One of the Key Electrical logo variants

Any small business owner will agree that it is vitally important to spend your marketing budget wisely, in times of economic uncertainty this is especially true. Finding the right balance between spending too much and devoting sufficient resources to effective and professional marketing has never been more important.

Often SMEs and new businesses will try to save money by producing their own design and marketing materials, while in some cases this can pay dividends we cannot recommend it for all small businesses.

After-all every brochure, advertisement, and business card that you pass out plays an important role in establishing the image of your company. The same is true of your company’s logo and website. The design skills and techniques used to create your company’s marketing materials establish your company’s corporate identity, so why would you risk sending out the wrong message by relying on amateur graphic design work to represent your business.

The benefits your business will receive from professional logo design are

• professional image
• make your business stand out from the competition
• confirm credibility
• design longevity

So when Wigan based electrical engineering company Key Electrical Ltd. decided it was time to update their old logo they turned to Creative Mixed Media’s designer Barry Jackson for inspiration. The brief was to create a simple logo that represented the company,s core business, it must be effective without colour and contain a design element which could be used effectively on its own to represent the company, The final design would form the basis for stationary marketing materials and vehicle graphics.

logo development ideas

After initial consultation with Key electrical managing director Brian Plunkett, Barry produced a number of design ideas in sketch form. From these it soon became clear that the company name built around a stylized bulb motif would fit the brief perfectly. This idea was then developed further using a vector based illustration program, working only in black and white at this stage of the design ensures that the logo will look good in its simplest form. The final stage was to colour the logo and then incorporate it into stationary designs.

Final design incorporated into letterhead and business card

If you haven’t had your ‘lightbulb moment’ yet, and are struggling with a design that strengthens the image of your business just get in touch.

Restaurant[mappress

With a new hotel to promote, Sales Manager – for the Ramada Plaza, Southport – Georgia Hayes has her work cut out. With a ‘new build’ hotel like this, how do you get people around the world aware of the hotel, how it looks and how it feels to stay there? We hope to contribute in some part by making the images we have shot of the hotel viewable, down-loadable and usable – by way of a ‘Creative Commons Licence’ – to a global audience. Putting the images at high resolution on our Flickr account with Tags and Links should help anyone who is looking for images of Southport find the images and use them. If they appear in any features illustrating Southport, so much the better.

This is a new approach we are taking with our images whereby the intention is to have as many eyes looking at the clients approved images of their product as we can. In the past many photographers instincts have been to closely guard and restrict the use of images. However, for some purposes this approach may be counter productive and not always serve the clients best needs. We will not always give our copyright away but for some clients in some situations this may have major benefits. You can see a larger range of images on our account at Flickr.

If you want to find out more about how you could benefit from having images of your product or service take advantage of these techniques call us or send an email. We will be very happy to talk to tell you more.
[mappress] ]]> http://creativemixedmedia.com/new-ramada-plaza-and-new-marketing-tools/feed/ 0 http://creativemixedmedia.com/simon-smithies-online-sales/ http://creativemixedmedia.com/simon-smithies-online-sales/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:49:09 +0000 admin http://www.creativemixedmedia.com/?p=389 Simon Smithies is an Actor and TV Presenter. Simon has done a lot of work with online selling TV channels and knows how to demonstrate a product to its best advantage. In this video Simon takes us through the virtues of an ipod dock. The benefit of having such video’s on your web site is that Simon or indeed any other presenter can be there on your site, selling your product 24 hours a day.

Working with a presenter like Simon, we can set up a temporary studio on your premises and record several such sales sessions in a day allowing you to have the power of such online selling techniques right there on your web site under your control. For the right products, these sales techniques really work.

David Kirkwood

Northern Lights clients were treated to an inspirational talk by leading creative consultant and internet marketeer Dave Kirkwood on Tuesday 12th August 2008. Dave, who was part of the team who launched laterooms.com, gave the audience some accounts of his career highlights so far. Dave also gave a quick guide to what businesses should be looking at if they want to be effective with their marketing efforts.

We must hold up our hands here and confess that Dave has been giving some mentoring help to Creative Mixed Media. We have been busy soaking up his advice for a couple of months now and it really has enlivened, focused and transformed our business.

Northern Lights Audience