Category: Graphic Design

Does Your Small Business Have a Brand Guide? The FIVE Reasons why you should.  

When starting a small business, it’s easy for you to have the mentality of “jumping right in.” You want to complete and do everything to feel like you are up and running as quickly as possible. While doing all of these things can be an important factor in becoming visible to potential customers, what is more important is slowing down to ensure you are creating a branding guide for your small business. This task is often a task that is skipped and looked over. A branding guide should be the base of your business, and you can create around this guide. This step can be a step that small businesses skip, but if you take the time to complete this in the beginning, you can find yourself more successful in the long term. Here are the top 5 reasons your small business should have a branding guide. 

Consistency

Having an established brand guide can create consistency with your online presence. Showing up consistently in front of your audience can show your audience and customers that you are committed to your brand and small business. Every time a customer or potential customer visits your website, comes across your business card or even scrolls your social media platforms, they are consuming your brand on top of everything else they consume on a daily basis. Showing consistency in your brand will make it more recognizable over time with your viewers. With the digital world being so saturated with influencers, other small businesses, and the daily life of friends and family, consistency will set your business apart from others. 

Setting Standards

A brand guide can contain some of the following elements, Logo, Color Palette Logo Standards, etc. This can set the standards for how your brand should be presented in all aspects of your business, whether that be digitally or in print. It might seem silly to think that you shouldn’t use extra colors or even fonts in your online presence, but even the slightest change in your brand can change how your brand is viewed by your customers. Setting standards can be a game-changer. 

Recognizable 

Keeping your brand consistent can ensure that your brand is more recognizable by your customers. Some of the most popular brands have shown consistency in their brands over their lifetime and can now say they are recognizable to just about anyone. Some examples of brand consistency include Target, Microsoft, Starbucks, and even Google. Target is universally known in my own household, with my toddler, as the “Red Store.” They consistently use the same color, red, in ALL of their stores, branding, and digital footprint. It is so consistent that my three-year-old has already put the puzzle pieces together, and when I say we are going to the “Red Store,” she automatically knows we are taking a trip to Target. Having a branding guide that you continuously follow will help your brand stay consistent, which will, in the end, lead to being recognizable. 

Staying Focused

When you get your business up and rolling, it can be easy to get distracted with product launches, new services, or the day-to-day of what it takes to run a business. This can easily stretch a brand too thin. A brand guide that is clearly laid out can help a business owner and all of their employees stay focused on what is important. Staying focused during times that seem to be stretching your brand thin can create value for your brand. 

Adding Value to Your Brand

Brand consistency over time can create brand value. Customers and consumers will continue to purchase and re-use products that they see or find value in. If your brand is consistent and recognizable, over time, you will create brand value. The value will create lifelong customers.

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW!

Wow, is the one to aim for.”

Milton Glaser

Problems that Graphic Design and Good Branding Can Help Solve: Time

The old wives’ tale that time is money has never been so true when talking about running or owning a small business. You find yourself constantly looking for ways you can save time. Graphic Design and Good Branding can help save you this time. Although Graphic Design, Logo Design, and Branding can seem daunting at the beginning of your business venture, doing this leg work can save you time in the future when you are getting prospective clients or customers to buy or sign up for your services.

If prospective clients or customers are reaching out and asking what your services are, this could indicate that they might have a problem with your presentation or your brand. Your presentation always leads back to your branding. For example, you might be taken aback when you first look at the Portland Trailblazers logo. Their name implies “trailblazer” (a type of horse), but their logo doesn’t look like a horse. Although the actual meaning behind the logo is significant, it implies five players on one side, playing or interacting with five players on the other side. It, unfortunately, doesn’t read easily and can be quite confusing.

Having a logo with the meaning behind it is always great, but it also lets consumers know who you are and what you do. When you combine both aspects (who you are and what you do) into your branding, you are on the right path to saving time and getting right down to the fun part, business. 

Problems that Graphic Design and Good Branding Can Help Solve: Standing Out From your Competitors

Starting or running your own small business can be very exciting and scary at the same time. Whether you are selling goods or providing services, the most important thing you will need, no matter what you do, is customers or clients. Do you own a plumbing company but are also in competition with fifteen other plumbing companies in your local area? What about your business will make the prospective client or customer call you instead of someone else?

Standing out from your competitors in a saturated market can be very difficult. If we dive deeper into plumbing companies, most consumers never think twice about plumbing services until they need a plumber. If you have a pipe burst in your bathroom or your toilet starts to overflow. For most, panic will start to set in. After the need for a plumber comes into play, recognition is the next step. Do you have a memorable logo, a trendy song in your commercials, or a brand consistently showing its customers that you can solve their plumbing problems? Recognition is the first step in standing out. Does your overall “look” and brand go across all of your marketing platforms? Are you consistent with your brand? During a time of panic, the prospective client or customer will always go with the plumbing company that presents itself professionally and consistently shows prospective customers and clients that they can solve their plumbing problems. 

Problems that Graphic Design and Good Branding Can Help Solve: Becoming and/or Being Memorable

You are now at the point in your business “life” where you have clients, but you are now looking for those clients or customers to come back. Is your business memorable? Is your logo memorable? Some might say that your great customer service will continue to bring customers back, but can you solely rely on this? When you think of a great coffee shop, most consumers think of Starbucks. They have great customer service and amazing coffee, are recognizable across the United States and the world and are consistent and memorable. You can start working on consistency now that you have the “recognition” part of your business.

Road trips are one of my favorite pastimes. I love to travel. While traveling, I am normally looking to stay awake. I correlate staying awake with coffee. While traveling, the only symbol that I look for on the interstate is the Starbucks logo. I don’t even need the “Starbucks” typography written below it. I know the logo because they are consistent. When I see it, I recognize it right away. I know who they are, what they sell, that they have great coffee, and who doesn’t like it. With Graphic Design and Good Branding, you can also be on the right track to attracting your customers and becoming memorable.

Why The AD Leaf? – 3 Problems that Graphic Design and Branding Can Help Solve

With these three problems solved for your business, you can now focus on the task at hand, running your business. At The AD Leaf ®, we can create any design that any company would be proud of and continue to use in the future to save you time, stand out from your competitors and become memorable with their clients or customers. For more information about our graphic design Melbourne, FL solutions, contact us at info@theadleaf.com or call 321-255-0900.

Everyone has a face, and that face, whether fair or not, is the first step to gaining trust. So we shave, cleanse, and smile to put our best foot forward to build loving, trusting relationships. The same should be brought into your business utilizing graphic design. However, what exactly is a logo and or trademark? Who is a trusted source to bring a face to your company? No matter your product or company size, a bad logo is the most expensive asset you could ever obtain. A poorly designed brand or logo can make or break a company.

What comes to mind when I say Nike? The Swoosh. What comes to mind when I say McDonald’s? The golden arches. Even though I stated the singular name of the company, you unconsciously accepted both a trademark and a logo. As in the case of NIKE’s branding, the Swoosh is the trademark, and the lettering/typeface is the actual logo. The logo comes from the ancient Greek ‘Logos’ meaning word. As you can see in our modern society, the two have become almost interchangeable.

Many people, to their detriment, regard the logo as secondary in nature to the running of the business itself. They have an image of something they feel would properly represent themselves as an entity. A graphic designer takes the client’s good intentions and makes that message palatable and inviting across all platforms. Building trustworthy relationships between client and designer and client and their consumers. However, you might never see your business’s true value or highest potential until you trust a real designer to find the true motivation, direction, and audience behind the company.

Hiring the right designer or agency to market your company is important as a business owner.

A poorly rebranded logo or a bad logo can destroy a company. I tell my clients that if they have a poor logo that doesn’t properly convey the value of their business, everything their logo touches is a waste of money. Most people, in this case with little to no understanding of the issue, believe they just need to be put more in the spotlight, so they throw more money at the problem, not realizing they are plastering the problem to everyone on everything speeding up the demise of their company.

No matter how big or successful your company is, nothing is more expensive than a bad logo design. A logo or trademark that is simple, elegant, and projects the full spectrum of the value you provide is an investment that will allow you to focus and scale beyond your goals and not hinder you to the pages lost in chapter 11. You should run your business with the help of a seasoned, trusted marketing agency.

The AD Leaf Can Help!

Contact us today to help develop and implement any Graphic Design needs your business might need! Talk to one of our experts here at The AD Leaf by clicking here! To schedule a free consultation with our team, call us today at 321-255-0900.

How can Graphic Design help my local business? This a great question that all local business owners should ask themselves! Some people might think that graphic design services are trivial for your business. That’s not true. The correct graphics and visuals for your company can help sell your product more efficiently than any amount of words can. It’s a matter of having the correct guidance to walk you through your company’s (re)branding, and The AD Leaf® can be that guidance.

How does Graphic Design Benefits Your Business As A Good Introduction

Local businesses’ number one goal is to give their customers the best services to increase their sales and, in turn, their revenue. Also, it increases the chance of a customer becoming a recurrent customer. But first, they must have a good introduction and impression.

Look at your logo and branding. Do they speak volumes about your company? Do the logo, colors, and imagery tell a story about your company when it was created, about how it currently is? First impressions are important to everyone, especially to customers.

Say there are two businesses next to each other, one with great branding that fits with how you feel the company should be represented and another with unappealing branding that feels relatively out of place. Which company would you likely check out first? And that is where graphic design comes into play. That’s where The AD Leaf® comes into play, our goal is to create the face of your company, and with our tools and knowledge, we’ll create the perfect logo, design, and branding that represents your company and the story that you want to share with your customers.

How does Graphic Design Benefits Your Business? – By Building Trust

Look at some of the biggest brands: Apple, Target, Coke, etc. Their logos and brand don’t just work; they relate what they do and how they do it to you, with only a look. 

Apple, with their straightforward apple with a bite taken out of it, often without “Apple” written anywhere near it. Stark, high-contrast designs with their product given the spotlight. Target’s target is to let you know that you have hit a bullseye by being there. The abundance of white allows the strategic use of red to convey energy and draw your eyes around the store. Both of the previous designs have been reworked over the years. On the other hand, Coca-Cola has had the same logo since 1891 and the introduction of its red in 1934. Keeping their longstanding branding tells customers they know what to expect; Coke is the same today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

Graphic Design Puts Your Customers First

There was a time when there was no internet and no smartphones. Customers had to go to companies to seek information and to inquire if they would a great deal for the products or services that the company provided for their money. Not any longer. Today, you, as a local business, should always put your customers first. Again, we do this by having eye-catching graphic designs. You must realize that it’s not only to make your company look good but also to solve your customer’s problem and make the sales process seem effortless. A well-designed website will make it much easier for your customers to understand how you can serve them without them knowing it. Our graphic design team understands human psychology, and we know how to implement our knowledge through our graphic design skills.

Conclusion

Throughout the years, there have been different ways to get your customer’s attention and support; having a great product, superb customer service, or the best prices all work to turn a one-time customer into a repeat customer. Branding has been a primary way, since the 1500s, to turn that person into a customer. Today, as a local business, you should always put your customers first. Again, we do this by having eye-catching graphic designs. You must realize that it’s not only to make your company look good but also to solve your customer’s problem and make the sales process seem effortless. A well-designed website will make it much easier for your customers to understand how you can serve them without them knowing it. Our graphic design team understands human psychology, and we know how to implement our knowledge through graphic design skills.

If your business needs graphic design services, contact The AD Leaf® by clicking here or calling us directly at (321) 255 0900, and we will happily work with you to drive your company to the number one spot in style.

Wondering how a well-designed logo will benefit your business? Every business needs a logo to be successful, but having a professionally designed logo one will help propel your business to success. Having an established logo is worth every penny of the investment. In fact, 50% of consumers are more likely to patronize a brand with a logo that they recognize. 

Logo design is essential to branding. The logo tells it all: what your brand does, represents, and values. It shapes how people perceive you and your business, which in turn impacts their experience with the product or service that you offer them – be it through words on an advertisement or website page. Anything that has your logo on it impacts the consumer in one way or another.

When people say “not to judge a book by its cover,” they usually do anyway, and logo design is the same. The logo for your business needs to be impactful and memorable, as it sets the tone for the rest of your brand. There’s a reason people can remember logos from big brands instantly. 

An unprofessional-looking logo can also damage customer confidence, as they may question how well you will deliver on products or services rendered at their request.

So, what aspects of a logo should you consider?

Color

A brand color palette also plays an integral part in branding, as it creates a visual experience for the consumer. Think of the most iconic brands: that specific blue linked to a particular jewelry store, or yellow golden arches, a blue arrow. Those brands come to mind immediately without even having to say the name.

The color of your brand is not something to take lightly. Colors can help shape mood and subconsciously shape action. For example, blue invokes honesty, loyalty, and trustworthiness, whereas yellow relates to cheerfulness, serenity, and warmth. 

Not only is the color important, but the saturation of colors is another aspect to take into account. Saturation is how vibrant or dull a color looks. Fully saturated colors are in their purest form, rich and bright, while low saturated colors will look more gray and dull.

Your logo should be viewed on light and dark backgrounds, over pictures or video, and on your products. This is why having variations of your logo (black, white, and full color) is vastly important.

Symbol

Something as simple as an apple or the letter “f” has been turned into some of the most recognizable logos in the world. 

When creating a logo, look in the direction of simplicity. Not only will it help the consumer remember the logo better, but it is more visually appealing than a cluttered logo that looks like it has been designed with no intention in mind. Consumers will know that you are serious about your brand and them.

Type

Typography is more important than people realize. Choosing a font for your logo can be challenging but worth it in the end. It may seem tedious when a graphic designer sends logo variations with nearly identical fonts, but type plays a crucial role in overall branding.

The type should not only reflect your brand, but it should be visually appealing as well. Careful arrangement of typography ensures that your design is well-organized and makes it more engaging. Considering different aspects like font selection, color contrast between blocks and fonts, and blank space produce a better visual experience with users.

Readability is a crucial factor when choosing a type for your logo. Script, display, and gothic fonts tend to be harder to read, while serif and sans-serif fonts are easier to read.

Logo Design and Branding Assistance

A well-designed logo is a vital part of any company’s branding and marketing strategy. It can create trustworthiness with customers and help to set your business apart from the competition. If you need a new logo or want to update your old one, The AD Leaf can help. We have years of experience creating beautiful, simple logos that reflect the essence of your business. Contact us today at 321-255-0900 or email info@theadleaf.com and ask about our Graphic Design services.