Sunday, October 3, 2010

How to Design Your Own Logo

A logo design plays a very important role in shaping up a brand image for your business, your products and/or your services. However, there is a cost factor associated with getting a logo design which might get you worried if you are totally broke and can not even spend USD $60 on a logo design. In that case you might want to consider designing your own logo.

First of all you need to understand that how logo designs work. These designs are created on expansive graphic software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Last time I checked they both cost nearly $1000 USD. Thats way above the price of a logo design that you can get from a professional design company.

Secondly you need to understand that even though you can work with MS Paint, or Photoshop a little, a professional graphic design takes a lot more than that. You need to have full grip over the tools available to you in order to come up with something that looks reasonably attractive and acceptable as a business logo. Otherwise you would just draw picture that would make your business look unprofessional.

Creativity is another factor that you would need to consider. Professional design agencies work with all kind of businesses and they know what works best for different industries and clients. They might have already designed logos for your competitors or some other business in the same industry as you are. On the other hand this would be the first time you will be creating a professional brand image for a business. No matter how artistic you are there is a good chance that you will not be able to understand the dynamics of the process.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Startups Helping Each Other using Social Web

The recent financial slowdown had huge influence on businesses and common men's lives. Jobs were taken away in many industries such as real estate, finance, automobile and manufacturing. Many of the newly unemployed people started their own small businesses. Many of them ran their businesses from the comfort of their own houses.

With small budget these small businesses found creative ways to market their products and hence they exploited social media to penetrate into targeted communities. This strategy was such a huge success that it even pulled the giant corporations into the social marketing activities.

Working with social media online meant a web presence so these small businesses hired services of web hosting providers, web designers and logo design. What is particularly great about social media is that you can build communities around your products and services. It helps small businesses particularly to win consumer loyalty. However social media needs to constant care and nurturing. Just like you would care and nurture your relationships in real lives.

In return these small businesses understand the needs of their consumers so they keep them posted about what’s happening and what’s new in their stores. This means more design jobs for graphic designers to create more logos, brand logos, graphic designs for packages and much more. This is a chain of cycle and it keeps moving if we all do our work with sincerity and genuine interest.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Online Marketing with Banner Design

Even though text based ads are all the buzz these days. They are cheaper and can be used through out the web. This lead us many marketing experts to debate whether the image based old fashioned banners are no more effective. The collective conclusion is that no they are not, in fact research has shown that in some cases banner advertisement is much more effective than text based ads.

The success of online marketing through banner advertisements depend heavily on the banner design itself. Sadly the success of online advertising programs such as AdwordsTM has led small business marketeers to believe that since they can create their own text-based ads they can also create their own banner design using adobe photoshop.

Images are a much more powerful media than text. As they say that an image is better than a thousand words. A banner should be properly designed by a professional graphic designer. A banner design needs to fit in on most websites where it is used for advertisement. It should also convey the right message effectively. For these purposes it is important that you hire a professional banner design company to create your advertising campaign.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Keep Your Web Design Simple But Useful

simplicity nuke

World Wide Web is a powerful source of information. With it's global reach, easy availability and general popularity as a preferred source of information, web today has become an essential tool for marketeers. Even small businesses who previously relied on word of mouth marketing are joining the web and reaching their clients with this powerful media.

However, in order to get most out of a website, it should have a few qualities that make it more easy to use and maintain. Web design services has also become cheap and are available easily. Also the prices of web hosting has declined dramatically during last ten years. So you can now afford more web space and cheaper web design services.

Many businesses forget the first rule of design which is to keep things simple. Since design services are so readily available clients want the designers to make them fancy websites with flash videos and shockingly bold colors. Doing so they completely forget that web is used by people to get information, and web is so full of information that if your website fails to deliver then there are a thousand more websites just a few clicks away.

It is important that you keep your web design as simple as possible. Simple web designs can also be elegant, beautiful, and fancy. But a simple web design will make it easier for your website visitors to find the information they need. This will ultimately increase your conversion rates and your chances of making new customers from your website.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Three Rules of Thumb for a Logo Design

Logo design is an important part of the corporate identity of any business. It plays the vital role in brand building, brand identity development, and marketing. However there are many things that needed to be concerned in order to come up with a unique idea for a perfect logo design.

Simplicity
Simplicity is generally regarded as the best design rule. Simplicity does not mean an easy way out of your logo design job by designing something easy. The best logo designs are those that display very complex ideas with a very simple style. This makes these logo designs more easy to view and remember. So don't go over board with crazy curves and complex design technique, because if your viewers can't get your logo right then you would loose the entire purpose of having a logo design.

Standout and Shine
Another aspect of a logo design is that it should be unique. However coming up with a unique idea for a logo design is not as easy as it might seem like. You might feel that all good ideas are already taken and there is nothing left for you to use on your logo design. This is probably because you are looking for design ideas from a narrow perspective, if you broaden your view you can find some strikingly wonderful new ideas.

Avoid Conflict
Logo design act as the visual brand mark for your business. There are also some legal implications to the design, you need to make sure that your logo design is protected and that you have the exclusive ownership and rights to its usage. Also make sure that your logo design does not create conflicting situation from any group with in your target market zone.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

How much you should spend on a Logo Design

Small businesses are struggling to survive in this tough economy. To save some money many small businesses cut back in the amount of money they spend on their marketing and promotional stuff, that's before they start firing workers. But the thing that small businesses in particular, need to understand is that marketing is even more important today than ever.

Whether you want to bring new customers in, or whether you want to keep your existing clientele. You need some kind of marketing, brand building related strategy.

Considering the cost of logo design services, many small businesses evaluate their budget and soon realize that logo design would cost them a lot more. Fortunately, there are small businesses who provide logo design services to other small businesses at affordable prices. But then again how much affordable is affordable?

It depends on your budget and the kind of services you are looking for. Some businesses need a thorough process to build a business identity. This thorough process where the designer sends you a draft and you send it back with suggestions is actually what makes logo design expensive. However there are some logo design services that offer unlimited revisions at very little extra cost.

Remember that the money you spend on marketing and creating brand awareness is actually an investment and would pay off as customer loyalty, trust and word of mouth referrals of new customers.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Qualities of a Good Web Design Company

Web is so full of so called website design companies that it has become very hard for small businesses to make a decision. There are even teenagers pretending to be web developers and offering their services to create giant corporate websites with in very few dollars. Obviously they are not that good otherwise why would large corporations spend thousands of dollars on hiring better professionals?

When looking for a web design company you should check out following things to make sure that you sign up the right company to take care of your corporate web design.

Quality Assurance

Make sure that the web design company you are hiring understands and values high quality work. To judge that look at their website specially the portfolio section where you will see web designs they have created. Pay special attention to details of these websites. Also write the web design company and asks them how they ensure quality of their work.

Customer Support Options

Check out what kind of customer support options are available to you as a customer. Most web design companies offer email support for a limited period of time once the job is done. But there are some companies that charge a little more but offer life time email support. You also need to make sure that they have fax and phone support available.

Client Testimonials 

Check out the client testimonials web page of your web design company's website. Visit the web pages of these clients and if possible don't hesitate to write them and ask them how was their experience working with us and would they like to invite your friends to your website.