logo design – Page 2

November 4, 2014

New Respect for Doodling: Problem-Solving and Logo Design

It starts on paper.

Doodling is often for designers a free form beginning to the exploration and creation of great ideas. While many exciting digital devices with intuitive interfaces are built to spur your creative process, nothing quite lives up in the beginning to the ease and freedom of doodling on paper. Sketching or doodling are the first steps of tracing out into reality the designs still forming in your imagination. Paper gives you permission to make mistakes, to create something odd or terrible or just maybe ingenious. It nurtures the “sketchy” nature of new ideas that are only partially formed, shadowy connections and inspirations that only begin to take on real shape in a quick sketch or design on paper.

Writing – or more precisely copywriting – takes place onscreen today. Mistakes are quickly edited and blocks of text can easily be moved around and reconnected as ideas evolve and take shape. The keyboard has sped up the creative process for wordsmiths. But to begin a visual idea, pencil or pen on paper still seem to be the tools of choice.

In the creation of a logo or any design concept, doodling is thinking. How do you represent a company’s core values, mission, standards, range of expertise in a compelling way? Sketching becomes a visual expression of real-time problem-solving – an essential part of the creative process. The shapes and ideas liberally sketched out on paper will be edited and developed on screen as the process continues. But in the initial stage, feel the freedom to draw, connect and reject. Wrong turns and attempted ideas all litter the page as you continue to draw, but still inform the overall process.

Alma Hoffman has a wonderful essay on this in an article called “I Draw Pictures All Day” on Smashing Magazine. She points out that all artists, writers and creatives should carry a sketchpad. You may also want to check out Sunni Brown’s book “The Doodle Revolution” about using the habit of doodling to improve creativity and focus.

With that in mind, we at ImageSmith gave custom embossed Moleskine® notebooks as gifts last holiday season. You never know when an idea will arise or you will find some tidbit of vital information to remember. No wifi needed. And now Moleskine has a notebook with a “Livescribe” app that instantly brings your sketched and notes to your computer screen and can convert writing to text. The paper itself has a dot pattern embedded in it which is read by the pen as you write. Moleskine understands the intersection of analog and digital.

Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a perpetual motion machine.

No surprise, doodling itself has risen to a high art form in the hands of many talented designers and artists. Check out this gallery for some inspiring examples: 48 Examples of Doodle Art. You might also find enlightening the random doodles of some creative greats at these sites: Doodles of Famous Authors like Plath, Nabokov and Kafka and Six Famous Notebook Users like Hemingway and Picasso.

They’ve also found doodling can help combat stress – another plus with those looming deadlines, right?

About the logo at the top of this article: ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

August 12, 2014

3 Ideas to Promote Your Small Business Online

A small business does not need a large corporate budget to carve out a niche online. A study conducted by advertising research firm Communicus found that 60 percent of those multi-million dollar Super Bowl ads do not make potential customers any more likely to buy the corresponding product or service. Researchers asked 1,000 consumers about their buying intentions before and after the 2012 and 2013 big games, and most were unmoved by the big-ticket ads they saw.

There are very inexpensive ways to promote your small business online—even free approaches that are very effective. Here are three methods to consider.

Sell T-Shirts & Other Custom Branded Merchandise

Jason Sadler had a wild idea of approaching companies and offering to wear T-shirts bearing their slogans, logos, and phone number for a nominal fee. Six years later, iwearyourshirt.com earns him $500,000 per year with no signs of slowing down, according to Business Insider. Advertising executives are willing to pay a guy to wear shirts because they know it works.

There are plenty of options for small business owners to purchase T-shirts in bulk and sell them via their website or even give them away when customers spend a certain amount. A 15-20 percent markup on the price you paid to have them made will earn you some revenue, but it’s the free advertising that you’re after. But don’t limit your thoughts just to clothing. You can put your logo and brand on virtually anything! It’s great marketing and even a profit center.

While you can use a free logo design platform online to keep overhead low on the entire project, consult your local printer on options for a brand refresh – or, if it’s time, a complete logo and brand makeover. Make sure your logo is consistent across all your social media channels.

Start a Blog

The saying goes “content is king” for marketing, and that is especially the case for small companies building a customer base. Companies that blog had 55 percent more website visitors, 97 percent more inbound links, and 434 percent more indexed pages, according to an informal 2009 study of Hubspot customers.

The key to blogging, however, is to produce compelling content that will drive people to your website who were not necessarily looking for your product. A hair restoration doctor, for instance, could produce content about celebrity men and women in the news who have had procedures done to enhance their locks. A health food firm could write about all the bad things associated with genetically-modified foods. Consider hiring a freelance writer with a proven track record of producing content that is subsequently shared on social media. There are more than 150 million blogs on the web, so the only thing that will make yours stand out is good content. Hiring a professional writer may be money well spent.

Facebook Paid Ads

You already have a Facebook business page, so why not give their promoted post feature a try. The idea is that Facebook will put your posts in the timelines of people who are most likely to read, like, and share it. The best part of Facebook advertising is that you can test it out with a small initial budget. If it’s working for you, increase your budget and put posts in front of more Facebook users.

There are mixed opinions about Facebook promoted ads. A small case study by eConsultancy found that the traffic to promoted posts was definitely higher, but there was no way of telling whether it was because it was paid for or if the traffic was organic. Others believe that the affordability makes it a no-brainer option for low-budget firms.

Technology of the 21st century has made promoting a small business simple for anyone. Now it’s just a matter of finding the right combination of channels to reach your fiscal goals.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

July 11, 2014

Sex and the Logo: Creative Typography in Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” Series and Beyond

This post is definitely SFW. No worries.

SEX – a loaded subject in the marketing world, and one that carries interesting choices for the graphic designer. The word itself ignites a hint of controversy when used in a headline, title or logo. While more common in song and book titles, the television and motion picture industries have used the word sparingly in project names, cautiously conscious of the line between art and pornography. Designers, when faced with a project using the word ‘sex’ in it’s title must simultaneously gauge how to temper AND excite potential reactions to the word in some way that will accurately reflect the intent of the project. That’s a touchy assignment. Good design will often push at the boundaries of acceptability within evolving cultural norms. Take for instance Showtime’s new series “Masters of Sex.”

This cable series is about the famous researchers Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson who, beginning in the 1950s, did pioneering study on human sexuality. The very name itself is a little double extendre, so it is no surprise that the logo reflects that very creatively. The slightly bawdy typographic logo features the “E” in “Sex” pushed over onto it’s back. Due to some carefully planned serifs, a new shape that just might be the groin area of a female figure appears with the help of the type’s negative space. Now the image is subtle enough that some see it as a martini glass, or a bikini thong. But that confusion in interpretation is just fine with Showtime, as it generates interest in the image and thus the show. The logo lets the viewer feel they are in on a joke, that we “got it.”

In some markets, Showtime has had to stand the “E” up, proper and respectable-like!, for outdoor billboard advertising so as not to run afoul of local decency laws. TV Guide reports that Donald Buckley, executive VP of program marketing and digital services at Showtime, said the point was to “strike a balance between subtle and salacious. ‘It’s intended to be sexy and maybe a little suggestive,’ he says, ‘but also ambiguous.'” (source)

Apparently there is a controversy over who designed the racy logo. In the TV Guide article, Buckley says a “freelancer” designed it, but doesn’t name names. French designer Abdallah Ahizoune had the original concept posted on Behance and other outlets back in 2011 – see it here – but has not been given proper credit by Showtime as of yet. Oddly enough, the Showtime trailer for the series does not show the logo with the sexy “E”, nor does the website itself, though many other print and online ad campaigns do make use of it. LogoThief is following that part of the story.

So historically, using the word SEX in a logo for TV or the movies has been, in and of itself, enough of a risk that few titles go there. Back in 1926, Mae West wrote, produced, directed and starred in a Broadway play named “Sex” – for which she was arrested and spent 10 days incarcerated on Roosevelt Island. Times have changed. Back in the 1960s, Helen Gurley Brown’s bestseller “Sex and the Single Girl” was made into a motion picture. Some of the marketing material made use of the male and female gender symbols that represent Mars and Venus – slightly shifting the focus from “sex” in a salacious sense to one more of gender roles and conflict. It was a comedy after all.

By 1989, the famously successful indie movie sex, lies, and videotape decided the name itself carried enough intrigue: the logo type was set in all lower case in a sans serif font. More recently, the logo for the popular HBO series Sex and the City chose to focus more on the ‘City’ than the ‘Sex,’ displaying the skyline of Manhattan around the words of the title. While the series certainly never shied away from sexual content, the logo design chose to steer clear of overtly advertising it.

I couldn’t find any other successful films or television shows that specifically included the word “sex” in their title. Considering it is so often a central topic, that is a telling fact. So it’s interesting to see how graphic designers have deftly handled these projects by walking a careful line when creating compelling movie posters and advertising. Isn’t it amazing what can be suggested by just the turn of one letter?

Strive to create and buy your marketing locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

July 10, 2014

What’s New in Illustrator CC 2014: Live Corners & Friendlier Pen and Pencil Tools

Illustrator CC 2014 brings graphic designers some cool new improvements to enhance the “drawing” experience of this vector program. I’ve always loved using Illustrator, although the disconnect between the feeling of drawing on paper vs. fashioning a vector shape onscreen can seem awkward. The new Illustrator perks: a more user-friendly Pen and Pencil tool and the new Live Shapes/Corners functionality give much more accessible controls to vector drawing and design. The best part of these new improvements? They are very intuitive. While an explanation or overview is helpful to know what has changed, the best way to understand them is to just get in there and create! The new tweaks will become second nature to a user with previous Illustrator experience in no time.

Live Corners – what a great enhancement for drawing and manipulating shapes! While this feature does nothing that was not possible in earlier versions of Illustrator, the sense of control is now much more integrated into the actual drawing process. Selecting any shape, or point on a shape, with the Direct Selection tool will reveal an on-art control point or “inset widget” at each of the corners. You can drag that widget to alter the shape of the corner. Double clicking the widget will open your dialog box for controls over the corner style (round, inverted round or chamfered), the corner radius dimension, and rounding that is Absolute or Relative. Option (or Alt) clicking will toggle between the three styles. Adobe offers some easy online video tutorials to cover all these features, but the process is so intuitive, just playing around with the new features is your best teacher. (BTW, I learned a new word with that “chamfered” corner feature.)

The Pencil tool, in CC 2014, has advanced away from being more of a freestyle drawing tool often relegated to imprecise sketching and moved more toward a companion of the Pen tool. Double clicking the Pencil tool in the Tools palette will bring up its Options where you can set the fidelity of the line you are creating to the actual movement of your cursor. This is a great way to smooth curves when needed, or to create sketchy curves when that is point. Holding down your Option (or Alt) key will constrain the Pencil tool to a straight line; holding down the Command (or Ctrl) key will constrain it to horizontal, vertical or 45° angles. As you can see, this is very much like the Pen tool. The Pencil tool also toggles out to access the Smooth and the Path Erase tools. The Smooth tool is a handy way to touch up a path shape with which you aren’t quite happy. It subtracts excess points and contours to create a smoother shape. The Path Erase tool is your eraser, pure and simple – even stopping mid-segment to create a new end point.

The CC 2014 Pen tool sports some major enhancements as well. One change you will notice right away is the Pen tool Path Preview. When drawing a shape, it is helpful to see exactly where the path will fall before dropping the point onto the document; this new tool previews that path for you with a colored preview line extending from the last point dropped to the position of the pen before you click in a new point. Adobe also gave us advancements on the manipulation of anchor points: repair broken anchor point handles, draw uneven handles when needed, and other new ways to finesse closing the shape of a path without distorting your drawing. The Pen tool in Illustrator has always been one of those tools that really needs hands-on practice to understand. Often the description of what or how the tool works is longer and much more confusing than the actual process of using it. So dive in – the new features will become second nature as you use the tools and incorporate the new perks into your work routine.

Launching Illustrator CC 2014 will bring up a Welcome screen that does a great job in introducing everything you need to know: the tabs for New Features, Getting Started, and Tips & Techniques include video tutorials and links to the great online library of Adobe help documents. (You can always access this screen when needed by going to Help – Welcome in the menu bar.) Have fun making some great vectors.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

May 28, 2014

Remembering Massimo Vignelli – One of the Greats of Graphic Design

One of the giants of 20th Century design, Italian-born Massimo Vignelli passed away on Tuesday (5/27/14) at the age of 83, after an extended illness. Credited with bringing the European modernist aesthetic to American design, Vignelli created memorable work for clients as diverse as the National Park Service, American Airlines, Bloomingdales, the New York City Subway – he even designed an entire church in New York.

Hear him in his own words below:

A hero of graphic design, Vignelli considered himself to be an “information architect” – yet his work resides in museums around the world. For a great overview of his life and work, check out the New York Times article on his death, Fast Company’s obituary tribute and of course the Vignelli Associates own website, where you will no doubt discover many familiar creations of this visionary graphic designer.

Your printer should understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

April 11, 2014

A Self-Marketing Guide for Freelancers

Establishing a successful career as a freelancer in the graphic design and marketing fields can be both incredibly rewarding and challenging. But as in any industry where contractors are plentiful, it can be difficult to separate yourself from the masses and identify how exactly you fit into the market. Fortunately, in the era of social media, self-promotion and marketing are much easier than you may think. In an effort to help all struggling, up and coming freelancers here are some self-marketing tips and strategies:

Identify Your Niche

According to It’s My Business, there are currently 10.3 million independent contractors working in the U.S. Whether you’re a writer, graphic designer, or consultant, the most important component to finding success as a freelancer is identifying your niche. In what areas do you excel? What are your weaknesses? What are you passionate about, and what are you most interested in working on? It’s critical to know the answers to such questions before you begin your freelance journey.

Create Your Own Brand

Once you’ve determined what types of services you want to offer, you can begin to shape your own brand and image. Don’t hesitate to share your expertise and enthusiasm on blogs, question boards, and other forums. Establish your name within the industry and prompt users to explore your name and website further. Consider creating a unique email extension with your own name and design a logo you can use when sending around work samples. One of your greatest resources: your local printer who wants to establish an ongoing relationship with you as you grow your business and reputation in the community. You will find no richer resource for technical, creative and promotional information.

Build A Professional Portfolio

Creating a unique and user-friendly way to display and showcase your work allows you to show potential employers just how talented you are. Though you should always be prepared to provide both digital and hard copies, building an online portfolio is crucial. You can collect your work via a blog or website, or create a digital reel of your work to present. Keep it simple without being too generic — allow your personality to shine through.

Digital Payments

Now that you’ve got a grasp on the basics, it’s time to discuss some logistics. As a freelancer, it can often be tedious and difficult to send and track invoices. Digitize your payment process by implementing mobile processing resources. This not only saves you time and frustration, but it is also incredibly easy to use for both yourself and clients. Track payments and manage accounts wirelessly all at the tip of your finger.

Utilize All Social Media Outlets

Take advantage of free social media platforms by posting links to or photos of your most recent accomplishments. Solicit your services and provide contact information for your users while maintaining a professional, eye-catching page. Consider creating social pages explicitly for professional use, and keep your personal accounts private.

Take On Pro Bono Work

Though you may not be jumping at the thought of taking on free work, such opportunities can often lead to paid gigs and/or referrals. This is also a great way to gain experience or dabble in an industry you’re not usually comfortable with. Furthermore, this give you the chance to network with potential clients for future projects – and while you gain useful experiences you also help others.

Small business entrepreneurs and talented freelancers are at the heart of Asheville and western North Carolina’s exciting economic growth – and we are committed to helping meet your marketing needs. ImageSmith is proud to be a printer in such an exciting era of digital communication. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER. Ask Imagesmith!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

February 25, 2014

Can Your Logo Multitask? Design With Versatility in Mind.

The story may be true or may be apocryphal, but either way it illustrates a good point: The logo below was Apple’s logo until the day Steve Jobs decided they needed to order embroidered polo shirts.

That logo would never work well stitched at a small size onto your work shirt. Is your logo up to the demands of integrated marketing? Does it fly as well in print as online, stitched onto clothing, 10 feet wide on outdoor signage? While your goal is one unified brand image, that does not necessarily mean you will only have one logo for all purposes.

The logo design you tweaked and approved back on day one is really put to test when you begin to market across different media. Initially, many folks think of their logo only in terms of how it will appear on a card, letterhead or envelope – or perhaps how it will appear in full RBG color on their website home page. But when you begin to explore other marketing needs, the very design of that logo may prove to be limited, to not carry the same impact. For instance, a logo design may look great in full color, but when the day comes you need a solid white logo reversed out on a dark background as an awning over the front doorway entrance, the limitations of the design become apparent. Many times, more complex designs look great at a large scale but then don’t work well if you try to imprint them onto small promotional objects or on websites. Balance is also important – a logo with one oversized element may look fine onscreen, but when printed at a small scale the type can be illegible due to the difference in size with the larger element. The logo that looks great in full color on your website will need to work just as well embroidered on company uniforms, imprinted onto promotional keychains or ink pens, and embossed onto a formal letterhead. That initial design process needs to include the logo in all its variations.

Many brand images are designed with some built in variety to accommodate varying layouts and usage needs: for instance, your designer should offer you a “wide” version, a “tall” or “stacked” version, a version with and without a tagline or company “motto”. This set of logos will allow versatility in your marketing without altering the impact and unity of your brand image. Likewise, your designer can create your logo in the necessary range of color combinations: all black, reversed out as all white on a black or colored background, spot color versions using one or more defined PMS colors, and a full color version as both CMYK and RGB.

Famous brands like Coca-Cola employ a variety of type-styles, logos and brand images to differentiate their products and campaigns.

And the simplest part is often the one forgotten: once finalized, you will definitely want to have control of your brand by having possession of your actual logo… er, logos! Even if you do not have the software necessary to edit or change your logo, you will want to have the digital files in hand and a basic understanding of what file types you need for different outputs. Your designer and printer should be happy to supply you with these files.

Files… because there is never just one file that works for all occasions. While it is certainly not mandatory, a logo that begins it’s life as a vector is a happy logo! It can be edited, scaled, redesigned, converted, and proves to be the most conveniently versatile file type. Vector logos can be saved as a native .ai file or an .eps file. These can then be easily converted to other common file types such as .tiff, .jpg, .gif or .png. While you do not have to know all the mechanics behind each of these file extensions, you may be asked to provide specific ones. Your web designer may need a .gif or .png while your t-shirt vendor may ask for a vector file in two spot colors. With just the options mentioned in this post, your final logo set would consist of 30 separate digital files!

So, saving or exporting your logo to exist as different file types is not so difficult (well, if it begins as a vector file!) A well-designed logo will work well in spot colors, full color, reversed or as black and white. A logo that is created as part of a design package including a style manual will have its usage already thought out — work with your designer to ensure the versatility of your logo and brand, and once finalized to understand your different file types for marketing usage.

ImageSmith is proud to be a printer in an exciting era of digital communication. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

January 30, 2014

The Name Game: Acronyms, Portmanteaux and Design

A business name is, in a very real sense, the cornerstone of the brand – it both drives and anchors the graphic development of the logo, the marketing and the overall design aesthetic that evolves to represent the company. In practically all cases for the designer, the company name is perhaps the one and ONLY given at the start of the design process or refresh. While you can suggest new colors, fonts, tag lines, voice and outreach methods, it would be a rare client who would let you change their company name! So that word or words become the starting point of design and inform every decision that follows. At the start of that process, long, technical or unexciting company names tend to be altered in one of two ways.

Acronyms

In line with what seems a current linguistic obsession of reducing words to initials, many successful brands rely on acronyms to fix their name in the public’s mind. Think IBM – where International Business Machines isn’t such a catchy, sleek moniker. These acronyms become part of our language. In time, we forget, if we ever knew, what the letters stand for and simply accept the newly formed “word” on it’s own merit.

CVS – Consumer Value Stores
GEICO – Government Employees Insurance Company
IKEA – Ingvar Kamprad (company founder) + Elmtaryd (his birthplace) + Agunnaryd (his current home)
3M – Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
UBS – originally, United Bank of Switzerland, though now the company says the letters are “no longer considered an acronym.”

Portmanteaux

Different from an acronym, a portmanteau is the combination of two or more words or parts of words (also called morphemes) and their definitions into a new word. Even the word “portmanteau” is a portmanteau – a combination of the the French words porter (to carry) and manteau (coat), with the combination of the two taking on a new definition apart from the French word porte-manteau, meaning coat rack. Anyway…

The meanings, as well as the sound of the original words, are also fused together. For instance, smoke and fog combine to form smog. The media seems to be enthralled with combining celebrity names (Lindsay Lohan is LiLo, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner become a new entity called Bennifer). Bromance, cankles, Frankenfood, spambot, it just goes on and on. But for marketing purposes, many successful company names were born out of the combination of sounds and meanings in this fashion.

Some combine words we all know to represent the company’s product or service, a very common trick among websites, mobile apps and the naming of pharmaceuticals:

Groupon – Group + Coupon
Instagram – Instant + Telegram
Pinterest – Pin + Interest
Travelocity – Travel + Velocity
Verizon – Veritas + Horizon
Prevacid – Prevent + Acid
Flonase – Flow + Nasal
Fruitopia – Fruit + Utopia

Others combine relevant names or products to create their new mark:

Hasbro – founders, the Hassenfeld Brothers
Adidas – founder, Adolf (Adi) Dassler
Kyocera – Kyoto Ceramics
Nabisco – National Biscuit Company
Linux – Linus (Torvalds, inventor) + Unix
Mattel – Harold “Matt” Matson and Elliot Handler

From these acronyms and portmanteaux, designers use typography as an inspirational starting point to fashion the logo and direct the brand development. The shape of the letters themselves function as design and symbolism in a way that unwieldy longer words and phrases could not. For instance, the Merle Norman logo switches the emphasis from the entire name to a graphic, art deco inspired “MN” as focal point. The typography of the acronym becomes their design.

Designers see new shapes arise from the placement of letters, or from the white space between the letters. Clever and inspired meanings are referenced from the letters when they begin to function as shapes beyond normal typography. Successful logos rely on symbolism that often works subconsciously to the viewer. The FedEx logo incorporates arrows in the negative space between the letters, a shape that often goes unnoticed. In our company name, for example, the mirror image of the “im” and “mi” merge together, a subtle symbol for the merging, fluid and integrated state of the technology and communication at which our business excels.

Whether or not your business venture uses any of these techniques in your logo and brand design, studying the way others represent themselves is instructive. Hopefully noticing the companies and products that employ this trick well – and not so well – can inspire your creativity.

ImageSmith is proud to be a printer in an exciting era of digital communication. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

November 26, 2013

Bending Rules – Vintage Adobe Poster, 1987

What a great old poster from Adobe in 1987 that has been around the shop here all this time. It is nice to realize the illustrated typography advice here is just as applicable today as it way back before InDesign and the Creative Cloud, and indeed anytime in the history of printing or graphic design. In essence, the message is “Rules – once learned – are made to be broken.” Or to be more precise, don’t let a strict adherence to rules blind you to the opportunities that lie beyond them.

In typography, relying on auto-kerning, hyphenation, line spacing, etc. can be convenient yet often yield jarring, hard to read results – a problem only compounded when several fonts are used together. Good design creates pleasure in reading. Whether it’s an advertisement, job resumé, wedding invitation or webpage, the goal is surely to get your message read. Often, bending away from the status quo in any creative endeavor can create nice surprises and greater success – not a bad idea to keep in mind.

Speaking of good design, check out the old retro Adobe logo circa 1987 in comparison to the one used today. Quite a change.

Consider the ways you can use inspired graphic design to market your small business. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

July 11, 2013

Multimedia Graphic Design Done Right: TCM Spotlight

Classic movies and classic graphic design – both sources of inspiration, and no one does it better than TCM. Their commercials, program intros, event branding, website, print publications and products all are branded with the same retro, distinctive TCM style. This unity of great design across platforms and media is a basic goal for any successful marketing, regardless of a company’s size or budget. TCM is well worth a look if you need a little inspiration.

Turner Classic Movies is the cable/satellite channel owned by Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time/Warner. The TCM logotype, which sets the graphic tone for all the consistent branding TCM does so well, was created by the charles s. anderson design co. of Minneapolis, MN. This world class firm holds a client list which reads like a Who’s Who of great branding and marketing success. (They also maintain an incredible royalty free image library of highly curated pop culture artwork, a great resource for any designer, called csaimages.) Their website relates the story of how the original TCM logo design was created with 30 different icons to represent the multiplicity of the movie industry and its ever-changing nature as a medium. When presented to Ted Turner, he wanted to know “which one is the logo?” The answer: all of them! “But which one?”

The multi-faceted approach of that original design sets the standard for the cross-platform, diversified branding of TCM that maintains the same look, feel and tone across it’s print media, television production, expansive website and product creation. The tone is distinctly retro, but with a modern, polished, and high-tech flavor. Having open access to one of the world’s largest, richest film libraries for your inspiration and imagery is a resource of which any graphic designer can only dream! But the folks at TCM consistently use those images in a fresh, larger-than-life way to maintain the thematic look of their brand without exploiting or tarnishing the classic films from which the images are appropriated. That, in itself, is a tough task and speaks to the integrity of the TCM design process. For example:

The first half of the clip above demonstrates this balance well – a humorous look at the man on the street’s reaction to the iconic image of Sue Lyon in Stanley Kubrick’s classic film “Lolita.” The second half of the clip sets a perfect film noir mood, creating an homage to American artist Edward Hopper’s famous painting “Nighthawks.” This is smart marketing that know’s its audience and upholds the value and integrity of its film archive.

Studying how the big players excel is valuable instruction for the rest of us. For those of us who cannot afford the guidance of a charles s. anderson design team and don’t have the budget of a Ted Turner, a few takeaways are:

Develop and know your image. Be sure, at the most basic level, you understand and control the “look” of your brand – what it stands for, how it will represent and how you want the public to perceive your business. This begins, typically, with a basic logotype and then expands throughout all the activities of your enterprise.

Respect yourself. Your passion for your work should show through in your business’ design and marketing efforts. Work with a designer and printer to create marketing material that inspires you, makes you feel proud of what you do, and represents quality.

Work to maintain consistency of your brand in all the ways the public encounters your business. The design and flavor of your print materials should be a consistent match to any representation of your business that your public will see. Consider all the areas this might include: signage, website, direct mail, social media, print/tv/radio/web advertisements, employee uniforms, retail spaces and lobby decor, promotional products as well as the actual goods or services produced and supplied.

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.