Business Cards and Your Logo
Business cards are the perfect place for your logo. As far as your brand is concerned, your logo encapsulates the sum total of your marketing image. Your business cards are likely the most common marketing tool you will use, especially when you are just getting the business going. With the limited real estate on a business card of only 2.5” X 3”, your logo is a perfect fit for this small format.
There are many ways to incorporate your logo into business card printing. The key is to make sure that all contact information elements remain intact and readable. Beyond that, your imagination is your only real limit. This article discusses just a few ideas for how to incorporate a logo into business card printing.
Standard format
The standard location for a logo is in the upper left hand corner of your business card. The company name, your name, your title, and other information are located to the side and below the logo. This is a typical format that customers expect to see, so you can’t go wrong with this layout.
Center it
You could also try putting your logo at the top center of your business card. Put all of your contact information along the bottom of the business card. This format puts emphasis on your logo and can work to help reinforce your brand.
Vertical
Try rotating your card 90° and including your logo at the top. This is another great way to highlight your logo, and this format may also give you more room for your contact information.
Use the back
Finally, try using the back of your business card for your logo. Most professional printing firms offer business card printing on both sides, so take advantage of the fact that you can put a full size logo on the back of your business card.
The Best Way To Incorporate Your Logo Into Your Brochure
An important point to remember when designing and printing brochures for your company or products is that branding helps to establish your identity. A great looking brochure might sell a product, but it may not keep your customers coming back to buy more. A strong brand presence is also important to form and maintain a loyal customer base. Good products and services may go ignored without a strong brand identity.
Why emphasize your logo in your brochure and other printed materials?
It is important to tell your customer about your brand on all your products and communications. Whether it is on receipts, shopping bags, posters or brochures, your logo should be front and center. Some companies have an iconic graphic such as Adidas’ three stripes or a recognizable color scheme. Your logo and other identifying symbols should be used on all your printed materials in a consistent way. Your customer should be able to immediately identify your brand and remember it, so they can look for more of your products at a later time.
Creating a strong brand identity is crucial to maintaining your sales and developing a larger customer base. Great products are often not enough. Your brand’s name and image must be interesting and memorable to the customer. Your logo should cause the customer to make associations in his or her mind. It should stand for something more than just the products. Once you develop a great brand image, you need to make sure the customer remembers it with iconic images and logo designs. The best way to keep customers aware of your brand is to allow them to see your logo everywhere you can put it: in emails, on websites, on printed correspondence, on sales tags, and in advertisements.
How should you use your logo in your brochure?
Logo Design Basics and Tips
A logo is one of the first things you should design when you start a new business. Your logo is what customers look to when they remember you or identify your business. Your logo also gives customers more faith and trust in you as a business. A business that doesn’t even have a logo is not yet a business in many people’s eyes. That’s why you gotta get a logo first!
A logo contributes to your credibility, memorability and visibility. You might want to put off designing your logo until you get more money, but the longer you wait, the longer you’ll have to wait to create marketing materials, including your Web site. That’s because your logo needs to go on every piece of marketing material and your product packaging too. That’s how important it is.
Your logo should be unique and heaven forbid, please do not use ClipArt! ClipArt screams amateur and unprofessional. Besides, if you use ClipArt, your logo could end up looking just like your competitor down the street.
The first step: design or text?
The first thing you want to decide on is whether you’ll have a design represent your company, your company’s name as your logo or a combination of both. There’s no right way to design a logo: all of these choices are equally good. It all depends on what’s needed for your company.
Design
If you decide on design, try to think of a way to incorporate your industry or your product into the design. I saw one clever logo for an airline called Peace Air, and its logo looked like a peace sign – the plane’s body was the vertical line that makes up the middle of the peace sign and the plane’s wings made up the two smaller lines that go out to the side of the peace sign. That’s pretty clever if you ask me.
Of course, you can’t always incorporate something from your industry into your logo. But it’s always nice if you can!
Text
On to text. If you decide to use purely text as your logo, here are some font tips:
1. Choose a font that fits your business’s personality. Serif fonts, the ones with “feet” give off a mature and established feeling whereas a sans-serif font (without feet) looks more modern and young.
2. Use a font that no one else uses. You can buy fonts online and download them, and some you can even download for free. I’d advise against the free ones, because those are the ones everyone else will be using. Buy a good, wide-ranging set of fonts so that you have less of a chance of looking like some other business. You can also create your own font by hiring a designer or buying software that lets you create fonts, like CorelDRAW. There are plenty of other software options out there, so just Google “create fonts software.”
3. Modify the font if possible. If you choose a font that looks similar to others, or if you just want to add a little bit of flair, modify your font just a bit. You could add longer serif “feet” or stretch the font to make it look wider. You could even just modify one letter of your logo to make it look different. A slight modification can make your logo look unique and add visual interest.
Branding: More Than a Logo
I have bad news for people who think they can slap their company’s logo on a product and call that branding. A cow might be “branded” just by slapping a name on it, but a product that looks like all others needs more than a logo to be considered branded.
Customizing Products
Nowadays, consumers can customize almost anything. From cars to clothing, you can design the product you want online. And then you can order it. You can “have it your way” anywhere, not just at Burger King anymore. Nike has been allowing consumers to design their own Nike kicks on their Web site since 1999. Jones Soda offers customization of their labels. Even kids get to design their own lovable companions with the Build-A-Bear workshops where kids can customize their new furry friends.
All this customization means that businesses can’t rely on their logos as their only brand identity. Once everyone starts customizing products, the product itself is what needs to shout to world “I’m a Mac” or “I’m a Nike.” The apple and swoosh just won’t cut it. That’s why Apple and Nike have built other brand recognition into their products so that they don’t need that logo recognition.
The Brand Function
Your brand is people’s perception of your products and company. Branding is the marketing effort of telling people about your company and your beliefs. Branding doesn’t only include your logo. It includes
• Colors (brown=UPS; red=Coke)
• Slogans (“Have you driven a Ford lately?” “I’m lovin’ it.” (McDonalds))
• Fonts
• Promise (“We try harder.” (Avis))
• Packaging
Basically, anything that consumers see when they look at your product is branding. So, if people are customizing everything about your product, how does it stay yours? How does your brand stay recognizable?
iPod: Good Branding
I hate to use Apple yet again in a branding blog, but darn it, the branding minds there do such a good job that I have to. The iPod is a great example of branding without the logo. Where’s the logo? On the back. Which goes against everything that is taught in Logo 101. You always put the logo on the front of a package where it has the greatest chance to be seen. But the key with the iPod is that the whole product is branded – from the click wheel to the shape – you know it’s an iPod without having to see the logo. No one would confuse a portable CD player made by Sony with an iPod. But people might confuse that CD player with one made by Samsung or Panasonic. If Sony removed the logo from the CD player, you wouldn’t be able to tell it from other brands. With the iPod, you can take the logo off and everyone will know it’s an iPod because the design is part of the brand.
So when you’re thinking of how to brand your product, think about how your product looks or feels different from competitors. What can you offer as part of your brand that others don’t and can’t? When consumers customize your product by altering the color or accessories, what’s left? Can you still tell it’s your brand?
