Have you ever wondered why Coca Cola makes millions of dollars all over the world when there are other soft-drink companies in the market? They sell because of two things: their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and marketing strategy. The same rule applies in the website design industry. If you are a freelance website designer and want to get regular projects, you need to highlight your USP to the clients and convince them to choose you.

Think about what makes you different from other designers. There are lots of web designers vying for the clients’ attention. Why a client should hire you when there are others? If you can’t stand out from the crowd, you can’t survive.

Find Out What Makes You Special- What is your USP? Are you an excellent logo designer? Can you create unique and wonderful layouts? Are you an expert in Flash design? Whatever your USP is, make it your trademark and convince your clients that you know about it better than anyone else in the field. It will help clients choose you quicker.

For example, if you want to brand yourself as an expert logo designer, people who want to design a logo for their company will come only to you.

However, there is a drawback with such branding. If someone wants to design a website in WordPress and you claim yourself as a Joomla expert, they won’t hire you. Another problem is, if that particular field loses its popularity, your career is over.

Some clients like to hire a web designer a few weeks before their website launch, and demand project completion within a very short deadline. If you work very fast and can deliver a logo within a week or two, that can be your USP.

Create A Respectable Profile- Make people aware of the fact that you are an experienced web designer. Start writing blogs and share useful tutorials, participate in seminars, etc. Once you establish yourself as an expert, you would be swarmed with new projects.

Also, you should have a portfolio site. When potential clients visit your site, they must be able to see your work samples and decide. Include your past clients’ testimonials in the site. When a future client reads the praises of another reputable client for your efficiency, reliability and timely delivery, he will be convinced about your capability.

Localize Your Services- Getting projects and earning money is lucrative, but the competition is much tougher when you compete with designers all over the world. When you present yourself as a local designer however, local clients will be more interested to do business with you. Especially, small-scale businesses don’t want to hire foreign companies, but when you present yourself as “web designer in Kolkata” or “web designer in India”, they can approach you without worries.

Flaunt Your Own Style- Over time, you will gather experience and will be able to create your own style. Try to be distinctive so that clients can recognize you when they see a website designed by you.

Also, besides designing a website, offer something extra to your clients. For instance, you can offer logo design services with website design at reasonable rates. When you offer multiple services, clients don’t need to go to other designers. This way you will save your clients’ money, as well as time, and they will be interested to hire you again.

How Much Do You Charge? - Some designers think that if they offer their service at a cheap rate, clients will certainly hire them. But there are two problems in this: low price is often considered equal to low quality. Also, in today’s competitive market, quoting the lowest price is impossible. There is always someone ready to offer a cheaper rate. Don’t try to make “cheap rate” your USP. Charge a reasonable rate and show your clients that your quality deserves a lot more.

Just like designers search for new clients; clients also look for reliable designers. A business owner always wants to hire designers who offer impeccable services, quotes an affordable charge and have expertise in their profession. When you highlight your USP, it becomes easier for a client to make up his mind and hire you.

With corporate branding and marketing of products, brands and their logos now have a huge impact on consumer minds. People these days not only buy a product by its brand name, but prefer to call it so too. For example, we don’t go to a fast food restaurant and say we want a burger and a bottle of water, instead say, “Give me one Big Mac and one bottle of Kinley.” That’s the impact of brands!

We all have our own favorite brands and like their names, but most of us have misconceptions about brand names. Let’s explore the famous brand names and find out how they came into existence.

Adidas- Adidas is often thought of as the acronym for “All Day I Dream About Sports”. The brand name is actually derived from the founder of the company, Adolf Dassler. “Adi” stands for Adolf and “Das” stands for Dassler.

Adobe- This software giant got its name from a river! Unbelievable, but true! Adobe’s co- founder, John Warnock’s house is beside the Adobe Creek River in California.

Google- The mighty Google is well-known to everyone, but do you know how the name came into being? The company wanted to patent the word “Googol” as their brand name. “Googol” is a number number that means 1 followed by 100 zeros. “Google” was actually a spelling mistake.

Apple- Apple’s logo design has nothing to do with the type of products the company manufactures. Why is the half-eaten apple then used as their logo? Newton discovered gravity when he saw an apple falling from a tree. The Apple logo stands for motivation for new innovation.

Nike- Nike was derived from the “Greek goddess of victory”. That’s why they use the ‘swoosh’ in their logo’s design. The tick also personifies victory.

Toyota- This world famous Japanese car manufacturer got its name from its founder, Sakichi Toyoda, whose surname was initially used as the brand name, but was later, changed to “Toyota”. The word Toyota uses eight letters of the Japanese alphabets. Eight is the lucky number in Japan. The company wanted to give their brand name both numerological luck and a ringing sound for universal appeal.

Coca Cola- We love to drink Coca Cola, but how many of us really know what the name stands for? The secret lies in the recipe for this popular beverage, which uses coca leaves and kola nuts. Coca-Cola maker, John S. Pemberton, changed the spelling of “kola” into “cola” to create the famous brand name “Coca Cola”.

Hotmail- Hotmail is based on HTML and the company wanted to give it a name that will sound like HTML and have the word “mail” at the end. They finally selected the name “HoTMaiL”, but later changed the word casing and made it “Hotmail”.

Mercedes- Emil Jellineks, the man behind this company, patented the car’s engine after his daughter, Mercédès Jellinek.

Hope my article gave you some new information and also rectified some old misconceptions about famous brand names.

You can’t find new clients if you don’t promote yourself. You have to make people hear you and hire you to stay in competition. However, self-promotion needs intelligent strategy to garner the desired result.

Every small and big company promotes their service and there is nothing bad in this. Unless you tell people about yourself and what you are offering, how will they know about you? Of course, self-promotion does not mean banging your own drum without clear focus. Nobody likes a bragger, but everyone likes to hear the achievements of a talented man.

Here are some tactful self-promotion suggestions that will help you capture the target audience’s attention.

Let Your Work Do The Talking- Before promotion, you need something that you can promote. What is the best thing that a man can promote about himself? His work or the services he provides of course.

If you have created an amazing logo design or started providing website designing at an affordable cost, people will be more interested in you.

To promote yourself, you first need to believe in yourself and the work you do. If you feel that you can design a website the way no one else can, your self confidence will boost your self-promotional skills.

Promotion Must Be Planned- Some people like to promote their work to the world as soon as they do it, while some people like to share their success with the people they trust and gradually let other people know about their achievements.

You can brag about your work if you know it’s flawless, but the wise thing to do is to give it some time. Let the small number of users try it and when you make it absolutely excellent, promote it. A good example of thoughtful promotion is Google +. Till date, Google has not made it available to everyone.

Tell People How You Can Change Their Business- When you meet a new client and want to impress him, don’t say things like, “I have 10 years experience” or “I have worked with X,Y, Z brand.”

There are several other web designers in the market who have worked more than a decade in this industry and have worked with many more brands than you ever did. Why will the customer come to you?

To interest clients, tell them how you can improve their business and earn them more profits. Claims like, “my website design will increase the conversion rate by 20% for you” will impress them. But, when you claim such things, show him data, where you helped your past clients to get more customers through your unique web design. One page statistical data is much more convincing than an hour of futile talk.

Listen More, Talk Less- This is the most subtle way of self-promotion. You may meet two clients one day. One of them is facing a problem with the contact form and another with the products page of his website. Unless you know what their problem is, you may start telling what a good webpage designer you are to the person who is looking for a great contact form!

Listen to your potential client’s problems and then offer them the solutions by saying how efficient you are in that particular field. If your expertise can solve their problem, they will be more interested to hear your ideas.

Don’t Pretend- Every web designer has his own personality and style of work. Don’t try to be someone you are not. You can’t be a jack of all trades, and acting like one is the gravest mistake you can make.

If you are good at graphic design, only promote your graphic designing skills. If you start promoting yourself as an expert in all aspects of  web development and fail to deliver, people will realize you are nothing but a liar. This will not only damage your image, but hurt your business as well. If you claim something, stick to it and satisfy the clients with your service.

Every client likes a sincere web designer who fulfills his promise. Hollow self-promotion will land you in trouble. When you promote your work, service or ideas, show people enough reasons to believe you.

In today’s age of marketing, where every company strives hard to create a brand presence for themselves, a professional logo is a must-have that has the power to pave the way to success easily. Hence to stand tall amidst others, every company, be it small or big, ensures that they have a well designed logo that not only represents the company values and essence to its targeted audience but also adds to its corporate identity.

To make your business memorable and distinct in itself, logo design makes a vital need that acts as a communicative bridge between a company and its audience. Demanding for large amount of effort and time, creating an effective logo design that captures the fancy of potential customers is no child’s play. It has always been a challenge for designers to try out something unique and different in logo designing, so that it represents a company at its best. Here we will be presenting to you some cleverly done logo designs that are sure to entice your interest:

ED Logo

In this logo, the designer has broken all conventional rules of logo designing and taken it to a new high. The letters ‘E’ and ‘D’ has been brilliantly used in this design to take up with the shape of an electric plug.

Eight Logo

Displaying creativity at its best, this logo is too good to be ignored by anyone. The designer has used a unique style of typeface, where every letter used in the design looks like the digit 8. Undoubtedly an amazing design, the Eight logo is the best example of clever use of creativity.

Toblerone Logo

While toblerone makes the favorite chocolates for many, its logo is equally interesting. Have a close look at it and you will discover the creative genius of the designer. Amazingly done, the designer has used the image of a hidden bear on the Swiss Alps to represent the originating place of the chocolate, i.e. Bern, Switzerland, as Bern is also known as the “City of Bears”.

Amazon Logo

Simple and clean to look at, the logo of amazon.com exhibits amazing blend of creativity that communicates the company’s philosophy to its clients incredibly. Mark the arrow that goes from the letter A to Z in the word ‘amazon.com’, thus conveying the message that everything from A to Z is available at amazon.com. It also stands for a smile that represents customer satisfaction.

Logo represents the brand image of an organization and thus it has to be placed in a prominent position so that it can be viewed easily. Now, since logo design is an integral part of an organization’s corporate identity, you need to be a bit cautious while coming to the crucial conclusion. Color combination, navigation, contrast etc are some of those issues that can make your life a complete misery while positioning a logo in a website. Here we are going to help you to promote the brand image of your website by placing your logo perfectly:

Header
This is probably the best and the most favorite place to position a logo. Header is the most crucial part of a website and therefore, you should incorporate your logo in the header section to maximize the chances of seizing the attention of viewers at the very first glance. Moreover, majority of users are in the habit of clicking on the logo to return to the home page and therefore, you should try to use the logo as an image rather than making it a part of the background image.

Favicon
Favicon is a tiny little icon that appears just next to the URL of a website on your browser. By adding a favicon to your website, you can add a certain level of professionalism to a website. This practice helps surfers to locate a particular website from the crowd of other websites. By using a favicon, you can easily make your website looks different from the rest of the others.

Use In different Social Media
If you want to feel the power of social media, do not forget to use your company’s logo as the profile picture. It will add value to your organization’s social presence besides helping people to locate your company easily and effortlessly.

Gravatar
Globally Recognized Avatar, which is alternatively known as “Gravatars”, is a popular service that is widely employed for providing a unique global identity. This is a unique of kind of its program in which a particular image is assigned to an email id. Try to use logo of your company while registering your email because it will help people to recognize you easily and effortlessly and thus it can help you promote your brand, whenever you comment on a blog or write something as a guest writer.

Guest Posts
This is anther great way to project your brand image and to introduce  yourself to a new breed of people in different communities. Guest posts can help you to get valuable traffic. Try to use logo as against your personal picture in the guest column since it will help you to increase brand awareness among people.

Email
Email marketing has always been a part of branding and  has proved instrumental in generating leads. You should try to exploit its unlimited benefits by featuring the logo of your company in the signature section. However, you can place it at fore of the newsletter or emails if you are comfortable with the ongoing email marketing campaign.

Picture yourself on a bright Sunday morning with a cup of hot black coffee and morning newspaper. You are perfectly at ease with yourself and then you find someone who resembles you. He is your look-alike. You will certainly feel a cold shiver down your spine. The same goes true with the leading corporate organizations when they find with utter surprise that their logos look almost the same with that of another organization. Apart from the legal intricacies, you cannot overlook its negative impact on their brand value. Can you dare to flaunt a logo that resembles Google or Yahoo? We suppose not.

Obviously there are cases of sheer co-incidents and sometimes the reasons are quite obviously (I do not want to rub on this point anymore). Here in this article, we are going to explore some interesting logos that look like twins but they are not. Let us take a look:

Scottish Arts Council and Artworkers

The uncanny similarities between these two logos can go down to the history of logo design since we have never seen any other logos flaunting almost the same form and structure. Furthermore, the fonts and the positioning of the texts are almost similar. The only difference is that artwork has positioned an extra element just above its main logo.

Sun Microsystems and Columbia Sportswear

It is really hard to believe that two companies of two different sectors can proudly flaunt almost the same logo. However there are some marked differences exist between them for example, Columbia Sportswear is featuring a basket like logo by positioning equal sign (=) squarely. Moreover, it is also using a different color scheme for its logo. Sun Microsystems is using a business-like blue whereas Columbia Sportswear has kept its faith in earthly brown color that goes perfectly with its sport portfolio. There is another marked different exists. Both the companies are using different fonts.

Carrier and Ford

Once upon a time, Carrier used to feature a logo that looks almost similar with that of the Ford’s logo. But thankfully, they have now opted for a different logo that truly represents what they are. Ford on the other hand is having a great time with its old and famed logo.

Diesel and Velux

Logos of these two familiar brands have one thing in common and that is the red background. But is that all that make them so similar? We suppose not. Besides using the iconic and bloody red background, which stands out of the rest of other the elements of their websites, both of these two logos are extremely simple and the messages are quite clear. They are straightforward, aggressive, bright but serious in their approach. But the question is how can one apply the same approach and the same rules while designing logos for two different companies.

Mini and Bentley

These two logos are more or less the same. However, they have reasons to be same since both of them are into the automobile industry. Both of them have used wings to connote speed and movement. Even the color scheme is the same but the structure is slightly different. Mini logo is a bit advance as far as its overall structure and appearance is concerned whereas Bentley believes in its traditional look.

Rebranding is definitely a good practice since it helps you to spruce up the image of your organization. Redesign of logo is certainly one of those widely employed rebranding techniques that have repeatedly been exploited by corporate bodies for giving a refreshing look to their existing brand image. But not every attempt succeeds, there are some glaring examples where the attempts were lambasted and came under fire for not being able to generate anything impressive. Here in this article, we are going to include some of the most controversial brand-building program that eventually turned out to be an embarrassment.

London 2012
Though it is not a rebranding effort literally, it is definitely an attempt to add twist to previously designed Olympic logos. But as is to be expected, the outcome was far from impressive. You can see by yourself how the meaning gets lost somewhere in the mess. In fact, some people even term it as a caricature that lacks energy, vitality and the distinctive appeal that are all so far closely associated with Olympics. Everything looks disjointed that has little to do with the so-called flexibility.

People reactions were sharp and they vented their frustrations clearly in those words:

OMG! The ‘London 2012′ logo makes me want to pluck out my eyes..

Animal Planet
The newly introduced logo of popular television channel Animal Planet neither has any animal nor does it have any planet for the animals. Wondering what it has then. Well, take a look then:

Find it hard to believe right? This was the reaction of majority of viewers who first saw the new Logo of Animal Planet. The new logo was supposed to bring out the visceral emotion in the animal kingdom but what turned out to be a sheer travesty of that noble attempt. This logo leads to unnecessary complications, confusions and was largely booed by the public.

The main drawbacks of this logo design are:

• It looks dreadful. (sorry for these tough words)
• It lacks the life.
• It does not convey any meaning; at least we have failed to figure it out.

Pepsi
Pepsi the beverage giant had also drawn ire from its loyal customers over a much-hyped rebranding plan that most experts termed it as utter failure. In 2008, Pepsi revealed a massive plan for branding exercise and brought out this logo:

But the logo failed to meet the expectations. It lacks the corporate appeal and appears average from the very look. There is no creative touch and its simplistic look failed utterly to cut a creative ice with its consumers.

Wacom
It is famous for its graphics tablet products but its logo does not reflect it at all. Graphics are poorly executed. In fact, it is rather ironic that a company proudly says “we believe that technology should be easy to use and simple to understand” can flaunt a logo that few could understand properly. The heavy use of colors can make a viewer colorblind (just kidding). It is really a mystery what has driven Wacom to choose such a logo.

Capital One
Rebranding is mainly carried out for giving a new look to a logo that run the risk of being outdated. But in the case of Capital One, it is quite different. They choose a logo and a symbol that has been adopted by thousands others previously. Why they have deliberately chosen of boomerang is now a million dollar question. Would ever a credit card company dare to opt for a boomerang? But as it seems Capital One had the courage to do so.

So, far we have described some of the most debating rebranding attempts that had failed to generate anything positive. We would definitely like to feature more in coming days.

Creativity plays a prominent role in logo design since it is about creating a brand icon, a public face of an organization so that people can relate easily to it. But as a logo designer, you know how tough it is to generate new and fresh ideas each day so that each logo appears unique. Staying creative throughout the day is a nerve-wracking task but as you are into this field, you need to know how to do it otherwise, you are sure to find yourself in a tough corner. Your clients will definitely not like to see a logo that looks more or less similar to that of his company’s logo and therefore, you need to be very particular about design if you wish to avoid this kind of embarrassing situation. Here we are going to discuss some common issues that are related to gathering inspiration for designing a logo.

Do Not Make a Google Search: A good designer should hate Google. Well, you have reasons enough to disagree with me but the fact is that majority of logo designer or at least, a significant section of them prone to make a Google search whenever they run short of ideas and the most favorite destination is obvious: Google Image Search (http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi). Obviously you are not going to copy and paste the design but you are certainly taking a cue from these logos that pop up whenever you make a search with the term “Logo”.

Inspiration: – So, you are asked to design a logo for a car. As is to be expected, you start scouting for existing logos of other car companies and therefore, the outcome is highly likely to be something similar. Images are not likely to be the same but the structure and the style might correspond to those existing logos. So, how on earth can you get inspiration for your next designing project? You can get inspiration for your next project by taking a short break from your desk and by taking a short nap. Sound outrageous! But the bottom-line is that if you want to do something different this time around, you need to opt for a less trodden path.

Do not Waste Your Time: Since time is short, you should not waste your time by going through the details of the project and the company thoroughly before you start designing a logo. Try to kick-start the project by formulating a plan in advance. Deadline has to be met at any cost and that means, you are not likely to have enough time in your hand to give a logo a unique and finessing touch.

A logo design helps in communicating the marketing message to the intended audience. A logo graphically represents the identity of a company. An effective logo design is required to make it easily recognizable to the present and potential customers.

Before designing a logo for your company you need to decide the requirements and aim of designing it. The nature and work of the company should also be compared before designing it. A graphic designer can draw inspiration from the ongoing logo designing styles and also thoroughly study the logo designs of the competitor companies. Continue reading ‘Tips to Design a Logo Effectively’ »

Logo is basically an identification of an entity or an institution. This is why, the designers need to remain quite careful while developing a logo design. Nowadays, along with the business corporations, music bands are also launching their own websites just for the sake of promoting them.

Like all other logos, band logo acts as a marketing tool that helps in the popularity enhancement of a particular music group. There is no doubt in the fact that if your singers and musicians are not talented you will never get response from your audience, but at the same time you should also give labor in order to make your website look attractive. In this age, it’s quite difficult to expect popularity without having a proper website.

Some of the most important strategies that you can follow for developing a logo design for your band are mentioned below: Continue reading ‘Design a Logo for your Music Band’ »