Do you want to compete with an outstanding brand identity that your competitors will envy?

Your corporate identity and branding is so important and should be prominent in all your signage, advertising, marketing literature and vehicle livery.

Engaging a professional graphic design services company to design your brand will give your company a competitive edge over others just starting up. No matter what kind of trading company you are, your corporate branding and logo are everything.

There are plenty of graphic designers who provide graphic design services for companies like yours who need the whole package such as a company logo, business graphics, marketing literature and signage, not to mention all your stationery such as letterheads, business cards and compliment slips. Just make sure you pick a good one!

Engaging a good graphic design company is a great investment in your company’s future. After all, you need to have confidence in your branding. And you need to get it right first time. Getting it right the first time will save additional expense on re-branding further down the line.

Your logo design can speak volumes about your business. For instance, it can be used to announce you as an innovative and creative brand, setting a perception that will allow you to get that contract before your number one competitor does.

What about the price though?

The price of getting the correct branding for your business might, at first, appear expensive but the firm who wants to be effective in a market place full of confident companies has to show the same brand awareness.

As I mentioned above, engaging a good graphic design agency to create your branding is an investment in the future of your enterprise. A good graphic designer will use their experience to look at the whole picture and plan out your likely needs and branding application.

They will design your branding with creativity, however, as we live in the real world a professional designer will also design with adaptability. Your branding will have many applications throughout your business so they’ll need to design with this in mind.

Some people try to go down the do-it-yourself route, some ask their local friendly high street printer who has some in-house facilities, but truly, this is not something to rush or to take lightly. You may have to live with it a long time, or even worse, perhaps not if you get it wrong.

From small brands to big brands

When you think of branding, think of Coca Cola. They spend vast sums of money on maintaining their brand to ensure they stay the number one brand across all nations.

Now you might be thinking, “I’m not Coca Cola, I just run a small whatever business…”. Well maybe that’s true for now but your business will stand a much better chance of growing properly if it has the right branding in place from the start.

So spend what you can and try not to skimp on this one. However, if you’re not in a great place financially, then just start with your logo design and build upon it as you go.

There are also lots of ways you can save money through how you apply your branding. But that’s something I’ll be covering in another article coming soon.

Jon Dalrymple

Studio 9 Graphic Designers
121 Giles Street,
Edinburgh
EH6 6BZ

T: (0131) 553 1000

Engage a graphic designer of course! The big question though, is just how do you get them to know what you want?  I mean, they don’t know you’re business, so how could they possibly grasp what your after?

Enter the ‘creative brief’ – a document you can present to your chosen designer which expresses the expected outcomes of your project. This is what you can use to express the direction the design should take.

It actually should be a very creative and enjoyable process in itself, if you approach it the right way. However, for those of you who have done it before and who dread writing up briefs, this could be of some help.

Always keep your briefs brief

Writing up a creative brief gives you and your designer somewhere positive to start and generally helps the design process to go more smoothly. If you go through this process, you’re more likely to end up with a finished project that will fulfill your needs. It’ll also serves as a benchmark against which to measure how successful the design work was.

Your designer will take the project more seriously than if you hit them with some vague ideas. Vague and graphic design just don’t work well together.

Its also a good idea to prepare your creative brief in advance of approaching any designer. It may help to raise questions which could have a bearing on the designer you actually choose to work with. Some are just better at certain things than others, that is, unless your planning to work with a agency that can cover most project types.

Oh, and don’t write War and Peace – they don’t call it a ‘brief’ for nothing – the clue’s in the title.

Great, but where do I start?

Just as no two projects are ever the same, no two briefs are ever the same also. Each project will have it’s own set of objectives and constraints, but don’t worry. Here’s a few guidelines to help you write one.

You might not need to include everything listed and the list won’t work for every conceivable type of project, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere, right?  Just pick the bits that fit with what your doing. If you think something’s missing then add it in! It’s your brief after all.

The following is taken from a proforma brief we use here at Studio 9 Graphic Designers, which is sent out to clients who are not sure where to start.  I hope you’ll find it useful – I know they do.

In a nutshell

The brief should be a clear written explanation, outlining the aims and objectives of the proposed project.

The creative brief is a critical part of the design process. Use it to form an understanding between you, the client, and your designer, what both your requirements and expectations are. Done successfully, it will serve as an essential point of reference for both parties.

Share the blame

Speak with as many people as you feel necessary before briefing your designer. It’s always good to get a bit of additional input. Objectivity can get a bit stale when you work closely with something

This is especially important within a larger organisation. Showing the design brief to different people and asking for their input may reveal remarkable differences in the way different people perceive your organisation’s aims and objectives.

Resolving any potential internal differences in opinion prior to briefing your designer will save considerable time and expense further down the line.

Don’t watch your language

It should go without saying that you should write your brief in a clear and concise way. However, there’s also no reason not to use emotive language to emphasise exactly what you want. Sometime a little bit of passion is all it takes to get the message across effectively. And who doesn’t like a little bit of passion?

Who the hell are you? (Bart Simpson)

Starting your design brief with a short, honest description of your organisation is always a good idea. But don’t take this information for granted, and don’t assume that your designer will necessarily know everything about your organisation and what it does. Even if they’ve worked with you before, please remember that most designers work with a wide variety of clients.

In you own words describe:

• What does your organisation do?
• Who are it’s clients are?
• Where are it’s primary markets?
• How does it fit into the business sector it’s marketing to?
• To date, what are it’s major successes?
• To date what areas does it consider less successful and why?
• How long has it been around?

What are your Aims and Objectives?

So that the project will have any real chance of succeeding you need to ensure that clear goals are set. Try using the following to consider what best represents what your trying to achieve.

Are you trying to:

• reposition yourselves within your market?
• increase uptake of your service?
• encourage more enquiries?
• raise your organisation’s profile?
• totally change or just freshen up your image?
• obtain feedback from clients and/or potential customers?
• create a more consistent approach to your marketing?
• other? Then explain.

Then try listing any particular key issues that need to be addressed and write a short explanation for each so that your designer will ‘get it’.

Whose attention do you want?

Next, describe your primary target markets or audiences along with any relevant details on each.

Explain what you want to gain within these sectors. i.e, if there’s more than one, have you different goals for each?

How will you know if the project’s been a success?

How will you know this within each sector if there’s more than one?

What turns you on?

As well as the brief, its a really good idea to show your designer some examples of what you consider to be effective or relevant design within in your sector. This might be something you’ve seen on the internet (remember to bookmark it), marketing materials sent to you, or even a competitor’s brochure. Alternatively, you might also show them examples of designs you consider to be in-effective or irrelevant!

What is it about the design that you really like or dislike?  If so, explain this and why. If you find it difficult to explain why you like something, try looking it from the viewpoint of its colour, imagery, quality & quantity of text, its typographical style and finally the atmosphere it creates.

Also, pull together samples of your organisation’s current marketing materials – even if their only purpose is to explain what you don’t want from your new marketing materials!
Don’t feel that you have to stick to the same medium when explaining your inspiration and influences. If another medium (ie. television, film, music etc.) creates the atmosphere you want, then say so. Include what photographic styles you like and feel appropriate.

Here’s a thought – have you considered using mediums such as TV, radio or press coverage to acheive your goals rather than just print & web marketing?

The more clues you give to your designer, the more they will be successful in meeting your requirements.

No copy cats please

Remember, although you go through this process, professional designers worth their salt will not copy the ideas and materials you indicate… but they will use them to help kick-start the design process in your favour.

The dreaded subjects of time and money

Even if you can only provide rough figures, a budget expectation will give the designer a good idea of the type of solution they will realistically be able to provide. It will also indicate to you both whether you’re expectations are reasonable within the confines of the brief. If not, you may have to think again.

Of course, its up to you and how much you trust your designer to be honest about this and not to price at your budget’s upper end just because they know what it is. However, if you can’t trust the designer to do this then you probably should find one who you do feel you can trust about all aspects of the project.

Time-scales are also an important consideration – let your designer know if there are any specific deadlines that have to be met. i.e. do you already have a roadmap with clearly defined milestones you would like to achieve within in a projected timeframe? (Ooh, that sounded very corporate!)

What else?

Once you’ve written your creative brief, take a moment to think about and include any other bits and pieces that might be useful for the designer to know about. Such as any other projects on the go that might have an impact on the direction and success of this one. It would not be the first time conflicting messages have been issued from the same organisation.

Who’s the boss?

Within a larger organisation, it’s a good idea to indicate primary points of contact and their roles relating to the project. From a designer’s point of view, its always good to know who to take direction from and also much better if all communications come from one source but with a back up point of contact for emergencies.

The final say

All in all, briefs are a pretty good thing in my book. I always find that projects starting off with a good brief are more likely to meet their objectives, they also run more smoothly and tend to come in on time and on budget. Issues like misunderstandings, mis-directions and the need for kill-fees can be avoided too.

So, have fun and go write those briefs (hopefully for us).

Jon Dalrymple

Studio 9 Graphic Designers
121 Giles Street,
Edinburgh
EH6 6BZ

T: (0131) 553 1000

This time I’d like to give you an insight into some of those little email annoyances that drive me nuts and that we’ve all come across at some time or another. Even if you take a fairly casual approach to emails there are still a few do’s and don’ts that everyone should adhere to so that the people you’re sending them to stand a chance of wanting to open and then read them – otherwise, what’s the point?

Subject to it being interesting

If your email in-box is as full as mine every morning then, like me – and many others I suspect, you probably scan the subject lines for the most relevant or interesting looking ones before you go to the others. Quite often the ‘others’ don’t get read (or deleted) until later in the morning when there’s more time.

So, if you want your emails to get read first, make the subject lines either very relevant or extremely interesting. Oh, and what’s with the blank subject line emails? I don’t even bother to open those – straight into the bin.

Avoiding the junk folder

Blank subject lines are one way to make it to the junk or deleted folder but there are others. Very often quite innocent emails get flagged as spam by people’s email clients and end up with a one-way ticket to the bin. Sophisticated email clients will often pick on words, or phrases, which, in the context of your email, are quite innocent but if they appear on its internal naughty list, your message will be history.

So, what can you do?

Not that much unfortunately, however, if its a persistent problem with only one or two recipients then just call and ask them to put you on their email ‘safe’ or ‘white’ lists. The simplest way to do this on most programs is to put the offending incoming email address into the program’s address book.

Are you into email marketing?

Do you regularly send out to a large list? In this case if you’re messages are constantly being rejected, you could try using one of the online email marketing programs which have built in spam checkers such as www.mailchimp.com or www.aweber.com. These will check your messages for deliverability before you send them and tell you if there are any problems.

Test your emails and avoid playing Scrabble at the other end

The worst emails I receive are those that look like a 5-year old produced them (no insult intended to 5-year olds) because the sender has never bothered to see what their emails look like at the other end.

Now, you may be saying, “Come on Jon, I’m not going to test every email before I send it – that’s just daft”. I’m not suggesting you do, but test a couple now and again by sending them to people on different PC’s with different email clients and ask for their feedback. This might not be a problem with personal emails but in business you must do this – at least once.

The problem arises when you use tabs and spaces to format the content of emails to create tables for figures –sending a quote by email for instance – and everything looks dandy at your end. Unfortunately, the recipient is using a different email client with a different font and at a different size so all that careful formatting you took hours over is completely lost. Instead of impressing your customer, you end up sending a jumbled mess that annoys them rather than selling your product or service.

Attachments are a better option in this instance.

At the very least…

Spell check your emails! All Email clients these days include a spell checker – use it! Also, I know you like to practice your text-speak skills via email but I’d rather be able to understand what you’re trying to say. Oh, and did I mention spell checking?

Please – break the chain – please

Now we come to one of my favourite pet hates – daisy chain emails. They start out simple enough – you send someone an email… and they reply. Their message comes back and automatically below their message is a copy of your one. You reply… and below the new message automatically is a copy of the previous two messages and then they reply… with copies of… well, I think you get the picture. In an email conversation, its not long before there are any number of old messages trailing behind.

This feature is useful for tracking a conversation but after a few dozen replies it becomes extremely difficult to track anything – especially with all the intervening junk the emails automatically insert between each message.

Every so often – break the chain with a fresh email. Incidentally, have you ever printed one of these emails out late in the conversation and forgotten to specify just the first page? War and Peace ring any bells? Not very green!

Email confidential

Beware also the contents of some of those previous emails especially if it has been CC’d from someone else’s ‘chain’. I’ve been privy to some very interesting and useful information that I know the sender would prefer I had not seen because of this (Don’t be silly – of course I’m not going to tell you what it was).

Anonymous@somewhere.com

Does your business send out anonymous emails? “Of course not”, you say but are you so sure. We frequently receive quotes or electronic proofs via email from printers. These very often come from people we don’t normally have any contact with other than by email but for some reason they tend not to sign their emails with a name.

As I write this I have just received an email containing proofs from a rather large Scottish printer which has no subject line, no contact name, no call to action and came from an email address entitled prepress@————.com – and this from a company which is ISO 9001-2000 accredited!

Give people someone to respond to.

MY PERSONAL TOP 5 EMAIL GRIPES

A short list of the things that drive me nuts with some emails.

1. Don’t email me War & Peace! Keeping your emails short and to the point – why do you think Post-It notes and Twitter work so well?

2. Also, no long email signature and disclaimer messages please – I don’t like having to print out unnecessary pages.

3. Please avoid text-speak and messages full of abbreviations or acronyms you think I ought to know but probably don’t.

4. If you must send me emails with large attachments, please send a small one first to let me know what’s coming or to ask if its okay to do so.

5. And finally… DON’T USE BLOCKS OF CAPTIALS – I’M NOT DEAF OR BLIND SO YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT – OKAY!

I hope you enjoyed this short article and please, don’t take it too seriously.

If you would like to read more business articles like this please go to our website at www.studio9scotland.com and sign up for our regular bulletin and we’ll let you know whenever new ones are posted on our blog.

Jon Dalrymple

Studio 9 – Graphic Designers
121 Giles Street
Edinburgh
EH6 6BZ

T: (0131) 553 1000

This two-part article will show you how your emails can contribute positively to your business. It offers a couple of ways to help you better manage your in-coming mail and show you how to use your everyday out-going mail as a free marketing tool. With a little work you can turn email into a real advantage.

Go on – clear out!

Ask yourself this question – “Is my email software slow to open and use?” If the answer is yes, this could be due to all the old emails and attachments your system is trying to cope with – time for a clear out!

Take a look at your in-box. Count how many emails are there (do a select all and look in the status bar) – does it number in the thousands? Around 5,000 upwards, is not uncommon – unless it’s a relatively new account. Check your ‘emails sent’ box too. Imagine if this were paper in your office, how would you ever find anything? That’s what filing and waste bins are for and email is no different.

First you need to address the quantity of old emails. Delete where possible, any you absolutely must keep can be filed in appropriately named email folders (one for each client, supplier or project).  First, view all emails by name, date or one of the other identifiers, then select as individual groups and transfer to the relevant email folder. It can take a bit of time at first but if done regularly, it will be easier to manage.

Alternatively, I offer here, an approach that worked for me when my email threatened to take over but I take no responsibility if you lose any valuable emails whilst using this. You have been warned!

Start by viewing your email in-box by order of date. Go back exactly a year and without looking at them individually, select and delete all emails older than this, Then, look at what’s left and choose to remove old attachments – especially photos. Repeat the process with your ‘emails sent’ box and any other directories or folders you use to store emails. Then, empty the ‘Deleted’ folder to finally remove them from your system.

Immediately you will be surprised at the difference this will make. Go further still if you can and try it with anything older than six months. The more you can get rid of, the better.

At the end you should have a much trimmer and more responsive system with fewer emails to file. I’m willing to bet you will not miss anything you’ve ditched. If there is an odd phone number or email address you need you can probably find it again by other means.

Spam, spam , spam (without the Monty Python)

Sooner or later, we all receive it. Each day, valuable time is wasted sorting out the wheat from the chaff as we try to find the mail we really want to read. Did you know though, that much of it can be avoided and that most of it is of our own making?

One of the best ways to avoid spam in your business email in-box is to only use your main business email address with people and other businesses you have confidence in.

Websites that ask you to register before allowing access usually ask you to submit your name and email address. Whatever you do, DON’T use your regular email address!  Even if the website states in it’s privacy policy that they do not sell addresses on to third parties – DON’T – they could be lying!

For transactions on the internet, set up a secondary email address. When it starts to attract spam, simply ditch it and set up a new one. Try using your name plus a number which can be easily changed, e.g. dave001@whatever.com becomes dave002@whatever.com and so on.

Most email software can be set to automatically detect much of the spam for you. With some, it’s just a matter of dragging a piece of email spam to your ‘Junk Email’ folder (that the email system sets up during installation). Thereafter, any mail coming from that sender will automatically be transferred to the Junk Email folder too. The Junk Email contents can also be set to self-delete at the end of a predetermined period.

Warning: Sometimes mail you do want can end up in this folder. If you find this happening you will need to add these senders to your safe list which is a list of trusted senders that most email software will allow you to create.

Email – a tone of its own

Everyone seems to be in a rush these days and sending emails is no different. We quickly dash off a new message or a response to one sent to us, often without regard to how we could make it more effective for our business. How much thought do you give to how it will be received and viewed at the recipients end (something I’ll cover Part 2 of this article)?

Every email sent to a client is an opportunity. Try to view it as such.

To our suppliers, we are clients, but you might not think it if you could see what passes for business correspondence in the form of emails. I don’t wish to seem uptight about this but if you choose to speak to clients via email, you must treat it with the same diligence you would apply to your other marketing communications.

Would you allow your staff to send your marketing messages hand scribbled on a bit of paper without any forethought? No – so why allow staff to do the equivalent by email?

Ten top tips

Make a difference now – here are my top ten email marketing tips you can employ straight away and better still, they won’t cost you a penny to implement!

DO list your services, offers etc. somewhere in each email. Simply list a few of your services at the foot of your email? E.g. “Thanks you for taking our ‘xyz’ service, however, did you know we also do …”

DO set up your ‘From’ line to start with your company name. We all want to keep our company name in front of our existing clients whenever possible? By placing it at the start of every ‘From’ line when your client looks at their email in-box your name will constantly be in front of them every day – rather than your competitors. (Great ‘persistence marketing’ and it doesn’t cost you a penny.)

DO use the power of the ‘p.s.’ at the foot of your emails. This is an excellent way to draw attention to an important point particularly if you use it as a marketing tool. E.g. “p.s. Oh, by the way, did you know we’re having an open day on….”

DO include your details somewhere within your emails. Name, address, phone number, company email address and most importantly – your website address set up as a link. To make sure people can click on your web address as an actual clickable link, always remember to include ‘http://’ before the ‘www’ part. Set all of this as an ‘Email Signature’ so you don’t have to do it for every new email.

DO start your emails on a friendly note. Don’t just launch in with the details. Keep this in mind especially when sending an email to a client.

DO avoid fancy HTML formatting in your everyday emails. You never know what software the recipient will use to receive them – boring I know, but plain text survives best. Reserve HTML formatted emails for your email marketing campaigns where you can set them up to cope with the vagaries of other people’s email systems. If you do insist on using it, then switch it off after having composed your email to see what it looks like as plain text – the way you client may see it.

DO avoid waffle. If it looks too long then it probably is! Edit it down or pick up the phone instead.

DO avoid using email as a way around speaking to clients you consider difficult. Also, do avoid becoming an email coward! Only cowards deliver bad or awkward news this way.

DO pick up the phone if you’ve got something that’s technically difficult to explain in an email– you’ll experience fewer misunderstandings.

DO be aware of your email tone or rather, the lack of it in messages. It may sound okay in your head but without your nuance of voice behind it, it could be misunderstood so always re-read it before sending.

Finally, if you’ve got the time, its much more pleasant to talk to clients in person so why not pick up the phone instead?

In part 2 of this article, we’ll talk about making sure your email looks okay at the recipient’s end and how to avoid a few of those email annoyances and bad habits.

Jon Dalrymple

Studio 9 (Scotland) Ltd.
121 Giles Street,
Edinburgh
EH6 6BZ

T: (0131) 553 1000