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View more examples in our Graphic Design Portfolio
Quality Graphic Design Uniquely Defines your Calgary & Cochrane Area Business
People often think of logo design as a company’s “brand.” However, the term brand extends to the entire experience your potential, new and returning customers have when interacting with your company: Your Web site is part of your digital media brand, so is your visibility in Google’s search results, your brochures, your company vehicles, your social media profiles and interactions, even the uptime of your website is part of that brand experience.
Brand also now extends beyond a company or business, it extends to our personal brands, to social causes and fan pages. So strengthening your overall brand extends beyond your logo or website, it is more and more defined by the level of authority any brand has online. Search Engine Optimization these days is a true reflection of this focus and is needed for any level of business or brand that is looking to achieve success online.
That said, your brand’s nucleus is your logo as it represents your company vision, culture and purpose. So it definitely requires creativity, strategy and thoughtful consideration so it can successfully convey all of those values. Professional graphic designer services are an essential part of your brand’s development and overall marketing strategy. Using leading edge design software, coupled with extensive design experience, our art director, visual designer and project managers work closely with our clients to ensure their vision is not only captured in the brand, but also aligned with key fundamental standards used by the largest brands in the world. A properly developed logo and its supporting brand elements will set a company apart from its competitors who chose a less professional approach.
Our graphic design and printing projects always start with creative research and development. Our lead designers are easy to work with and have a talent at drawing out our clients’ unique vision. Combine this creative process with efficient skills and your corporate or personal vision will emerge quickly and successfully!
Our Graphic Designer Services Include:
- Logo Design
- Business Cards
- Brochures
- Booklets
- Magazine Layouts
- Media Advertising
- Vehicle Signage
- Building Signage
- Business Branding
- Corporate Identity Development
- Colour Management
- Newspaper Ad Layout
- Illustration Services
- PowerPoint Templates
- Customized Marketing Solutions
Graphic Design Calgary & Surrounding Areas
Our local graphic designers regularly produce materials for clients alongside their Web projects. This is the perfect way to consistently promote their new Web presence or to simply establish their corporate identity with a professional look and feel. By properly optimizing your logos and branding elements to look the best on the Web, we can ensure that your logo will look its best across different media.
Before You Brand or Rebrand…
Whether you are looking for a brand new logo for a brand new company or if you are looking to re-vision your existing brand or corporate identity, we’d recommend reviewing or considering the following steps before you start the design process:
- Do you have a marketing strategy in place? If not, we can help with this initial step too.
- Who is your immediate competition?
- Are there any brands that you’d like to emulate?
- What makes your company or organization unique?
- What core values do you wish your company to be known for?
- Do you need to develop a Mission statement or Vision statement, or review and update existing ones?
- Do you want to be seen as a local business or a larger brand over the next 3 to 5 years?
- Do you have ideas for your logo as far as concept or color? (We can help in either case).
- Would you rather work with a local team that can meet with you directly to discuss ideas?
- How consistent is your current branding experience in print, Web and social media?
- Do you need to consider other marketing channels such as signage, uniforms and web development at this time?
- How do you want your customers, employees and peers to view your brand?
Please note: While we can help you answer some of these questions simply by delving into the Branding Identity Package, we recommend you consider these questions before developing your brand. They will help you clarify your current and future direction. Since 2001, we have helped hundreds of businesses develop a unique brand that captures their spirit and vision. If you’d like more information on developing a full marketing strategy, just let us know, we’d love to help.
Brand Identity Package
Looking for a designer to help you develop your brand and logo? Whether you are looking for fresh new concepts or for someone to work from your rough concepts (scribbles on napkins are accepted), we can help to produce a professional and iconic image for your new or existing company.
Our inclusive Branding Identity Package will provide you with the key elements you need for a professional brand.
This package includes logo development, master business card design, core branding elements, optional tagline co-development and printer management. The final product will be an iconic, professional and engaging identity that speaks uniquely for your brand and company vision.
What does this package include?
- Our creativity and industry experience – BlindDrop Design Inc. been in business since 2001 and specialize in corporate identity development across media. Our lead team brings over 42 years combined experience to the table.
- An initial meeting to discuss not only your branding needs but to gain a deeper understanding of your company/organization and its unique vision
- Up to 4 unique logo concepts and/or variations based on your specific needs
- One round of revisions – to bring the final design to a pre-press stage
- A master business card design (for one name) based on new brand identity
- Printer management for the business card (we work with a variety of printers to ensure you have a full choice of printing options. We work with local printers in Cochrane and Calgary and we also have a printer in Ontario that has perfected a unique finish that no one locally can reproduce.
- Specific Digital file types of the finished work – We provide the client with both print-ready and general use digital file formats at project sign off. Package does not include printing or signage costs.
Time frame – Project will take approximately 2 weeks depending on client feedback.
We are proud to be one of the leading graphic design firms locally serving Cochrane & Calgary AB.
Call us today at 403-667-0765 to discuss your needs.
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Proudly Serving Cochrane & Area
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Local Design Services
Calgary, Cochrane & Beyond
BlindDrop’s Design Services Are Among the Best in Canada
/in Alberta, Calgary, Cochrane, Graphic Design, Photography, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design & Development /by bdd13For more than 18 years, we have been providing design services to companies of all different sizes. Over time, we have expanded our offerings to become your one-stop shop for creative, graphic design, web development, SEO, photography, videography and other multimedia services. In addition to Cochrane and the area surrounding Calgary, we serve clients in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. News of our work in the community has gotten around to the point that Clutch lists us among the best web design agencies in Canada.
Located in Washington, D.C., Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews website. The reviews that they gather and post help clients hire a service provider that will be a good fit for their project needs. First, Clutch segments the companies on the site based on their location and industry. Then, analysts assign two scores to each for ranking purposes. Focus is a measure of their expertise and experience within a given service while Ability to Deliver is based on client reviews, market presence, and work experience. Each client review is the result of a verified interview over the phone or online with a Clutch analyst. An in-depth questionnaire fills in all of the details about a project along with the extent of the client-vendor relationship. With a 5-star rating overall, take a quick peek at what a couple of our clients have said about us:
“I thank BlindDrop Design for a lot of my success. Everything from the website to the marketing projects have been high quality and up to expectations.”
~ Owner, Destination Wedding Planning Service
“We’ve utilized them for more than a decade, and the relationship is still ongoing. I’ve always gone back to them when I’m ready to have the work done.”
~ President, Audio Equipment Company
Our reputation has even spread to other platforms that are also ran by Clutch. The Manifest, which publishes business news and best practices, includes us on their list of the best web design agencies in Canada. Visual Objects features our portfolio items in order to let potential clients view our best work before hiring for their projects.
We hope that you will consider us for your next project!
Top 10 SEO Marketing Strategies for your Business
/in Branding, Calgary, Cochrane, Featured, Graphic Design, Home Page, Logo Design, Mobile Friendly, Responsive Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Design & Development, Web Hosting, WordPress /by bdd13What is SEO and How Can It Help My Company?
As a business owner, you need to at least be aware of how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can affect your business’ success online.
SEO is an industry to itself, as it involves all of the ways a brand can naturally (organically) gain visibility online without running paid advertising.
The goal of SEO is to get your business ranking at the top of page 1 of Google so your customers (audience) can easily find you.
For those people looking for your service, the fact that your website is ranked at the top alongside your competitors, tells them straight away that Google has determined that your site is an authority and can be trusted. In many ways this can go much further than buying ads.
From an even wider perspective, SEO is part of UEO (User Experience Optimization), which again focuses on providing the best online experience for your customers, an experience that should naturally reflect your company’s high level of service and goal of customer satisfaction.
To simplify the focus of SEO, it can be divided into a strategic combination of On-Page and Off-Page SEO techniques to help your business get higher visibility in Google and other search engines. This article outlines the top 10 areas that are needed to not only make your website stand out on top but provide a professional, effective and consistent web presence.
1. Tell Your Brand’s Story, Make the Customer the Hero
Forget about SEO for a minute and focus on some core questions about your business:
What is the essence of your unique business? Think about your visual identity, character, culture, mission and vision, successes (and failures), and which values you uphold – basically who is your company, what is your expertise and what can you offer new and existing customers?
What is your niche?
Who is your target audience?
What are their challenges?
How can you help them solve these challenges?
Once you have a better understanding of your company and your customer, you can start to build a compelling brand story for your target audience (customers, suppliers, team members) to engage with, make them the hero in this story, help them to their success.
Marketing in the social media influenced world is more about story telling these days than selling. While advertising still plays a role in this picture, it is perhaps driven by deeper values than before. People don’t want to be sold to, they want to connect, be heard and guided to the best solution to their problem.
Google and other search engines are focusing more and more on ranking those sites more highly that deliver a superior user experience. If you have a value-based website that delivers great content, has great reviews and a strong social media following, you will naturally rank well.
2. Build a Content Strategy
Your content strategy is again to focus on creating targeted, relevant and useful information for your audience. This applies to your written content, videos, pod casts and PDF downloads. When using photos, use professional custom photography if possible, as that is unique to your brand, or at least, use a higher quality stock photo that has a more natural look that engages your audience. Make sure all of your content creation supports and deepens your Brand story.
Here is one specific strategy for ranking in Google, that you can start applying today:
It is now best to optimize keywords for a page’s topic, not just its target phrase. To do this, use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords. These are natural alternative search phrases of your target keyword.
Google is focusing more on semantic search to provide a more natural and accurate search results for its users. This means less focus on keyword density and more focus on producing natural, accurate and context-based content. By doing so, you are actually reaching more users outside of your keyword targeting range because LSI focuses on the topic of the page’s content rather than the keywords themselves. This is not to say keywords are thrown out the proverbial window, rather they become the topic, rather than the focus.
An easy way to determine some popularly searched LSI keywords is to search for your main topic in Google and analyze the “Searches related to” suggestions that Google offers. This is a great way to get ideas for writing relevant content and reach your target audience who are looking for those answers. A similar technique is by typing your target keyword into the search bar and review the autofill suggestions it provides.
Once you have your list of LSI keywords, you can focus your content generation around these refined searches and blend them into your Brand’s storyline.
3. Get a Handle on Social Media
Social media is constantly changing. It is hard for business owners and marketers to keep up. Social media channels are always improving and changing their platforms, updating algorithms and increasing the pressure to promote content and ads. Brands and businesses have to keep up with these changes, or be lost in the crowd. In addition, a brand must continually be working to build an audience of fans and followers, finding relevant content around trending topics and hashtags to be seen as an authority and influence in their niche.
Some authorities say that social media has become the “great equalizer” for marketers because your can build a great brand simply by being creative and knowing your audience. However, I would argue that being “creative and knowing your audience” is essentially what marketing is, so larger companies who have time and resources to be creative by hiring brand managers, marketers and designers and “know their audience” through hiring a professional team of SEO experts who have the time and know how to mine through competitor analysis and historical search data, will generally come out on top.
So, I see this as one of the biggest challenges that small businesses are having online today. These challenges are from both an SEO and business management point of view. Since Google and other search engines use social signals as part of determining a brand’s influence and authority in their search results, all businesses should at least have a social media presence established to allow for this factor.
This presence is the extension of the Brand and its story. Social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest have billions of combined users, many of them on some or all of these top channels. So, your brand and its story need to be professional, consistent, engaging and useful to your audience. Your Social Media audience is interactive, opinionated and reactionary, so you need to be ready to respond quickly and politely when they reach out.
So yes, it is possible for a small Brand to build up a massive following and become an influencer. However, for a small business, it is yet another thing to have to worry about building up and maintaining.
Social media, like all online experiences is about relationship. Yes, that is a broad term, but that broadness reflects the massive potential of the online world.
Every business should at least:
By focusing on one social media channel, you can build up confidence and audience. However, I would still recommend getting all other key social channels set up properly. Once you have gotten comfortable with that one channel, you can then easily start to share the same content (with minor revisions) to all of your channels.
4. The Many Benefits of Press Releases
While the traditional newspaper industry is overshadowed by online news publications, the equally traditional press release continues to be a great marketing and PR tool for all sizes of business. Specifically, a well-crafted press release will give your website a nice boost in rankings!
Keep your marketing strategy research and brand story in mind when you approach an effective press release for your business.
The fastest and easiest way is to hire an expert to write and distribute your press release using a paid release distribution service. This ensures that your release will get picked up quickly by authority news sites across North America.
From an SEO point of view, you have to be careful with SEO keywords in a press release, keep wording objective, natural and focused on a news worthy item. If you are a local business then working in an event that is happening in your area will help you naturally reference that keyword. Using an appropriate topic is essential to keep it objective and timely.
If you are stuck for where to start, a company like BlindDrop can help you determine your topic, write the release and distribute it. Such press release topics include the announcement of a:
The press release can also be sent directly to local papers; however, they will require more lead time (3 to 6 weeks) than doing an online distribution (3 days to a week).
Even as a local business, using a country-wide online distributor can still help boost visibility with local rankings, if you write and optimize the press release correctly for SEO.
When done properly, a press release can help your business to:
As you can see, a press release offers often overlooked benefit, however when done correctly, they will help you:
On top of the benefit of a short turnaround in gaining exposure on dozens of news websites, your press release will often stay live and ranked well for months at a time. So, there is a long-term benefit to a press release aimed at a short-term topic.
If you don’t have a product-based announcement, you can focus instead on doing a value-based announcement. For example, a survey or report-based release that provides valuable information to your customers or suppliers will increase the perceived value and authority of your company. Look back to your Brand Story’s values that you have already determined to ensure that every press release you create embodies those same values.
5. Yes, You Still Need Backlinks
Getting backlinks to your business website is still part of the bread and butter of SEO. Aim to build links naturally across a wide range of domains in a natural way.
The types of backlinks you can get will vary in impact on your SEO, the higher authority sites that are more popular, higher domain link authority and trust will be worth more than a multitude of lower valued links. From my experience, having an SEO team to help with this one factor is worth the investment. Link building can be a challenging task, so hiring an expert can be the best answer to the conundrum of trading your own time for the dollars spent on hiring someone else.
A good starting point for building backlinks to your site can include (but is not limited to):
Getting a diverse source of links is critical – so getting lots of links from lots of different referring domains is best.
Link building is a complex subject far beyond the scope of this article, but this list is a good place to start exploring the best options.
6. How to Manage Online Reviews
Customer reviews and ratings are an important part of how people (and therefore Search Engines) view your brand. And those 5-star ratings can definitely affect your bottom line. Reviews are a key asset when it comes to your reputation. So, it may seem like common sense that business owners should be up to speed on this topic, but many still aren’t. Some businesses understand and take this responsibility seriously enough that they have integrated this part of their customer service into their daily online activities.
For those that are not yet convinced, here are some things to remember when it comes to online reviews and how they can affect your online business:
Here are some easy steps to managing your online reviews:
If this feels like a daunting task, or if you would prefer to have a professional help, I would highly recommend you do so, at least to do the proper research of the best review sites to align with for your niche. A professional service will also get them properly branded and optimized for you and offer a training session on managing the account once complete.
7. The Importance of Citations & NAP
Citations are basically another term for directory listings. And many directory listings now have a “leave a review” feature. So, now you can see the strong connection between a Review site and a Citation. For example, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Urban Spoon, Cylex, TrustedPros, HomeStars, etc. allow you to create or claim listings. However, in some cases, your company’s info may have already been scrapped and an automatic listing may have been created on your behalf. In this case, it should just be a matter of claiming the listing and fleshing it out from there.
Directory listings that do not have review functions are still worthy of consideration since they list your NAP. NAP stands for Name Address Phone and is the bread and butter of your business information that is scraped and shared across the public domain. Services like WhiteSpark are a great way to find these citations and those of your competitors, so you can locate and create listings to surpass them.
8. Blog Posting Methods for Your Business
Your blog section of your website is your active hub. It is the easiest and most efficient way to publish new content and share it to your audience. Blogging is a massive industry, however for most companies it remains an untapped opportunity. There is definitely merit to just having a blog set up on your website. Search Engines like to see that a blog is part of the website’s features, which is another reason why WordPress is a great option on which to build your company Website.
Having a blog opens the door to many specific methods of traffic generation and SEO benefits. These include, but are not limited to:
All of these opportunities should be explored from the perspective of your Brand’s story, culture and niche. This not only helps to gain the best search rankings and targeted traffic, but also eases overwhelm of entering into this daunting process. By reviewing your own day to day business processes, insights, products, customer service, events, sales and promotions, you can more easily build a realistic and successful strategy.
Remember to develop blog categories and sub categories and research and include relevant tags.
Longer blog posts of quality content will gain better rankings than shorter ones and include mixed media too, including videos.
Include a mix of external links to other related websites and also internal links to other pages and posts on your own site. Do this all with moderation and purpose in providing the best information to your reader.
Once you have any blog post published, make sure to share the content out through your social media channels and also make sure that the content itself is shareable, so those people who find your blog post useful can easily share it to their own channels.
9. Create the Best Website Experience You Can
When you consider that your website is often the first impression of your brand, you enter the world of UEO (User Engagement Optimization) also known as User Experience Optimization. This includes SEO, so ranking highly so your website is found easily – think of having your brick and mortar business located on a bustling high street full of customers (i.e. page 1 of Google), versus being hidden away on a desolate backstreet where no one even knows you exist (i.e. pages 3 or deeper on Google).
Being found easily is part of the best positive customer experience. You need to be accessible in search, social and in popular directories.
But once they have found your listing and clicked on your link to visit your website, what will they find? What they should find is a website that:
To sum up, your website visitor’s experience is about sharing and engaging on a value level rather than an information level. In this way, your company can more quickly connect with your customers needs, build trust and authority and reflect the level of customer service you deliver in other business channels.
10. Why Managed Hosting is Worth Every Penny
Last, but definitely not least, on the list is web hosting. A good host is critical to your site’s uptime and it is also an important factor in your search engine rankings and trust scores. From a performance side, Google looks at page speed as a ranking factor, as a page that loads quickly provides a better user experience. Page speed is ultimately a combination of server side, website software and content optimization factors. However, as your hosting environment is the very foundation on which your web presence rests, it is a critical component to your site’s success and is worth the investment.
If you are running a WordPress website, I highly recommend using a Managed WordPress Hosting solution. A premier managed host for the WordPress platform will deliver exceptional service and support in these areas:
If you are looking for the best WordPress hosting, I can personally recommend WP Engine for all of the above. They have been our Web hosting partner for 6 years and the service and support has been excellent. We have never had a site hacked or had any downtime. WP Engine guarantees that it won’t happen, if it does, they will fix it for free – a promise I did not find on any other competitors. They are always forward thinking and have expanded all areas of their hosting environment and support, yet have kept the user interface easy to use. You can read more about managed WordPress hosting or sign up for your own account on WP Engine here.
In the end, doesn’t it make sense to choose a managed hosting service for your WordPress website that the experts use themselves?
These top 10 SEO strategies are key to your company’s success online. Each strategy has an entry point and some top-level actions that every business can and should make if they want to succeed online. My company has been helping businesses since 2001 and we can help you with any of these strategies, from online marketing strategies, to branding solutions, WordPress hosting and custom development including E-commerce solutions and all off-page SEO and social media tasks to improve your visibility and activity online.
Need Help with Your Website & Marketing?
A Review of 8 Responsive Web Design Trends
/in Branding, Mobile Friendly, Social Media /by bdd13By Lucas D. Arnatt, Web designer
When I started web designing back in the fall of 1997, “web patterns” were really just emerging and becoming established as the tried and true foundations of successful design. When I worked with a media company in 1999 in downtown Calgary, we focused on building scalable websites, meaning websites that would expand out to larger screens, with our base resolution width of 640px. Building and testing all of those resolutions was about as much fun as trying to get ANY site to work properly in Netscape 3 or IE 3! But there is also such a joy felt when all of the pixels lined up as they should.
There are a lot of trends on the Web in design. Each year a particular font or effect will make its way through newly created (or redesigned) sites. But behind the fads remain a lot of common sense design approaches that are still valid today.
With the wide variety of mobile screen resolutions to contend with, CSS3 and above have been a godsend to designers, providing a fluid and manageable way to control different layout versions of the same content.
So now in 2015, we are enjoying the freedom of mobile technology and design seems to be evolving at a similar pace to provide the best user experience possible.
Check out this interesting article by Jeremy Girard about 8 responsive web design trends that defined 2015.
I am including the 8 trends below, but please note these are my comments, not Jeremy’s, below each numbered title:
These 8 trends include:
1. Captivating storytelling
Yes, if one thing all media teaches us is that it is the story that matters. It engages, it conjures up images in the imagination and it can sell any idea if done well enough. Girard notes that it is important to tell the story above the fold. Many designers may focus on just making sure the main navigation, logos, and titles are above the fold, but making sure the immediate impact and engagement with the story’s characters is strong enough to stick. He also notes that making the story easy to share for the reader is of utmost importance in this day and age of social media audiences.
2. Less is more
This is one of our company’s design mantras for both print and Web. Keeping design clean and properly spaced can in itself define a website’s subtle, but powerful, presence as an authority in its niche. Quantity is relative to a certain degree when it comes to a successful website, as we have seen all varieties of content length and page counts from simple video sales pages and landing pages to extensive articles on super-specific topics.
You have to first define the need of the user, what it will take to convince them to trust you and then provide the solution based around what you can give them. This is why video sales letters are so popular and successful; they provide everything above the fold, simply, cleanly and effectively.
3. Patterns everywhere
Girard notes that with the advent of responsive web design, new patterns have begun to emerge. This is definitely true, including new ways to compact navigation, image scalability, hierarchy control of content blocks all making sure the User Experience is first and foremost. Google has started to penalize sites to some extent that are not considered “mobile-friendly”. Here are some layout patterns from Google’s developer website.
4. Card layouts
This type of layout made popular by Pinterest focuses on one block of content. For example, a product, a single photo (meme), etc. that can be more easily arranged among other similarly composed content blocks. This facilitates the Millenial ability to share content across social media channels.
5. Hidden menus
As I mentioned before, navigation has had to adapt to small screens, so long horizontal menus are sculpted into small square icon capsules that you can pop open when you need to. A click to get to any navigation isn’t ideal, but it is a relatively small price to pay for an otherwise intuitive solution.
Girard mentions that some argue against these menus for that very reason of having to make an extra click (if they recognize the new menu icon at all) and that they are less used than visible full menus. Yes, but as with any new pattern, it will take the global audience a relatively short time to adapt as more and more web sites use this type of navigation.
6. Big hero images versus no hero images
A hero image spans the full width and height of a user’s screen creating instant impact and strong visual engagement (or strong repulsion if the image backfires). They are part of the evil parallax designs that (to me) are all bark and no bite. Google always is stressing the importance of quality content.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see the appeal of parallax designs to both designer and client. It’s BIG, it’s BRANDING IN YO FACE BIG. But how useful is it to the end user if they struggle to find the content they are looking for, scrolling (seemingly) forever down the page, loading full screen image after full screen image separated by a minimum of a 60px heading that says something impactful, but meaningless at the same time all the while taking ages to load as all of the “content” is strung together as some contrived story that trails off to a basic footer with a massive phone number in a 300px font at the bottom: “CALL ME!” It can also be a lazy way to optimize for multiple screen resolutions simply because there is very little content to contend with.
Girard compares the advantages of Big hero images and No hero images. Both have their place of course and I agree that 2016 will continue to see both used judiciously aaaand not so much.
7. Rethinking advertising
He makes a good point that, as advertising on a website revolves around ad size and placement, the need for responsive web design challenges this static approach. Girard doesn’t give a solution here for this new need, but I think that we can simply look at how Social Media giants are developing solutions. They do incredible amounts of testing across many demographics so any design company or marketing team can benefit just from keeping up with, and making use of, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
8. Improved workflow
With all of the challenges of scalable responsive design facing a designer, I have to say it is nice that this challenge is being met by advanced prototyping design software that allows for quick and easy multi-platform development.
Girard refers to UXPin, which looks like a great solution for designers in 2016.
He also offers some “next steps” at the bottom of the page, which you should definitely check out.
The user experience of any web presence in 2016 will still depend on the key elements of quality content backed by strong, supportive design elements and frameworks that allow the message to be conveyed consistently and effectively.
Learn more about responsive, mobile-friendly web design.
Get a free, no-obligation website audit that takes into consideration these factors (and more), or if you are starting a new website or branding project, just fill out this request form.
The Essential Art of Logo Design
/in Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design /by bdd13I will venture to say that anyone can create a logo. Now, since I am a logo designer, you might think this is a BB-gun shot to the foot (ouch.), but I cannot deny the truth. We are all creative, we all have artistic potential in some form or another, and I have to say that if you can draw an original shape then you can make a logo. Here’s the “However”… however, we can also admit that some logos seem to carry more power than others, more attraction, more recognition. If there is some magic in logo design, it is the ability of a designer to convey this magical meaning from her client’s corporate office all the way to the other side of the world, where someone who speaks a different language, has been born and raised in a totally different environment, can still connect with this logo and receive its initial meaning.
Go to Google and search “logo design” (in quotations so you’ll see only results for that search term) and you will be faced with 8 million search results and pelted with ads claiming “6 logos for $50!” and “Build your own logo using our software!” Some claims are worthwhile, of course, such as “unlimited revisions” and “money back guarantee”, claims that are needed to create that initial trust and confidence to choose that design company.
So how much should a logo cost your company? First define cost:
So cost is less about how much money it cost initially to create the logo, but more importantly, is the cost of NOT getting the logo made properly the first time. Some of the most powerful and recognizable logos are also the simplest in design – they allow for space, for imagination, for communication to flow between the intender and the intendee. A logo is needed if you want a single vision for your company. A logo is needed if you want your company to grow and prosper because we (humans, consumers) all need focal points to help each other find the way through life. The ones that help the most will prosper the most.
Perhaps anyone can create a logo because all logos are already created and we simply unveil them through the creative process and then tag them with “TM” and claim them as “ours.” But the more you can define the nature of your own life’s purpose and that of your company’s the more you will see its creative nature becomes realized. Is a logo ever a finished product? No, because it is always being defined by what it represents, it is always being projected upon and used to project on others and what that projection is will, in some degree, continue to shift. This is not bad, nor good, but a logo needs to maintain the paradox of a fluctuating fixture – a constant for change.
BlindDrop Design Inc. offers full creative media development for Corporate Identities (yes, including logos), Graphic Design services, Web Video production, along with Web design, development and managed WordPress hosting. Please contact us if you would like more information about any of these professional services.
Five Key Ways to Market Your Calgary Business
/in Branding, Calgary, E-Commerce, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing /by bdd13Here are five fundamental ways to market your business on the web and on the street:
1. Get properly branded – getting a professional logo design is a great start, but it is also critical to plan your branding, which is based on the customer experience and how your company is interpreted by the customer from near and afar. Get a logo and business card at the minimum and during this process work through basic marketing factors such as demographics, culture, sales region and budgeting for advertising.
2. Develop a custom Web presence – Once you have the branding planned and established you can move this onto the Web by getting a custom site that supports your branding and business model. Ideally, you will secure a domain, website and domain-based email addresses. The site should reflect the corporate identity, provide essential information about your company and also provide service to generate sales. If e-commerce is not a suitable fit for your company’s services, you can use a custom form to direct and define sales, or use an online chat system to connect with your customer directly.
3. Market your Web presence Online – this includes having an active website, email list and any active submissions to groups, help sites or forums. You can also increase traffic and sales by actively managing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaigns each week. Examples of this are commenting on blogs, getting back links to your site and running paid advertisements in search engines and directories. The more focused and niche-based your campaigns are online, the better results you will have. But, keep in mind that you need to research what people are looking for and balance those results with what you’d like them to see.
4. Market your Web presence Offline – this is the only way you can attract people to your online business when they are not at their computer. Look at any magazine from the early 1990’s (if you can find one) and I wager it will be nearly impossible to find ads with web addresses in them. These days classified ads, newspaper ads, posters, uniforms, video, tv, vehicle signage, stationary and pretty much any media channel is used by businesses to promote their Web presence. If your website is e-commerce enabled, then your offline marketing efforts can drive direct sales to your company just by handing out a business card. The customer may never call your number, but they may well purchase something from you with nothing more than a good first impression.
5. Be Consistent and be Professional – in all cases, whether online or offline, be consistent with your branding and communications. Being professional does not mean being overly conservative, but it does require conscious attention to details. For example, simple typos in an introductory letter or a broken link on your website can detract from the overall image of your company. Make sure you follow your initial branding plan and mission statement and triple-check any published items that cannot be easily changed.