Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

We have recently completed a short booklet outlining strategies worth considering when initiating the branding process.

How to Effectively Brand your Products and Business to Highly Targeted Audiences.

Click the link above to discover how you can receive this branding guide free of charge.

Lately, I’ve had many small business owners asking me what they should consider when branding their business and products.

As we know, branding is more than just a logo or business cards.

It’s all the little details of business life that contribute to how the public, your customers and even your staff, see, interact with, and talk about your business.

So I’ve put together a list of the various areas of your business that require branding attention.

The checklist recommends that you tick off each area once you decide a direction and then when you put your decisions into action.

Click this link to download the Branding Checklist.

Here’s a cute little video that helps to remind us that doing everything on our own can often feel like bashing your head against a brick wall.

Don’t forget to ask for or employ help to get the job done much faster.

You can check out the great little video at youtube.com.

Business cards are a great way for clients and customers to receive your contact details, as they usually accompany a face to face meeting.

Unfortunately, because everybody has a business card, it can be hard to stand out in the crowd.

So having a business card that grabs people’s attention and makes an impact is one of the most useful marketing tools you can have at your disposal.

Check out this list of creative and inspirational business cards over at Toxel.com.

How does your business card stand up against the competition?

The web is quickly becoming the art gallery of the future as you will see by some of the stunning font treatments here.

Many people don’t put the time into the typographic area of design.

Which is unfortunate, as it can be one of the greatest ways to attach emotion to your message.

Budget of course also plays a part here.

It takes time to create these typographic works of art.

Time, which most clients either can’t afford or don’t see the value in.

Hopefully you’ll find many of these typographic creations as inspiring as I have.

Make sure to scroll down the page or you may miss some. 

SXSW is a yearly conference in Austin Texas that says it covers, music, film and interactive topics.

In reality, it covers a whole lot more.

Literally hundreds of speakers getting together to speak about all things creative, innovative and ground breaking.

Unfortunately, like many people, I find myself on the other side of the world and over committed to my work to take a trip over to the U.S. and soak up 10 days of thoughts and ideas from brilliant speakers. There is also the issue of it being finished for this year (March 7-16).

So what’s an information junkie to do…?

There is a solution. Many of the panels have been recorded as audio podcasts which you can download for free.

So far I’ve listen to panels on time management, web design, branding, digital effects on a budget, industrial design, business start-ups and game theory.

There are more to come, so make sure you subscribe to the rss feeds which can be found here at feedburner or by doing a search for SXSW in the podcast section of itunes.

I hope you find them as useful and thought provoking as I have.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcasts before they take them down otherwise you may miss the chance to download them.

Don’t be afraid to post your comments on this blog, I’d be interested to read your thoughts.

A number of blogs have touched on this post by logoorange.com regarding logo design trends for 2008.

If makes some good points about style directions that we’ve noticed moving from late 2007 through to 2008.

A number of the styles, including organic 3D and transparency, take advantage of the electronic presentation of their brand.

While they do look nice, these logos will run into trouble with many ‘real world’ applications, such as embroidery and screen printing.

Pretty isn’t always functional. But functional doesn’t need to be ugly.

The ability to take purpose and function into account when designing is key to creating successful design solutions.

Check out the full article here.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and a is conference that brings together great speakers from around the world.

The TED web site houses a gold mine of presentations given on topics ranging from Business to the Environment, from Culture to Innovation.

With talks by guests such as Jane Goodall, Al Gore and Brian Greene each FREE video presentation is packed with insightful and interesting information.

Each speaker is given (approx) 18 minutes to give the talk of a life time on their chosen subject.

There is some really great stuff on the site and I would highly recommend that you take some time to check it out.

I’ve also selected a category on design which I think you’ll interesting – “Design like you give a Damn” features a range of great speakers talking about all aspects of design.

If you found this interesting, leave me a comment and let me know.

For those of you who enjoy the creative possibilities of Photoshop – here’s some great animal cross fruit & veg creations.

If anyone has seen any other examples of this sort of work, feel free to post it in the comments.

I’ve just finished reading a great book that you might be interested in.
‘Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die…’

Written by Chip & Dan Heath, Made to Stick deals with why some ideas, stories and products become world famous and why most don’t. Why some things are ’sticky’ and why others are not.

I found the topic particularly interesting from a marketing and advertising point of view.

Not only does the book direct us to examples of the ’stickiness’ factor. But it then breaks them down and describes why they work. Then best of all, how we can replicate them.

Of course, with all great things, many elements have to align for our ideas to become hugely successful.

But by following methods described in the book, you will certainly place yourself closer to the mark. Giving you every chance to make sure that your next thing - is the ‘Next Big Thing’.

I’d definitely recommend reading the book if only to freshen your ideas about marketing and presentation.

To read more about the book including excerpts, you can visit the Made to Stick web site here.