Branding…
You’ve heard the word, but do you know what it really means?
Branding in today’s world takes on a whole new meaning. The constant competition we receive as business owners battling to make our way to the top can seem overwhelming. Yet, we tend to over look one of the most important factors. Branding. Your logo, or company’s image to it’s intended demographic. Who is your demographic? Why do you stand out to them? How do you grow your interest in consumers eyes or other business in case of B2B?
I’m Mike Murphy, Creative Director at Melinda McCaw Media and I want to talk branding and some ways I try and help an organization’s brand whether in logo design, web design, and/or social media presence.
Clarify Your Brand with a Logo or New Custom Website from Melinda McCaw Media
Branding to Murf
To me a brand represents a company and it’s ability to build confidence in the consumers and other entities who interact with it. This is everything from the attitude you use when replying to blog or social media comments to the heart of your brand “the logo”. Do you take the time for every public interaction to make sure you are keeping with your branding guidelines? Do you even have branding guidelines. Many small companies don’t even know what this is. When speaking of your image, this can be the fonts used in your logo, and the defining color codes used for presenting your image/brand/logo to the public via print or web/app. If you have a logo on hand without at least these guidelines for it’s use(font info, color codes), then you probably didn’t have a professional designer doing the work for you. Contact Melinda McCaw Media if you need help with your brand.
Every logo that leaves a design company as a final logo package should have the following items as a bare minimum:
- Vector based imagery
- Raster versions in web optimized size as well as print quality 300 dpi
- PNG versions of your logo for web use
- PDF versions
- All black – a logo isn’t a logo if you can’t recognize it in 1-2 colors max
- All white – same as above
- Social Media profile square versions of your logo
- A guide to using the logo including:
- Colors used (ie: RGB, CMYK, Pantone & Hexidecimal)
- fonts used – if any
Your Demographic
Know who your audience is. Are you appealing to more males than females or neither or both? What is your age group? What sort of brands do they likely identify with already?
We are all being programmed every minute of the day to accept or expect certain levels of quality in our imagery. If you are appealing to a demographic that is older and more likely to have suffering vision, do you fill your logo with tiny type they can’t read, or use edgy overly complicated imagery that is hard to understand?
Clarity
In all things clarity. Your brand should come across as easy to identify. And it should always work in one color as stated above and at the very most 2 colors. If you put your logo over the top of a photo in one color does it turn into a blob of nothing? If so, you probably have a severely suffering brand.
Let Melinda McCaw Media use the skills and knowledge of lifetimes of graphic design to help build and reinforce your brand with a custom website project or logo.