Of course these days a website is often considered the single most important marketing tool of any business.
There are many different types of websites on the internet today – simple personal sites, more robust business sites, and major business/corporate sites. The actual functionality of these sites varies as well, from being strictly informational, to being fully functional on a national or global level (such as communication and financial institution sites).
There are many, many facets to web development. The internet is also a liquid medium, meaning each day new technologies emerge and the way a site is developed, designed, marketed and visited is constantly changing. Each of these facets of web development can be explored to extensive ends, consuming a lot of time, energy and money.
The importance of these areas and bottomline impact on your budget and project depends on your unique goals and needs.
Graphic Design / Print Solutions
While the internet has quickly become the marketing cornerstone to any business, print is still an extremely effective advertising/marketing medium.
Of course any serious and legitimate business should have core identity materials – a logo, business cards, letterhead, and mailing envelopes – Beyond this a well designed printed piece can speak volumes to an intended audience. Whether it’s a flyer, direct mail piece or magazine advertisement, print is tangible and highly impressionable.
Logo Design
Lets face it, people judge books by their covers. And, as the old adage says “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”.
A well designed logo tells clients you’re serious about your profession, and your product or service. It lets them know that you pay attention to detail and quality is important to you in every aspect of what you do.
A business logo defines your image on every level… plain and simple.
You may have the best functioning widget in the world, but if a client meets you (sees your logo and other identity materials), is unimpressed, or worse gets an uneasy feeling from the lack of professionalism and presentation, they very may well turn to one of you competitors – someone who’s widget isn’t as impressive, but someone who presents themselves in a fashion that instills confidence making the client feel comfortable and sealing the deal.
Logo Design Vs. Graphic
Often, we are approached by small businesses or startups taking their first steps toward serious branding and marketing. Many times these clients request a logo design when what they’re really looking for is the creation of a static graphic instead. Let us take a moment to clarify the difference.
A logo is a symbol, typographic or illustrative design, adopted by an organization to identify itself, product or service.
Professional logos are virtually always created as line art or vector art – which means they can be scaled to literally any size without losing any quality. This core ability allows logos to be placed on a very wide gamut of marketing materials from a small business card, to a baseball cap or jacket, to the side of a vehicle, to a large roadside billboard etc…
Logos typically need no or very minimal changes to be applied to various uses.
In contrast, a static graphic is a design, or illustration created to a specific size and use. This type of graphic may or may not be line art and often may contain a mixture of photographic (or raster) elements as well as line art elements. Static graphics begin to lose quality when you enlarge or shrink them.
A website banner, the front panel of a product package, or the front cover to a book, are all examples of a static graphic.
Static graphics typically need significant changes or need to be totally reworked in order to be applied to other uses than those originally intended.
Further, logos are used to communicate a more general message then a static graphic. If you owned a shoe store for example, you would rely on your logo to attract attention, and recognition not inform consumers of the latest sale, or 3 new locations opening up downtown. For this more specific communication, a static graphic would be created (of course in all likelihood utilizing the logo in the design).
