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Do you like leaps of faith? Enjoy stepping blindly into the great unknown? Get a kick out of running full speed into the darkness? No? Didn’t think so. I mean, I think life, a life truly lived, necessitates a certain degree of “adventure,” but there is such a thing as calculated risk. It’s one thing to take a chance on a new dining experience or giving the latest rollercoaster a try, but there are decisions that really should be thought through. Bet you can guess what I’m going to say next … yep, your branding is one of those decisions.
In past articles, I’ve pointed out some essential elements of the branding process:
- communicating clearly with designers
– maintaining a reciprocal relationship with your designers
– embracing your name
– embracing your brand
These are all good tips if you are already engaged in the process; however, there are branding decisions you need to make before hiring someone to take the reins. In fact, these decisions may even lead you in another direction, involving some do-it-yourself branding that will not only save you money, but help you better understand what you want and what, exactly, you need in regard to your branding.
The first step in this process is meditation. No, I’m not getting all “new age” on you (does anyone use that term anymore?), but some introspection is integral to the process. The means for meditation are different for everyone, but some universal constants include finding a comfortable space for thinking, surrounding yourself with things you find inspirational (this can be music, images, food … beverages, ahem) – something to put you in a relaxed state and just taking a moment to shut out the distractions in your life. This may be harder than it sounds, but even 30 minutes of “clear’ time is helpful. Once you achieve “clarity” (I feel like such a shaman), reflect on your business and what you hope to achieve.
At this point, try to envision your greatest aspirations for you and your business. At the same time, look closely at your craft/business. What is your style? How do you like to work? What do you hope to do for your customers and clients? Who are they (better yet, who do you hope they are)? Create a sketch of the who, what, why and how of your business. You may find that during this time you are able to create a business philosophy or mission with real depth. Make this philosophy the driving force behind how you create your business identity. You don’t need a designer to tell you who YOU are. If you do eventually decide to go to a designer for your branding, then go in with a clear vision of what you want. This makes everyone’s job easier (and will make the experience all the more enriching). What you may come to discover, however, is that you aren’t ready for a designer or that, at the moment, you don’t need one.
Yes, that’s the second time I’ve mentioned the idea that you don’t need a designer. Maybe I’m crazy (ha ha ha, bless your soul). But, really what I’m saying is come prepared, complete with a vision of your identity and ready to do some work. By not doing so, you’re setting yourself up for a costly failure. There are so many clients who come to LUXC with a new brand that was just paid for and is NOT working. These clients have just paid an inordinate sum of money for a brand that was never suited to them in the first place or that is already dated and no longer in sync with the direction of the business. These are mistakes of both designer and client. On one hand, the designer doesn’t take the time to listen to what his or her client is saying. On the other, the client doesn’t clearly articulate his or her wants/needs and winds up stuck with something that kinda-sorta-almost-but-not-really-works. In the worst cases, clients with limited budgets pay for cheap branding solutions that look, well, cheap, and now these struggling businesses are broke and left with an ineffective brand. Poorly executed branding can be such a trap.
The main question any businessperson needs to ask is, “Am I ready? Am I fiscally, mentally and philosophically ready for a new branding strategy?” The question is especially relevant in these economic times and it’s that fiscal element of the question that may take precedence over any other issues. Certainly, if one is not mentally prepared, complete with a clear branding philosophy, then that business owner need not apply. Don’t spend the money (there I go again with my crazy talk). There are other options that can buy you time before taking the financial and mental plunge into the branding process. One that is rarely talked about (because many designers consider this an absolute aberration – utter blasphemy) is to go with a DIY approach …
(Let us pause for a moment of silence to remember all of the designers who just dropped dead)
No, it’s not as scary as it sounds. Play it smart, and some DIY branding can give you time to think, reflect, plan and raise the capital for a major branding overhaul without negatively impacting your business’s image or breaking you. Just remember the words of Thoreau: Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! Think simple, clean fonts like serif or sans serif (see Julia’s article on fonts in our blog), clean lines, good use of white space. Make it clean. If you don’t have a name in mind, use your name with a single word that describes your business, such as Tom Foolery Photography or Betsy Ross Tailoring. Don’t go wild with color. Go with two, three tops and choose colors that aren’t “out there.” If you’re not good with that sort of thing, ask a few friends to give you some critiques. Just keep it simple. You want something you can use on a business card and something that can transfer easily to a website. Focus on your product and making it better. As business improves and your identity takes shape, you can then turn your focus to branding. It’s smart business sense.
However you decide to proceed, know that this process is a journey of self-discovery. Business is not just business. Business is meaningful, organic, reciprocal and enriching. It shouldn’t be a pain. It shouldn’t be overly stressful. Likewise, creating an identity for your business is meaningful, organic, reciprocal and enriching. Take your time and plan carefully. A little foresight and caution on your end and the process will take a natural path towards a brand that will work for you and for your company, without unnecessary setbacks. Yes, Grasshopper, it will all come with time.
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years. He currently walks the earth, finding adventure and helping others along his path to enlightenment.
In education, there is a phenomenon we call the “honeymoon period.” It’s that time between the first day of class and the day the first graded assignment is returned to the students. That’s when all the fun ends. Prior to that day, I’m the eccentric, quirky professor. I’m the guy that makes English “interesting” and who is always up for a good class discussion. After that day, well … let’s just say some of the students are using more, um, colorful adjectives to describe me.
What those students – most students – have a hard time understanding is that the red ink on their essays and the resulting grade are not indictments of them as individuals, but constructive critiques of their work. The point of any course is to help the student improve a skill, not to build his or her ego (though, many believe this to be the case). The same paradigm extends to many different arenas, including business, where projects and reports are critiqued as a means of delivering the best product or service possible. And, as it is in the classroom, there are many individuals who view criticism of their work as somehow a judgment of them personally.
On the other side of the coin, people are often weary to critique another’s work for fear of hurting someone’s feelings or creating conflict. This is an unfortunate dynamic for how else can something – an essay, a project, a business plan – be improved upon if there is no one looking at the “thing” with a critical eye? The short answer is – it can’t.
In regards to design, constructive criticism is an integral part of the process and one that underscores the reciprocal nature of the relationship between designer and client. Designers aren’t miracle workers and they aren’t psychics (Miss Cleo was not a designer). The work of any designer hinges on the quality of information and feedback provided by the client. It’s true that a client hires or purchases the services of a designer, but the misconception is that the designer is simply working FOR the client. The reality is that a designer works WITH a client to design a identity. Clients have work to do as well – the lion’s share of which involves the client taking the time to provide constructive criticism throughout the branding process.
A good client should do the following:
• Maintain communication with the designer: Don’t fall off the planet in the middle of the design process. True, you have a life too, but at this point you need to focus a good bit of your attention on your design.
• Respond to questions from the designer with well-thought-out, detailed answers: No response to a designer should involve “yes” or “no.” Your responses need to have some meat to them. Furthermore, don’t give answers hastily. Don’t brush off or gloss over questions from your designer.
• Never be afraid to critique concepts or suggestions: You may worry about hurting your designers feelings by offering criticism, but the truth is you are going to really hurt their feelings (and really tick them off) if you wait until end of the process to say, “ I don’t think I like this.” Take care of problems or concerns early to ensure a final product that fits your wants and needs.
• Perhaps this is redundant, but … BE SPECIFIC: Don’t respond with, “I don’t like it.” Answers like that don’t say anything. What don’t you like? Color? Font? Direction? How can the designer make it better? What DO you like? (this question is a biggie – it can help steer the designer in the right direction).
There are certainly moments in life when one shouldn’t be a critic, but during the design process, a critical eye is more than warranted. The designer won’t know unless you tell her. So, get out your red pen and bleed on the page. In the end, a carefully-placed, well-developed critique will save you and your designer a lot of conflict.
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years. He is teribal prfsr. Dnt take his class! He will fail you for know reson!
Remember dial-up? I do. It was horrible. Waiting literally quarters-of-an-hour or longer just to get a simple chat site like www.starwarsrocks.com to load (not a real site by the way – I’m all over that!). Thank goodness for DSL and Cable Internet! Can you imagine trying to load a flash site or an image-rich blog site with dial-up? Well, you can actually. Every time you attempt to open up a site with images not properly resized for the web, that’s exactly what you are experiencing – the digital equivalent to dial-up.
There is nothing more frustrating than having to wait for a blog site to load up, especially for image-centric sites such as those for photographers, designers and other graphic artists. We’ve all experienced this problem at some point (I’ve baked potatoes in the time it takes to load some webpages). But this is not an impossible problem to remedy. The solution is simple and one that can be executed in a few easy-to-follow steps …
Which, I will provide shortly. First, I want to talk about a very special number. That number is 72. No, this is not the answer to life, the universe and everything else (for you Hitchhiker’s Guide fans out there … anybody?), but it is the number to remember when you are thinking about dpi (dots per inch) for any image you are uploading to the web. At 72 dpi, your image maintains its quality, but is in a manageable size so not to clog up bandwidth for those visiting your website. Remember this number and your visitors will thank you (as opposed to drumming their computer desks impatiently, mumbling nasty horrible things about you under their breath).
The first part of the process is resizing the image to an appropriate dpi (you guessed it … 72). You will need to click on the “image” menu and select “image size,” which will open a dialog box. You will see the following options:
- Image Size in MB
– Pixel Dimension (Size of image in pixels)
– Document Size (Size of image in inches/cm)
– Three checkboxes for Scale Styles, Constrain Proportions and Resample Images
Once you have resized your image. just go to the “File’ menu and select “Save for Web and Other Devices.” This little gem allows you to produce a copy of your image optimal for Web use. This means that the image file will be as small as possible (without compromising image integrity), and that the image will use only Web-safe colors (if desired). “Save for Web” can produce GIF, JPEG, or PNG format images. Once you select “Save for Web,” a dialog box will open. You can choose format (JPEG/GIF), quality using a slider (keep it as high as possible) and an option to resize Pixel Dimensions (we suggest adjusting to size of your blog - most photo blogs are between 600 and 900 pixels). Feed in the required dimensions. You may choose a different size according to your needs.
However you decide to perform this operation, be sure to remember the 72 dpi and Save for Web. It will certainly make opening your site smoother for anyone stopping in to see your work. You don’t want to turn off potential clients or “fans” with slow loading.
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years and secretly dreams of sharing ideas with Neil Gaiman over coffee at DragonCon.
When you hear the word “gimmick,” your gut reaction may be to turn the other way and run. Fast. Gimmicks are for the unwashed masses – for people who would actually purchase a beer hat or one of those ridiculous faux-bass wall mounts that sings “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Gimmicks are for LOSERS. Right?
Well, I actually owned a beer hat in college and I’m pretty sure that there are no less than 5 people in my family who have purchased or received a “Big Mouth Billy Bass” for Christmas (maybe it’s the same one). The truth is we love our gimmicks. Think about the most crowded stores during the holiday season: Spenser’s Gifts and Brookstone (you know, for the moneyed losers). Both stores are chock full of catchy gimmicks that, for some reason, register in our heads as “you must have this!”
Truth is, “gimmick” is not always a four-letter word. Used properly, a well-thought-out “gimmick” can actually be a positive business move – especially when it comes to naming. In two recent articles, I’ve discussed strategies for both branding and naming your business. Both were focused on the idea of embracing your brand and embracing your name. The smart use of a gimmick to inspire your branding, naming or both is one means to that end. What you may regard as “gimmicky,” could, in fact, be a way to make you more emotionally vested in your branding.
There is no better illustration of this idea than the business owner who wishes to use her own name for that of her business. Let’s call her Robin Wainwright. We’ll say Robin is a children’s photographer in New Mexico. Robin is looking for a new branding strategy and has “no idea” what she should do. All she does know is that she wants to use her name for her business – Robin Wainwright Photography. Great! Immediately, she adds, “but I don’t think I want a bird. It’s too obvious.”
You hear that? That’s the sound of designers around the world collectively sighing at Robin’s decision about the bird. Yes, a bird may be the “obvious” choice, but when your name is Robin, the use of a bird has a basis – it’s warranted. However, in this case it isn’t the only choice. The name Wainwright could be of use as well. A search of the name reveals that it comes from the English word for wheel maker – as in wagon wheel. How perfect; especially since Robin lives in an “Old West” state. Not to mention, she’s a children’s photographer, so the idea of a wagon can be manipulated further.
Okay, so Robin’s name may be a little too easy, but you get the point. Even in a case as obvious as Robin’s, the use of a “gimmick” doesn’t necessarily have to be the dominant element in the brand design. The robin could be just one of a handful of design elements tied together by a larger idea (e.g. a nest or a tree). It comes down to taking stock of one’s resources and utilizing those resources as best as possible. However, you are not limited in how and to what extent those resources are used. The most important lesson to take from this article is to not limit your branding and naming options by excluding possibilities because you think something is “gimmicky.” People love gimmicks and, if done in the right way, a gimmick can bring you that much closer to a brand and name that you can truly embrace.
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years. His full name is Tyrie Joseph Charles Smith. His brand would be a king wearing a multi-colored coat, hammering a blockheaded kid on an anvil.
When it comes to brand identity, even some of the biggest companies fall flat. Case in point, Coca-Cola’s mid-eighties snafu, New Coke. If you aren’t old enough to remember that strange time, allow me to give a bit of a recap: we had a former b-list actor (featured in several 50s-era spaghetti westerns) as our president, fashion highlights included Jams, parachute pants, Ocean Pacific t-shirts, and lots of acid-washed, paint-splattered clothing, Dippity-Do hair gel was a staple for both men and women, every popular song was required, by law, to have a synthesizer and/or drum machine (see Flock of Seagulls, Tears For Fears, Berlin, the Eurhythmics, et al), hip-hop was still fun and “safe” and the spot for the coolest television show on air was a toss-up between Miami Vice and Knight Rider (yes, Hasselhoff was a god). It was a strange time, indeed. So strange, in fact, that the hands-down, number-one soft drink company in the world decided to abandon its original formula and its long-standing, globally-recognized brand to introduce a new keystone product with a “computer generated” talking head as its spokesperson. It was truly a branding disaster.
Coca-Cola’s biggest mistake was its failure to commit to its brand identity. It’s strange to think that a company with such a recognizable brand would ever fall into such a trap, but the reality is that most companies, at some point or another, struggle with embracing their brand identity. Why? Well, it’s simple: markets change, people get nervous, triggers get pulled. In the case of Coca-Cola, though it was on top in the world of soft drinks, it was being threatened by relatively-new-kid-on-the-block Pepsi Cola. Coke was struggling to compete with Pepsi’s newer, hipper branding strategy. There was a real need for adjustment. However, adjusting to a market and completely abandoning one’s brand identity are two entirely different beasts (and the former will almost always explode into an ugly mess). What Coca-Cola should have done (ah, hindsight) was to embrace its brand identity and innovate it, building on its existing strengths (namely, its position as one of the most recognized brands on the planet!) and invigorating its standing in the marketplace.
Embracing brand identity is key for success in any business. And no matter if you are refreshing an existing design or starting from scratch, whether you are a one-person show or have 100 employees, embracing brand identity cannot be a fickle act. The brand is as much a part of a business as the products that business sells. It may seem that branding is the easy part of running a successful company, but, as our friends at Coke taught us in the 80s, many businesses struggle with brand identity everyday. In terms of brand development, it becomes even harder. Brand development is oftentimes a tug-of-war between designers and company owners and executives over the myriad of details that go into the process. The smarter execs recognize their limitations and allow designers to do what they are trained to do. The greatest failures in marketing history happen when the opposite occurs.
What makes branding so hard for some business owners? Well, that’s really a question about trust. It’s the trust involved with turning over, what could be, their biggest investment to another individual to develop. It’s like handing over the keys to your house to a new acquaintance and saying, “Okay, make it pretty.” Granted, the branding process isn’t a blind endeavor; yet, no matter how much information a client gives to a designer or how involved he or she may be in the process, it can be truly hard to “let go” and trust the designer’s decisions.
But, trust is exactly what every business owner should do. If you’ve taken the time to research and find the right designer for you, entered into a contract with that designer, invested the time and energy in providing information to that designer and given the “okay” on the designer’s choices, then you should embrace those decisions and trust to the designer’s expertise in regard to your brand and all the design elements that accompany it. In other words, embrace your brand identity.
In a recent ezine article, “Embracing Your Brand,” Charen Smith notes that branding goes beyond marketing materials, but should be a part of every aspect of one’s business – that it needs to be a part of every aspect of the business. Smith writes:
To spread your brand you need to ensure that everything your company does is linked with that brand name. You need to get custom printing done to have letterheads on everything you send out. If someone gets something from anyone in your company you should be sure they’re going to see your brand name in a prominent position.
Smith makes an important point. Having a smart logo and a clean, sleek website aren’t enough when it comes to embracing your brand identity. Everything from the tag line to stationery to business cards needs to incorporate the brand on some level. Even seemingly banal things, such as the language of your website, need to incorporate this philosophy. For instance, if your brand is something fun and whimsical, then the language of your site should also be fun and whimsical. If your business is sleek and stylish, then, again, the language on your website – everything from your personnel bios to your blog – should be a reflection of that sleek and stylish element of your brand. This principle extends to every aspect of one’s business self or personae. It should appear in your personal style, the design of your work space, your letterhead and even, perhaps, your choices of where you hold business lunches. The more a business can incorporate the brand into the day-to-day, the more that brand becomes recognizable to clients and potential clients.
In another aspect of the process, you must EMBRACE YOUR NAME. It’s amazing how simple this concept appears on the surface, yet how difficult it becomes for a company to follow through. If your new brand identity is named “Surfing Unicorn” and indeed employs a unicorn on a Santa Cruz surfboard, cresting a “bitchin” wave, then you need to embrace that name to the fullest. Surfing Unicorn, LLC doesn’t need to have a bird as its logo. Nor does it need to be a simple, script logo. If you’ve signed off on “Surfing Unicorn” then, by golly, there needs to be a unicorn! (unless you’re going for irony, in which case there needs to be an ogre or, at the least, some play on the idea of a surfing unicorn like one of those narwhal thingies that Norwegian fishermen thought that was a sea unicorn) Furthermore, every other aspect of your branding needs to be, in one way or another, an extension of that name. Surfing Unicorn, LLC needs to be communicated in everything from the tag line to the website to the stationery.
Once again, this all comes down to trust (though, if a design firm throws “Surfing Unicorn” your way, you can trust that somebody is either A) using illicit substances, B) out to destroy your business, or C) carries a Trapper Keeper … possibly with unicorns and kittens on it). When working with a design firm, trust to the fact that everyone involved in the development of your brand are individuals who are A) highly experienced in what they do, B) just as invested in the success of your company as you are and C) have a broader perspective of branding principles than you do. That’s why you hired them. These designers, illustrators, and copywriters are branding junkies 
. They live for this stuff. And what’s wonderful for the client is that they are applying all of that knowledge to create a look and feel for your business that is entirely unique to that business and are ensuring that your brand is something that clients will recognize as a relevant, quality and necessary part of their lives. Trust your designers. Trust your identity.
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years, none of which took place in the 80s (and that is really sad, because he like totally missed out on some bitchin’ professional fashion trends and like, ya know, could have totally been one of those gnarly marketing dudes with a Delorean and a rad Don Johnson sport coat).
Have you ever met someone and thought, “he’s not a “Robert – a “Doug” or even a “Brad,” but not a Robert.” It’s an interesting study in human nature in how we assign certain characteristics – physically or personality-wise – to something seemingly subjective as a name. This phenomenon is based, somewhat, in the concepts “semiotics” and “metonymy,” but I’ll leave the linguistics lesson for the classroom. The main point is that we assign “things” certain names and when those names don’t match up with our preconceptions about “thing” and “name,” a little bell goes off in our heads (however, if you are hearing bells all the time, you should really get that checked out). There is perhaps nowhere else this phenomenon is clearer than in branding.
As branding consultants will tell you, the strength of a brand lies in the name and how well it communicates all the unsaid aspects of a business – mission, product, philosophy, etc. – in a single word or phrase. However, the name is only a piece of the overall branding puzzle. The real magic happens when a business embraces the name to its fullest potential, incorporating all of those unspoken nuances into a branding mission. It really is all about naming your brand and embracing your name. Though, it’s easier to see how this works if we can look at the process of naming in practice. For that, I want to turn to a recent client and her personal journey towards creating a new identity for her photography business and how that journey led to a lesson, though indirect, about semiotics.
Allison Parker came to Luxecetera looking for a new way to brand her photography business, Phreckle Nose Photography. Like a lot of our clients, she was happy with her name, but wanted something more from her brand – something that better communicated her business’ mission and her philosophy on photography. Furthermore, Allison was looking for a brand that could carry her business forward.
Initially, we looked at Allison’s business name, “Phreckle Nose,” and her business’ focus, primarily children’s photography, and immediately honed in on the fun, whimsical, kid-centeric aspect of the company. It seemed to be an easy fit. However, as we talked to Allison, we could see that her vision, as she saw it, was something not exactly relatable to the name Phreckle Nose.
Over the next few weeks of consult time, we, along with Allison, struggled with how to keep the name (a name that Allison and her husband developed together), but communicate her particular business perspective. In my interview with Allison, I gave her my theory on changing a name once a business was already established – that if you have a good reputation and are well-known under one moniker, changing midstream runs the risk of affecting relationships with established clients. To a fault, I stretched the boundaries of what we could accomplish with Phreckle Nose and tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. Going over the conversation with Ashley, I started to realize the problem with my advice – that Allison’s vision for her company had outgrown her old name (and, thusly, her old brand).
It wasn’t even my company and I was having trouble with altering the name. Yet, the fact remained; Allison’s revised vision of a company that communicated a refined but playful, vintage, classic product no longer fit with her name. Additionally, Allison had dreams of broadening her scope as a photographer. It wasn’t something she was looking to do immediately, but she wanted the option to photograph more seniors, couples, brides and families in the future. Again, this was a vision not relatable to the semiotics of Phreckle Nose. Our sketches of fairytale frog princes and cartoon-ish blue birds wouldn’t fly (had to get one pun in).
It took Allison some time to get used to the idea too. “It’s so obvious now,” Allison says about her new name and brand. “I didn’t get it until I saw the design concepts. Now, I am so happy.” What Allsion saw in those concepts was the branding manifestation of semiotics. The new name, Feather Nest, is built out of the phrase “feather your nest,” which was a tagline Allison had used for Phreckle Nose. Her perspective on photography is to bring art – the art of moments – into her clients’ homes. To that end, “Feather Nest” works metonymically to represent this idea. Breaking the name down into its parts, “feather” and “nest” we uncover even deeper meaning from the images these words/symbols evoke. In this instance, ambiguity is intentional and important because we want the client to imagine several images and emotions associated with these terms. Too much detail, like Eagle’s Feather Sweetgrass Nest, would be restrictive. As it is, clients may imagine the softness of feathers, downy feathers, beautiful feathers (like those of a peacock), while nest may evoke ideas like homeplace, coziness, and something thoughtfully put together.
And though clear to her now, Allison still remembers why she was initially hesitant, “I just saw it [Phreckle Nose] as something else. I was blinded by love, I guess. It’s like renaming your kid – you know, just waking up one day and having namer’s remorse and calling your child something different. I just didn’t see it.” A big part of her “seeing it” was the time she had to think about her brand during the process. “I am really grateful for the time it took to put this all together. It really forces you think about the business – what we are, where we are going. I got more than just a new brand and a new name, I got a new business plan. I needed that time really see what I wanted and what I needed.” Ultimately, what Allison came to see was that she needed a name that she could fully embrace. If she stuck with the Phreckle Nose brand, she had to embrace what that name represented – its semiotics and metonymy. If she wasn’t able to do that, then she had to accept that her inability to do so said something about her business; what it was and where it was going. That, in turn, translated to the fact that she had to find a name she could embrace – fully and without question.
To borrow a cliché, “what’s in a name?” Well, as you can see, there’s a great deal. Names carry weight. They overflow with ideas and represent different things to different people. In branding, the ability of any business to “embrace the name” lies in understanding what that name communicates about the business. It’s an all or none dynamic. When you look at your company name, ask yourself, “can I embrace these words and the images they evoke as representative of my company and its mission?” If your answer is not a firm “yes,” then it’s time for a change. The ability to embrace your name trumps any history or attachment you may feel towards that moniker. If you can’t embrace your name, then the name is not fulfilling its purpose. It’s not an easy path to walk, however, as Allison says, “it takes time, but it is definitely worth it.”
Tyrie Smith is the copywriter and editor for Luxecetera. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for 10 years and spends his downtime thinking of better names for well-established companies … if only they would listen.
Keep an eye out for a Allison’s brand feature on the blog very soon… it will include some YUMMY letterpress business cards!
As some of us, and doubtless some of you are gearing up for the beginning of the school year, learning is in the air! In our continuing quest to give you more design vocabulary, and to help you describe your brand, your business, your needs, and your desires, we bring to you this extensive list of design terms. In our recent articles, we have delved into the terminology of type. By now we expect you all know the difference between a serif and a sans serif, or a script and a blackletter font. This list of terms goes beyond just type, covering terms generally associated with design, color, and composition to name a few.
Balance: Balance is an equilibrium resulting from looking at images and judging them against our ideas of physical structure (such as mass, gravity or the sides of a page). Balance can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. Symmetrical balance occurs when the weight of a composition is evenly distributed around a central vertical or horizontal axis. Asymmetrical balance occurs when the weight of a composition is not evenly distributed around a central axis. It involves the arranging of objects of differing size in such a way that they balance one another with their respective visual weights.
Rhythm: The repetition or alteration of elements, often with regularly defined intervals, or spaces. Rhythm can create a sense of movement, progression, or simply repetition.
Proportion: The comparison of dimension of elements in relation to scale.
Dominance or Emphasis: Determines what in the composition is given the most visual weight. Can be expressed as primary, secondary and tertiary information; or as dominant, sub-dominant, and subordinate.
Unity: The relationship of all parts of the composition to the whole.
Hue: Hue is generally what is meant when you ask “What color is that?” What you are asking for is the hue. Red, yellow, green, blue, those are all the hues.
Saturation: Saturation is just like it sounds, the saturation of the color, or hue. For instance, a room is painted one color, but throughout the day the saturation changes based on lighting conditions. Think about it in terms of pale or weak versus pure or strong.
Shade: Adding black to a pure hue.
Tint: Adding white to a pure hue.
Tones: Adding gray to a pure hue.
Value: When we talk about a color in terms of its “lightness” and “darkness” we are talking about its value, this may also be called brightness. It is a measure of a color in relation to white. For instance, yellow is brighter than olive green, which is brighter than black.
Alignment: How a line of type relates to the edges of a column. Examples are flush left, flush right, or justified.
Kerning: Kerning is the adjustment of the space between two letters. If a typeface is spaced too uniformly, it creates a pattern in the letters that is not uniform enough, so to remedy that, designers often kern the letter spacing to create optical balance and equality.
Leading: The space between lines of type. Also called line spacing. Why is it called leading? It goes back to the days of letterpress and manual printing. When the typesetter hand-set the small lead type, letter by letter, they would space lines with a long solid piece of lead, whose thickness determined the spacing to the next line of type. The term has stayed, even as typesetting moved from manual to digital.
Tracking: Tracking is adjusting the spacing across a word, line, or column of text. Also known as letter spacing.
Typeface: A typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity. A typeface usually comprises an alphabet of letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. The term typeface is frequently interchanged with font, however the two terms had more clearly differentiated meanings before the advent of desktop publishing. A font is a specific style within a type family, or typeface. For example, Adobe Garamond Pro Bold is a font, within the typeface Adobe Garamond.
Vector: Vector graphics are comprised of geometric “primitives” such as points, lines, curves, and/or polygons which use mathematical equations to create the image. The benefit of using vector images is that they are infinitely scalable without distortion, and create smaller file sizes. So your logo, whether it is 1/4″ high for a business card, or blown up for a car wrap, will maintain its quality.
Raster: Raster graphics, unlike vector graphics, are created with a series of pixels, or points of color. Photographs, for instance, are raster graphics. Raster graphics can show great photographic detail, however, if you have ever taken a picture with your cell phone and tried to blow it up, you are well aware that a raster image is not scalable above its original size. That is because when you blow up a raster image, you are making the pixels visible, which creates that unattractive jagged, or artifacted look.
~Intern Julia
