Your corporate logo is your company’s first impression to prospective clients and customers. First impressions are hard to overcome, and most of the time you won’t be there to try.
It is crucial that a seasoned pro with tons of branding experience leads you through the process. And that’s where I come in.
With more than 60 companies of all sizes branded and rebranded from the corporate logo design to everything that comes afterwards, you can trust that I know the pitfalls and opportunities presented in this very important time in a company’s evolution.
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EVALUATING YOUR CURRENT CORPORATE LOGO
The first step is to detach as much as possible from any personal feelings or other connections you may have with your current corporate logo design, to look at it with new eyes, to look at it as much as possible like your clients and customers will be looking at it. If you’re unable to, try to ask a handful of strangers, people who don’t know you or the company, what their impressions are of the company that this logo represetnts.
Don’t lead them. Ask them things like, “How big do you think this company is?” “How long do you think this company has been in business?” “Is this a foreign or a domestic company?” “What business do you think this company is in?” and “Is this company still in business?” Some or all of their answers might shock you. Just try to go in expecting the worst, because most company logos can use improvement. You’re not alone.
Not all of the logos below in my design portfolio tell specifically what each business does, but all of them tell a client or customer that there is a certain level of sophistication. They all impart a clear mood or tone of the company’s business. They all indicate that the companies are probably current, not decades old. And they all communicate a certain proficiency and confidence in what they do.
So now you’ve either seen it or seen it through strangers’ eyes and you understand it’s time for a change. But how can you transition your company into the next phase without that logo that’s meant so much to you?
Maybe you scratched it out on a napkin during a special, inspired moment when you were first starting out. Maybe your favorite niece was an artists and you were proud to let her create it. Maybe initially you didn’t have any money to do it right. Whatever the reason, you owe it to yourself to hold that old logo in your memory, but to move on. You, your employees, and your company’s success depends on it more than you can imagine.
YOUR CORPORATE LOGO’S REACH
In addition to being your company’s first impression, your corporate logo design has a wider reach than you might imagine.
Every design decision you will every make for your company, must relate in some way to the corporate logo, from the color of your trade show booth, to the orientation of your logo on vertical banners, how small it can appear at low resolution. It informs what your business cards look like, your sales sheets, your brick and mortar signage, your website, your app, your company vehicles, and a never-ending continuing list.
Additionally, your new corporate logo has the power to create whatever image in your clients’ or customers’ minds. If you’re a 10-person shop, an improved corporate logo can suggest that you could be a 100-person operation. What I try to do when creating a corporate logo is identify what the perfect business in your area of expertise would look like, what tone they would set, what reaction they are trying to elicit, and work from there.
Now Is Always time to evaluate your CORPORATE LOGO
So again, decouple your emotions from your current corporate logo. I’ll help you right your ship, using the wisdom and guidance I’ve gained over my years as a a professional designer who has done this hugely important work successfully dozens of times before.
In this digital world, one might expect printed anything to be passé at best, if not outright obsolete. But printed stationery design is still a not only a thing: it’s a necessity. Digital stationery isn’t a replacement but an addition to an individual’s or a company’s list of corporate identity needs. I have branded and rebranded 50+ large and small organizations nationwide, including full print and digital stationery.
Billboard Design: Special graphic design considerations
At a glance, billboard design appears to be a seems simple task. But that is an illusion. And there are considerations unique to billboard design at every point in order to achieve that illusion of simplicity—while marketing, during design, and throughout production.
These facts apply to any designed piece:
The time required to adequately take in a design—to comprehend its who, what, and how—is directly related to the design’s simplicity and logic of its layout; and,
Viewers only act on what they take in.
Billboard design is especially vulnerable to this truth.
The Who, The What, And The How
On average, viewers have 5 seconds or less to take in billboard details, so they must have ultra-simple designs—simpler in fact than business cards. A viewer can take in about three design elements in five seconds. These are almost always the company name/logo (the who), the message (the what), and the call-to-action (the how).
The Company Name/Logo
It’s beneficial to speak quickly about the importance of a clear, simple corporate logo design. If viewers spend half or more of their time deciphering all the layered detail of a complex logo, there’s little time to get to the other two important elements. They’d know who the client is, but miss the message or how to engage—the what and how.
The Message
All that billboard space can lead one into message bulk. “Well that’s part of my message, too.” “Seems like we have plenty of space for , too.” “How about we add…” are common requests, even understandable, but they should be seen for what they are: temptations into the Forest of Ineffective Design.
Imagine you have only 5 seconds of battery life to tell your rescuer how to save you. Would you ramble like an auctioneer, trying to get in as many details as you could quickly. Maybe, but you’d be wiser to include only a couple key details in as clear a fashion as possible. The same is true with billboard design. Rather than filling the space edge-to-edge with information, it’s wiser and more effective to limit the message to one thing whenever possible—one service, one special, a short pitch. And that one message should itself be ultra-short:
Fun for the Whole Family
Free Drink with Fill-Up
Best Mexican in the County
Next Stop 50 Miles
Free Estimates. Always.
The Call-To-Action
The call-to-action is what the viewer needs to do to become a customer. Like the message, it needs to be singular and concise:
Phone number
Web address
Exit 250 / 1 mile
Stop In. Next Exit.
Since this unique ad space is expensive and because attempts are being made in every market nationwide to phase it out, let Company Man Design concept, design, and deliver your attention-getting, effective, and targeted billboard.
The difficulty with designing branded merchandise isn’t only that the designer has to think three-dimensionally where he/she is probably more accustomed to designing for the two-dimensional page or screen: it’s that they don’t do it every day. Most designers are more confident working on a complex design project they’ve done a lot as opposed to simpler one they’ve never touched before. Ebooks, multi-page documents, trade show displays, websites, or any other complex design projects were daunting the first few times we took them on. But we made our mistakes, streamlined work, and found ways to improve quality along the way. Soon, all the considerations and steps to producing them were second-nature, if not ever what one would call simple.
Branding merchandise is not one kind of job but as many types of job as there are things an organization can put their logo, tagline, and/or message on. Water bottles, keychains, mouse pads, rulers, and any other gadgets and knick-knacks you’ve seen at events, conventions, trade shows, grocery stores, etc. And every one of these jobs has its own print area, print resolution, and color limitations or translations. Additionally, designers are accustomed to printing on paper with ink, but with merchandise branding, you’re more likely to have your logo stamped, sewn, engraved, and many even stranger “printing” methods.
There may be a customer tendency, even a designer tendency to think of the small-sized jobs as easier. But as I’ve written about business cards digital ads, just the opposite is often true. So let Company Man Design brand the merchandise for your next event or giveaway. We’ve branded about every kind of merchandise imaginable and by using our network of trusted, quality vendors, we take the worry away, getting the job done on time and on-budget.
Packaging design—the design of boxes, bottles, stickers, wraps, and more—presents a couple unique challenges to a designer.
The design normal considerations apply:
Creating a strong, attention-grabbing design
Showcasing the client’s corporate identity
Selling the specifics of the product itself; and,
But the designer must also consider
Imparting multiple blocks of directional and legal information; and, most importantly,
Achieving all of this, not in 2 dimension, but for 3-dimensional items that will possibly be handled, turned, stacked, shipped, etc.
The bottom line is that packaging design is not for the amateur or inexperienced designer. Company Man Design has the confidence and experience to design your packaging so that it tastefully stands out while communicating your company identity, all while standing up to whatever the real world might throw at it.
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