Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Should You Print Your Own Marketing Materials?

Clients often ask me if they can print their own marketing materials in order to save money. This is a tricky question, because, yes, of course it's possible to print your own marketing materials so long as you have access to a printer and some paper. So, of course, you can either take a PDF from your designer and print it, or lay something out in Word or Publisher and run it off.

But, beyond the question of whether you can print your own marketing materials is whether you should. This often boils down to a simple question of whether printing materials yourself will present the right image for your company — whether the materials you produce will actually look good enough to represent your company well. And, of course, whether printing the materials yourself will actually save you money, or if it will be worth the time it will take.

And, whether you should depends on a few factors:

• The age of your business. If you're just starting your business, then printing some materials may make sense. Printing yourself would be a cost-effective way to start getting clients in the door, and this way you can start by testing your designs and marketing messages. If you've been around for a while, clients may expect to see professionally printed materials.
• Your confidence in your text. You could use your early home-printed materials to test your marketing text with your audience — there's no use in professionally printing hundreds of copies of anything and then discovering that it doesn't connect with or make sense to your audience. Or that you've accidentally misrepresented some bit of information. Try printing a few at home to see if they're effective before producing thousands.
• The actual amount of money (and time) that you'll save. Printing things at home still has a cost associated with it. There are the hard costs of paper and ink, along with wear and tear on your printer. And, then there's the expense of your time — how much are you willing to spend waiting for your printer, fixing paper jams, feeding in new paper, and trimming the finished prints down to size? With the option of printing many pieces digitally these days, and discount printers available online (like www.psprint.com), the cost of professionally printing materials is not really that large — so do some research and see if you can afford to have your materials printed. It may pay off by saving you time and irritation.
• The loss of credibility that you'll face. What goes through your mind when you receive a packet of printed materials that are obviously printed on a home or office printer? Do you wonder if the business is stable? If they're worth their asking price? If they take pride in their work? Do you think about their level of sophistication? You don't want any of these sorts of thoughts going through a new prospect's mind. You want them to get your materials, be impressed, and then to consider hiring you — you don't want to create more questions in their minds.
• The likelihood that your competition's materials will look better. Unless you're in a very "homey" industry (like a babysitter or errand running service), then there's a good chance that your competitors are printing their materials professionally. You want your materials to look as good as — if not better than — your competition's materials. This includes print quality and design.
• What marketing materials you're planning to print. Printing a flyer out on your home or office printer sends out an entirely different message than printing your business cards yourself. So, ask if printing your piece at home is appropriate for the actual piece itself.

In the next article, I'll talk specifically about which types of marketing materials make sense to print yourself, and which ones you shouldn't print at home — and why.

Objectifying Your Small Business's Logo

A common thing to hear at the start of a logo design project is, "I just want a picture of a [insert object here] to be my logo." The object could be a hammer, a car, a golf club, a spine, a pile of books, a map—you name it. This object may or may not have a direct relationship with the business that the logo will be representing. For example, I've been asked to draw a sea horse logo for a financial planner, and recently, a client requested that I work a cat into the logo for her exercise company.

There are two major issues inherent with designing a logo with a picture of an object in it. The first is that your logo instantly becomes a "representational logo," and you'll want to evaluate whether this form of logo serves your business best. The second issue is that before committing to using that object as the face of your business, you'll have to carefully consider the type of object that you're including in the logo and all of its' possible meanings to the viewer.

So, let's tackle the issues with the first one first: The fact that your logo will be a representational logo.

What is a representational logo? And is it the right choice for my business?

"Representational logo" simply means that the icon of the logo has a picture in it that looks like a recognizable object. A representational logo is often most appropriate for a company that's on the smaller side, or one that provides business-to-consumer, or personal services (think dog walking, house painting, carpentry).

You rarely see representational logos for successful professional services companies (think accountants, lawyers, engineers), unless those companies are very small. So make sure that having a representational logo matches to the level of sophistication that you'd like your company to reach. You can evaluate the level of sophistication in terms of the object you choose to use as your logo and how the object is drawn. For example, a cartoon of a pile of money may not convey the right visual message for an investment specialist.

It is true that some big companies do have representational logos—the apple for Apple Computers, for example. But they've already made their business name a little abstract by combining words that don't go together conceptually, so having a representational logo in this case can help to make their incongruous name more memorable.

Choose your object wisely

If you commit to a representational logo, you should choose an item that makes sense in some way with your business—either based on your business name, what you sell, or if there's a more complicated story that you'll wind up having to explain to prospects. Also remember that you're signing up for your company to always have some sort of link to the item in the logo—so you may not want to start out with a picture of a product that you sell.

For example, say you operate a foods company making chips out of carrots, and you decide to go with a carrot in the logo. Then your company decides a short while later to change directions and start manufacturing chips made of corn instead. Suddenly, the carrot logo is less appropriate for your business; and unless you find some way that it does integrate into your new business direction, you might run into trouble.

You'll also want to think about the meaning of the item that you choose as your logo. Some items already have a traditional symbolic meaning—for example, a butterfly is often used to symbolize change or transition because it goes through a metamorphosis. Research your item so that you can become sure that you're not missing any of its' potential meanings. And in this way, you can make sure that your item doesn't have any unintended negative connotations as well. 

A representational logo isn't right for every business. But if you decide that a representational logo is the right choice for your business, then making sure that you choose your object wisely can help you to ensure that your logo will be a good fit for your business and that it will support the growth of your brand. 

How to Design Mailing Labels in Microsoft Word

Small businesses might find designing a set of mailing labels to be a cost-effective way to brand their business mail and packages.

If you send business letters only occasionally, then printing mailing labels in small quantities on an as-needed basis is usually less expensive than printing a batch of envelopes.

Mailing labels are not only less expensive, but they're less of a commitment to create and use. The smallest quantity of envelopes many printers will print is 500 — and if you don't send mail often, then it can take quite a while to go through that many envelopes. Instead of printing up 500 or 1000 envelopes with your business address on them, and then possibly not using them up before you have to move, you can print just a sheet or two of mailing labels at one time. That way, if you wind up moving, as many small businesses do during their first few years, you'll have minimal waste.

The third big advantage to mailing labels is that you can use them on many sizes and types of envelopes and packages — not only on #10 business envelopes, which is the most common size for small businesses to have printed. You can even use them on Priority Mail envelopes.

To cash in on these advantages, you need to know how to design mailing labels in Microsoft Word. Here are the steps you'll need to take, along with instructions on how to lay the labels out.

1.Gather the design elements you'll need. For many mailing labels designs, this just means that you need a copy of your company logo. If your logo is laid out in a horizontal orientation, you'll have the best results on many mailing label types, since they tend to be horizontally shaped. You can use a vertical logo, but make sure that you don't scale it down so much that your company name is illegible or that the design elements bleed together. You'll also want to use a high-resolution file of your logo — I recommend a 300 DPI, TIF or JPG format file in RGB color mode.

2. Gather your other marketing materials to use as reference material. In many cases, it's most important that your mailing label match your letterhead the most closely, so it can help to have a copy of your printed and/or digital letterhead nearby as you create your mailing label design. You won't have a ton of space on the mailing label for design elements, but making sure that the designs you do use match will ensure that your communications are cohesive.

3. You'll also need your address to appear on the mailing label. Decide if you're using your physical location, or if you will be using a Post Office or UPS Store mailbox address for greater privacy.

4. Decide what kind and size of mailing label you'd like to create. The first question is which brand to go with. I recommend going with a standard Avery label as the base sheet for the mailing labels, because they are widely available at office supply stores, they are easy to print, and they peel and stick well, with no frustration. You can also get them for either inkjet or laser printers, depending on what you have available.

The next question is size. Standard Avery Label sizes that work well for #10 envelopes, catalog envelopes and packages include:

5160	1" x 2.63"	30/sheet
5163	2" x 4"	10/sheet
5164	4" x 3.33"	6/sheet

Choose a label size that will allow plenty of space for your logo. If your address is long, you may want to choose one of the larger sizes. Also, if you ship more packages, the larger labels will stand out more on those, while still working for #10 envelopes. You may even consider designing a couple of different sizes for different uses.

5. Once you have these elements together (your logo, your other materials and your contact information), use them to design your mailing label. You can have a professional designer create a graphic file to insert into Microsoft Word, or you can just use Word to create the design using the following steps:

a.	Make a new Word document to act as your mailing label template using the "Tools > Labels" command, and go through the dialog box to select the right size of label. This will pop up a page with a grid on it the size of the labels you've chosen.
b.	Now we'll design one mailing label, and later we'll copy and paste that label into all of the label boxes.
c.	Take a digital copy of your logo and embed it into the file by using the "Insert > Picture > From File" command. You'll want to insert a high-resolution file (300 DPI) and to use an EPS, TIFF, JPEG or some other file format that Word accepts.
d.	If needed, scale the logo. Click on the logo to select it. Click and drag on a corner point to make the logo smaller or larger. Hold down "shift" while you do this so that you can constrain the proportions of the logo and so that it doesn't get stretched out.
e.	Use Word's Drawing toolbar to add in shapes, color bars, background colors, lines or other visual elements to match your other materials. You can access the Drawing menu through Tools > Customize Toolbars/Menus and then selecting the Drawing menu. It has a variety of tools for creating shapes and coloring them in.
f.	Create a text box (also available in the Drawing menu), and insert your address there. Choose a font that matches your address font on your letterhead.
g.	Once you are happy with your design, select all of your design elements and copy and paste them into the other label boxes to create a full sheet of labels.

6. Now it's time to print. After you've followed these steps to design a mailing label, just grab a box of Avery labels (make sure you get the right size for your design) and start printing. You can print as many or as few sheets as you need, and easily reprint on demand from your saved file. 

If you follow these steps, you'll be able to create a mailing label design in Word that will allow you to easily brand your postal mail and packages. This will make all of your mailed communications look more professional and appear consistent with your other marketing materials. 

Another Option For Printing Envelopes

This is a follow-on to the last article I wrote on "Envelope vs. Mailing Label: Fight!". In addition to printing envelopes professionally, or printing mailing labels, you could try printing directly onto the envelope with your laser printer or inkjet printer. I've had varied results with this method - depending on how well your printer works and feeds the paper. Also, it is time-consuming to have to stop what you're doing, feed the printer an envelope and then wait for it to finish before sending your mail. But, it is a third option for printing your envelopes, and may make sense if you need to print a very few envelopes and your printer works well.

Envelope versus Mailing Label: Fight!

In this corner, weighing in at 50 cents each, we have: custom-printed, #10 business envelopes. In the other corner, weighing in between 6 cents and 20 cents each (depending on size chosen), we have custom-designed mailing labels. How do these two opponents stack up on matters other than price?

What custom-printed envelopes have going for them:

• They look high-end. The very fact that you've printed your logo and return address on the envelope makes your marketing look good. 
  
• You can print on more of the envelope's surface. Instead of limiting your graphics to the upper left corner for the return address, you can include designs all around the envelope—even all the way to the edge if you're willing to have the envelopes themselves custom-cut and made after printing (however, this is an even more expensive option). Do check with the post office as well on their requirements—they need some areas of the envelope not to have printing for their processors to scan and route your mail correctly.    
• You can match your envelope to the color of your letterhead. Not to say you couldn't do this with mailing labels as well, but if you have, say, green letterhead stock, the white labels will stick out on them. There are clear Avery labels, but they don't print as well as the white ones, so I don't recommend using them. 
• Putting the mail together becomes very easy. There's no hunting around for your mailing labels—just grab an envelope, stick your letter in, seal, stamp and go. 
• Custom printed envelopes are really great for high-volume mailings. This is one place where the investment in money can outweigh the investment in time. If you're mailing out many individual pieces, such as a business introduction campaign, form letter, or even a mass holiday mailing, consider having your return address printed on the envelopes. This approach can save you hours of peeling and sticking work.

Custom-printed envelopes' competitive disadvantages:

• They are, as previously noted, expensive. Especially in "low" quantities like 500 or 1000, the price per piece to print an envelope can be large. Add even more to that price if you have more than 2 colors in your logo—the standard envelope printer only handles 2 colors at a pass, so 3 or more colors will mean that the printer has to run the envelopes through the press twice. This takes more time, and can be difficult to align the envelopes a second time to get them printed right—so there's likely to be more spoiled pieces. 
  
• You have to print a lot of them at once to get the pricing to make sense. This makes you wind up with a lot of envelopes to go through. And, to throw out if your address changes before you've used them all. 
• Once you have your 1000 envelopes, you need to dedicate a corner of your office to storing them. If you have a home office or a small workspace, this can be inconvenient. Mailing labels stack flat, and take up very little space. 
• You'll only have one size of envelope—so choose wisely. Many businesses wind up printing the standard #10 envelope. But, what happens when you have to send out a thick report? Or a booklet? Or even a thank-you card? You have two options: either print out envelopes of multiple sizes (which will turn out being even more expensive, and needing even more storage), develop a mailing label as well, or go to hand-writing those materials. If you already have a mailing label, then you can just use a larger envelope. You can use mailing labels on Priority Mail envelopes and packages as well. 
• Some clients may never notice the difference. If your clients have an assistant handling their mail, they may never see the envelope you invested in. Or, if they're busy, they might not pay attention to the printing in their efforts to get the mail processed.

Now, on to the stats for the mailing labels. The pros:

• You can print them on demand. If you only need a few mailing labels in a month, there's nothing that says you can't just print one sheet at a time. If your address changes, or your logo gets updated, then you won't have hundreds of labels floating around that are suddenly outdated. 
  
  
• If you have a color printer in your office, you can even print them out yourself. No going to a professional printer, or even heading in to Kinko's. You can just open your document, load a sheet or two of label stock into your printer, and have a new set of labels in just a few minutes. 
• You can choose the size, and easily customize to fill your mailing needs. Say you really only send out mail in envelopes—then it would make sense to go with a small sized label like Avery 5160 (1" x 2.6"). If you send out packages as well, you could either add a second label (Avery 5164, which is 3.33" x 4") or if you send out more packages than letters, you might go with only designing the larger 5164 labels and using them on your #10 envelopes as well. 
• They are inexpensive. Though you do have to buy the label stock (and I strongly recommend the higher-quality Avery brand labels), which is a bit more expensive, in addition to purchasing some blank envelopes, the price per piece is still much lower than printing envelopes. 
• They're easy to design and lay out in Microsoft Word, which even has a "Labels" design tool that lays out all the standard Avery sizes for you. It couldn't be any simpler than that.

What mailing labels have stacked against them:

• They require a bit more manual labor. This is usually not a big deal unless you're sending out hundreds of pieces of mail, but it does take a few extra seconds to reach for the address labels, peel one off the sheet, and attach it to your envelope. This is probably a worthwhile bit of work unless you send out a lot of mail. 
  
• They don't look as finished. If your clients are style-conscious, or have a keen eye, and are likely to pay attention to the way your communications are packaged, then printing an envelope instead of going with mailing labels can have the added benefit of making your materials look sharper. 
• They can occasionally misalign in the printer. Especially if you're printing them at home, you might find that your printer doesn't always feed the label stock through evenly. It may even be bad enough on a sheet that you have to throw it out and start over. This doesn't happen often, but it is something to keep an eye out for.

Now that you have all the facts on envelopes and mailing labels, choosing which one you'll use in your company should be easier. Next time, I'll tell you how you can go about designing your own mailing label, in case you decide to go that route. 

How To Design A Digital Letterhead That Works

Do you send out client communications, as either email attachments or printed documents that you generate from your own computer? If you do already or if you want to begin doing so, it would be good for you to have a digital letterhead so that these communications can have your logo and brand designs on them and match your other marketing materials.

For a small business, a digital letterhead can be a powerful branding tool. Having one at the ready can make creating branded letters, speaking engagement handouts, invoices, contracts and all other paperwork very easy. And if you use your brand on all of the communications that you send out, it's more likely that your customers will see your business as established and credible.

To gain these advantages, you need to know how to make a letterhead that will work for your business. Here are the steps I take when creating a digital letterhead for a client, along with some simple instructions on how you can design your own digital letterhead using Microsoft Word.

1. Gather the elements you'll need. You'll need to design your digital letterhead using your company's logo and the Visual Vocabulary elements that are used on your other marketing materials, like your color palette, secondary shapes, and tagline text treatment. I recommend inserting the logo in 300 DPI, TIF format in RGB color mode.

2. Gather your other marketing materials for use as reference material. You'll want your digital letterhead to match your other marketing pieces, such as your business card, website design, and any other marketing materials you use. Having all of these materials share a consistent design theme will make your company look more professional.

3. Determine what contact information you'd like to include. For a letterhead, you'll typically include your mailing address, phone and fax number, general company email address (like info@yourcompany.com), and website address. If you're a consultant or a solo business owner and you plan to stay that way, you may also choose to include your name on the letterhead. If you're a larger company, then you'll probably want to leave any individual names off to make the letterhead work for correspondence from everyone in the company.

4. Use these 3 elements (your logo, your other materials, and your contact information) to create your design. You can have a professional designer create a masthead and footer graphic to insert into Word if you'd like a complex, eye-catching design. Or you can design a simple letterhead yourself in Word with the following steps:

a.	Make a new Word document to act as your letterhead template.
b.	Insert a header and footer into a your document using the "View > Header and Footer" command.
c.	Take a digital copy of your logo and embed it into the header of the file by using the "Insert > Picture > From File" command. You'll want to insert a high-resolution file (300 DPI) and to use an EPS, TIFF, JPEG or some other file format that Word accepts.
d.	Use Word's Drawing toolbar to add in shapes, color bars, or other visual elements to match your other materials. You can access the Drawing menu through Tools > Customize Toolbars/Menus and then selecting the Drawing menu. It has a variety of tools for creating shapes and coloring them in.
e.	Create a text box (also available in the Drawing menu), and insert your contact information there. You'll probably want to deactivate the linking capability on your email and website addresses, or at least change the color on the link so it isn't a bright, festive blue. Unless that bright blue goes with your color palette!
f.	You can put a stripe, your tagline, or some other design element on the bottom of the page if you'd like to balance out the design.
g.	Adjust all of your alignment and spacing so that the design looks cohesive. Save this new document to use as a template and you're ready!

5. Regardless of whether you design your template or if you have a designer create it, do keep these two technical items about Word in mind. First, you'll need to create your design with a significant page margin. I usually recommend about .75—1" all around your artwork. This is so that the artwork will work with Word's page margins. This will also ensure that when you, or a client you email, tries to print the document you're creating, your printer's margin allowance won't trim off the edges of the design.

Second, think about how you want to deliver the final document if you're planning to send a file. If you email a Word document to a client, they might wind up not having Word—or having a different version than the one that you used to create your document. And, if you send your document as a Word file, then your recipient could easily edit the content—which may not be the result you're after if you're sending a proposal or contract. It will probably be safer—and easier—to convert your Word document into a PDF file before you send it along. 

If you follow these steps, you'll be able to create a digital letterhead in Word that will extend your brand onto your email attachments and any documents you may want to create and print from your own printer. This will make all of your digital communications look more professional and appear consistent with your other marketing materials, which will help your marketing efforts to be more well-received by clients and potential clients. 

Does Your Small Business Need A Digital Or A Printed Letterhead?

A small business's letterhead is one of the most essential marketing pieces. A letterhead enables you to send your company's brand out on all of your communications with your clients and vendors. This not only gives you the opportunity to build up more recognition of your brand, but it also makes your business look established and credible.

But many small businesses don't wind up sending out a lot of printed communications—instead, they'll send out an email with their document attached. And if they do need to print up a piece to mail, it will often just mean printing a few documents over the course of a year. Which brings us to the question of whether it's really worth the cost for your business to invest in a stack of printed letterhead.

The disadvantages—and advantages—of print letterhead

One disadvantage of printed letterhead is the cost of getting it printed. Many traditional printers will begin to print with a minimum order of 500 pieces of letterhead. The price per-piece of letterhead will often be very high at this low of a quantity. It makes more sense from a pricing standpoint to print at least 1000 or 2000 pieces of letterhead.

Another disadvantage of printed letterhead is its' permanence. Once you've printed those thousand pieces of letterhead, you're stuck with them as they are. If you move or change any of your other contact information, your letterhead immediately becomes outdated. The same goes if you change your tagline or your logo—all of those costly printed pieces head directly to the recycling bin.

The advantages of print letterhead are that it often looks more professional than printing up a single copy of a digital letterhead on your home printer. When you create a professionally printed letterhead, you can also have bleeds—where the ink goes all the way to the edge of the page—whereas on a digital letterhead, you have to leave space around the edges for your printer's margin allowance. Bleeding the ink off the edge looks more sophisticated.

The advantages and disadvantages of digital letterhead

A digital letterhead's biggest advantages come from the fact that it is a digital file. That makes it easy to change contact information in a digital letterhead; you just make changes to the header image file and pop the new file into Word. A digital letterhead also doesn't have the added up-front production cost that printing physical copies of a letterhead has; so it's less expensive to create a digital letterhead. And with a digital letterhead, you can choose to either print out the finished piece or you can create a PDF of the document and attach it to an email. If you choose to attach the document to an email, then your document will get to its' destination more quickly than it would by mail. Plus, it's more eco-friendly to send a digital file than to use a piece of paper.

The biggest disadvantage of digital letterhead is that it is digital—and if you're printing it out, it will look like a digital letterhead. Clients will be able to tell that you've printed the letterhead on your home printer (though, if you invest in a nice printer and some high-quality paper, this can be less obvious). And, as mentioned before, you'll have to design the letterhead to take the margins of your home printer into account. If you're planning to email the document out, you may want to make the margins pretty large so that the recipient's printer won't cut off your contact information when they print out your document.

The other disadvantage is that if you're emailing a PDF to someone who's not technologically savvy or who is having computer problems, it can be difficult or even impossible for them to get the document to open. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it can be frustrating for the recipient.

With all of these advantages and disadvantages, how do you determine which route is the correct path for your business to take? Do you need a printed letterhead, a digital letterhead, or possibly both?

How to figure out which form of letterhead you need

1. Determine how you plan to use your letterhead. Common uses for letterhead include:

• Writing personalized letters and other correspondence
• Direct mail and letters of introduction
• Invoicing (though if you use an invoicing program such as Quickbooks, you'll just need to insert a digital copy of your logo or a digital page header into the template invoice design)
• Creating estimates and proposals
• Formatting contracts and other client intake materials (such as questionnaires or forms)
• Reprinting your articles
• Creating speech handouts
• Submitting orders to vendors

Think about how many of these uses (and any others you can think of) apply to how you run your business.

2. Decide if you're more likely to send a physical mail piece or an email. Matching your letterhead format to your business preferences can help to streamline your business. For example, it may help to speed up your client acquisition process to have a digital letterhead for your contracts. Or, you may get paid faster if you have a digital invoice, since clients won't have to wait to receive their bill in the mail. But if you give talks frequently, you may want to get printed letterhead created so that your handouts will look fabulous.

3. Think about which format your clients would prefer to receive your communications in. The simple step of considering your clients' communication preferences can help you to create a better—and smoother—client relationship. If you're catering to eco-friendly businesses, they will appreciate the reduction in paper that digital correspondence brings.

4. Weigh this information along with the advantages and disadvantages of each type of document as listed above. For example, if you know you'll be moving soon, then creating a digital letterhead may be the way to go so that you can change your address when the time comes. But, if having every piece of communication that comes from your business look as professional as possible is important to your business's success, then consider creating a printed letterhead so you'll make the best possible impression. 

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of printed and digital letterheads, and then going through the process of evaluating what you need in your business can help to make sure that you get the right kind of letterhead designed to serve your business's needs. 

Making A Great First Impression With Your Marketing Materials

It's said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is certainly true with your company's marketing materials. A new client often takes many pieces of information away from their first glimpse of a marketing piece or website. And this impression can make the difference between whether they choose to read the rest of your material or if decide that your piece is a waste of time and (gasp!) recycle it.

You want to make sure that the marketing piece you spent time and money writing, designing, and printing—or hosting online—actually grabs viewers' attention and encourages them to read the information you've worked so hard to put together. Or keep your business card in their files, bookmark your website, consider your proposal, or whatever the goal for the marketing piece may be.

Before they start reading the text, studying the figures, or even looking at the details of your logo, viewers will first get an overall impression of the marketing piece you just gave them. They'll be most likely to see these 5 elements first:

1. The layout of the elements in the piece, which is the overall arrangement of information and graphics on the page. You want to make sure your layout displays your content well, organizes it in a way that makes the most sense, and also looks appealing at a glance.

2. The color palette, which can instantly communicate a visual message about your company through color psychology. Colors evoke many meanings and emotions, and what they typically evoke has become somewhat standardized, at least within certain cultures.

Make sure your color choices are on-message for your brand and your marketing piece and that the colors you use are appropriate for your audience's ethnicity. For example, red is the color of urgency and emergency in the United States and also means "stop". But in China, red is the color of luck and is often worn at weddings.

3. The rhythm of the distribution of those colors on the page. Are they equally distributed? Is one color dominant, with highlights of a secondary color? Is the top half of the piece mostly one color, and the bottom half another? Each of these approaches creates a different mood in your marketing piece or on the screen. You need to look at color distribution as more than just what looks good or not and understand the message it's communicating.

4. The white space. White space can make a design feel free and open. It also gives viewers' eyes a place to rest while taking in design and text. If white space is balanced with text and graphics, it can encourage viewers to move around the page and to actually get around to reading the text.

5. The photos. This article is getting dangerously close to being chock-full of cliches, but a picture really is worth a thousand words. When you include a photo in your marketing materials, your viewers immediately assess its overall mood, color palette, visual message, quality, and even how up-to-date clothing and hairstyles look. All these bits of information add up to those "thousand words" you're looking to convey—so make sure that your photos are really the right ones and not just "good enough".

How to tell if your material is making a good first impression:

1. Do the glance test. If you're designing a marketing piece that you'll distribute in printed format, then print a test copy. If you're working on a website, email newsletter, blog, or some other online design piece, then pull it up on your monitor. Leave the test copy on a table or your computer turned on, then leave the room and look at something else for a few minutes.

Turn on the TV. Look out the window. Look at a magazine or a coffee table book of art. Don't think about your marketing piece at all. Then, go back and look at it with fresh eyes. Try to look at it as though you've never seen it before. (This is hard, but it can be done!). What jumps out at you?

2. Next, think about your piece in the context of the 5 elements I've mentioned. Really look at the layout, color palette and rhythm, white space, and photos—and be critical. Think about each of these elements in the context of the message that you're trying to convey. And think about these elements from your target prospect's perspective—what do they want to see?

3. Gather some comparison materials. Your customers will not be looking at your materials in a vacuum. They'll likely receive your materials at a networking event, trade show, in the mail, or during a web search or surfing session. So you'll want to know how your materials rate in comparison to other materials they'll be looking at.

Networking events and web searches are the most accessible and easiest routes to take when trying to compare your works-in-progress. Go to the networking events you'll be attending, and bring back the cards you gather and then spread those out on the table along with your sketches. Do your cards look appealing in comparison?

Do a web search for your company category and on keywords that you hope to rank for. Look at the sites and blogs that are already showing up in those categories. They will be your competition in web searches, and you have to compare your site's look against them. If a prospect was pressed for time and searching for a company to do business with, would yours stand out from the other sites in your category? Another online option is to subscribe to your competition's email newsletters and pit them against your design to see which looks more impressive.

4. Ask clients and prospects to tell you their first impressions. This is easiest to do in person, but you could also schedule a phone meeting with a good client or potential client and then email them your sketches or documents while you're on the phone. For a printed piece, you could mail the document to your evaluator enclosed in a second envelope, with instructions not to open the inner envelope until your designated meeting time.

For a first-impression test, you want to limit the amount of time your testers have to think about the material they're looking at. If they look at a piece for a day and then give you their thoughts, they've had time to read it, think about it, and process their thoughts. This is not what you want when you're concerned about making an immediate impression—you want to know what prospects think about a piece in the instant they first see it. Getting their opinions in more detail later can also be helpful, but you can never get a first impression again, so get it while you can. 

If you keep the 5 elements of a good first impression in mind while designing your marketing materials and evaluate them while you're creating them, you should be able to create marketing materials that will make an excellent first impression on your target clients. 

What Your Logo Designer Needs to Know About Your Business

name, given me a quick description of what they do, and then asked me to design a their logo.

When this happens, it feels like I'm throwing a dinner party and one of the guests has invited someone I don't know (maybe a new love interest or an out-of-town guest). They've told me the guest's name, but nothing about their personality, food preferences, or even what they prefer to drink. So I'm left guessing—and hoping—that the guest likes pork, drinks red wine, and doesn't mind if our frisky puppy jumps on them a bit when they walk in the door.

I've made these decisions about the dinner based on my preferences and personality and various assumptions but not on facts or information that I really should have about the guest. On the other hand, if I know in advance that the guest can't eat pork and that the sulfites in red wine gives them migraines, I can be prepared instead of having a hungry and disappointed guest.

If someone asks me to design a logo based on a tiny bit of information, then I have to make just as many assumptions about the personality of the business, its customers, and the owner's personal taste as I do in creating my hypothetical dinner. And the logo I design winds up being more about me and my preferences than about my client's business.

A business's logo should tell your business's story. It should capture its flavor and essence. But, to do that, your designer must have information. The more information you give to a designer, the more likely it is that their designs will accurately reflect your business. Instead of a slice of information, give your designer the whole pie.

Information that's really useful when designing a logo includes:

• The reason you chose your business name. Does it have special meaning or significance? 
  
  

The products or services that you provide. Be detailed—provide a sales sheet or summary of each of your offerings. Or pretend that your logo designer is a potential client. What do they need to know about your process and approach? 

Your competition. To create a logo that stands out, it's very helpful to know the specific companies you're competing against. Are there a couple of companies like yours you keep running into at networking events? Or that you keep writing proposals against? 

What makes your business stand out? Specifically, why would someone hire you instead of hiring another company like yours? 

Who do you work with? Who do you love to work with? 

What's problem(s) do you solve for your clients? What's the end result that they get from working with you? 

What are your goals with your clients? How do you help people? 

What personality do you want your business to convey? If people were to describe your business using 5 adjectives, which ones would you want them to use?

To get this information, many designers—myself included—have created a questionnaire or worksheet for you to fill out. Or they may interview you and ask you these questions. I prefer the worksheet method because writing things down gives you a chance to think about the answers to these questions. You can also set the questionnaire aside for a day or two and Òsleep on itÓ to make sure that the answers are really right for you.

If your designer hasn't asked these questions, make sure that they're planning to get this information some other way—through reading your website, reviewing your marketing materials, etc. And, if they're doing their research this way, then make sure your materials are up-to-date and really reflect your business as it is now.

However you get this information to your designer, it will help them create a logo that really shows what your business is all about and gives prospective clients a taste of your business's style. 

How to Get the Logo You Want

Your logo is more than just an important part of your marketing materials. It is the face of your business. Your logo gives clients and prospects a visual reference to pair with your business name, which increases the memorability of your brand.

When a client comes to me asking for a logo, I often get the same few comments when beginning the project: "I know what I want, but I don't know how to explain it." "I know what my logo looks like, but I'm not an artist. I can't draw it. So I want you to keep drawing until you get it right." Or even more vague, "I'll know my logo when I see it."

Many of these statements come from clients who have worked with other designers and haven't been walked through a successful design process. They seem to depend on my mind-reading capabilities, which, admittedly, aren't the sharpest. I'm a logo designer, not a clairvoyant! There are, however, logical ways to approach the design process to make sure you end up with a logo that's truly and uniquely yours.

Are you having a hard time getting the logo you want?

If you're working with a designer and looking for "just the right" logo but getting sketches that cause nothing but frustration, don't despair. I've worked with many clients on difficult projects and come reasonably close to reading their minds without having ESP. Here are some tips to help you get your logo done right:

1. Make sure you're working with a designer who can work in a style you like.Check out their portfolio and make sure they've done work that inspires you. If you're having trouble getting good results from your designer, reconfirm that they have done the work in their portfolio—that those samples weren't done by subcontractors or employees in their firm.

Also, let them know which specific samples you like. A designer will probably have several different styles and approaches in their portfolio, so zeroing in on the logos you like—plus detailing what you like about each one—can help get your project started out on the right foot.

2. Gather other examples of logos you like. This way, your designer will be able to get a sense of your taste, instead of having to guess at your preferences. Example logos don't have to come from your competitors or your industry. They are to help your designer gauge your level of visual taste. Choose logos that visually appeal to you regardless of the company or product.

It's important that you send your designer logos, not photos or paintings. Photos and paintings are graphically very different from a logo, and they don't often translate well from one medium to another. And if there is one particular element of a logo that you love specifically—the font, color palette, or something about the icon—then tell your designer what it is.

3. Define your business. Too often, clients give designers the bare minimum of information, for example, business name and products or services. Then they expect designers to read their minds and perform a miracle. If you provide so little information, how can your designer be expected to "get" what you're all about and to translate your personality and individuality into a unique logo?

Tell your designer about your business's mission, what excites you about it, and how you'd like your clients to see your personality. Tell them about your clients—who they are, what they need, and what their problems are. With this information, your designer will be much more able to create a logo that truly communicates the essence of your business to clients and prospects.

4. Give detailed feedback. Instead of saying "I don't like them" when your designer presents logos to you and ending the conversation there, engage in a dialog about the options offered. Don't just dismiss everything because it's not perfect the first time around. Getting anything just right can take a couple of tries.

Focus on the positive aspects of the concepts you've been given instead of the negatives. See if there's anything in any of the logos that appeals to you—or a direction that interests you.

5. Break the design process down. Look at the elements of the logo separately. Sometimes a logo won't seem right because it's in the wrong color palette or matched with the wrong font. Focus first on the logo icon and then look at the font. Apply color last so that it doesn't distract you from the merits of the design.

If these steps fail, perhaps the best logo isn't the one you personally love. Instead, your business may be better served by creating a logo that appeals to your clients.

6. Keep in mind that your logo's job is to appeal to your best clients, not just to make you happy. Instead of focusing on whether or not you like your logo, show it to some of your best clients and get their opinions. Sometimes, it's better to have a logo your clients like than to like it yourself, because the logo's job is to help them see your personality and remember your business, not make you proud.

Ask your clients what they think about your logo. Do keep in mind that each client brings different personal taste to the table. Put the most weight on feedback from clients who best match your ideal client profile. And be sure that you respect their taste. If your main focus group target drives beater cars or dresses questionably, and you're creating a luxury brand, consider finding a more high-end client to run the logo by.

7. Ask your designer what to do in cases like this. This advice is my procedure for getting past the ESP phase of the project and into my clients' heads. Another designer may have a totally different way of getting around a hitch in the process and creating a logo that looks as you envisioned it. Just ask your designer to walk you through their process.

These steps should help you get closer to a logo that works for your business and avoid going around in circles and getting frustrated. Even if your designer can't read your mind immediately, it's worth going through the process to get the best logo possible for your business.