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Brand design has a secret language: visual language. A logo has many roles in your business, and perhaps the most important of them is communicating your main brand message to your audience. In this post, I explain how visual design works, and list 4 types of brand messages you can create for your business. Read more...
Design is not just for designers. Everyone uses design at some point—whether it’s making a presentation for a conference talk, printing “Lost dog” posters, or creating social media graphics to promote your business. Check out some of the most common beginner design mistakes, and how to fix them. Read more...
Logos come in different shapes and types, and choosing the right one for your business can seem like an overwhelming task. Here are the 3 types of logos, and how to decide which one’s the best fit for your business, product, band or creative project. Read more...
When it comes to the very highest level of branding and marketing approaches, currently I see two currents: “Be focused” or “Be all of who you are”. Which one should you adopt? It’s not a decision anyone else can make for you. What I can do is give you pros and cons for both to help you make the right choice—so let's do that. Read more...
People outside of the design industry who don’t understand the nuances behind logo design are legitimately confused by the prices. Logo prices vary wildly, from $5 to millions of dollars. What’s the deal? How can the same thing cost $5 and $5 million? I explain it in this post. Read more...
Unethical freelancers are the worst, and it stings even more when those rotten apples are my own colleagues. I want to make their job of cheating you harder, and your job of finding great freelancers online easier. Here’s what you can do to protect yourself from being taken advantage of. Read more...
Ideal clients: those mythical creatures all brand strategists talk about. Who are they? How do you find them? How do you charm them so they become your real, not just ideal clients? Maybe those aren't the first questions you should be asking yourself. In fact, by starting your branding strategy with your ideal clients, you might run into some traps. Read more...
Wide-eyed, rookie business owners tend to think that everyone in the world who has any use for their products or services is their potential client. And that’s precisely where they go wrong. Having a brand that targets everyone is like not having a brand at all. Read more...
I write a lot about branding on this blog, but I don’t blame you at all if you’re getting sick and tired of hearing this word all the time. Let’s try something different today instead. Let’s drop all pretense of there being any system or formula that you need to know or follow in order to succeed in business. Let’s deconstruct “branding”. Read more...
Your unique value proposition is a statement of how your business solves the customer’s problem in a unique way – what differentiates your business from thousands of others in the world who are attempting to do the same. Finding it may be one of the most challenging aspects of branding and marketing. In this post, I offer tips on how to do that. Read more...
If you had to figure out your brand strategy right now would you be able to do it? Would you know which steps to follow to get to a coherent brand that is easy to maintain for you, and attractive to your ideal clients? If your answer is “No”, or “Maybe”, or “Uhhh, I’m not sure...” that’s OK, because today we’ll get that confusion out of the way. Read more...
Many people don’t use their logos to their full potential. Then there are others who commission a logo expecting that it will somehow magically fix their business and increase their sales. We have to talk about what logos can realistically achieve for your business, and what they can’t. Read more...
If you're having trouble finding branding advice that's perfect for you in the forest of information that's available out there, I've created a free tool that will help you get tailored advice based on where you're currently at. Take this fun quiz and learn how to grow your brand into the next stage! Read more...
Most people when they hear the words “premium brand” imagine a luxury brand: Cartier, Tiffany, designer clothes, vintage champagne, 95% fair trade cocoa chocolate with edible 24-karat gold flakes. You may be feeling this way about the word “premium”, too. But in truth, you may already be using premium products and services yourself, without even knowing it. Read more...
While the answer to this question may seem obvious to me and other designers, business owners aren't always clear on that. I divide the evolution of every small business into two distinct stages, and here are my recommendations for each one. Read more...
If you’ve been exploring logo design services for your upcoming (re)branding project, or you’re learning how to design logos on your own, you’ve probably encountered the term branding guidelines, also called brand identity guidelines, branding manuals, or brand style guides. Branding guidelines are a document that contains a set of rules for how a brand will be visually represented through different media (printed, electronic, video, photography etc.) Read more...
In-person networking is a powerful way of making connections with potential clients. If you’re preparing for an upcoming event where you will meet new people, this post will help you pick your priorities, so you can turn your new connections into followers and clients. Read more...
What makes a brand premium? What does premium even mean? Premium brands have value propositions that are so different from other products or services in the market, that the comparisons don’t make sense. This enables premium brands to charge 10 times or a 100 times more than their competitors, because they offer something that competitors can’t match. While it may seem like creating a premium brand would be more expensive, it actually doesn’t have to be. Read more...
Creating beautiful blog post illustrations can be time consuming. Sometimes, creating the perfect feature image for a post takes just as much time as writing it. In my search for the perfect solution – blog post images that are both visually appealing and easy to make – I tested many different techniques, and in this post I share some of my tips with you. Read more...
In over a decade of my design career, no one has ever asked me this question. Yet, I know it must be the #1 question going through my clients’ minds when we set out to work together. Luckily, I’ve spent years perfecting my process to make sure that my clients get exactly what they need, and not only feel pleased, but amazed with the results I provide. Here's what I learned, and how you can make sure you get exactly what you need as a client in your collaborations with designers. Read more...