October 6, 2016

A is for Audience

Research your target audience, what are their needs and how does your brand meet them? If it meets their needs consider how can you continue to keep them interested. If needs aren’t being met think how can you refocus your brand to match them more.

B is for Brand

Continue to analyse your current brand and all touch-points – consider what is working and what could be better. Is your current brand successfully attracting the right audience and meeting the outcomes you aim for? Has the audience needs changed? If your brand is no longer effective consider the benefits of a rebrand.

C is for Cohesive and Consistent

Consistency is key – creating a cohesive and successful brand identity. Decide upon the foundations of your brand and apply them across all print and digital promotional work.

D is for Differentiators

Companies that offer something that few other do are more valuable to their customers; do you have a Unique Selling Point (USP) that will set you apart from the crowd?

E is for Engage

Once you have a clear understanding of your demographic ensure that your brand matches their interests and desires. Work out what your audience wants and tailor your brand and content towards them.

F is for Familiarity

People like familiarity, so try to keep things simple and consistent, don’t stray too far from your company’s values and brand essence.

G is for Graphic design

Graphic design is an important part of branding; for your brand to be successful it should have a strong visual identity that presents the company appropriately. This will allow the audience to immediately understand what the company offers.

H is for Human Element

Whilst it is important to present your brand in a professional manner – don’t loose the human element. A real personality delivers a familiar and reassuring side to your brand that people will feel comfortable with.

I is for Image

Your image is the way your audience perceive your brand; the emotional value that
it has to the consumer and it’s market position. Your brand image can be developed over time through the use of advertising campaigns and marketing materials. Alternatively you can rebrand in order to focus on a different audience or appeal to a wider demography.

J is for Jingle

A jingle is a short and catchy tune or song used for advertising purposes, not all brands need a jingle but it is representative of that fact that your brand isn’t just about the visual aspects. It’s an experience which can encompass anything from sounds, smells and taste to how your brand makes your audience feel.

K is for Knowledge

You understand everything there is to know about your industry and your business – use this to your advantage. Offer advice to your audience, this will build trust and develop a relationship between your brand and the consumer.

L is for Logo

Your logo mark is one of the key contributors to a strong visual identity. It’s a simple but important visual insight that should be representative of your brand and cohesive with the rest of your identity.

M is for Marketing

Marketing across all platforms is an key component in brand awareness. The more interactive you make a marketing campaign, the more memorable your product or service will be to your audience. Simply ‘pushing’ out messaging doesn’t work any more you must respond and interact with your audience.

N is for Name

Your brand name is essential to your company – finding a unique, memorable name is often a challenge but it’s important. Avoid generic names such as ‘solutions’!

O is for Original

It is unlikely that the services or product you offer will be completely unique and original – but your approach can be. Try to capture the audience’s attention, do something that they haven’t seen before by being bold, brave and thinking outside the box.

P is for Personality

If you brand were a celebrity or well-known person who would it be? This may sound like a childish activity, but it will help you to define the key characteristics you want your company to portray and give you an idea about the tone of voice and key values of your brand.

Q is for Questions & Research

Do your research, make sure you fully understand what your audience want by asking questions, conducting surveys and narrowing down your search points.

R is for Recognisable

Staying relevant and remaining recognisable is important for success. To make your brand recognisable ensure that you have a set of brand guidelines that you refer to when producing new marketing materials and touch-points.

S is for Social Media Strategy

Social Media is a key marketing tool and definitely something that all business types should invest in. Being active on social media can increase your brand awareness, increase traffic going to your website and help you to build new relationships, as well gaining an insight into what works for your audience. However, it is important to define your strategy and ensure that the content you post is relevant to not just your brand but also your audience interests.

T is for Tone of Voice

Defining your tone of voice is one of the first aspects to consider when branding your company – it’s important to present the business and address your audience using a voice that’s genuine. If the business is serious and assertive ensure it’s voice matches that experience.

U is for Understanding your aims

What’s your desired outcome (simply selling more isn’t enough) and track your progress to ensure that your aims are being met. With a website you can set-up goals, with a physical shop measure visitors.

V is for Visual Identity

Your visual identity includes; brand name, logo, slogan/strapline, colour palette and overall branding that is used to present your company and services. It is basically everything visual that’s connected to your brand and must reflect the company, product and services that you offer.

W is for Website

Your website is a huge part of your brand, it’s a way of interacting with your audience and keeping them updated, it’s important that your website is coherent with your brand, user experience friendly and regularly updated. Think also about how they are visiting your website – all sites must work well on mobile.

X is for UX – User Experience

UX is everything your audience experiences when connecting with your brand, this includes things like, tones of voice, imagery, video content, brand identity, colour palette and lots more. All the above should be established in the early stages of branding and should be applied throughout your brand.

Y is for You

Any good brand starts with one good idea, but in order to make that brand a success you need a team strong team around you. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from people who can support you – a good creative agency can deliver exceptional return on investment. Remember that you have to speculate to accumulate.

Z is for Zero to Hero!

Transform your brand from Zero to Hero by using our A-Z Guide for Branding!

If you would like any guidance on branding your company or any of the topics briefly discussed above – feel free to contact us. You can email team@hanselldesign.co.uk or give us a call on 01732 743 455 and ask for Matt or Paul. 

 

September 30, 2016

On Tuesday 13^th September Wines of Chile hosted a fantastic trade and consumer event at the Old Truman Brewery in East London; the biggest gathering of Chilean wine in the Northern Hemisphere. 52 wineries showcased over 400 wines; as well as 7 independent food and drink stallholders and a feature tasting area that was replaced with a Chilean band and dancers for the consumer event in the evening.

We designed the venue graphics and street art, which transformed the empty exhibition space into an intimate Chilean style location. As well as the venue graphics and wall art, we also delivered the more technical aspects such as online exhibitor and visitor registration, automated creation of printed and digital catalogues and provided project management. We visited the site with the client during planning phase, produced scale floor plans and identified key areas for event graphics.

The day before the event took place our team was on site installing wall vinyl, fitting beautiful canvas artworks, creating temporary walls and guiding the lighting team and other suppliers. Ensuring everything ran smoothly and that the stalls, wall graphics and lighting were displayed as planned. We think it’s important with an event of this scale that every detail is planned and agreed in advance in order to avoid any last minute issues.

On the day of the event, the whole Hansell team attended the consumer tasting in the evening, it was a lovely summers day in London and the space was bustling with people enjoying the Chilean wine, food and general atmosphere. The venue graphics and wall art really brought the space to life and along with the band and Chilean dancers created an authentic Chilean-esque feel.

If you would like help with event branding or venue graphics please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we are contactable on 01732 743 455 or by email matt@hanselldesign.co.uk alternatively if you would like to have a further look at our Wines of Chile portfolio click here.

August 22, 2016

Photography is one of the most powerful sources of communication; not only does it have the ability to deliver a message in an instant but it also speaks a universal language and can reach almost any audience.

Therefore photography is vital tool in our creative ‘toolbox’. Effective imagery can be the make or break of any design piece. Whether it’s for your new website or in a printed brochure images are the first thing that will engage your observer. It doesn’t matter how good the written copy is on your website if the photography isn’t of an equal standard then your audience may have disengaged before they choose to read on.

When branding or rebranding, photography is one of the key factors in the process; the same way you need a cohesive brand identity, a logo, a colour palette, and an appropriate tone of voice. A portfolio of brand-appropriate images is an important cog that will keep your brand turning. Strong visuals will separate you from the crowd and deliver a message to the observer about who you are and what your company represents before you’ve had the chance to tell them.

People buy from people and they like to feel reassured that there is a person behind the brand, imagery has the power to deliver that message and add the all-important human touch. This will create a connection between you and your audience and instantly make your brand feel more trustworthy.

To summarise photography is a valuable tool to a company brand and when used correctly with creative projects, both print or digital, has the ability to create an effective marketing piece that will engage your audience and drive your brand forward.

If you would like any help with the creative direction of a photography shoot then please contact us on 01732 743 455 or send an email to matt@hanselldesign.co.uk. 

June 25, 2016

1. A picture can tell a thousand words

It may sound cliché but an image has the ability to communicate a message much faster than a paragraph of text can. A huge part of marketing is now done online and through social media, and with such a vast amount of companies now making use of these platforms strong, effective imagery is crucial to stand out from the crowd.
It is important that your imagery does two main things; firstly you want to capture the audience’s attention and get them to engage. Secondly, it must convey a message about your brand or business. It can be difficult to interlink these two attributes in just one image, which is why graphic design is vital, as it has the ability to deliver a message in the most efficient and aesthetic way.

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2. A strong brand is memorable

A strong brand identity is much more than just having a logo and a website. Your brand is a representation of your company, what you do and how you want to be perceived by your target audience. This should all be communicated through the 
use of a colour palette, distinct tone of voice, logo, specific typeface and much more.

As well as having all the above elements, consistency is another vital part of branding and ensures that your brand will remain recognisable to your audience 
no matter where it is presented. The best way to guarantee brand consistency is to produce a style guide. Designers can produce a style guide best suited to your brand, including helpful guidelines on how components must be presented.

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3. Stand out from the crowd

It can be difficult to stand out from the crowd with lots of other companies competing for attention in a similar market. In order to make sure your voice is heard it is important to have something that differentiates you. Whether this is locality, pricing, good customer service or something as simple as having a bold visual identity that defines you and enables your brand to stand out.

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4. Create conversions

Effective Website Design is something that is vital to small businesses, and it’s a topic that we have focused on a lot recently having presented a video on the subject back in May at Search Seven’s marketing event.
From our experience we have narrowed this topic down to 3 key areas, these are:
Understanding your audience: It is important that you have a strong knowledge of your audience and what they want to get out of your website, this way you can match their interests making for a better conversion rate.

Be Your User Experience: Having a strong brand identity and building your website around this, delivering immersive content that your target audience will want to engage in and ensuring that you remain authentic.

Test, Go Live and Stay Live: Using A/B testing, this is where you can use audience sampling to guide web improvements, another important point is to avoid time wasting – make your website live and update it as you go.

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5. Speculate to Accumulate

Small businesses can be reluctant to invest in the creative side of their business thinking that it is unimportant and they can function with out it. However, Graphic Design shouldn’t be undervalued, if you think about any of the most successful brands such as Google, Coca Cola and Nike they all have a very strong and consistent brand identity, and make sure this is consistent throughout all of their branding campaigns.

The key to giving your brand impact and ensuring it remains recognisable to a broad audience is to guarantee that is always presented consistently.

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If you would like to find out more about how Graphic Design can improve your business please contact us on 01732 743 455 or send a email to team@hanselldesign.co.uk alternatively if you would like to watch our video on Effective Website Design then click this link.

May 25, 2016

We were approached by Gary Bennett, the managing director of Logit Research, to help with the development of a new identity, image and website for their company. It was important that the new identity reflected that are they an approachable and personable team, as well as communicating their high level of skills and experience in their specialist area. We worked through a process of step-by-step developments to get an understanding of Logit Research, what a rebrand meant to them and how to deliver in a way that would do their company justice – presenting them in a highly appropriate way to new and existing clients.

1. Insight in to Logit Research
Our first step was to establish a clear idea of the brief and understand Logit Research as a company, to help us do this we asked Gary to fill out a client questionnaire and we conducted initial meetings. This gave us a better understanding of what Logit Research does, the service that they deliver, their target audience, main competitors, what their brand identity currently consist of and further additional information to give us an in-depth knowledge of the company and its employees.

2. Understand the Core Values they want to communicate
Before starting on a large-scale project it is important to understand the core values of the company and what they want to communicate to their audience. In terms of Logit Research, they are a Market Research team who deliver a full range of statistical services; it’s a complex topic with a lot of mathematical and analytical aspects which can be daunting to people who don’t speak the ‘lingo’. Gary felt it important to humanise the company perception, by reflecting that they are a team of approachable and personable people, as well as highly skilled and experienced in their specialist area.

3. Primary Research of their Target Audience
We carried out primary research by contacting Logit Research’s existing clients to see which areas of the company they valued and why, and which areas of the company they thought could be improved upon. We found that from the research we gathered the clients were reassured by having the ‘human element’ and the ability to deal with a Gary one-on-one gave them a sense of familiarity. We also wanted to capture their opinion on a change of brand name, and discussed ‘The Stats Person/Guy’ (singular) Vs. ‘The Stats People’ (a group). All the clients interviewed were happy with a change of name and felt that although they enjoyed dealing with Gary directly, they were reassured knowing he had a team behind him and therefore ‘The Stats People’ was preferred over ‘The Stats Person/Guy’ as it suggested a team of people.

4. Developing an Identity
Introduction of the new brand name – ‘The Stats People’, this name was selected following the feedback from Gary and from the company clients, as it is relatable and communicates that they are human – not a team of robots!

It was essential that once the name had been selected the logo design and colour palette followed suit, reinforcing their core values, with the human element and also reflecting that Gary is the ‘heart’ of the company, but also they he has a strong and skilled team behind him. A clean and straightforward colour palette was selected to give the identity a modern and competent feel.

5. Creation of a new Website with new Photography
In order to ensure that the brand identity ran cohesively across all media a new website was designed. In the initial stages we produced a site-map to agree on which pages and categories would feature on the site and which pages would be static on each of the main pages.

We populated the site with articles and information that had been supplied by Gary and Sarah from The Stats People. Hansell also art directed a photo-shoot, where we aimed to produce a collection of new imagery that summed up the different aspects of the company. As well as profile shots of each employee and service and client shots intended to use for page headers and sliders on the website.

6. Rolling out the new Brand
Once the name has been selected, a logo has been design, colour palette established and the website has gone live it is also important to ensure that the new identity is rolled out across all media; email marketing communications, deliverables, power point presentations, stationary and letterheads etc, this adds the finishing touches to a cohesive brand identity and also introduces the client to the new brand.

The introduction of the new brand to the client can be a great opportunity to reconnect with clients (and suppliers) – using the new brand name, visual approach and key touch-points (website) as a marketing opportunity. This must be carefully managed to avoid any client confusion.

If you would like any information on the branding or rebranding of your company please contact us on 01732 743 455 or email matt@hanselldesign.co.uk