By Jennifer Randall, account rep at ADG Integrated (Published Mar. 29, 2004)

Maybe when you started your company, you created a logo with a word processing program. You then inserted the logo on matching business cards, letterhead and even a website. You got started after a high level of trial and error, with the basic components to convey your company's image, and they seemed to have served you well.

What kind of results have you achieved from the identity you created? Even if they've been satisfactory, now that your organization has grown, it may be time to call on a design agency to help re-focus what you are communicating to other businesses.

I'll back-track a few steps. Perhaps you are just starting and considering how much to budget for marketing efforts. Investing in a design agency to give you a professional identity, before anything has been printed, published or uploaded, is going to be your wisest choice.

A more expensive/less desirable scenario is to waste your valuable time, energy and resources figuring out how to design all of your marketing materials to hold you over until you perceive of your company as "x" enough to hire a design agency to replace everything. {Variable "x" equals profitable, established or experienced.}

On the Mark --> A well-crafted, professional identity is a good investment, no matter where your business is at.

A moment of reflection:
· Have you ever had people, you didn't previously know, show unsolicited enthusiasm over your business card, brochure or website?
·I must ask: have you ever experienced the opposite?!

Having asked the second question, the likelihood of someone honestly telling you that your identity materials leave much to be desired, in a business environment, is probably low. In other words, if people -- who don't have a prior connection to you -- aren't even occasionally enthusiastic about your designed materials, it could be that your materials aren't doing their job in communicating a message which leaves an impression, conveys an emotion or provokes a verbal or non-verbal response.

Here are a few more reasons you might consider calling on a design agency:

1.) In a leaner economy, you want to hone in on your services and market to a niche audience.
2.) Or the opposite - you want to make your offering more general to adapt to various needs.
3.) With competition more fierce, you want to create the most memorable identity possible.
4.) You want to differentiate your service from similar companies who've recently sprung up.
5.) You don't feel your current logo really relates what your organization stands for.

More on that last point, above: what your business says to the world should be left in the hands of experienced visual communicators, versus inspired Photoshop fans. I don't know a design agency that isn't all about implementing creative projects and thinking out of the box. When creativity goes undisciplined, it meanders around and opens itself up to various possibilities. You could call that a version of artistic expression, but you could not call it a guided design approach. If you have some very creative design work that doesn't really say anything about your company beyond, "I'm different," you might want to think about an unrelated type of investment: matting and framing.

Scenario: You've arrived at a networking event, dressed for the occasion, with the thirty-second speech prepared and a ton of business cards, in your pocket. At best, those who got your card will remember you, as the owner of it. In the worst case, they will not remember you, but hold on to your card. In either instance, your card will serve as your "representative." What does it say about you? A well-done card with a solid identity can easily relate your organization's values of the following:

· Excellence
· Professionalism
· Readiness
· Integrity
· Technologically Apt

The list can go on, depending on what you, or your design agency, decide to convey and implement.

On the Mark --> A well-crafted, professional identity is the most strategic way to communicate your company's values and mission with potential clients, investors and other organizations.

At the end of your networking function, you've probably got a pile of cards - a collection of hodgepodge identities (maybe even some whose wrinkles attest to the fact that the flimsy paper chosen could barely withstand the journey home amidst the shuffle of other cards).

Your 48-second awareness exercise:

1.) Pull out that towering pile of business cards, or your Rolodex.
2.) Start flipping through them. Scatter them about. Feel them. Flip them over.
3.) Which ones proudly say "I was crafted by a Pro," and which ones don't?

I did this. I saw a lot of white and ivory and a few dashes of color here and there. And then a few with bold color. One is dark, but very well done and the paper feels almost velvety. Here's one that's ivory and clean, with just the right amount of spacing. This other one hurts my eyes. And this one is interesting, eye-catching, and has color and images on the back. And I remember just the person who gave it to me!

If you did this exercise with me, one thing may be overwhelming clear -- there are so many choices! Objectively, you can probably see many business cards you are neutral about, and maybe a couple that you honestly like, and a few which shout 'amateur,' and do nothing to enhance the image of the company.

In layman's terms, these are the choices, made purposefully or not, when a new design is implemented via your most portable identity asset - the business card:

· thickness, texture and sheen of paper
· application of color and shine of ink
· size and amount of words
· mixture of typefaces
· spacing between words and letters
· spacing around groups of words
· positioning of icons or visual elements

This is just the area covering the depth, width and height of a business card. This does not include the deployment of your design strategy across various media, including brochures, pocket folders, stationery, cd-card and a website.

With much room for error or excellence in speaking professionalism, purpose and values - I hope we may now be in agreement that image speaks louder than words!

On the Mark --> Invest in a well-crafted, professional identity and step up into a level of communicating your image that well-established professionals come to expect from the same.

Finally, a "branded" identity -- your brand identity expressed by way of business cards, letterhead, envelopes, etc. -- is the end result, or product, of engaging in a branding campaign. In the next article of the "Making Your Mark" series, we'll discuss what a branding campaign entails.

Jennifer Randall, an Account Executive at ADG Integrated www.adgintegrated.com, has 8 years of interactive design experience from DC to Dulles to New York to Boston and Milan. She revels in the strategy of visual communication and is reached at jrandall@adgintegrated.com.

Back to top
Current Digitalharboronline Columns Page