Branding

Branding is promoting your company or product in a differentiated and consistent way. Investing in branding provides you with a professional toolkit for successful marketing, and it can save you money versus designing every item as a one-off project. Effective branding is both an art and a science – it is based on strategy but should also be visually compelling.

Branding differentiates a company, product or service by clearly communicating what you offer and why you are the best alternative for your prospective customers. Every company, product and service is competing for attention and sales with others, whether directly or indirectly. Done well, branding also creates an image that is positive and memorable. This is especially important for innovative products or services and start-ups who must also educate consumers about something completely new.

Branding is a broad term, and because every business is different, we offer branding services that are tailored to your specific needs. On the visual side these range from logos, color palettes and font systems to custom patterns, icons and illustration or photography styles. On the verbal side, we develop company names, website URLs, tag lines, brand voice guidelines, copy points and more. When working on branding we discuss your current and future marketing needs and customize our work for each client.

To decide if you need a logo or more, ask yourself if you need to share your brand elements with various vendors, employees or partners to ensure consistency and professionalism. Also think about the channels you will be using for marketing and if it would be helpful (and potentially save money) to have additional brand elements to use. Finally think about your budget. If you can only start with a logo, you’ll have a solid foundation on which to build in the future.

Over the past 20+ years in business we have honed an effective process for creating logos that our clients are really excited about and that are effective for their marketing efforts. But while a logo is an important and foundational representation of a brand, it’s just one element of branding. Many of our clients start with a logo (with or without a full color palette and font system), while other want more options.

There are four things we keep in mind: Targeted, flexible, memorable and consistent. Before working on a logo design or branding project, we want to know as much as we can about your current and prospective customers to ensure your brand will appeal to those you want to attract. We also want to learn about how your branding will be applied – what marketing channels you will use – so the system we develop is flexible enough to work in those applications. We want to learn about your company, product or service as well as your competitors so we can authentically communicate what you’re about and differentiate you in a memorable way. And finally, effective branding is consistent – it’s the number one thing you can do to establish your brand and elevate your level of professionalism. A brand toolkit makes consistency so much easier.

Sometimes customers come to us for a brand refresh for business reasons – new ownership, the launch of new products or a desire to grow their business. Other times it’s obvious that their logo, colors or fonts have become dates. And yet other times a client is expanding their marketing efforts into new channels or in need of a new website which is always a great time for a refresh.