For Relax America, we took concepts from internally developed graphics and translated them into a consumer brand by adjusting colors, and tweaking the design.

I am surprised when people, who use Facebook for business connections, post political items. Is it a bad branding decision to “like” a presidential candidate?

If you haven’t noticed, the bar for the quality of photos used in most marketing materials is extremely low. It seems that everyone wants the benefit of photography without paying much for it.

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is why photography so often plays a critical role in a web design, printed marketing materials, book cover design, etc. But it seems like very few people have the budget to pay for a photographer, so more and more we rely on stock photography and royalty-free photography. (Read this for an explanation of the difference between stock and royalty-free photos.)

As a designer, I have many clients who expect photography as part of a design solution but are not prepared for the extra costs, therefore we are forced to use these same low-cost options. Here at Visible Logic, the other designers and I have learned to quickly sort through the loads of poor-quality photos and find those diamonds in the rough.

With our experienced eye we can:

• sort though and determine which photos are the best
• crop them in a way to make them look better
• colorize them or apply another treatment to create a more distinct look for them
• integrate them into a design so that they become part of a larger (better) design solution

Designing a brand identity is the chance to emphasize key elements that should be repeated, and add in elements that could not be part of the logo design.

I can’t tell you how frequently clients come to me and say: I just want a simple logo. Nothing fancy or complex, just simple. The expectation is that a simple logo design will cost less than a complex one. Let me explain why this is not usually the case. First of all, the mark of a well-designed logo is its simplicity. While this is not always true, it is true more often than not. If you look at the iconic logos of our time, they are universally simple. Think of FedEx, Nike or the Apple logos. The work of a professional designer is to distill the elements of a logo to it’s simplest form, yet still keep it unique and recognizable. Often, a less trained designer, and therefore less expensive designer, is unable to do this. To design a strong brand identity, we need to start by doing a full exploration. The process for creating logos can take a long  Continue Reading »