Better By Design

Welcome to Better by Design, the monthly visual marketing bulletin from Orme Creative.

Every month we’ll be offering you useful design tips to help you make the most of your business. From advertising, brand identity and corporate literature, to multimedia, newsletters and websites, we’ll be sharing our knowledge and experience with you. We hope you’ll find this information useful. If you have any questions or feedback, please give us a call on 0800 112 3056 or email nick@ormecreative.co.uk.

Nick Orme

A mere whiff of the word branding is enough to drive fear into the hearts of many business people. News stories come to mind of global corporations blowing the GDP of a third world country on redesigning their logo only to have it look just like the old one, or to change the colour of their store fronts because, “green is so ‘90s”. However, branding’s bad press is largely undeserved. In fact, it’s a vital element of any business.

Branding might sound a bit vague, but it’s not rocket science. The term originates from the days when farmers would brand their livestock with a red hot iron to let them and everyone else know which animals were theirs. In some ways not much has changed. Today businesses brand any visible element of their company so that their customers, partners and suppliers recognise them instantly, and half the hard work is already done. Think of any successful company and the chances are you’ll know what their logo looks like, what their corporate colours are, and probably a bit about what they stand for (or what they would like you to think they stand for, anyway). In today’s competitive environment, without a consistent brand it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to succeed.

So how do you go about building a brand that works? Here are 10 tips to help you.

1. Keep it simple. Focus on a small number of your key selling points and values and stick to them.
2. Be consistent. Make sure every aspect of your business has one look and feel.
3. Think about your customers. Make sure your branding matches what your customers are looking for.
4. Take control. A brand can lose its focus if too many people are involved. Assign a person or team to manage the brand.
5. Communicate your brand. Every time you get in touch with your customers, by post, email or face to face, make sure your branding is consistent.
6. Be honest. Branding can be useful for focusing on certain elements of your business but stay true to your core values.
7. Think beyond the logo. Branding is more than putting your logo on all your marketing materials (although this is important). Think about how your communications with your customers reflect your company and what it has to offer.
8. Be flexible. Your brand should be versatile enough to evolve with your business, while still being recognisable.
9. Involve employees. A brand only works if the whole company understands it and believes in it.
10. Live up to your brand. Every time you don’t, your brand becomes weaker.

Above all, make sure your brand reflects how you want your business to be perceived. If you know your company’s selling points and understand what it is your customers really want, you’re already halfway there. The rest comes down to good design.

When it comes to building a strong brand for your business, getting your logo right is essential. A good logo should be both instantly recognisable and evoke the right associations and feelings in your stakeholders. Ideally, anyone looking at your logo for the first time should have a fair idea of what you do and what you stand for. It really is that integral to your brand.

So, you know you need to get it right. But where to start? One of the first things you need to do is to decide on a brand strategy (See the last entry of Better By Design). Unless you have a clear idea of your company’s core strengths and values, it will be virtually impossible to come up with a logo that represents your business accurately.

Once you have a firm idea of your brand, you need to find a logo that fits it. Keep it simple. Your logo should work in any medium - on your letterhead, brochures, website, corporate uniforms, company blimp… you get the idea. If you create a logo with elaborate images and patterns, it’s unlikely to look good when it’s been reduced to fit on your business card, for example. So, keeping it simple is important.

Carefully consider the fonts and colours you use. Some fonts will make you look corporate and serious, while others will carry a whiff of a homemade poster for the village fete. Likewise, colours can have associations too. For instance, orange can suggest value for money and budget services – think Easyjet or Happy Shopper – while dark colours can appear conservative and dependable – look at Marks & Spencers or British Airways. The colour, or colours, you choose for your logo should be in line with how you want people to feel about your company.

Finally, once you have your logo, keep control of it. It should be consistent throughout your business to present a unified and focussed message to you customers. If the Accounts department thinks it looks better in blue for the annual report, while Marketing choose pink for the website, you’re fighting a losing battle. Create guidelines for using the logo, and make sure everyone in the company knows what they are.

Building a website can be a daunting task. Even if you’re after something simple, there is a lot to think about and many decisions that need to be made. Who is the website aimed at? What information will they want to know? What is the best way to categorise your products and services? What are the key messages you want to get across? How do you want visitors to your website to contact you?

It can be made easier by keeping a few things in mind. Your website is essentially your online shop window. You should put your best offers, products and services on the homepage so that potential customers are drawn in, and then provide more detailed information around the site for those that want to know more.

Just about any website should contain the following pages:

• Home – Your shop window. Just by glancing at your homepage, your prospects and customers should know what you do and why you’re different to the competition.
• About us – More information about your company for people that want to find out a bit more about you. With so many companies on the web it’s important to reassure potential clients that you’re established and trustworthy.
• Products and services – You can go into some depth here, with pages for specific products and services.
• Contact us – So that at any point your customers can call or email you to do business. After all, your website is really just a way for you to generate sales!

There are countless other types of pages that can be added and these will depend on the kind of organisation you have and what information you need to put online. The main thing is you make it easy for people to navigate around your site. You can do this using tabs and links, which act as virtual signposts around the site.

It’s vital that the design of your website is integrated with the look and feel of the rest of your business; that is, your signage, business cards, brochures, etc. That way, just by looking at the homepage, your customers will recognise you and make the right associations (value, quality, expertise, etc.).

It’s also important to use high quality images on the site. No matter how well structured your website is, if the images are of poor resolution your website will more than likely put more people off than it attracts! Conversely, high quality images have a professional feel that will help you stand out from the competition.

With more and more people using the web to research companies and buy products and services, it is essential to the success of your business that you get your website right. By having your site professionally built and investing in good design, you can let your website do a lot of the work for you!