You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Graphic Design’ category.
I’m sure you’ve seen the ads from printers offering to design “free logos” along with their business cards. Or maybe you’ve got a web person who put some sort of logo together for you on your website. Or maybe you know someone who wants to put together a logo in Word or Publisher. Sounds like a great deal right?
Wrong. Most likely these great deals aren’t going to give you a logo you can use for anything other than that business card, or that webpage or Word doc. I’ve run into this with several small business clients here in Brighton, Michigan who want marketing materials designed, but only have a low res logo on the website, or they only have it printed on their cards. Then in order to put together a print quality design that includes this “free” logo, I have to recreate it. Now this free logo ends up costing them extra in design fees and it might not be possible to recreate it exactly like what they have. I’ve also seen scores of ads looking for designers to recreate a logo that some unsuspecting business thought was a good deal.
Ideally, when you have a logo designed the final product you receive should include a vector file as well as high and low res images of your logo. Not only will you need these formats to design other materials, often the companies who sell promotional items like pens will want a vector file. Sign companies and trade show vendors will also most likely want a vector.
Save yourself trouble down the road. Get a real logo designed to start out with and don’t bother with the free options. Not only will you get the right formats, chances are you will also be getting a better and more original logo.
I’ve been eating a lot of oranges lately. This is a big deal for me, because even though I really like oranges, I didn’t eat them very often because I’ve always been ridiculously picky about getting all of the white stuff off the orange. It could seriously take me a half hour to peel an orange.
What does this little tangent have to do with graphics? Well, unlike the folly of spending too long peeling an orange, most of us actually should spend more time paying attention to the details of our marketing materials and campaigns. Too often, marketing materials go out with all the metaphorical white stuff all over them, because we don’t want to take the time or effort to get them really right – and clean.
One of the details that many small businesses here in southease Michigan and beyond miss, is getting a standard way to convey their brand. Even if a business has a logo, they might use it one way in one piece, with one font here, one color there and very little that is consistent. Big companies know this is a no no. They know that in order to most effectively keep control of your brand, you need to have consistent standards. Many larger companies have very detailed written out guidelines for everything from how a logo is to be used to what font letters are to be written in.
Do most small businesses have to go this far? Probably not quite this far, but we should all pay a little more attention to the consistent use of our brand. This consistency goes a long way towards gaining recognition. For me, I think I am going to spend more time on my brand and less on peeling my oranges. Because there is a time and place to be ridiculously picky.
Colleen with Dream Kitchens of Howell, Michigan came to me looking to update her marketing materials by creating a logo and a cohesive look. She had previously been given a pseudo logo as part of an ad she purchased with a Michigan publication and we originally went with ways to update that logo, which was her company name inside an oval. I came up with 4 concepts on this theme. 
Her initial preference was for the top two logos, but after some additional thought, she decided she like the bottom right logo with the monogram, only she wanted to see it with both the initials D and K. She also wanted to decide if she wanted the monogram on top, or behind the company name.
In the end, we decided that just because the initial ad she had purchased created a logo within an oval, that she didn’t have to keep the logo and the final logo was the monogram watermarked behind the company name, without the enclosure.
Next post… how this logo was developed into cohesive marketing materials…
So in the last post, I told you not to use more than 3 different fonts in your piece. Today the focus is on what to do when choosing those fonts. When you are choosing these 2-3 fonts, make sure the fonts are indeed different enough that you can tell they were picked on purpose. For example, don’t pick two fonts like Times New Roman and Book Antigua, that are different fonts, but really not that different. Or Arial and Verdana. It creates the effect of something just being “off” because it’s not entirely clear they’re different fonts, and it looks like it might be a mistake. Pick two fonts that are obviously different. The easy way for a beginner to do this is to use a serif (font with the little curls at the bottom of the letters – Times New Roman is the one most people are most familiar with) with a non serif (Arial is the familiar example) font. Once you get into really working with your typography there is a lot more to the nuances of different fonts (maybe for future posts) but when starting out, go for basics.
I regulary give seminars on graphic design for small businesses here in Brighton, Michigan. If you are a small business putting together your own marketing materials, there are a few basic design principles you should try to follow. The first one has to do with the fonts you choose.
One of the biggest sins non-designers will make when putting work together is to use too many fonts. Try to limit your fonts to two, three at most. Use one font for your headings, one for your main text and if you need a third, use it for sidebars or other places where text needs to stand out.
Limiting the number of fonts you use instantly cleans up your piece and makes it easier to read.
As I’ve mentioned before, I do alot of networking here in Brighton, Michigan and I see a wide variety of people at these events. Have you ever been to a networking event and run into someone in torn jeans and a t-shirt? Were you more or less likely to take them seriously as a business person? Would you go to a job interview in yoga pants and a fleece jacket? For most of us in the business world, we know these are no nos when you are out marketing yourself or your company. You don’t always have to wear a suit, but you have to dress in a manner appropriate for the level of professionalism that is expected.
The same can be said for the look and professionalism of your marketing materials. Passing out a business card that was put together on your home computer, printed out on plain paper and sloppily cut out instantly says, “I’m not professional”. So does some clip art you threw together with a whole bunch of different fonts. You don’t always have to hire a professional graphic designer (although it can’t hurt, and let’s face it, as a graphic designer I would advise you to hire one), but you should at the very least educate yourself on some very basic graphic design principles to help make your materials look appropriately professional.
More in the next several posts on some of these basic principles…
The challenge of this project, how to express a varied mix of products for a company whose name didn’t portray this variety. I was approached by Michigan based Musical Instruments Supplies International to design a logo that would appeal to all of their potential clients. While the company’s name implied a fairly limited clientele, in reality, the company supplies imported wood for musical instruments, furniture and flooring… a fairly diverse market.
For the first round of logo designs, I provided one design that very overtly showed each of the target markets and then focused the other designs on what was a commonality among each product (exotic wood). Three logos were designed with a stylized version of a rubber tree and one with images of musical instruments, flooring and furniture.
For the second round, he wanted to focus on the logo that displayed all three uses. I changed the violin image to a guitar and then offered a variety of color options.
After considering the logo for a few days he decided to go back to the idea of the stylized tree. While he was originally not happy with the logo of a tree in a circle, this logo had grown on him. For the final logo we decided to merge logo #3 and #4 together and came up with a stylized rubber tree, confined within a circle with the words, “musical instruments, flooring and furniture” as well as only the initials MISI for a company name. Completed within 5 days from start of project to delivery of the final logo, this logo portrayed the commonality among his products, and didn’t limit him to only musical instruments.
I got the chance to design some very funky business cards when Betsy with Michigan based OpenDesign came to me to design unique business cards for her and her up and coming interior design business. Betsy’s tagline is “The Smiling Eclectic Designer”, and it suits her to a tea. Fun, energized and anything but stodgy, Betsy wanted cards that represented her… definitely different, and definitely not corporate.
She had developed a swirly graphic, sorta yin yang, sorta stylized woman, and had been using that as a logo of sorts. She also had a photograph of herself, somewhat out of focus and generally soft with flowers in the background. We decided on a two sided card, with the photo on one side and most of the business information on the other.
For the photo side, I added an earthy gradient to the photo to leave room for some text and also to allow the image to take up the entire area of the card. For the other side, I took her swirly graphic (a low res bitmap), redrew it as a vector file and then colored it in four earthy yet funky color versions. These four swirls were strategically placed in the background of the card so as not to compete too much with the text, but so that they also definitely stand out. I then added her company information and other tagline of “life is too short for white walls”. She was thrilled with the results, which capture her style and creativity with a card that is far from just another business card.
Do you have hundreds or thousands of pieces of old marketing materials lying around? Perhaps you designed them a few years ago, and got a great deal on printing if you printed a huge amount. Are they doing you much good now?
It used to be that small businesses would redesign their marketing materials every so many years, and then print thousands of copies. This way you could get a good per piece price break. Unfortunately, this also meant companies were limited in their flexibility to change their materials, whether a wholesale redesign or simply tweaking them to work better. It also means that a lot of companies end up not as enthusiastically marketing their company because, as one client recently told me about some old postcards, “We’re just tired of looking at those things.”
In today’s business world, it doesn’t make sense to print huge quantities of materials. Say you put out a piece and find it isn’t working. Or perhaps it is working really well with one market and now you need to tweak it for another market. Or maybe the piece worked well six months ago, but the marketplace has now changed and you need to be able to adapt to it.
Sure, it might cost you a little more per piece to print a reasonable amount of marketing materials, but honestly, how much do you really save if boxes of those old marketing materials end up doing nothing more than taking up storage space, or maybe balancing a crooked table?
How long do you think your marketing materials should last? How long before they’re outdated or you’re tired of them?
Everyone likes new stuff. And this applies to marketing materials as well. I’ve worked in the marketing department of companies here in Michigan where we get the box of new brochures, or even pens with our logo on them and get all giddy at the newness of them. And I see this continue in my own business.
When I first started my Brighton basead graphic design business, I immediately got to work making a logo, and then got a couple clients and stalled on putting out new marketing materials. Then I finished the work for those clients and saw myself losing some of my enthusiasm as no new clients came in. Which could have been a death spiral. The less enthusiastic I was, the less chance of getting new clients and the less enthusiasm I would have.
The thing that eventually broke this cycle was when I got that push from my husband and actually put together my website, a new leave behind and other marketing materials. Seeing my information in a new light made me feel better about my company. It gave me new confidence to go out and get more clients and thankfully that has kept going.
I’ve seen this enthusiasm work for my small business clients as well. I can see the glint in their eyes when they get those new business cards or leave behinds – that new found pride in their company. And even if they aren’t in the horrible cycle I was, that new boost to their enthusiasm can be seen when they talk about their company. And when prospective clients see that excitement, it can be contagious.
What do you think? What could updated marketing materials do for your company? For your enthusiasm?
