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Posts Tagged ‘graphic design’

Consumer behaviour is changing and it is looking to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Throughout the boom of the last few years, we have seen very small business adequately competing with the bigger brands. Many of these websites have gone local to global in a very short space of time, thanks to their prices. People were willing to buy products and services from a company or website they’d never heard of, if the price was lower. But business are loosing the battle against the recession every day, many of them most likely leaving customer orders unfulfilled, thus consumer confidence is at an all time low. What does this mean? well it means that all of those bargain hunters are returning to the big brands that they recognise, even if that means spending more money, because they don’t want to take the risk.

With the recession causing people to loose their jobs, some have looked to the internet as a portal for their salvation, but starting their own business. But even in the recession, web business is booming, Barclays showed that even in the credit crunch 98,000 new business popped up over only a three month period. It can be a thankless route to success. Around the same number of businesses failed during that period too!

I believe that most new online business fails due to bad branding. You brand and logo are the first things that your future customers see. This is how you are judged by those who keep your business afloat, the people logging in everyday to buy your goods, that see you as a logo and that logo is critical to the process. But it’s so often the case that startup owners put off paying professional logo design in the initial stages. All to often its “Lets see how many customers we can get before we think about branding”.So what they do is, try to knock one together in paint or get a mate down the pub to create one. Many new companies unfortunately opt for cheap Vista Print Logos or free clip art to design their brand.

This isn’t acceptable for a Brand. All web business now more than ever, need to look much bigger and much more capable via good marketing, to retain customers and encourage new ones.  In these anxious times the image of stability and reliability is more crucial than ever. Very small businesses need to look like a much bigger business, its possible. As I’ve touched on above, people nowadays are more and more attracted to bigger brands and bigger companies. And finally, a good image will make it more likely for customers you do have to refer you to their friends and family.

The bottom line is this. Bankruptcy will hit around half small business very early on in their life, usually within two to three years. Badly planned marketing strategies are thought to be the main cause of most websites decline. A custom logo design helps you create the right image for this marketing to succeed. So do yourself a favour – start looking at some sample logos in your industry and see what the successful ones have in common.  Then get yourself a proper graphic designer to plan and create a great corporate identity that will help you not only stay afloat but truly stand out and succeed.

The current climate is causing a real shift in how consumers use the internet. Throughout the boom of the last few years, we have seen very small business adequately competing with the bigger brands. Many of these websites have gone local to global in a very short space of time, thanks to their prices. Before the recession web users searched out the best price for the products they wanted, now they look for the best brands that will still be there when they need them if something goes wrong. But business are loosing the battle against the recession every day, many of them most likely leaving customer orders unfulfilled, thus consumer confidence is at an all time low. What does this mean? well it means that all of those bargain hunters are returning to the big brands that they recognise, even if that means spending more money, because they don’t want to take the risk.

Although in times such as these when people are worried for their jobs or loosing them, some start to consider their dream business online and of being their own boss. Research from Barclays last year showed that there were 98,000 start-ups created in the UK within a three month period, despite the credit crunch. Yet it’s a tough road to go down. While nearly 100,000 new start-ups are taking off another 100,000 are crashing to the bankruptcy pile!

I believe that most new online business fails due to bad branding. You brand and logo are the first things that your future customers see. It’s crucial to what people use to judge whether you are trustworthy or not. But it’s so often the case that startup owners put off paying professional logo design in the initial stages. It seams to be a matter of “Lets wait and see what happens, then we will design something”.Then they design one themselves in photoshop and thinking that looks fine, load it up to the site. Many go for free clipart template business cards and stationery design from somewhere like vista print.

This isn’t acceptable for a Brand. All web business now more than ever, need to look much bigger and much more capable via good marketing, to retain customers and encourage new ones.  In these anxious times the image of stability and reliability is more crucial than ever. You also want to avoid looking like a very small business, even if you are one. So, these days online customers are looking back to the bigger brands or at least who they deem to be the big brands. And finally, a good image will make it more likely for customers you do have to refer you to their friends and family.

The fact of he matter is. About 50% of all new start-ups are forced into bankruptcy within only a few years. Experts agree that one of the main reasons for failure is poorly thought out  and shoddy marketing. A custom logo design helps you create the right image for this marketing to succeed. So do yourself a favour – start looking at some sample logos in your industry and see what the successful ones have in common.Find yourself a professional designer who can carve out a unique identity for your brand and ensure its success in such a stormy climate.

Web design tip number one – Use black text on a white background.

Web design that converts visitors into customers must make sure that any sections of text greater than 2 lines uses dark text, preferably black text on a white background.  For blocks of text in your web design you need to forget about fancy font colours and dark backgrounds in your attempt to achieve visual appeal.  Your web design should stick with the basics of making your text easy to read on the screen.

The web design reasons for it include…

In order for you to be able to sell to your potential customers.

1. Your web design needs to make it easy for people to take in your information.
2. Research indicates that having more than a 15% background tint will negatively impact on the effectiveness of your sales message.
3. Your web design needs to be all about conversion and less about the branding.

If you are a small to medium business then selecting a dark text on a white background for main copy usage use is the most sensible and cost effective strategy to use.

Identify the most popular keywords.

A critical step in any internet marketing program is to research the most popular key phrases and target these in your web design.  Then once you know what they you need to make sure that these keywords occur on your website.

To grow your business, you web site needs to be seen and that need to come mostly from search engines ranking you for your key words.

Web design is often a less about the design, and more about the copy, because if the copy does not contain the frequently searched for keywords/phrases, then you are never going to get in front of a customer. So make sure that you know which keywords you should be being found for and place these strategically in your text throughout the site.

Make your web site visually appealing.

Some graphic designers may be worried web design tip number one and number two are diametrically opposed to web design tip number three.

The reality is that you need to be found in the search engines and have your information easily communicated first.  But you must also at all times present your information in a professional manner to engender the customer trust required in order to purchase from you for request information from you.

By the following of these three simple rules above in your business, you will benefit from more sales leads, signups and sales conversions from your web design.

Evolution of Pepsi Logo Designs on YouTube

It’s the biggest recession in modern history. Massive corporations previously thought of as indestructable are collapsing. The ones who remain are being extra cautious not to keep spending ridiculous amounts of money on things like marketing campaigns. Right?

Not for Pepsi. The soft drinks giant are reported to have spent an incredible $10 million for their new logo design. Yes, you heard me right. It’s just a fraction of the estimated $1.2 billion they’re spending on a global rebrand of all their products.Correct me if I’m wong here, but if I spent that amount of silly money on a logo you’d think I’d be getting the hottest logo EVER – correct? Erm, not quite. If you ask me, the new Pepsi logo is terrible. As a recent LA Times article put it, it looks like a fake foreign knockoff of Pepsi. To begin with the font they used has been revealed as being almost identical to one they used for Diet Pepsi back in the 1980s. Then we come to the motif of the logo. It’s hardly changed! And it’s hardly taken the design world by storm. In the words of design critic and editor of Before & After magazine John McWade, the new Pepsi logo is “static, empty and vaguely bland”. Let’s take a look see and try and find out what they spent all this money on for their logo?

The new design has been done by New York based branding agency Arnell. A mind blowing document got leaked on to Reddit by an anonymous mole, which was one of the things used to present the new logo design to Pepsi execs. The document, modestly named “A breathtaking design strategy”, is a 101 in advertising BS. According to this document, the new Pepsi logo has been inspired by the likes of the architecture of the Parthenon and the proportions of the Mona Lisa. The next step in this raving luncay compares the Pepsi logo with Planet Earth’s gravitational fields! There’s even a bit where it talks about “The Gravitational Pull of Pepsi” in the shopping aisle.

If you read this crazy document you will understand how this all happened. Pepsi came to this hotshot design agency and asked for a new custom logo design. The head honchos at the design agency heard cash registers going off in their heads.  First they got one of their graphic designers to throw together a few rough sketches and sample logos which eventually became Pepsi’s simple new logo redesign. OK so that was what, maybe a couple days work at most for a competent designer. At this point it would be laughable to have even thought about charging $10million for basically a two overlapping circles and a curved line, wouldn’t you agree? So they told their team to spend the rest of the time coming up with the most outrageous, masturbatory and extra-terrestrial justifications of the design. They cranked up the BS machine to the ‘it’s gonna blow!’ mark to show how this new logo is linked to THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR AND THE TIMELESS FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE. Now THAT’s worth ten million dollars! It would have been hilarious to have been in the room during the presentation. Pepsi, you got hustled!

It is intriguing to see how web development has moved on over the past several years. The world wide web has turned from a niche for brochure-ware and intranets into one of the biggest software development environments in the market over just a few years. The web as a platform is a hollow dream no longer – you can now run and develop a web application without needing to host any sort of web page yourself and you can even get the data from a wide variety of other sources. Web development has created jobs around our country which is really helpful. Just watching the TV for five minutes these days is depressing enough – no jobs, un-employment crashes to a new high and the recession just gets deeper and deeper.

Moving web development on is a very tricky business. When designing a site you now need to consider cutting edge graphic design and logo design. Simply building some for the web is no where near enough anymore, people want the full package. Unless you have a very compelling product or idea most clients will already have something in place web wise and chances are they have already spent a lot of money on it. Maintaining a website is much more common these days than creating something innovative. Yet in today’s modern web society just creating a site is not enough. You want to able to get your site seen. How do you do that? Keeping on top of web trends is understanding the logistics of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). SEO is fundamentally tweaking your website to be visible with search engines such as Google and Yahoo! If you can get your site seen by these search engines the amount of revenue and visibility you can get from these search engines is incredible and it can completely revolutionise a business.

So what about the future? Well if I knew that I would be on a hot beach somewhere soaking up the sun. However what I will say is that the way some web developers deal with market forces and business people is wrong. What matters these days is how fast you can do the project and how quickly you can get it to market. This goes against what I believe in as a web designer and I think businesses should stand up and fight against these ‘quick wins’. What do you think?

Graphic design is a term that makes a reference to the line of work and skill that centers on visual presentation and communication. The art of graphic design unites words, ideas, images and symbols into a visual presentation with an aim of imparting information to an audience. Accordingly, if one wishes to display a process, make an announcement, elaborate on a intricate system or coax an individual, a visual medium of communication is usually extremely effective and graphic design will be of great aid. The term refers to both the products (designs) and the process (designing).

Graphic design solutions are made up of components like lines, color, type and texture. Lines are used to direct eyes, section off space and create forms. Color is largely used to invoke emotions and make an image outstanding. Type should be utilized to successfully impart a message. Texture involves the feel of a design surface and can additionally be communicated through the design style. The blending of these design components need to be utilized with the objective of making certain that a piece of work reveals unity and balance. No element should overshadow the other.

A graphic designer assembles images and utilizes methods for page layout in a variety ways.  Typography and visual arts are utilized to organize design elements on diverse types of mediums like computer printouts, logos, posters, letters, magazine advertisements and web pages. Have a look at web design fulham for examples.

Computers and graphic software packages have been deemed essential tools in graphic design. A graphic designer will make use of graphics software applications including InDesign, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The designer works with various tools that these packages provide to make sure the audience receives an appealing message. The chief communication tools are typography and images.

To achieve successful results when designing a project, there are certain {steps} to be followed. Rather than jumping right away into graphics software applications to create a graphic project, it is sensible to lay down a blueprint of the course of action that should be followed successively to achieve the required outcome. One can save a lot of energy and time by first studying a topic, summarizing the methodology, starting out with sketches and using approved design methodologies to come up with the final product.

Currently, graphic design is swamping the domain of marketing and various other similar domains such as TV and web page design. This article describes how graphic design has matured into the appealing and dominant art that it is at the present time. Several of the very many uses of graphic design are presented too.

Uniting Both Design and Production

Even when new production techniques were launched during the Industrial Revolution, designing communication mediums, such as books and magazines, was regularly a distinct job from the actual production. This implied that book publishers, magazine companies, and advertising organizations consistently had to hire art directors who would be in charge of bringing all visual facets into union. Design and production could never be a single undertaking.

In this day and age {though}, primarily because of the technological developments now available to designers, graphic design is both a design and production venture. Thus, graphic design has progressed to become a field, art, and vocation all its own. Presently, its uses are evidenced in almost everything around us.

Graphic Design and Marketing

From notes to published materials to web sites, graphic design can be applied in various fields. In particular, marketing and branding appear to be maximizing the uses of graphic design – see graphic designer fulham for many examples of this. In these times, advertising campaigns feature a lot of creativity and, as a result of the expressiveness of graphic design, are occasionally even without words. Being careful that visual aspects are all in harmony is therefore extremely important in order for marketing campaigns to impart their message.

Several Other Uses of Graphic Design

Graphic design is not just about ad campaigns and posters though. It has also made its way into publications as well. Magazines and their page layouts sustain design processes. The handling of each visual aspect on a magazine spread has the ultimate aim of creating uncluttered, cohesive layouts. Concurrently, graphic designers must make sure to include creative components that will help attain an aesthetically-pleasing look and feel. Book covers utilize graphic design too.

In modern times, Internet sites are essential and graphic designers find great application for their skills in web design. The most challenging aspect of web site design is to blend visual communication with interactive communication in order to enhance the visitor’s online experience. Designers have the objective of creating a web site that is as visually enticing as it is educational.

Aside from all of the uses mentioned above, one can find the use of graphic design in clothing, company logos, invitations, posters, and a variety of types of print media. The development of graphic design does not show any evidence of letting up. Technological developments, are definitely going to continue to bring the discipline steps higher.