Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Web Design Decision #7: Stock Photos

The second way to get photos for your marketing materials is to buy photos from a stock photo website.

Stock photos can be great because:

• Stock photos are affordable. With prices ranging from $5 to $100 for most royalty-free stock photos, even the smallest of businesses can afford to use photographs on their marketing pieces.
  
• Widely available. Before the Internet, stock photos were only available by calling stock photo houses, getting catalogs and talking to their representatives. This didn’t make it easy for small businesses to get access to stock photos without going through a design agency. But, now, stock photo houses have searchable websites that make it easy for small business owners to go find their own photos.
  
• Lots of subjects/topics. You’d be amazed at the breadth of the content of the photos. People of all ages and races, in all sorts of places and situations, doing a whole variety of things. Animals, objects, locations… it’s all there.
  

Some of the cons against stock photography include:

• You can’t control how the image is used by others. Your photo of a smiling young man could later be used as a testimonial fee for a new type of medication – implying that your spokes model now has – or recently recovered from - some sort of horrible disease!
  
• Your competitors might use it. Along the same line as the above point, you can’t keep your competition from using the same image. They may use it out of ignorance – if they don’t do their research on your materials, then using it may be purely accidental. Or, they may use it to piggyback off of your reputation and your marketing efforts.
  
• You can’t always find what you want. If you’re looking for something really specific – like a piece of technology or a very particular topic, then you might have some trouble finding an accurate image.
  
• Searching takes a long time: Since there are so many sources out there, and each source has many, many images available, it can be a very time-consuming process to search for the ideal image. Be sure that you have enough time to address this in your project’s timeline.
  

Web Design Decision #7: What Type of Photography To Use?

There are three major sources for photographs for your website: Your own digital camera, stock photography websites, and getting photos taken by a professional photographer.

Your Own Digital Camera: I’ve seen far too many small business owners get purchase a digital camera and immediately decide that they can take their own photographs for their website. I understand that this is a tempting solution – after all, you’ve got the camera, and it’s just point-and-shoot, right? But, too often, this leaves you with photographs that leave something to be desired.

The most common mistakes that I see with taking your own photos:

You might assume that your graphic designer can magically clean up a bad photo. Sure, with Photoshop and a steady hand, a good designer can improve a photo considerably. But, if your photo needs more than a little cropping, a small bit of color adjustment, or some red-eye removed, then it will take a designer some time to make the fixes.

Starting with a good photo is the best way to avoid all of this work and the additional charges that come with it. Make sure that your photo has adequate lighting and that you look as professional as possible – it’s a lot of work to Photoshop out a stray bra strap, wrinkles in your clothes, or distracting things in the background. And, it’s nearly impossible to fix textured items – like a hole in a patterned shirt or a bad hair day.

Your dining room isn’t a photo studio. Photographers can make their product shots look so good because they have specialized lighting and backdrops available. Setting your beautiful product up on your dining room table just won’t cut it – even if you use your nicest tablecloth.

If you must take your own product shots, make sure that you use a plain background – a nice, ironed tablecloth in white or some other light color is best. And, take the photo outside in indirect sunlight – it’s much more flattering than harsh, direct light or indoor light.

You don’t always look at the whole photo. Everyone has a photo in their family photo album with that family member who looks like they have a tree growing out of their head. But, if your professional headshot includes “antlers”, then it won’t make you look as professional as you should!

If you are going to take your own head shots, look at both the background and the foreground. And, make sure that the surroundings that you take your headshot in are professional enough to match your brand. That flower garden you love may be a lovely spot, but it might not be professional-looking enough for your consulting head shots.

You might be great at taking candid home photos, but professional-quality photos are a whole different ball game. If you are going to take your own photos, I suggest learning a bit about photography first – take a class at your community college, or read a book about taking good photos or do some web searching. The better your photos are, the more professional your company will look.

Your digital camera might not take high-enough quality photos for print use. It’s great to use the same photos on your website and on your printed materials - it adds consistency to your Visual Vocabulary. But, if your camera doesn’t take very high-resolution photos, then they might not print out very well, which could pose a problem.

Run a test photo by a designer so that they can see if your photo will work well when professionally printed. And, be sure to save your original photo file – once the photo is resized for web use, you will have lost valuable data that you can’t get back.

Web Design Rule #6: Photography

Using photos on your website is a great way to add more color, visual interest and to add to your site’s overall emotional tone. But, photography can be a budget-buster. Here are some tips on using photos:

• As an element of the general page design. Photos can be placed underneath your navigation items in a vertical navigation menu, or in the upper right corner of your website frame. This can add visual texture to every page of your site, and act as a major contributor to your Visual Vocabulary. This is a great technique for livening up a website for a company that has a very simple logo or a text-only logo. You can also change these images from page to page to add more variety to your site.
  
• As a feature on the home page. Many home page designs are centered around a large image in the center of the page. This image may also be accented by some words – a tagline, service bullet points, or a marketing campaign statement like “Kids’ Easter Fashions That Hop!”. If you’re not ready to write a detailed home page, or if your company’s brand is more focused on emotions, this can be a great approach. This is also a strong solution for companies whose brands depend on visuals – like fashion companies, furniture companies, or even design companies.
  
• To highlight your company’s offerings. In a product-based company, this usually means having photos of your company’s products throughout the site. You should certainly use photos of your company’s products in the shopping cart to show the products off and communicate their value. If your company is a service company, then showing photos of what you do may be difficult. If you do produce a physical end-product – like a decorator or architect, for example – then be sure to take photos of your work and post them on your site. If you don’t, then you can highlight your offerings by writing up case studies or posting testimonials and including your clients’ head shots or logos next to those.
  
• To show who you are and build trust. Whether you sell products or services, it helps to have a headshot of yourself and any key people in your company on your company’s “About” page. You can also use these photos on your press page, and alongside promotions for classes or written materials to show who’s involved in your company. I also suggest placing a headshot on a thank-you page. This helps to build trust and makes your company seem more “human” and friendly in this technical media.
  
• As an accent throughout the site. You can use strategically-placed stock photos throughout your site too add visual interest. If you choose to do this, I recommend that you select photos that have a similar theme. This means that they have subject matter and/or color palette commonalities. For example, one site that I designed for an investment firm included photos that all depicted sports. Another site that I designed for a computer company had photos that all had a muted color palette. This helps the site to look cohesive.
  
• As a highlight or special promotion. If you’re promoting or selling a special service or product that you want to shine a spotlight on, accenting your offer with a photo or even an illustration can help bring it some extra attention, and get it noticed on your site. This will help you to close more sales.
  

Web Design Rule #5: Prepare Your Image Files Appropriately

After you’ve created a beautiful design for your website, the next step is to make sure that you prepare your image files appropriately. There are a few considerations to making sure that your images are prepared well:

File size: The file size of your images used to be a source of concern. Ages ago, when the Internet was relatively new, most website visitors only had dial-up connections. Since these were so slow, it was very important to make your website images as small as possible – and, this was sometimes accomplished by compressing color palettes to include a very minimal number of colors, or by using the fewest number of images possible on your website.

Luckily, DSL and cable modems have made browsing the Internet much faster. Paring your images down to the smallest possible size is no longer absolutely necessary. But, you still should make sure that your files are somewhat small in size, so that they are still quick-loading for any visitors who may still be using dial-up connections.

No rasterizing: Rasterizing is an effect that you can sometimes get on website graphics when you reduce the number of colors in the color palette. The image will separate out into distinct dots of color, which results in the image looking grainy. Make sure that your images are saved for the web with enough colors in the color palette to make them look smooth.

File formats: There are two very common file formats that can be displayed in a web browser: GIF and JPEG.

• GIF images are best for artwork that has large areas of flat color – like a logo, a stripe of color or a vector image cartoon. Saving those files as GIFs will ensure that the large areas of color remain smooth and solid. GIF images allow for background transparency, which can allow you to place these images inside larger blocks of color and let the background color show through.
  
• GIF images allow you to reduce your file size by allowing you to choose the number of colors that will appear in the final image. It then compresses the image’s color palette down to the number of colors in that palette. It does this by choosing the most common colors in the image as the colors for the palette and then changing any additional colors into the closest color on the reduced palette. This can result in rasterizing.
  
• When you create a transparent background on a GIF image, there can sometimes be a halo effect of a background color (also called the Matte color in the “Save to web” palette in Photoshop). Make sure that this color value is set appropriately so that your image will look good on its’ background.
  
• JPEG images are best used for gradient images or photos because they can smoothly render the whole rainbow of color.
  
• JPEG images allow you to change the file size by adjusting the quality of the image on a sliding bar. You don’t have to use the highest quality (typically a 10) on the scale to get good results on the web. But, you also shouldn’t use a very low quality like a 2 or 3, either – it will make your image look chunky. An image quality between 6 and 8 typically works well for most web graphics.
  

Web Design Decision #6: Flash vs. HTML: If you must use animation…

If you must use animation to convey a concept, then there are a few elegant ways that you can do that. The best choices include:

Embedding a small Flash animation in a regular HTML page. You can use the advantages of Flash to your advantage by creating a Flash animation as an inset on a web page. That way, you get all the benefits of both worlds – the Search Engine friendliness and ease of maintenance of a regular web page, and the animation capabilities of Flash, which can deepen your communication with your customers and your website’s overall effectiveness.

Just make sure that you don’t get carried away with embedding animations in your website. You don’t want to have too many moving images tucked all around your site – that would just be distracting and could make your visitors feel a little sick!

For the pros and cons of Flash and HTML, see the previous 2 posts.

Use Flash wisely – on the home page, or to explain complicated processes or products – and you’ll benefit from it.

Animated GIFs: For simple animations, I recommend using animated GIFs. You can use these to create animations with several frames of graphics, which is often enough to create an interesting and eye-catching effect, and to illustrate simple concepts.

The pros of this approach are:

• You don’t have to resort to learning a complicated program to create them. They’re easy to create and to edit using simple graphics editing software like Photoshop and ImageReady.
  
• They’re pretty easy to create – and therefore, they tend to take less time and to be less expensive. And, a good number of designers know how to
  
• Animated GIFs also can be sent in HTML emails. Some HTML emailing programs and email reading programs aren’t yet advanced enough to handle Flash files. But, your animated GIFs will translate to your HTML emails just fine.
  

The cons of this approach are:

• Animated GIFs aren’t as advanced as Flash. You won’t be able to create smooth fades or movement using an animated GIF. But, if your animation is not very complicated, animated GIF files can work very well.
  

Web Design Decision #6: Flash vs. HTML: The pros and cons of both.

Part 2: HTML
HTML is a computer coding language that tells a web browser how to display text and images.
Pros of using HTML:

• There are lots of web designers who work in HTML.. HTML is the most basic website coding language – so nearly every web programmer can work efficiently in it. Some web designers are also fluent in HTML. So, you’ll be opening up your project and your site to a large base of available talent
  
• It’s quick to make additions, updates and changes in HTML.. In Flash, you have to go into the master file to make even the smallest of changes, and then export the file to put it online. In HTML, you just have to edit a simple text file to make your updates.
  
• There are lots of easy-to-use programs that you can maintain your own HTML website with.. I recommend Adobe Contribute, which is as easy to learn and use as Microsoft Word. Doing your own website maintenance can save you hundreds of dollars per year in marketing fees.
  
• The Search Engines understand and love plain HTML.. Since the search engines read text, and HTML files are entirely made up of text code, they can easily see, understand and index the content of your site if it’s coded in HTML. And, every entrepreneur wants to rank well in Google, right?
  
• All web browsers can read HTML files, provided they’re well written.. So, you won’t run into any compatibility issues.
  
• Since they’re text-only files, HTML files are automatically very small. - which can help your site to load quickly.
  

Cons of HTML:

• Well, it’s just not “cool”. HTML isn’t sexy. But, sexy isn’t always effective. If your business needs to be seen as “cool” – such as an entertainment or automorive business – then an HTML site might not be for you.
  
• HTML files are table-based. and therefore tend to have a “boxy” design. Advanced CSS techniques are making this less of a necessary evil, but advances CSS techniques are still not commonplace or easy to implement.
  

A Logo Is Not A Tattoo: Why Your Personal Tastes Have Nothing To Do With Your Logo

As a business owner, one of the most important business decisions you'll make is choosing the design of your logo. Whether you design the logo yourself or hire a designer, you'll have to make some decisions during the design process.

But you want to make sure that the logo you decide on will work well. Many business owners make the mistake of basing their logo choices on their personal preferences. But your 'likes' should have very little to do with your logo design.

Before I go into why this is the case, let me tell you a story of the most difficult logo designs that I ever did. This logo was for an entrepreneur who was running a very small spa.

Now, this project didn't start out difficult. I'd done several logos for spas in the past and during the course of those projects I had learned a lot about the industry. The business also had a good, solid brand definition, and the business owner had filled out my branding worksheet thoroughly. So I thought that the project would go smoothly and that I'd create a fabulous logo for her in no time.

I designed her first round of the logo to reflect the brand that she'd been setting up for herself. But, when she got the initial designs, I got an almost immediate call back — she hated them! We talked a bit about her brand, her clients and their tastes, and all of the things that I take into consideration when designing a brand. And we talked about how the sketches reflected those considerations. But then the real problem came out — she actually had a bigger vision for her logo.

She wanted to have the final logo tattooed onto her hip!

She wasn't just looking at the business effectiveness of this logo — she wanted a sexy personal symbol! This was a whole different challenge.

She was set on designing a 'tattoo' logo, even though I didn't recommend it. We wound up taking a whole different approach to the project and we did come up with a logo that she loves. Luckily her clients still react well to the finished logo, so it works for her business. But if you design your logo from your personal perspective, instead of taking your clients' viewpoints in mind, you might be setting yourself up for disaster.

So, what's the best way to decide on your logo design?

• First, define your business' brand. Your Brand Definition will guide the design of all of your brand identity materials, starting with your logo. The most important things to determine before designing your logo will be:
  
  
  
  • Who You Are, your business' mission, vision and purpose.
    
  • What You Do, the products and services that you deliver.
    
  • Who You Can Best Help, or your target audience.
    

  For more information how to create your Brand Definition, you can download my "Define Your Difference" Branding Worksheet.

• Then boil your full Brand Definition down to the most essential elements. Logos are small. Creating a clean and straightforward logo is essential to making sure that it communicates well. Most Brand Definitions are complex. Trying to pack too many details into a logo can create a muddled mess. You want to make sure that you narrow yours down to the few most important characteristics. That will enable you to create a concise, focused logo design that will tell your business' story clearly.

• Keep your Brand Definition in mind as you design your logo. Weigh your designs against the characteristics you've chosen. Think about every choice you make and how it affects your logo's icon, font choice and color scheme. The most important piece of the Brand Definition in this step is "Who You Can Best Help". Your logo has to connect with your clients. The design and overall feel of the logo has to communicate to them. Their perspective is the most important. If you're targeting clients who are similar to you, then it might be okay to design the logo for yourself, but often that's not the case. Be sure you're designing for them and not just for you. You may even ask some of your clients about your logo options to make sure that the final logo works for them.
  

Going through this process doesn't always result in a logo you'll love. For example I don't love my logo. But it communicates what I do — creating designs that help small businesses stand out from the competition. And my clients get the message (or a message that's close enough and still works!). They like my logo so it does its job. Of course, I never wanted to get it tattooed on myself!

About the Author

Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses. Through her customized marketing and brand identity packages, Erin helps her clients discover their brand differentiators, then designs logos, business cards, and other marketing materials and websites to reflect that differentiation, as well as to increase credibility and memorability. As the owner of elf design, Erin is passionate about helping small business owners stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. Hundreds of small business owners across the US and Canada have relied on Erin to create content and visuals that support their brands.

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Web Design Decision #6: Flash vs. HTML: The pros and cons of both.

Part 1: Flash

There are two major ways to code a website, which can affect the design: Flash and HTML.

Flash is an animation program that can be used to create websites.
Pros of using Flash:

• Flash has fewer graphical constraints than HTML does – you don’t have to base your designs on a table. This gives you greater design flexibility.
  
• Flash-based sites can move and have other animation. This can make your site more visually interesting and engaging, but if you over-use it, it can be confusing and distracting to visitors.
  
• Flash is considered more of a “cutting-edge” technology than plain HTML. If your brand is based on being up-to-date with new technologies, then it might reinforce your brand to put some Flash on your site.
  

Cons of using Flash:

• There’s no easy way to make edits or site changes. In order to make even simple text changes, a designer would have to go back into the main Flash source file, make the change, and re-export the file into a web format. So, if you’re planning to make a lot of updates or edits to your site, Flash is not the way to go.
  
• Search Engines don’t index all of the content in Flash-based sites. Your text content is the most valuable tool that the search engines use to determine what your website is about so that they can rank you appropriately. But, because of the way that Flash files are encoded, it’s difficult for the Search Engines to read all of the text content.
  
• Website visitors need to have special software installed on their computer – beyond just a web browser – to be able to see sites coded in Flash. Not everyone keeps these software packages up-to-date, and if a visitor doesn’t have the software they need to view your site installed, it would be an inconvenience for them to have to go and download and install the new software. Some visitors may be too busy or hurried to go and do that, and they may just pass your site by once they see that as a requirement.
  
• Flash files are larger than most HTML files and take longer to load.
  
• Not all website designers and programmers know how to work in Flash. So, if you choose Flash, you may have a harder time finding a site designer/programmer to work with, or to update your site for you down the line.
  
• It’s a harder program for entrepreneurs to learn – so you’re less likely to be able to make changes yourself.
  
• Flash has a bad reputation. A lot of Flash intros and cartoons are pretty pointless – they don’t add value or meaning to the site that they’re on. They’re just there to look cool, to show off technically, or to provide amusement. Many website visitors have become disenchanted with this type of website animation. If you do choose to use Flash, make sure that your animation has a purpose and a meaning, instead of being “just pretty”.
  

Web Design Rule #4: Use straight lines as much as possible

But, you say, straight lines are boring! Everyone has them on their websites! And, all I really want to do is to make a website that’s interesting and looks cool!

Well, everyone uses straight lines online for a reason. Websites are written using HTML code. HTML code is based off of table structure. Think of your website as an Excel spreadsheet. All of the text and design elements for the site have to fit within those straight little boxes.

The boxes are scalable to accommodate the information that you need to fit within each section. And, there are some coding tricks that you can do to make the edges of a box or set of boxes blurry – but those will make your site harder to modify and slower to load.

Some of the advantages of using straight lines:

• The site will be easier to code because of the table-based nature of HTML – and less expensive!
  
• If you use straight lines, you’ll be able to code many of your site’s graphics in plain HTML. Then, if you need to change your site’s color palette, all you have to do is change a tiny bit of the code instead of editing images.
  
• HTML code is quicker to load than graphic files
  
• Your site’s design and code may be more flexible if you use straight lines to code the site instead of curves.
  
• Straight lines look cleaner than curves and blurred effects
  

I recommend that my small business clients use straight lines in their sites.

Web Design Decision #5: Should you work for consistency of color across all monitors?

When I design a website, a question about consistency of colors across multiple computers often comes into play. A business owner will typically review their site on many computers, and often, the colors used on the site, in the logo and on the photos won’t match from computer. Or, the colors of the website won’t print as the business owner hopes.

But, this is just the nature of computers, unfortunately. Each type of monitor comes with slightly different color calibrations installed. And, each monitor offers the end user the opportunity to change those settings even further – to modify the color balance, contrast, and brightness of the monitor. So, each monitor winds up with unique display preferences set. Because of that, the same color will wind up looking quite different on each monitor.

For example, it’s common for colors to look a lot lighter and brighter on Macintosh monitors than on PC monitors, because of the factory settings.

There’s no way to control this in the design or code of a website. But, you can minimize it by using darker colors.

This is because monitors display colors using light. White is created on a monitor by turning all 3 of the color “guns” all the way up. Black is created by turning them all the way off. For darker colors, less intense light is involved in creating that color. The less intense the light involved, the less the individual settings of the monitor will shift or change the color on the screen. So, dark colors – blacks, navy, forest green, maroon, and even some bright colors like primary red will have less of a shift than light or pastel colors.

If you’re very bothered by shifting colors, don’t design your website using pastel colors.