Creating business and brand identity are often considered art by business people and designers alike. It is not. Business identity is a visual, bridge-building tool that helps companies sell their products and services. The overall goal pinning down why it’s a good idea to invest in identity is to sell either a company’s product, its ethos or, if it’s a non-profit organization, its mission.

Sure, there is much more to it and many sub-considerations, but when the initial conversation is about favorite colors and Oh by the way, can we have a big eagle swooping down in the logo, well then, things have veered dangerously off track at the outset. Hit the brakes, turn around and refocus.

A proper identity project indeed entails a creative process, and assumes years of refined skills which enable a designer to do it right. The end product must look great and be well executed. That part is artistic. But how do you know if it is right?  Start by understanding the client, their customers, their industry and their market. What is it about them that’s unique? What makes them great? What is their key messaging, and to whom?

The goal is to design visuals that encompass everything in their business. This one image will come to represent who they are, what they do, how they act, what they stand for and, of course, the products that they sell. It’s not art; rather, it’s the face of the company, and needs careful consideration to properly mix that company’s positioning and personality.

To sum up, this is a business project centered on the goal of your clients to sell their products and services. Your task is to help companies grow by giving them the proper visual tools to achieve that goal. It’s not something they will frame and hang over a mantel.

Being close to Thanksgiving, let us take this opportunity to wish everyone a great gobble gobble!

Let’s pretend you are remodeling your kitchen. The first thing you might do is ask friends for referrals and get a few names. Next, you jump online to do some research about them.

And let’s suppose you find:

Based on what you see:

• Which company looks like it does higher-quality work?
• Does one look more experienced than the other?
• Are you confident each will be in business in a few years if issues arise?
• Who will most likely finish the work on time, not stranding you without a kitchen?

No, we are not suggesting that anyone choose a business based solely on its logo. But when a homeowner starts researching and comparing options, the image your business projects can grab her attention and direct her initial perceptions about the type of company you are. These are make-or-break perceptions—about your company’s size, success, reliability, financial stability, service and quality—all based on what the shopper sees. True, this process may not always be fair and reasonable, but it’s how we all operate. It is, after all, human nature.

You didn’t happen to answer “Boyd,” did you?

While Boyd may in fact be the better company, the hard wiring in our brain tells us otherwise, probably they’re not. They just don’t look “right.” This can happen any day, with most any company. And the hard lesson is, if you haven’t invested in a professional business identity, you are probably losing business to competitors that have.

The ones that have made a proper investment look appealing, and there is inherent credibility in the effort and expenditure required to look that way. People see them as established & professional. That builds trust. Conversely, companies like Boyd are seen as higher risk and less reliable. Boyd will have to compete on price to win business because our gut tells us they are not as good or dependable. In order for us to go with (i.e., gamble on) them, we’ll expect a much lower price.

Few companies want clients like that.

I don’t need to explain what Google is, right? It’s simply the best search engine on the planet. Everyone agrees on that. Search is still what we think of when we hear “Google it”—a simple, clutter-free page that gets right to the point for doing a search online. Google has such a strong brand here that, they own this category. Is anyone using Bing these days? Or Ya-who?

Yet Google increasingly does so much else, its business model risks getting messy. Who are they in the minds of their huge audience? Doing everything is never an asset for brand positioning.

When I searched Google products on Wikipedia I stopped counting at 50, with a long way to go. (Here is the list if you’re curious. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products)

Consider this dizzying array of products:
Android – smart phone operating system
Google SketchUp – a 3D illustration software
YouTube
Google Phone or Google Talk
Google TV
Google + social media site
Google music – set to launch this year
Google Deals- coming soon because Groupon turned down their offer.
Blogger – which will soon change to Google blogs
Picasa – photo organization and editing application
Jaiku – Twitter knockoff
Google Chrome – web browser

Do any of these sound like Google Search?

Obviously, Google still has a very strong brand—no question there—but the path they are heading in may dilute it, making them more like Microsoft. Could they become a big tech giant with its hand in so many places and still be great at them all? Case in point, Google T.V. is a major flop, and Google Plus is likely to follow.

So far Google’s largely sticking to technology and many of their new products are logical brand extensions. That’s good. They at least didn’t open a bakery or start selling insurance. Companies strive to have people know who they are, know what they do and then understand that they do it well. That is powerful. Google is absolutely the best with search, but as they grow they must be careful not to water down their brand equity. It’s a tough balance, growing steadily while staying true to initial brand strength.

So what is Google today…and what will it mean to us in a year or two?

Let’s hope that as they attempt to buy companies like Groupon, Google asks themselves not just how does this move affect our bottom line, but how does it affect our top-of-mind brand. Otherwise, the next time someone says Google it, you might have to ask, Do you want me to call you? Channel surf my T.V? Write a blog post? Make a 3D model? Or… Google it how?

We always love hearing your comments, so keep them coming. Hope you had a fun summer!

The July fourth holiday condensed our month, and we’re behind on writing our newsletter/blog post. So instead of being late, we’d like to share one of our current design projects for our client Tommiland.

We’re proud of our work and love sharing it, so we may start sprinkling in a few examples between posts. What do you guys think of this idea?

A little about our client
Tommiland is Tommi West, a technical writer for all materials related to web design. Her focus is ensuring the success of users with software products. She’s authored books, re-written an entire knowledgebase of articles, created learning guides, developed numerous how-to tutorials for Adobe.com, and developed sample project files to help web designers and developers accomplish specific tasks. If you need a technical writer, let us know, and we’ll do a personal introduction.

Brand personality traits
Creative, technical, accurate and reliable.

Brand promise
Tommiland grasps technical information quickly and organizes it into easily digestible documentation.

The solution
The new identity incorporates T & L for Tommiland within a mosaic. The letters are neither hidden or obvious. They represent the integration of complicated concepts into a larger whole – in a clear, accurate, comprehensible way. The identity’s professionalism  and polish conveys that they are a trusted and dependable firm.

We also discovered in our process a tagline that boiled up from Tommi’s own subconscious: Passionately Rational. The client said it in the line of conversation and we stopped her, “wait what was that? That’s perfect.”

The result
“I just saw the Tommiland business cards for the first time… and they are STUNNING! I am so thrilled – they are perfect and so professional.

I got a call from another department at Adobe for a potential new gig. I’m meeting with them next Tuesday, so now I can hand the Product Manager my new card and totally impress them.”

As this project shows, we dig deep to understand and clearly communicate our client’s brand strategy, brand positioning and story. We always love hearing your comments, so keep them coming. Have a fun summer!

The postal service has shown tremendous insight throughout their current (and brilliant) “If It Fits, It Ships” campaign. In many ways this service should give them a huge advantage over their private carrier competitors. Determining the size of a box, weighing it, and calculating postage per postal zone is a hassle. The simplicity of their program, by contrast, is compelling. Yet they still don’t see the root of their problem. And until they do, they’ll continue to lose business to FedEX and UPS.

Why?

Take our client and friend, Jojami, a superb image stylist. (I should know, she even made me look good, no easy task.) We took it as a compliment when she asked us to design a business image reflecting her professional service. As soon as her cards came off press, we planned to hand deliver them, a goodwill service we often gladly include. Well, unable to sync our schedules, she asked, “Can you mail them?” Of course we could.

Then it dawned on us, does that mean a trip to the post office? Please, no!

Something that should be no big deal suddenly became a nightmare! I mean, have you been there lately? It is one of the worst examples of customer service I can think of. The lines are long. They never have more than one window open. You notice a worker coming to open another window and get excited, then deflated, as the first one goes on break. They rarely smile. They move like molasses, hardly caring. Our local branch is a dump, too. Water leaks from the roof in three spots, one into a bucket, two directly onto the floor. The windows are covered in metal mesh that looks like a prison. No wonder they are grumpy. All in all, the post office is a depressing place, be it the branch near where we used to live in San Francisco, or the one we’re stuck with here today. The service, if you can call it that, is slow and miserable.

We honestly considered driving Jojami’s cards to Delaware. Our post office is a half mile away and we would rather drive to Delaware? Luckily we remembered the Northern Liberties Mailbox Store, a private mailing shop where everything’s the opposite of the USPS—clean, quick, friendly and welcoming. Job done, cards shipped, time saved.

To be fair, the postal service isn’t all bad. They really are amazing logistically. Ever thought how lucky we are to put a mere 44 cents on an envelope and have it ship from here to there, say Alaska, right to a friend’s door? And the delivery people are not like Newman on Seinfeld; they are warm and friendly, reliable and a great part of our community. I love these guys. They deliver in snow, rain, bitter cold, and oppressive heat, every day but Sunday, with a smile to boot! Also, it’s impressive how quickly a letter is delivered locally, often in less than 24 hours within this metro area. That is efficiency!

If only USPS could match the on-site post office experience to their other strengths. Their “if it fits it ships” business model and marketing campaign is so simple, easy and reasonably priced, perfect for any business. They could really stick it to FedEx and UPS. And yet if the public’s perceptions and experiences keep turning sour, no one will pay attention.

So what do you think? When was the last time you actually stepped inside a post office? What was the outcome? Do you prefer FedEx or the United States Postal Service?

Last month I covered key factors that make a logo effective; this month I’ll complement that thinking by mentioning some common mistakes and practices to avoid in logo design. (If you missed last month’s post you can read it here on the Bondepus blog.)

Computer gimmicks—Avoid computer tricks, filters, and even transparency in a logo. Since many filters become dated quickly and end up looking cheesy, using them shows a lack of savvy design. Even big-time professionally designed logos can reveal this mistake. For example, I once had to add AT&T as a sponsor on the back of a non profit’s T-shirt. For budget reasons it was a one-color screen print, the logo, which had a transparency, does not print one color. That left us no choice but to eliminate the globe and use just the name.

Too complicated/too many elements—A busy logo is an ineffective logo. Use just one, or at most two, graphic identifiers.You want to communicate the core traits of the business as simply and focused as possible.

Dated font—To ensure that your logo lasts at least 10 years, perhaps decades, avoid fonts associated with a certain era. Using a font that was trendy in the ’70s or ’90s will date a company’s “new” identity from the start. That said, it can be appropriate when your company’s brand is retro or throwback, say, Restoration Hardware or Stephen Starr’s Jones restaurant. Bottom line, use a font that fits the characteristic(s) of the brand.

Hard to read font—With surprising regularity people (even designers!) pick a font that is busy, unruly or so hip that it’s hard to read. Cleverness aside, it’s never smart to block the viewer from reading the company’s name. Make it easy for them. Few logos are so fascinating that people will actually work through a puzzle just to read who a company is. They are busy and they will focus on more important things.

Pictures—There are exceptions but as a rule, images (photos) do not scale up without quality loss. Resolution will be a never ending concern. Because a company’s logo goes on so many diverse communication pieces, make it flexible and use vector-based software such as Illustrator or Corel Draw.

Avoid trendy colors—Never choose a color based on trendiness; and if you can’t resist a color that happens to be trendy, make sure it captures the mood and personality of the business. There are ways to apply color that won’t go out of fashion.

Using an unedited piece of clip art—You can’t own something you buy and place alongside your name. It’s not unique to your business if it’s for sale to the world, meaning that you can’t own, protect, copyright or register it with the Patent and Trademark Office. And when you find the company next door using it in their logo, there’s nothing you can do about that.

Unbalanced—The symbol of the logo should not overwhelm the name of the company. If you make the symbol twice the size of the name, you lose the critical balance. Given equal weighting, though, the eye will take both in equally. Since they both represent you, allow people to see both as a unified whole in order to build recognition.

If you’d like to learn more, we’d love to chat further on this topic so central to our work. Give us a call or email. Next month I’ll revisit some of our marketing and branding experiences—things you and I see every day—but look at them differently.

-Gary Epis & Amy Bond
267-239-0409 ph

People often ask me, What is it that makes a logo good? My reply is, Whatever makes it effective. You see, people judge a logo based on how it looks, which is important, sure. But that tells only half the story. My purpose here is to cover the visual aspects, yet not the branding work behind each good logo. Next month, I will explain some of the pitfalls to avoid.

Memorable – People are inundated with messages…5,000 per day, says a recent New York Times article. If your company looks like all your competitors, the brain quickly lumps it in that big, boring pile with them and ignores it. Be memorable to gain entry into the compartment of the brain that is relevant and focused on. When your brand identity stands out from the pack, people pay attention, which puts you leaps and bounds ahead of other businesses.

Concept – Does your logo communicate the essence of your business – the who, the what and the why of the business? Does it capture who the company is? Does it communicate the spirit and culture of your company? Does it speak to your intended audience, that is, your customer and prospect base? This is the most important factor in methodically building a brand as opposed to just sporting a piece of cool artwork as a logo.

Character – Creating visual interest can go a long way to being memorable. Character makes you interesting. Used appropriately, a little whimsy can make you stand out. The same, trite radial band looping around your company name no longer gets the job done.

Recognizable – A strong identity requires far fewer total impressions before people embrace and remember it. Thus, much less exposure is needed for people to retain your business.

Versatile – A logo needs to be simple in order to be versatile. It will be used on every communication piece and will interact at every touch point. It must live comfortably on every medium—online, print, social media, sign on the door. Can it read powerfully in full color and in black and white?…reversed out for dark background applications?…scaled small and large?

Concise – The more complicated your logo, the harder it is for people to take in. So the key is to remove extraneous elements until the logo reaches its simplest form but still communicates the brand. This is not unlike good writing—remove the fluff and stay on point.

Balanced – Your eye takes it in comfortably. The space between letters is adjusted and equal. The negative and positive space is balanced. The weights of the name, symbols and icons are visually balanced.

For brevity’s sake I cannot cover everything here. Just remember, as you research, explore, and develop your own business identity, to ask yourself, Are these guiding principles working? If the answer is Yes, you’ll have a powerful and successful logo rather than a cool yet ineffective one.

So what if I told you that the “apple” on the back of your iPad is not really a logo?

First off, I’m not attempting to change peoples’ usage of “logo,” but you might find it interesting that what is commonly thought to be one, isn’t.

“What? Baloney! I know what a logo is.” Okay, let me explain.

What most people typically refer to as a logo is a really a trademark. We already have the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Maybe they should rename it the U.S. Patent and Logo office?

Logo is short for logotype, design industry-speak for a custom-lettered word. How this came to be used by the public I’m unsure, but its root comes from the Greek word “logos,” meaning “word.”  A trademark that is strictly a custom-lettered word is a logomark, or logo. Think Pentax, Hershey’s and Microsoft. The Nike swoosh is not custom lettering, and therefore is neither a logomark nor a logo! The “apple” for Apple Computers is not one either. Rather, these are symbols, some say icons, within a trademark. Whether they are logomarks or symbols, though, they are both trademarks.

Here is a breakdown of trademark types.

1. Logotype – a custom-lettered word, with no symbols, i.e. Pentax, Microsoft, Hershey’s, Marlboro
2. Symbols – Nike Swoosh, Apple Computer, the “P” on a Phillies cap!
3. Monogram – IBM, GE, the NY combo on a Yankees cap.
4. Emblems – Manchester United, Free Masons, U.S. Navy.

Today, people use logo to cover all of these. Once a shortening for a specific type of trademark, now has come to be universal. Logo is easy, it’s short and it’s cool. Trademark sounds stodgy. So I’m not expecting clients to tell me any time soon, “Hey, that’s a nice trademark you designed, Gary.”

My advice, just keep saying logo and let us design nuts worry about it.

Imagine you’re at a networking event, meeting new people, sharing a few smiles, conversing briefly here and there, perhaps even exchanging business cards. Then the next day you get a couple of invitations, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” What then? Do you accept?

There seem to be two different approaches for handling this. One is to link to most everyone you meet. The other is to link exclusively to people you feel you’ve gotten to know. Which is best? I’m not sure, so I’d like to hear what you think.

For me, I prefer connecting to someone I’ve at least met for coffee. While doing so, I’ve determined that they are someone I’d like to talk with more and get to know further. After all, I took the time to go meet with them. Sure I make some exceptions here, especially for the handful of people I’ve linked to who were simply not feasible to meet with in person, yet with whom I felt a deeper connection. Perhaps an excellent phone call.

Question is, am I missing out on connecting with a much larger group of people? Yes, I may be, but does it matter? If I pay attention to LinkedIn’s Network Statistics, I’m missing out on millions of connections! Yet honestly, how many of us have successfully navigated a 3rd degree connection? Are they really that “connected?” While in reality I’m missing out on only about 2,000 of these, that’s still a lot of people.

Which brings us right back to the quantity vs. quality dilemma. Personally, I’d like to think I’m keeping my network small and more relevant by resisting the urge to play the numbers game. One strong connection is stronger than 10 superficial ones, I figure. Right…or wrong? In our social media crazed world today, am I being foolhardy?

Let me hear from you. I’m curious to know which strategy you find most effective for you and your business. Maybe you consider both approaches valid, and neither is better. I’ve posted this on our Facebook page, so Click HERE and chime in.

I don’t have the answer. Do you?