setting up a new business and you need a business card created that really stands out from the industry you are entering, how are you going to do that? Hire a designer to create a very abstract creative design? Well Vistaprint recently contacted me with some fantastic novel ideas you may not have considered..

Aboveis an infographic with 31 creative uses for business cards .

To see this in more clarity please visit my pintrest board here .

8 of the best ideas from the Vistaprint infographic I particularly like.

creative uses for business cards no 1

Meeting a potential client in person? Why not make them feel extra special with a special discount on the business card you give them? That may just close the deal if they were wavering about it..everyone likes to feel a little bit special.

creative uses for business cards no 2

Every single business in the modern age now uses social media to connect to its audience and if they don’t they should do. Make sure to put your social media id’s on your business card for a more personal and direct connection to your fans, customers & business partners.

creative uses for business cards no 3

Got a major event coming up in the future or one that you attend regularly? Make your Customers aware on your business card.

creative uses for business cards no 4

Giving your business card a 2nd purpose other than to give your details to the person receiving it may get the recipient using it more places. A bookmark is one idea, particularly good if you are a 2nd hand book shop. Just think about your product or service you are selling and convey it on your business card if possible.

creative uses for business cards no 5

Are you an event organiser? A holdiay rep or maybe a tour guide? Why not ask your customers to upload their pictures to a location online to share their experiences? Your customers view points are the most valuable thing to help promote more sales to others.

creative uses for business cards no 6

Making others feel good about themselves or seeing another smile can be very rewarding, why not send a little positive vibe out into the world. Just be careful not to use quotes as not every quote will agree with every personality. An example, “you are beautiful” could be great for a beautician or life coach.

creative uses for business cards no 7

Getring good feedback from your clients?Great! That will surely help give your potential customers a little more confidence in you. Before you do this make sure you get permission from your customers first, you don’t want to upset anyone.

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8

Loyalty is a rare thing to find these days with so many different companies desperate to win your business rewarding that loyalty with something special will make your customer feel special & give a positive impression of your company.

Want more ideas for business cards? Check out my pinterest board or alternatively use the contact button above and i can help design you a very unique and creative business card for your company.

Related articles across the web

• 20 Creative and Unique Business Card Templates
• Types of Business Cards
• 6 ways to get people talking about your business

As designers of identity and graphics we must train ourselves to think critically about what works well in creating a logo that is timeless whilst maintaining the corporate message about the company. The way a logo is designed can say a lot about the company you are designing for so it is not as easy a task as one may seem it to be. With many years experience in varying fields of creativity I have been trained to be pretty critical of what works and what doesn’t in many design fields thus in this blog post I will share with you what I believe really helps in making a killer logo that will remain highly identifiable throughout the decades.

The Art of Logo Design

Video from OffBook

Research

First step to creating any magnificent logo design is to spend a little time researching what your industry competition is doing to represent its image & corporate identity. Study what colours are commonly being used, what shapes, symbols & typography.

This is a great starting point but you don’t want to be the same as every other brand, that would just be booooooring! This is just to allow you to gain an insight of what is working ( or not).

I believe it can be important to consider how you can in-cooperate some principles of accepted industry standards whilst adding something alternative that will make you look different from the competition and a forward thinking company not scared to stand out from the crowd.

What works

Look at corporate logos of companies that have succeeded in world recognition. What do you notice about most logos from successfully branded companies below?

Of course, they are all simple, easily recognizable minimalist symbols. Some corporations use typography but the main and most important rule of all successful branding is to keep it SIMPLE.

Foresee the four C’s

Classicality

Keep it minimal. The most memorable logos are all minimal. Don’t try to be a leonardo here, try and refine your design and reduce it to its basic form and I am sure you will reach at an impressive design.

Colour

The psychology of colour has more power than you think. For instance, everyone knows that red can mean danger but it also can mean passion. McDonalds use it because psychologists believe that red makes you do things on impulse where as yellow can make you fellow hungry thus their colour choice is down to trying to sell as much fast food as possible by making people hungry and act on their impulse to eat a bigmac. There are plenty of books out there that discuss this in further detail ( although I plan to blog about this in the near future ) so if you are a graphic designer make sure you understand the principles of good colour selection & the psychology behind things.

Concept

What seperates a good logo from a great logo? In my opinion, probably a good artistic concept. I argue this case with all art forms, whether architecture, painting, graphics or fashion, without a great concept or theory behind the work it is nothing more than a pretty item. This frustrates me because pretty pictures are not art or at all creative, they are simply technical ability expressed. Concept puts meaning to inanimate objects & things which is all important as we humans try to make sense of the world and surroundings we live in. Designers shouldn’t just be creators of identity they should be thoughtful, society transforming knights to help businesses grow and enhance the lives of others through creative developments.

Craze

As previously mentioned, creating a logo that is “timeless” must consider what is expected in the industry but also what is currently in vogue. Logo Design is fashion driven, all creative industries are, from architecture to cars to simple graphic design, there is a set fashion to what is popular and what is currently believed about certain symbols, shapes and styles. These things must be considered in unison with keeping the design simple enough in order for instant recognition from anybody who sees it.

Conclusion

A great logo takes time to develop and it usually isn’t the first thing you produce that is the logo that will be the final product. The best logos are developed and refined many many times. I am a designer of identity and i can help you with your corporate branding if you wish, just ask any questions and I will gladly help you out. Best of luck in your logo design .

Related articles across the web

• What Is Branding?
• The 5 Different Logo Design Styles: Which Type Fits Your Brand?
• The 174 Coolest Brochure Designs for Creative Inspiration
• Google Click Through Rate
• Use The Creative Process To Choose Vanity 800 Numbers
• Is 2015 the year brands finally stopped tweeting insensitive MLK tweets?

When creating a professional web design the designing effective homepages is one of the most important pages on your site. It is usually your shop window, the door to your potential sales and the place where your users will usually know whether they want to go any further on your site, so you can imagine, its vital that you get this page right, you don’t want to give a bad impression before your users have even entered the site but what is it that really makes for a great ux homepage?

We all need purpose

Everything in this world created by us humans needs purpose and websites are no different. You may argue that there are many pointless websites out there, but even if they are pointless…that is still a purpose, by being pointless, isn’t it? . Your first step in designing a homepage is firstly identifying your website’s/business goal & then developing your homepage’s purpose. Keep in mind that your main website goal is slightly different from your homepage goal.

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Is your main goal to sell more of your product or service, create more brand awareness or start communication? Then does your homepages purpose relate to this? Are you wanting to target a specific service that isn’t selling as well, or are you wanting to try and sell a product or a service? Is it purely an information site? Do you want people to subscribe to your blog or gather emails for newsletters and promotions? Whatever the reason is  a well designed call to action is vital to influence your website users into taking the action you want .

Call to Actions

What is a call to action? A call to action is a way of asking visitors to do something, take action! Usually, for most businesses it is to close a sale or to at least suggest finding out more information about a product or service that will eventually lead to the close of sale the business wants.Sometimes though, it might not be the goal to sell, it may be to get your visitors to sign up to a newsletter, make contact or subscribe to your blog. Never use “Click here”, “Read More” or “Learn More” these are not good call to actions, they are not informative or appealing enough to entice someone to act. ( 37 Call to Action to Get People to Read, Click and Buy ).

A well designed call to action will entice people with an exciting offer or something that will really appeal to your target audience.

Audience matters

So you have decided what business goal you are going to try and create a call to action for. You want to sell a specific product but saying “Buy this amazing product” is not really going to sell it. You need to put the customer first, customer is king  when doing web design and you really need to understand their needs in order to create a perfect homepage. One way of doing this is creating persona’s. A customer persona is creating an artificial customer, someone who might use your site, what they are looking for, even their hobbies and other websites, apps and things they might use outside of work. Here is a website with a quick guide in how to create one ( Website ). I will be creating another blog post on this and a free template to download in future.

Visuals

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, thus whoever your target audience is, the visuals must be targeted to them. Is your market 16-29 ? Then look at design trends for that age group, what are they buying? What are they listening to? What would appeal to this group? Are they 40+ the established professionals? What would appeal to this group? What about your business industry, what is working on the business leaders sites?

Keep in mind your branding colours at all times when designing your graphics, make it identifiable as your company but don’t be too concerned that you make all your pictures match the brand colours, it will make it all just brand in a little too much and be quite a dull page.

No one likes complex navigation. Minimalism is the way forward

Although seeing a pretty graphical website at first does make everyone think oooooooooooooooooooo…pretty, if it isn’t a useable interface people will become frustrated and the pretty pictures will soon become ugly. Websites are about usability. Make sure you can do these three things when accessing your site : –

• Identify the brand and product you are selling instantly by including your logo and company colours from your style guide.
• Make it easy to find the contact details of your company
• Make it easy to navigate to any page that the user wants

Why do this you are asking? Well it has been scientifically proven that after 8 seconds the user will make a decision whether or not to leave.

The content of a book is not on the front page, websites are no different

The homepage is not the place to go crazy on textual information! It is the page to guide the user to whatever it is they need from your site. It is important to include a “brief” description of what your company does with a link to the about page.  The home page is not the place to write a long blurb about your company’s history or founders how will that enhance the user experience? It won’t. If the user really wants a back story then that information should be left for the “About Us” page.

Make more than one option and test it

You’ve used the tips i have provided and drawn a few different layouts but how do you know which one would be the most succesful? Google Analytics provides you with a treasure trove of great tools to delve deeply into what pages are working, what is successful and what isn’t. It also provides an extra option called “experiments”. With this tool you can test a multitude of homepages that you have created so that when a visitor arrives on a particular page you the user will be given one of the new pages. Google Analytics will then give you some results to allow you to compare how succesful the new pages have been compared to the others in order for you to choose the best option for you to make the most conversions ( I will be writing about how to do this in the very near future ).

If you have anything else to add please do make more suggestions and best of luck with designing your homage web design.

1) Twitter Backgrounds are left-aligned.

If you look at my twitter background you can see that my icon is to the left. When designing keep in mind that it will be JUST the left side of your tweets that will be being branded. important background content on the left of the screen. Continue “Creating a branded Twitter Background”