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January 23, 2013

Branded Work Apparel: Customize Your Team’s Gear

Consistent, cohesive and high quality branding is important for small businesses. Your logo design and identity should work for you across each aspect of your business, wherever you interact with the public. That includes signage, building design, interior decor, employee apparel and work gear, website branding, direct mail outreach…. you have a chance at each of these points when the public sees your business to make a good impression.

Outfitting your employees with branded apparel and work gear makes a strong impression both in store and outside of the place of business. They will see your team doing quality work, in quality gear. Consider standardizing the look, color and design of your team’s apparel, whether it is a typical uniform or a more casual style. Through embroidery and screen printing, most all work clothing can be customized to reflect your brand. Even tools, construction gear and footwear can be part of your public image. We outfitted a team’s construction hats with their brand colors and logos through contour cut vinyl adhesive labelling. Begin to browse online for ideas and you will discover a huge variety of high quality, custom apparel to help you achieve the right look for your team.

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have in fashioning your brand or designing your marketing materials. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for print, signage, apparel and integrated marketing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote 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 marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

January 10, 2013

See the Negative Space in Your Logo Design

Is that a black circle floating in nothingness? Or is it a field of white with a hole in the middle? With either view, the shapes exist in context with each other. In design, the field surrounding intentional shapes is often called negative space. Yet this “empty” area also speaks – sometimes intentionally, and occasionally with an unintended message. The control of negative space in a design amounts to working out a productive balance between shape and the shape of what’s left.

The negative space of a logo can speak subtely, in a supporting or even subliminal role. The trick is to make sure that this role is the one you want, and does not carry any unintended messages. The iconic FedEx logo contains a subtle but effective arrow in it’s negative space – something I missed for years – a great example of an almost subliminal symbol of motion, travel and progress built into the negative space of their brand.

The new logo for VH1, on the other hand, has a negative space issue that I find confusing – or maybe have just not deciphered yet. From first glance, the logo looks like the negative space should be spelling out something… it looks a little like the word “is” in an old-school monospace font. But I don’t think that is the intended message. In this case, the negative space feels distracting – like a message that is not really there.

I love the creative way many designers now actively manage negative space in logos to speak as loudly, and perhaps more effectively, than the “positive” space. In a way, these designs give the viewer a satisfaction of having solved a riddle, having “gotten” the inside joke or meaning. Arguably, this puts them in a friendlier, more receptive mood to the design’s message. The cleverness of a logo design can yield a powerful impact. A few samples are below – google “negative space in logo design” for many great design galleries, or check out this link for more.

Designer: Rajendra Prasad A on Behance

Designer: Matto

Designer: Sean Heisler

Abdallah Ahizoune

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote 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 marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

November 2, 2012

Our Logo Evolution: Graphic Updates from the 1980’s to Today

Instead of writing about the logos and branding success or failure of others, this blog post takes a look at our own branding – ImageSmith’s history from a start in the 1980s to a brand that changes to keep looking forward. Our graphic development has sought to reflect the changes in our industry and the scope of our operation, as well as the progress in technology associated with graphic design and marketing communications. The company name combines three essential components of our business:

the company owners and founders, Mary and David Smith;
the word “image”, representing both the visual and graphic aspects of modern printing/marketing, and the idea of “image” as the overall impression a customer’s brand and marketing creates;
the nature of print being a craft – just like the blacksmith or silversmith – who trains and hones his skills over time to become an expert in his field.

These three elements of ImageSmith branding have remained consistent through our development up to today. The look of our logo, however, has changed significantly.

Our earliest digital ImageSmith logo is seen above, circa the late 1980’s. This version definitely reflects the graphic sensibility of it’s day: the rainbow gradient central to the mark promoted full-color offset printing, something less common, more expensive and more time-consuming to produce that today’s quick, digital output. The fonts used look outdated today but reflect the quickly expanding availability of new, creative typefaces for desktop publishing in that era. Our tagline: “Full Service Printing Specialists.”

The second icarnation of the ImageSmith logo came in 1998. The printing industry was in a metamorphosis as the internet and print technology were bringing quick and unsettling change to the industry. The word image was streamlined to a sans serif font to modernize the appearance of the brand, and the drop shadow went from a hard vector shape to one with transparency – a nod to the technical advancements in prepress design with Adobe PageMaker, PhotoShop and Illustrator. This was one year before InDesign premiered and transparency moved from something that only lived within PhotoShop native layers. We changed our tagline from “Full Service Printing Specialists” to “Printing Your World on Paper” – an emphasis on the foundation of our company in offset printing and on the ability to graphically capture communication and marketing messages on paper. By 2002, the scope of our business had changed to where the emphasis on paper was less important than e-commerce, digital printing and file transmissions, and other technological advances. We changed our tagline to be the url of our newly expanding website.

By 2005, the evolution in print and marketing demanded a more drastic change to our brand. The current ImageSmith logo was designed to reflect these changes and to function in a much more versatile manner, just as our business has expanded to cover more versatile means of communication.

Our name itself changed to “ImageSmith Communications.” The logo evolved into a sleeker, more visually concise mark. Gone were the gradients, drop shadows and complex typefaces that had been significant in an earlier age of prepress technology, but merely givens today. The logo merged into a mirror-like image: the “i” and “m” of “image” with the “m” and “i” of “smith” – a subtle representation of the merging, fluid and integrated state of the technology and communication at which our business excels. We grew to offer much more than just offset printing – web development and e-commerce, design, digital printing, integrated marketing, mailing services, embroidery, signage, branded merchandise. In response, our logo needed to be much more versatile – to function equally well on a small embroidered patch as on a large format sign or website. In addition, our branding added our zebra Marty as a type of unifying “mascot” with the tagline “…earning our stripes, every day.”

Your brand and logo need to remain relevant – to proactively speak your message through changing times. If your look represents your beginnings, but not your evolution and promise, then you should put some creative thought into what changes are needed to your brand. Sometimes a refresh is appropriate, other times a major overhaul is needed. Making such design and marketing decisions is time-consuming for a small business owner. Turn to your printer for sound, experienced advice on where to begin the process. They should be able to provide you guidance and advice every step along the way from brainstorming ideas to final production of a new look. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

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

October 12, 2012

The New Wendy’s Logo: Contemporary Brand Design

UPDATE: Interesting to note a hidden (intentionally or not) subliminal message in the new logo, first “discovered” by StockLogos.com. The word “MOM” appears to be hiding in Wendy’s collar. When the logo is printed in black and white, or one spot color, it becomes much more apparent. Check out this post over at designtaxi.com that lists famous corporate logos with subliminal messages you may have overlooked.

“We are improving the total customer experience, with bold restaurant designs, fresh product innovation, more engaging advertising and digital media advancements,” said Emil Brolick, President and Chief Executive Officer.

What do you think of Wendy’s new look? While keeping the iconic little redhead in it’s brand, this is the chain’s first logo update since 1983, and presents their “mascot” a little older with a hair makeover that’s redder and less orange. A more casual font, a simplified layout and the removal of the words “Old Fashioned” (and even the word “Hamburgers”) represents a new direction for the growing chain with what they call a “new contemporary brand logo.” Wendy’s website says the new look will “premiere” in March of 2013, but you can check it out on their website. I’d say the change is both overdue, and a great success.

Wendy’s is in the process of expanding it’s menu in order to compete with chains that offer more upscale choices and dining experiences, such as Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread. To reflect the evolving direction of the company, a logo refresh was definitely called for. I remember the previous logo from all the way back in the early 1980’s, and thought at the time that the “old-fashioned” theme and carnival-sideshow artwork style of the logo was not appealing. The first Wendy’s restaurant in which I remember eating had tabletops that were decorated with old-timey newspaper images from what looked like the late 1800’s – never was quite sure of that connection. In step with this new menu and thorough brand refresh, Wendy’s will also be updating everything from restaurant lobbies to employee uniforms.

Wendy’s new logo visually modernizes the brand in a similar way that KFC modernized their look in the 1990’s from the old Kentucky Fried Chicken days. The logo was simplified, streamlined and made to appear more modern, both in the text and the artwork. The change seen below follows the same logic of the Wendy’s brand refresh above.

These marketing changes illustrate the importance of keeping your brand fresh. A total redesign is generally not necessary, but unless your logo is established as a thoroughly iconic image (by that I mean you are Coke or McDonalds!), most logos and marks need to consistently be evaluated and evolve over time to avoid becoming stale and giving the public an impression you do not want. Time to get started?

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

September 24, 2012

Holiday Gifts: Branded Merchandise for Staff and Customers

Quality branded merchandise is a great way for your company to express gratitude during the holiday season toward your loyal customers or to thank employees for a job well done. Purchasing in bulk affords exceptional pricing as you brand your gift items with your company color, look and logo. Branded gifts will also keep your business’ name in the hands of your customers – a steady reminder of your quality and generosity.

The variety of products is huge; select something appropriate for the season or based on your customer’s interests. Browsing online will give you many ideas to customize and personalize your gift selection for your employees and clients. Everywhere they use these gifts over the lifetime of the product will give your brand exposure. Also considedr imprinting a QR code to drive visitors online in a traceable way. It will cost no extra, and you’ll be able to track online activity created by the QR code. That is the first step in developing a campaign to unite the message you brand on your promotional items with your website and other marketing materials for a truly integrated effort.

Finding a product that is relevant to your business and desired by your customer base should be easy… in fact the hard decision will be narrowing down which item to send out as a gift. Begin your search at our online store. You may also want to read our other blog articles for information and ideas on branding, promotions and integrated marketing. Keep in mind that the more useful and desirable the item is, the longer it will stay effective as a reminder of your brand. A banner ad on a website is seen for a few seconds – customers and staff will hang onto that handy flash drive, clothing item, or water bottle bearing your logo and compliments for months to come.

To browse through the huge selection of promotional products available, go online at this link. Also, check out our blog for information and ideas on branding, promotions and integrated marketing or visit our website and follow the link to “Branded Merchandise”.

Consider these points when deciding on promotional products:

Brand, brand, brand: promotional products generate brand awareness and exposure. You can choose an object that relates to your enterprise itself or to a specific message you want your business to convey. For instance, if your emphasis is on helping clients solve problems, choose a calculator; if you want to highlight your timeliness – a dashboard clock,calendar or watches. Promotional products should be ordered to match your exact brand colors and imprinted or engraved with your logo, tagline and other messages.

Low Cost (and low minimum orders): when you order promotional products, you receive a price per piece that is far lower than the usual retail cost, and the selection is vast. Some items are very inexpensive, and others are much more high end. Test the waters with a low cost item or for the holidays reward valuable customers and staff with a keepsake item. Set-up charges are minimal and you will pay a discounted price per piece on orders. Most items generally have a minimum quantity requirement.

Creative relevance: with such a diverse selection of products to choose from, you have a great oppportunity to get creative. Work out a tagline that makes sense with the product and work it into your larger marketing campaign. A quick example: if you run a insurance business, you could give away branded rain ponchos or small umbrellas with the tagline “We’ve got you covered.” If you want to emphasize the your company’s environmental commitment, think about seed packets, herb garden starter kits, or products made from recyclable materials. You get the idea… get creative.

For help? Rely on your printer for advice and direction in choosing and branding your promotional items. They should be able to provide you access to just about any item you can imagine. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

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

June 8, 2012

Heat Up Summer Marketing & Sales with Promotional Products

Summertime is a great season to distribute the most popular promotional products: sunglasses, stadium cups, towels and t-shirts, caps and visors, sunscreen, sports equipment, lanyards, caribiner clips, travel accessories, and gear for the beach. Customers and employees love receiving useful items, and everywhere they travel with these gifts will give your brand exposure in a positive light. Imprint a QR code on promotional products to drive visitors online in a traceable way. You’ll be able to track which products created the most response, and will develop a campaign to unite the message you brand on your promotional items with your website and other marketing materials for a truly integrated campaign.

Finding a product that is relevant to your business and desired by your customer base should be easy… in fact the hard decision will be narrowing down which item you want to invest in to promote your business. To browse through a huge selection of promotional products that are available for branding, go to our online store. You may also want to read our other blog articles for information and ideas on branding, promotions and integrated marketing. Remember, the more useful and desirable the item is, the longer it will stay in the hands of your potential customer. A banner ad on a website is seen for a few seconds – they can hang onto that handy flash drive or water bottle bearing your logo and compliments for months to come.

Consider these points when deciding on promotional products:

Brand, brand, brand: promotional products generate brand awareness and exposure. You can choose an object that relates to your enterprise itself or to a specific message you want your business to convey. For instance, if your emphasis is on helping clients solve problems, choose a calculator; if you want to highlight your timeliness – a dashboard clock or calendar. Promotional products should be ordered to match your exact brand colors and imprinted with your logo, tagline and other messages.

People Like Gifts: unlike a flyer, banner ad on a website or text message, branded merchandise has a physical presence and value. Promotional items are not thrown away, but often regarded as a gift. Their value and usefulness will keep them on your customers desk, in their purse, on their keychain… and that keeps your brand refreshed in their mind each time they see it.

Low Cost (and low minimum orders): when you order promotional products, you receive a price per piece that is far lower than the usual retail cost, and the selection is vast. Some items are very inexpensive, and others are much more high end. Test the waters with a low cost item, or reward valuable customers with a keepsake item for the holidays… all branded with your logo, contact information and message. Set-up charges are minimal and you will pay a discounted price per piece on orders. Most items generally have a minimum quantity requirement.

Check out the diversity of items you can incorporate into your marketing plan: frisbees to hot sauce, yo yo’s to surgery scrubs. The variety is eye-opening. Do yourself a favor and browse the promotional products catalog – you’ll get inspired with products that can get your business noticed and remembered.

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

January 30, 2012

Carolina Panthers Refresh Brand with New Logo Update

Keeping your brand fresh and current is a constant evolution, and while a total rebranding is a drastic step in a marketing plan, often smaller tweaks and changes are called for in a logo, typeface or message. Take for instance the current changes just announced for the Carolina Panthers football team. This is the first time in their 18 year history that their logo has been altered. The new logo will be phased in throughout 2012, and is still unclear when or how the team’s uniforms will be changed to incorporate the new look.

When compared side by side, you can see that new new logo shows a sleeker, more striking panther. Notice the subtle changes to the shape of the teeth, chin and eyes. Perhaps more drastic is the change to the logo’s typeface. The NFL creative department says the typeface change will make it more readable and “cleaner” for its different uses. The Panthers website has a quick video showing the transformation of the logo from the original style to the current. I have to admit, I completely missed the change on the first viewing, however. It is not a drastic visual shift.

But do the changes work? They are a nice refinement – subtle, but effective in adding more energy and flow to the image of the panther. Losing the black outline around the entire image makes a great improvement. I am not crazy about the lettering change, however – the basic font is still outdated and somewhat clunky, whereas the previous one was just outdated! That could use some more work, but I agree the result is more readable and compatible with the sleeker panther design. The folks over at logodesign.com polled both designers and the public in separate polls to look at the best NFL logo designs. The OLD Panthers logo was ranked 9th by the designers. Check out the results and vote here. (To see all the NFL logos, check out this site.)

Overall, the change illustrates the importance of keeping your brand fresh. A total redesign is generally not necessary. But unless your logo is established as a thoroughly iconic image (by that I mean you are Coke or McDonald’s!), most logos and marks need to consistently be evaluated and evolve over time to avoid becoming stale and giving the public an impression you do not want. Time to get started?

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

May 16, 2011

Adobe Illustrator’s Image Trace: Creating Vectors from Pixels

Any vector art can easily be converted to pixels (rasterized). The journey back from pixel to vector however is not an easy one, if possible at all. Some sound advice: get the original, vector, fonts-turned-to-outlines version of your logo from the designer as soon as it is created and signed off on. Even if you can’t place or use it any of the programs you use daily, get it and guard it! It can be reproduced at any size and mainting its clear, perfect resolution, it can be repurposed into any other file types needed for print or online usage, and it can contain the needed PMS spot color information needed for color separation to maintain your brand standards.

It is truly amazing the number of companies out there who have an established logo and brand, but are unable to lay hands on a vector version of their logo. They are ready with a marketing budget but armed only with a tiny .gif or .jpg someone nabbed off a website, or possibly a fuzzy print of a logo placed in a Word document. Many do not know the PMS color designated for their brand/logo. Imagine Target or Coke thinking any old red will work work their printing… or leaving it up to a random printer to decide which red to use!?! The original logo design for any well-made brand will have begun its life as a vector-based artwork. As many offices use software that requires a .jpg or .tif format for placed art and websites require low-res .pngs and .jpgs…. so the value of the vector art is often overlooked.

In the Old Days When You Needed a Vector Logo….

I use to love Adobe Streamline. It saved many print jobs from disaster. Discontinued with the advent of Illustrator CS2, Streamline was the program used to convert pixel-based art into vectors… and when it worked the way you wanted, it was a lifesaver for a prepress department. Could it redraw any logo to perfection? Of course not, but it could be used to re-create some logos for vector output.

A potentially huge new client gives you their first print job… you have to print some forms in black and their spot PMS color, but the logo they supply is a fuzzy RGB jpg – no way to properly color separate the pixel-based file, no built in spot color, no chance of impressing the client! But Streamline, if the logo scan was high enough quality, could render the proper shapes in a vector format that allowed you to print the job correctly, reset the logo as needed, and gain a new client’s trust.

Image Trace

Image Trace in Adobe® Illustrator (formerly called “Live Trace”) is a great asset for designers, and useful for far more than just a prepress department stuck with a lousy jpg and a deadline. As with most tools in Illustrator and throughout Creative Suite, the best way to learn Image Trace is to simply use it: open up a document, place a pixel-based tif or jpg on the page and the try the different options under the Image Trace button in your menu.

Drop down menu of actions under the Live Trace button.

Try converting full color photographs, scanned drawings, images that have been run through PhotoShop filters – the results can be amazing. From the results you will begin to understand what kinds of effects you can apply in Photoshop before conversion in order to make your Image Trace output more of what you are after. For logo “re-creation,” a clear, large size scan of the logo is preferable to start from – and the cleaner the scan, the better the results. Once you select the preset you want, you will have to click the “Expand” button to actually apply the conversion, and then Ungroup the objects to work with the individual vector shapes. Image Trace will not give suitable results for scanned type in most instances. For more advanced controls over your vectorization, try the Tracing Options dialogue box by going to Window > Image Trace and choose a preset or specify the tracing options. You can enable Preview to see the results of your modifications. and play around with the blur, threshold, path fitting and other tools you find there.

A full color photograph before and after Live Trace - notice each color area has been turned into a vector shape.

Tag: logo

Branded Work Apparel: Customize Your Team’s Gear

See the Negative Space in Your Logo Design

Our Logo Evolution: Graphic Updates from the 1980’s to Today

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

The New Wendy’s Logo: Contemporary Brand Design

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

Holiday Gifts: Branded Merchandise for Staff and Customers

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

Heat Up Summer Marketing & Sales with Promotional Products

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

Carolina Panthers Refresh Brand with New Logo Update

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

Adobe Illustrator’s Image Trace: Creating Vectors from Pixels

In the Old Days When You Needed a Vector Logo….

Image Trace

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, high impact marketing solutions.