Graphic Design For Your Business

Professional Design and Your Business... The Perfect Merger of Form and Function

This lens is primarily centered on professional corporate design and marketing/branding issues. Other designers may find this lens interesting, but the topics are targeted more specifically to business owners, marketing directors, senior executives and entrepreneurs.

Overall, the aim of this lens is to give businesses the tools to work with design more effectively.

Corporate Creative Articles

http://articles.sagemedia.ca

These articles from Corporate Creative address several different issues faced by marketing teams, entrepreneurs, business owners and senior executives vested in the success of their respective companies.

Building a Global Brand: In addition to taking advantage of outstanding growth opportunities, there are several factors driving the increasing interest in taking brands global%u2026
Postcard Marketing - Good Things Come in Small Packages: Although the days of the "penny" postcard are long over, these convenient cards still have a lot of marketing life left in them, especially with the advent of online postcard printing services that make design (and sometimes the actual mailing) a snap. Postcards afford instant visibility and are effective in boosting sales and building name recognition. Granted a great deal of today's marketing buzz is on Internet-based advertising, but not everyone stays connected 24 hours a day. Postcards let you easily engage in mass mail-outs without breaking the bank and should not be overlooked in your marketing plan.
Culture Conversion: Designing for Niche Markets: A niche market is a focused, targetable portion of a market%u2026 or a narrowly defined group of potential customers. In general, if your business focuses on a niche market, you should be addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.

Unless you are in the community being targeted, it can be hard to tell upfront whether the design of your creative is going to be effective. But when you're part of the targeted community, you get the message loud and clear. The trick comes in when you want to target a niche market to which you yourself do not belong. Bridging this gap between business and niche markets thus often requires a thoughtful cultural conversion campaign.
Digital vs. Offset Printing: How To Choose?: Design is a complex and multilayered industry, and just as good design begins about ten steps before pen actually hits paper (or tablet, as it were), neither does it end when the final digital proofs are approved and delivered. The actual implementation of the design must be treated with considerable thought and care as well, if you're interested in gaining maximum effect from the design itself.

The most common implementation questions we come across are often in regards to printing%u2026 what finishes to use, what stock, and most often, should we use digital or offset printing?
7 Ways To Improve Direct Mail Response: While print marketing should not be relied upon exclusively in today's communications world, direct mail campaigns are still an important ingredient in an effective marketing mix.
Compelling Brochure Copy - The Basics: It's part of our job to educate our clients on the importance and advantages of excellent design. At the same time, it must be said that effective brochure composition requires more than (just) compelling design. In planning your promotional materials, you need to pay as much attention to content as you do to visuals - and vice versa.
Using design in business: Design in business is much more than just catchy ads. You can use design to generate new ideas and turn them into innovative and competitive products and services, improve your business processes and strengthen and deepen your marketing approach.
Brand Revitalization: Building a strong brand takes commitment, time and hard work, but the result is one of the most valuable assets a company can own. That said, not all assets are static, and your brand image is no exception.

In building your brand, you are creating a new definition with the aim of making it a household name. When people think of tissue, they instantly think of Kleenex. That's the sort of association you want. Instant identification in the mind of the customer is not enough though%u2026 you also need that identification to represent competence, quality, authenticity and credibility. At the same time, your brand needs to remain dynamic, relevant, and at the top of mind while retaining its established heritage and identity.
Tips for choosing the right design firm: If ever there were an overly competitive industry with little to no regulation, it would be the commercial design industry. Any child with a computer and some basic software can market themselves as a designer, while the true industry suffers wide scale devaluation and thousands of business owners are taken for a ride by unqualified or even unscrupulous "designers".

As a consumer, how do you protect yourself and your company? The answer is more simple than you may think%u2026 all you have to do is a bit of homework.
Q&A: What does excellent trade show signage look like?: Question:
What does excellent trade show signage look like? Is it simple? Colorful? Digital (narrowcasting)? Branded?
A case for rebranding - catalysts for brand revitalization: British Bakeries first launched Hovis Invisible Crust, the first ever crust-less bread, in August 2005, and has re-launched the product this January with a $4.5 million rebranding campaign. The company says, 'It has performed brilliantly with great consumer feedback'. A perfect example of how rebranding can revitalize a product, British Bakeries is investing at a critical point to bring this revolutionary new product in line with the rest of the Hovis range, creating a sense of continuity and trust in the new product, and bringing fresh attention to the rest of the brand's existing products.
What's up with Personal Branding, and why you should consider it: Most of our readers own their own business, or at least run the marketing department. And for the most part, they know that the concept of branding has a much farther reach than just their company. But maybe you're not the CEO of your own business%u2026 yet%u2026 do you really need to be thinking about issues like branding?
The Self Promotion Piece - Bringing a Graphics Standard into the Business World: Graphic designers are intimately familiar with the all-important portfolio and accompanying self-promotion piece. After the big pitch and presentation, designers and firms provide prospective clients with an SPP%u2026 often a bound promotional brochure or catalogue highlighting their best work and success stories/case studies, as well as a list of awards and some basic reminder company information.
A Well Managed Suite of Business Materials: When you're not around to make a personal impression, your materials are doing it for you. So naturally, you want to be sure that your materials are making the right impression. In this article I'll go over a few specific bits of advice to ensure that your corporate identity materials are projecting an image of competence and success.
Packaging: dressing your product in a fashion conscious market: Packaging. It's something most people don't necessarily think about, perhaps partly due to the fact that it is so overwhelmingly pervasive. Even just picking up groceries for the week, in a single forum we are subjected to the end results of thousands of individual design and branding endeavours; some good, some bad, and the rest forgettable.
Holiday networking: Scrooge once said that Christmas has a way of keeping men from doing business%u2026 but really, what does he know? The truth is, the holiday season provides some really excellent opportunities for networking. Odds are that very soon you will be mingling with all manner of people at some holiday get-together. Some you'll barely know, and others you'll know very well - the important thing to remember is that networking this time of year is different than any other month.
You've got 50 milliseconds to wow me: How strong is your website's immediate appeal? According to a Carleton University study published earlier this year in the academic journal Behaviour & Information Technology, web designers have only 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression.
The creativity/business conundrum: The concept of creativity is an abstract one, at best. The dictionary tells you that when you ask for creativity, you can expect to see "the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context." This is all well and good if you're in the market for something astonishing to frame and hang on your wall, but in the context of business design it falls somewhat short of adequate.
How to compose an effective email newsletter: One of the key elements in building relationships with clients (and prospective clients) is constant contact. But as plain a concept as it is, simply keeping in touch can be a tricky feat. By now, surely every modern business has at least a basic understanding of the potential impact of electronic communication, but how effectively do they use it? This article will outline a few of the foundational elements of building a successful email newsletter campaign.
How to shop for a design firm (be an educated consumer): With brand revitalization and product redesigns rolling out more quickly than ever before, it's clear that design and innovation are becoming the hot topic for business. Apple is a prime example%u2026 constantly pushing the envelope and driving the market, the iPod has become an icon of fanatic consumer loyalty and yet, the increasingly rapid rollover to bigger (or smaller) and better models is met with pocketbooks held wide open and the competition struggling to keep up. Apple has brought the impact of effective design in business to the forefront.
Getting and keeping your key demographic's attention: In a rich media environment, audiences are in an increasingly constant state of distraction. We're all busy, and there is a lot going on in our lives - our attention is valuable and limited. Unfortunately for businesses, this means that in order to cut through the clutter, they have to constantly repeat themselves and draw their audience's attention back to important items, refocusing them over and over again. It's a frustrating dance for both partners. The business may ask "how can I get this person's attention?", while the audience is left wondering "what's this person trying to tell me? and why should I care?"