Developing your Identity Design—from concept to an effective business tool.

A great deal of planning is required when you are seeking to develop an effective Identity Design. After strategic planning, we are ready to begin work on creating multiple products in different medias to create a cohesive unit to represent your business. We want your Identity to represent your business perfectly and be usable with all media.

A basic Identity is necessary for any design. If all you require at this time are business cards, a logo, or a website—we will put the same effort into your project as we would to any other, with the understanding that you may require these colors and these 'basic' concepts to do more for you later. To do anything less is shortsighted, and is a disservice to you, our clientele.

So what is a complete Identity Design?

This can encompass different things for different businesses.* (see info below for inclusion of current data)

A color palette and an effective logo design are absolutely required.

Generally, stationary and basic printed materials are a given. These usually include business cards, stationary, and envelopes—and often include price tags, invoices, shipping labels, product labels, packaging materials, and other business supplies. Any time you correspond with people or offer your product to the public in any way, it is beneficial to provide materials that will help your buyers as well as your clients identify with your products. This provides recognition and definition of your business to resellers, gives a stronger presence to consumers, and helps to build new customers through gift purchases.

While some business materials require specialized printing (such as business cards and pricing labels), many aspects of printing personalized business materials can be as simple as the creation of a template for your needs, allowing you to work in Word, Excell, etc.; printing out invoices and such that include your Identity straight from your own printer.

Clothing and Other Printed Materials for Employees.

If your business includes employees who interact with clients, offering options for clothing should be a strong consideration. A recognizable 'brand' represented by your employees adds cohesion to your business. Customers are not at a loss as to whom they can talk to when they seek assistance. Your staff is readily apparent. This can also aid in building a 'team' environment for your employees.

Prior to Internet Printing Services, this implied clothing your associates in a selection of T-Shirts. If you offer burgers or plumbing supplies, this is perfectly adequate and will save on costs. These fashion limitations, however, are no longer an excuse for avoiding a more unified company attire.

With Internet printing possibilities, it is quite realistic to create tasteful clothing to express high-end businesses with jackets, fitted blouses, golf shirts and/or tasteful name tags carrying your business logo. While using a logo on clothing for your employees may require tasteful handling, it is better to provide consumer recognition of your staff than leave customers uncomfortable with approaching strangers, in hope that they might question staff, but with concern that they may confront another customer instead.

Clothing and Other Printed Materials–for web-based businesses and others, beyond employee needs.

In the past, businesses had to take great care in ordering shirts, bumper stickers, etc. before having a clear idea of consumer desire. In the past, you were forced to commit to a large number of shirts/bumper stickers/magnets, etc. before you could offer merchandise representing your logo to customers. This is no longer the case. As part of your Identity Design, we can easily include designs for these printed materials, which you can order on an as-needed basis. This type of on-request design is not the most cost-effective, but will provide you with an idea of demand for product placement of your logo, and provide a small additional income, while allowing you more security to explore the success of this type of marketing before investing money to order a large quantity via a more cost effective source. If sales of these products go well, we can aid you in producing these promotional products in larger bulk for a great deal less per unit. Any

Website Representation—is it necessary?

Part of any Identity Design should include a web page. This website can be quite simple to be effective, like a business card that covers basic business info on one page, or can be very complex, offering audio and video, multiple pages, a shopping cart for goods available for purchase via the web, etc.

Why is having a website presence necessary? Simply, because everyone has access to the Internet.

Even if your average client is elderly, assuming they don't use the Internet to research services is a bad bet. While there are some older people who are not web friendly, these potential clients have friends and relatives who are web savvy. It's just good business to assume that someone will attempt to research your business using the Internet. If a potential client searches for your business through most search engines and your business doesn't come up, these potential clients will be redirected to multiple websites for businesses that offer comparable services to yours. Your lack of a site won't be the main deterrent; the biggest problem is that your potential clients will be redirected to other services.

Even the most basic site can eliminate this problem. Clients don't require flashy animation or bling, just a straight-forward introduction to who you are and what you do is great; if you want to take a site further, we can do that too, but a basic site is really a necessity.

The best web page you can offer for your clients is a page that works. Often, a more complex site will increase your potential to earn more money, but this not always the case. Sometimes site complexity just doesn't matter. Our priority is to make your design work for you. Crazy us, we want to provide you with what you need, and don't want to charge you for services that aren't necessary. In short, you really need a website, but we won't ever do more than you need. Too many sites on the web include pages that don't work correctly and sites that look terrible. An ugly site that is functional is rather painful, but a site that doesn't work correctly is an example of a business that does not care about details (like providing excellent service)…. If a potential client visits your site, and sees the pages don't work and the contact form is useless, what will they conclude about your company?

We want to create a web site that represents your Identity as flawless. No matter the design—simple or complex, our first priority is functional perfection. Your site is a reflection of your business, and any flaws in the site design will reflect on you in a negative manner-we design for perfection. Our designs are strategically planned from the start. While we adore current technology, we also design all of our sites to be functional for everyone else. We design all sites for people using outdated technology, as well as for people with special needs.

All of our pages are designed using CSS rather than tables. CSS is a programming language that allows us to create a website layout in a manner that is friendly to visually impaired people requiring 'readers' to provide them with information on web content. While this design applies to a small percentage of the population, we think it's important to provide accessible content to everyone.

Putting it all Together...

Creating a cohesive Identity Design requires a great deal of work. Pleas be patient while we work out all of the details, as we work out the complexities required to make a perfect Identity for your company.

* If you wish to use a current logo design and current Identity colors, but wish us to provide improved design elements, that is entirely doable. We will do our best to create a far more effective design encompassing these elements while addressing the spectrum of your design needs.