Filed under: branding, design advice, Design Principles, Philosophy | Tags: brand, brochure, business cards, collateral, design rules, graphic design, intellectual property, marketing, new business, promotional material, visual identity, website
the best small businesses are watching their branding
If you are beginning a new business venture, or new marketing push in an existing business, which requires collateral for its delivery, you’re probably going to need something designed to do it well.
Maybe its business cards, or marketing postcards. Perhaps fliers or brochures, menus or signs. You’ve probably decided a website is on the list. Your emails should have header and /or footer graphics too. Letterheads or invoices should carry the right look as well.
You’ll probably have at least a few of these things on your list, if not all, and perhaps several others which I haven’t included.
So which do you have designed and created first? With a limited budget there may be a need to stage or progressively produce them. What order is best?
Something was missing from the list above, did you spot it?
A designer will need to create this first, and most critical of pieces, before they can realistically think about all the others. Without this key element, all the others will lack cohesion and direction. The impact and recognition on their important viewers, your customers and clients, will be lost. Your vital marketing message will be diluted, possibly washed away all together.
The vital piece? Your business visual identity.
Without the set of rules and standards developed as a part of your identity, all subsequent collateral will be floundering. Sure, the identity will include a logo, but also the colours, typestyles, spaces and iconic appearance and feel which will represent your business. Rules will be established around which the rest of your critical business collateral can be developed.
With this development, the resultant material becomes a valuable component of the intellectual property of your business. Not something to enter into lightly.
This identity can, on initial inspection, appear to have a somewhat intangible nature. But consider the value and significance of all that it will influence and control, and you can begin to appreciate its ultimate value.
Be sure to give this value the respect it deserves, get the order of your design right, and devote appropriate time and resources to a most valuable component of your business.
The best small businesses are watching their brand, and they are designing it first.
Brian.
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