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Creating a brand is one of the most important marketing decisions you can ever make. When you build a website, you are either creating a new brand or following an existing brand. It is imperative that you always stick with branding no matter what. Branding is everything in an advertising campaign because it shows a common appearance because it the reader can relate to your business with. It is important to create a brand because it will allow the person to immediately recognize your company when someone gives them a business card, sends them to their website, gives away a brochure, or puts up a billboard. Keeping a campaign that follows designer established rules is very important to a successful campaign, as well as the success of their business.
Features of a brand include what colors, fonts, sizes, pictures, cardstock, or even the amount of space that is used when advertising. The most important aspect of their advertising campaign is most usually their logo. Things that you need to think about before developing their website is: Do they have a logo? Will their logo look good on the web? Am I using their logo the same way that it is being used in their other advertising campaigns?
If you’re building this website for yourself or for a new business, most likely you do not have a logo to work with and you’ll have to create one. Since you’ve already chosen a color scheme and a layout for the website you are about to develop, you should begin thinking of logo ideas–if one doesn’t exist yet of course. A logo, although usually seems extravagant, is actually a very simple process. It’s generally a simple text version of the company’s name (i.e. Amazing Design Secrets) in a bold and clear font that sometimes has some type of emblem or symbol next to it. For the sake of building their website, my advice is to keep it simple. There are marketing companies that charge thousands and thousands of dollars for a simple logo which you can throw together in five minutes (using techniques I will show you how to do later on in the book). If you are building this website for an established business that already has a logo, be sure to incorporate aspects of the logo into your design. As I mentioned, branding is very important when developing any advertising entity, so it is very important to follow these trends strictly.
One exercise that I found very helpful when developing a logo for my clients is, with the same paper method we used earlier, to draw out exactly what you’re imagining in your head. It’s okay if the idea that you came up with is simple because you can always design around the logo no matter how simple the idea is or how ugly it is.
Here is an insider secret that designers don’t want the world to know when their building websites and advertising campaigns, they don’t always build them themselves. Although we’ll never admit that we do this, there are several services on the internet that generate royalty free logos for very cheap prices.
Design Secret
Logo Creator Studio - Logo Creator Studio has some fantastic logos very low prices. If you’re in a hurry to build logo so you can get started on developing a website, I would definitely recommend this shortcut.
Whether you decided to develop or follow an existing brand, doing so is the key to your client’s success, which means its key to your success as a professional web designer. Whether you’re learning to become a web designer as a trade, to start a business, or to just have a hobby, consistency will bring you far more benefits in the long run and will make you more money in the long run.
Article written by Andrew J. McClary, © 2008, All Rights Reserved.
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