Less is almost always more

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Developing an effective brand

Don't begin your branding campaign blindly. Branding is much more than just a thoughtful logo or slogan. It’s more than just a unique color scheme. There are steps that need to be taken in order to start your successful brand image. Doing research within the company will greatly improve the success of your brand.

Examine the Competition
Differentiate yourself from your competition. To do this you need to know how consumers view your competition. You need to know how your competitors differentiate themselves from the market. Also, you should know your competitors strengths and weaknesses.

Identify Your Strengths
Once you know your competition’s weaknesses you can start to highlight your company’s strengths. Perform a target market analysis, learn from it, and use it to your advantage. This is a useful tool to make sure your company’s strengths are in fact important to your target market.

Know the Customer
Learn more about the customer, market to them more effectively. Know their purchasing behavior. Do they buy often? Buy only during sales or promotions? Do they buy an array of products or services or just a select few? These are questions you should ask to better market to your best customers. Also, know your customer’s lifestyles, needs, mindsets, and attitudes.

Be Your Brand
Make sure your company really represents what your brand identifies you with. For example, if one of the traits your brand identifies your company with is politeness, be polite. This means every employee from the receptionist all the way up to the CEO should represent politeness in every interaction.

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Color used in design

The Color Wheel
A color wheel is a visual tool for determining which colors to use based on their positions in the spectrum. It is essentially a circular rainbow with colors laid out equidistant to each other in order to line up with the color theory spectrum. If you spin a color wheel, the colors will blend until the wheel is white. The color wheel is most often used for determining complementary and analogous colors. Complementary and analagous groups are the basic common color relationships used in determining color theory based on the spectrum.

Complementary and Analagous Colors
Complementary colors are located across from each other on the color wheel. You can find your complementary color by drawing a line from your chosen dominant color directly across your color wheel through the center point to form a diameter line in your color wheel. The color on the other end of that line is your complementary color. Complementary colors are highcontrast, and their use is popular in outdoor advertising for its boldness and easy readability.Analagous colors are colors that are right next to each other on the color wheel. When using analagous colors, you choose a dominant color, then use the two adjacent colors as accent coloring. Analogous color combinations come off as muted. They are not recommended for signs or advertising, which need to be bold to stand out.

Psychological Effects
In color theory, there are warm and cold colors. In addition to their heat association, colors and color combinations also have psychological associations. These psychological associations have widespread similarities but can also differ widely from culture to culture. For instance, green is a fairly universal color that indicates health and abundance, and purple is often associated with royalty. See Elements of Color Design in Art in References for a color psychology interpretation table.

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TIPS on logo design

It's a no-no to use clip art
If you area small local business or a mom-n-pop shop you might not be that keen in investing towards a logo and establishing your brand (though I sincerely believe that's very wrong). In such situation, you can try using some high quality royalty free clip art combining it with a suitable typeface to put your company name. You can also use more than one clip arts to create the total graphics for your logo.

However, you should keep in mind that clip arts would never give you the effect of a custom logo and they can be easily duplicated or stolen. Even if you are modifying a clip art, it is almost impossible to get a trademark on that. In future, once your business grows to the level when you need to have trademarked logo you will have to get a total new logo (may be something closer to the one you have) and start with your branding efforts once again to establish that new logo.

To avoid all this problems it is advisable that you get a unique custom logo and it is not always that you need to spend a lot on your logos. There are companies on the web that offers custom logo design at reasonable price.

Some More Logo Design Tips
1) Keep it simple
Remember, simplicity is the key. Most of the great logos are absolutely simple and it is always easier for us to remember and recognize a simple design than to identify a complicated artwork. If you want to have some complex illustration for your logo, try to minimize the number of lines and make it as simple as possible keeping in mind that the viewer should be able to understand what has been drawn.

2) Typography:
You should be careful while deciding on the typeface that you intend to use for your logo. Choosing the correct typeface can make a lot of difference. For example, a finance company depicting strength and stability would like to use some bold, thick font. Also, the letters can be twisted to create simple yet nice logos. Some ideal examples of logo that contains only letters are "SONY" and Dell - remember the twisted "e"?

3) Choice of Color:
You should be careful while deciding on your logo colors. It is advisable to restrict yourself to RGB or CMYK colors so that your logo looks equally good in print as it looks on web. Also, ensure that your logo looks good in black and white as well, mind it, you will also have to use your logo on while faxing any of your marketing material or corporate documents.

Finally, it is always better if you are employing any specialized logo design firm to create your logo design than doing it yourself. It is their profession so they would know it much better than you do and neither is logo design always very costly. It is just a matter of locating that designer and you can be on your way to having a wonderful custom logo design.

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The key to marketing yourself

Contact me today for a business card design.

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Business card etiquette

If you want to use good business etiquette and good marketing then you need to start handing out more of your business cards. There is nothing easier or more profitable than using business cards in your marketing strategy.

Your business card is an extension of yourself and if you want to be able to market yourself the right way your card needs to represent you the right way. This means that it needs to make an impression, a good one. Your business cards should look professional but still have a flair to them. That means not having too much going on as far as graphics while still being attractive.

Once you have had the business cards designed and printed, how do you go about handing them out? And who should you give them to?

You should give your business cards to everyone but don't stop there. Get cards in return as well, these are going to prove to be much more useful to you than anything else. Once you have other people's cards in hand you can begin to network.

Networking with business cards is key to your successful marketing. With a few cards you will be able to get your name and your company info out to tons of people and every card that you collect can be developed into a solid contact in any industry.

Here are some tips to help you make the most our of your business card marketing:

Only choose the best paper for your business cards.
Thicker heavier paper is better as it look more expensive and professional.

Do not design your own card
Unless of course, you are actually a graphic designer, leave this job to the pros. They know how to make a statement and an impact with graphics.

Take plenty of business cards with you
When you are going out on the town or to any kind of business function take plenty of business cards with you. You need to always have enough of them on hand when you are going out of town for business as well. You may need to take a couple of hundred, depending on how many associates will be there and how long you are going for.

Talk to people
When someone hands you their business card talk to them, and try to find out as much as you can in a short amount of time. Remember what you learn and use it at a later date.

If you are traveling abroad
If you are going abroad for business to a country where your language is not he first language then you should consider having some business cards made up for that country. All you have to do is have the back printed in this other language, this way those you give your card to will still be able to understand what it is saying. If they can't read it, what was the point of giving it to them? Marketing comes in all different forms and this is a great way to market yourself abroad using your business cards.

Business cards can be a powerful marketing tool and the sooner that you realize that the sooner your business is going to really take off.

If you're in need of a business card design, web design, e-marketing (blog) campaign, please don't hesitate to contact Design Chef Studios today.
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