PHASE 1: Discovery, strategy development, project management

This will include development of creative and strategic goals, objectives, tone, mandatories, and review of relevant references including peers and competitors.

 

PHASE 2: Concept development

This will include initial rough sketches showing various configurations, basic type styles, etc. References may also be shown for discussion, i.e.: other logos that are similar and relevant to this project. Sketches will be narrowed down and one to two directions will be flagged for further exploration.

 

PHASE 3: Logo execution

This phase will include rough computer comps of one to two approved directions executed to a tighter, more finished level. These directions will be narrowed down and final version will be taken to mechanical art and rendered on computer in black and white.

 

PHASE 4: Mechanical art and color exploration

This phase will take the chosen concept direction to final art. Color options will be shown, and once color is approved, the art will be provided to you in multiple digital versions: PMS, CMYK and RGB and saved as JPG, PNG and EPS formats for various print and screen uses.

See some examples of our logo work.

One person told me he and his partner once made over 2,000 cold calls without getting a project

Ouch. Now that's cold.

Everyone agrees that getting referrals from a personal connection is the best way to develop prospects, but that's not always possible. You can go to networking events, ask your existing contacts for help and you can mine your clients for additional projects, but at some point you're going to want to reach out to someone who has no idea who you are.

Believe.

You can do your homework in advance. You can name drop some of your big clients. You can talk about your expertise and do your elevator speech without taking a breath. But mostly you should try to connect with someone on a personal and non-sales-ey level if you can. And I think you've got to BELIEVE. If you don't believe it's worth doing, it isnt.

Don't make getting a project the goal of the call.

Adjust your measure of success. This is the start of a relationship. You've got to establish a connection, i.e. trust. The prospect needs to know that you're legit and a potentially good fit before they'll even consider asking you for a quote. They've also got to be in the market to buy. Your goal here is to spread the word about your company and start a dialogue.

Regarding the actual call, I've had the best results by being blatantly direct. "I know you don't know who we are. I'm calling you because of x. I'm making some cold calls today to people I'd like to work with. Here's who we are and what we do and I'd like to e-mail you a link and follow up with you next week."

I've gotten zero projects from that first call, but I don't consider that a failure because my goal for the call is to connect with a person not with a project.

Be patient and persistent.

Over the years, I've told countless students to stay in touch and be persistent. Don't be a pest, but stay in touch. I almost never hear from them again and the ones that do follow up really stand out. That same lesson applies with cold calls. Start a relationship and stay in touch.

http://www.brandingmagazine.com/2013/02/25/wendys-rebranding/

Check out the article and commercials below.

http://www.brandingmagazine.com/2014/02/27/share-jim-beam-mila-kunis/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5757414/apple-prototype-tablets-phones-laptops-from-the-80s-photos

http://martinagency.com/collection/mad_men_for_your_consideration

With any project there are lulls. Waiting on client feedback, waiting on vendor estimates, whatever. We all try and maximize our time to fill those lulls with other billable work and switch gears to move the next thing forward. But what if all your projects are on hold for an afternoon?

Go see a movie and enjoy the break? Good sometimes.

Get on the phone and start e-mailing and prospecting new leads? Better.

Work on ways to strengthen the relationships you already have? I think Seth Godin would say that’s the BEST.

Ideally every job would be under budget, you would bill every hour in the day to something, and you would be constantly in new business mode, but there’s a lot to be said for making your work the best it can be and striving to satisfy your clients so completely that they can’t wait to work with you again.

Here's an article on the branding update for Peabody Nixon.

I love the energy, boldness and friendliness of the updated identity, but does it look like an international law firm? No, but if the goal is to redefine what an international law firm should look like then the answer will someday be "yes."

I applaud Nixon Peabody's willingness to stick their necks out and be different.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/11/a-law-firm-gets-a-rebrand-fit-for-a-tech-start-up/

Here's a link to the firm's website as well. It's worth a look. It's very different from what you'd expect from a national law firm at least today. You might feel differently tomorrow.

http://www.nixonpeabody.com/index.aspx

By the way, Lee says she HATES the look of their new website and the green is assaulting her eyes. Check it out and see what you think.

The article quotes branding consultant Gerry O'Brion.

All too often, law firms believe that their brand is what they think it is.  Rather, they must understand that their brand is what clients think it is. 

The article is long but worth the read and has some simple analogies that I enjoyed, particularly this piece about finding a point of differentiation.

O’Brion used the example of an auto repair shop that branded itself as servicing all makes and models of cars, with little success.  When the shop realized that much of its work came from servicing Audis and VWs, it changed its message to specialize in these makes of car and business tripled.  Customers wanted to go to a shop that specialized in solving their particular problem.

“Successful branding boils down to just one thing,” said Gerry O’Brion.  “You must be different from your competition in a way that clients value.  Big brands thrive by continually refining their understanding of what their customers value and by consistently delivering their messages in a way that stands out from the competition.  Law firms can do the same.”

You can be an attorney.  You can be an attorney representing all businesses, everywhere.  You can be an attorney representing hospitality businesses in Colorado.  Or you can be an attorney representing restaurant clients in Denver.  If you are a Denver restaurant owner, which lawyer will you choose?  The sharper you focus, the better your brand and the more-profitable your business.

See? I told you it was good.

The researchers maintained that those at the top had separated themselves and had “the best reputation” in brand terms. They said the table was based on a combination of press coverage, social media activity and “front of mind responses from the wider industry”. 

The Top 20 list follows with links to each of the firms' Websites.

The Top 20
1 Allen & Overy
2 DLA Piper
3 Eversheds
4 Irwin Mitchell
5 Clifford Chance
6 Linklaters
7 Withers
8 Pinsent Masons
9 Herbert Smith Freehills
10 Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
11 Pannone (to merge with Slater & Gordon in February 2014)
12 CMS
13 Hogan Lovells
14 Ashurst
15 Taylor Wessing
16 Olswang
17 Norton Rose Fulbright
18 Slaughter and May
19 Addleshaw Goddard
20 Berwin Leighton Paisner

 

 

According to the article, CEOs and CMOs surveyed rate their own firms' branding and marketing efforts as average. 66% rate their brands as marginally or moderately distinctive.

The article features lots of good stats and pertinent research for CMOs and CEOs struggling with branding their firms and funding those branding efforts in a lackluster economy, but this paragraph in particular stood out to me:

Unicorns and innovative brands are as rare as hens’ teeth. Again, responding CMOs and CEOs believe brands are important to success but say uniqueness is hard to come by in the professional services space. Perhaps this relates to the fact that lawyers and law firms typically follow precedent (and one another). Meanwhile, marketers toil in the business of awareness building and differentiation.

That’s the rub. The most innovative firms and best marketers have the courage to take risks, break with convention, and inspire interest in the brand among their audience.

It's not only okay to be different. It's essential. That's the essence of marketing.

Law firms know that brand perception plays a big role in the recruiting process. Their marketing audience isn't just clients and prospects, it's peers and recruits as well.

Here's a snippet form the article:

1. Always regard your firm’s brand from the viewpoint of those outside of it. We all think our own children are the smartest and best looking in the class. You need to look at your own firm objectively from the perspective of a reluctant prospect who has a lot to lose if the move to your firm goes wrong.

Or just sit back and have a good laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YBtspm8j8M&utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=911363&utm_campaign=0

So what happens when an established company wants to evolve the logo in an attempt to refresh or evolve it to appeal to a new demographic? It's a balancing act between preserving the existing equity and updating the look without making the logo unrecognizable to core customers.

Here's a great article showcasing good examples of bad logo evolutions.

So cool.

http://www.demilked.com/elgin-park-miniature-cars-michael-paul-smith/

As a marketing director, you can usually expect to receive JPGs that have been processed as a group by the photographer. All of these files will be in RGB color mode which is a big gamut of color representing 16,777,216 available colors, or all the colors your computer monitor can reproduce.

If you're planning to print the image on a press though, it has to be converted to CMYK which is a pretty small gamut of color representing only about 1,000,000 available colors all made from 4 inks. Check out this link if you realllly want a technical overview.

http://dnacreative.org.uk/blog/adrian-wheeler-homework-2nd-session/

All those bright blues and greens won't be available and someone will have to adjust the image to compensate it to be printed with only Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black transparent inks.

Visual color space

Go see a Van Gogh painting in a museum. The colors are so vibrant they'll melt your eyeballs. Visual color space is every color recognizable by the human eye. Ka-blam, it's beautiful.

RGB color space

You take a photo of the painting. The photo looks pretty close but not exact. You just converted visual color to RGB. RGB is every color available on a computer monitor made of 255 shades of Red, Green and Blue light. Ka-blam, it's still pretty nice.

CMYK color space

Next you convert that image to CMYK and try to print a poster of it and it looks nowhere near as rich as the original. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Those are the 4 transparent inks used in 4 color process printing. Because you're trying to make all the colors of the painting out of only 4 inks, you will be disappointed with the results compared to the original. Ka-plooey, it's pretty mediocre.

It's like the idea of Blue and Yellow makes green, but there are only so many greens you can make. There are printing enhancements available like touch plates and spot colors, but we're just talking about standard 4 color process printing.

Check out the link below to see a diagram of color gamuts and see how much smaller CMYK is than RGB.

http://graphicdesigncluster.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/every-wondered-why-the-colours-you-see-on-screen-dont-print-correctly/

Control your disappointment

Before printing, someone has to do this CMYK conversion process and it's usually an agency service supervised by an art director. That's the best way. When you convert all those beautiful RGB images to the lackluster CMYK color space, you lose color information right from the start. But you can control it by having a professional manage your color correction and get your images to reproduce the best they can be.

It's usually not as easy as just changing the mode in Photoshop. The art director will work with a retoucher to make corrections to the photo and get it as close as possible to the original. CMYK conversions may also be done by the prepress department at the printer, but it has to be done by somebody. The corrected file is then output to a digital proof and corrected again and again as needed. This can take a good chunk of time to get it right, and of course, time = money.

A photographer friend of mine showed me a catalog he'd shot and said he was embarrassed to show it because the color was so bad. The printing was good, the photos were amazing and the design looked nice too, but the client or the designer had opted not to color correct for CMYK and the images had been converted without adjustment. The color looked flat, grayed out, and just gross. It happens. Don't let it happen to you.

Color correction is super important with product photography and skin tones

Imagine you're an apparel manufacturer and you've just finished shooting your brand's new spring line. You want your printed catalog to match the real color of the product. You also want multiple shots of the same product in different environments, and shot with different lighting, to match each other. It doesn't just magically happen, and requires a lot of skill and experience. Skin tones are really touchy too with small percentages making big shifts in tone that can result in faces looking too red or peachy even.

Make color correction a priority and be glad you did

Be realistic in budgeting to allow for color correction time outside of standard post processing by the photographer or designer. Color correction is a separate and very valuable process. For example, if you tell your agency it's critical that your images match the products and match each other, you make color correction a priority on the front end and give your agency a sense of how important it is to your project's success. Your agency will then be able to better plan for it on the back end, and can give you an idea where your color corrections will fit in the overall project budget.

Your Spring Catalog is gonna rock.

Take a look at these lovely images, just for fun.

http://www.demilked.com/minimiam-miniature-figures-food-pierre-javelle-akiko-ida/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/12/10-predictions-for-imagery-in-2014/