Tag: Educational

Call them experts. Call them genius. Just make sure you call them.

Clients who trust a professional to work on their car, or perform surgery, should no less trust professional designers. Gain the full advantage of a designer’s talents and processes to help your business thrive in a competitive marketplace. From putting your name on the map of endless competition to putting your product on the right shelf in the right store, a true design professional adds great value where the chop shops and amateurs leave you wanting.

First of all, professional designers are committed to quality. The sure sign of a hack is a rip-off logo, bad letter spacing, or poor color choices. Therefore, quality is hands down the primary factor between an expert and an amateur.

Second, professionals work from a code of ethical principles. A true professional will never take on projects that they don’t believe in. They will never pursue conflicting interests. And above all, they will follow through on their promises.

Lastly, the true professional stands on a platform of the best business practices. The ultimate goal is to serve their client’s interests best. These designers are a rare breed. Thinking ahead, they can craft a brand that is timeless.

Ultimately, a designer is an inventor, creating custom, individual, unique concepts from scratch. All the while making it specific to the client’s needs, without the use of templates and cheap tricks. A designer is a problem solver, an engineer, and an artist. Designers work for their clients to help them succeed and grow. No more. No less. The aim is at the center of the target.

Doodl has established a high standard for professional practice as a branding expert and designer. Let us help your business do the same.

Graphic Design is an investment in value.

First of all, Graphic Design is an investment in innovative thinking. It is positioning a brand by communicating its values. It is creating competitive advantages, customer trust and loyalty, and expanding market share.

The modern business environment is changing rapidly. Competition is increasing and businesses need solutions to stay profitable. Most businesses lean toward the lowest-cost producer. Instead, they should consider a tried and true solution—professional design.

Graphic design provides new life to existing products and businesses. It increases desire and ultimately improves market share. It is a low-cost investment that is most effective when employed early in corporate plans. Then executed throughout the life of the product or business. Learn more about return on investment. But, it is never too late to start.

Doodl would like to be your strategic partner. We like to get involved as early as possible to clarify your message. In the end, we will produce a memorable, provocative, and thoughtful strategy to help you and your business succeed.

We can help.

Doodl has the experience, knowledge, and intestinal fortitude to build substantial brands from the ground up. We can also rejuvenate a brand that has grown stagnant or cold and give it new life. Sound good? Give us a call to learn more about how we can help your business or product.

True product branding is an art.

Over the last hundred years, the art of branding has shifted from announcing that a product or service existed to becoming a culture shaped by that product or service. First, let us remember a simple definition of branding is: what you stand for. How does the public view you? What are the ideas they hold? Are they good or bad?

A short history

Let’s review the history of branding. We’ll see how the modern definition differs from that of the past.

A major step in the creative revolution came in the 1980s when entertainment and experience became the top priority. Branding was about creating a memorable experience for the customer. Not just the facts.

Advertising basically relied on creating an external brand image. One that counted on awareness, memories, and affection to drive sales. This model may have worked then, but with increased access to the internet, it’s a new world. Word-of-mouth reports, social networking, and personal experience have replaced even the emotional connections. This is because consumers now have easy access to the internal climate of any company. Therefore businesses cannot say one thing externally and internally act another way. Society wants honesty. And that runs true even with ads and products that they see and buy.

The Shift

Also, the most recent shift in branding uses sociological anthropology to shed light on this phenomenon. Man instinctively wants and seeks to live a life of meaning. One of the largest influence we have to define “meaning” comes through the filter of culture. In a consumer-driven culture, we want the brands that we associate with. If the meaning behind the values of a company matches the consumer’s values then they fuse themselves together. So we can see through values that it is the culture that traditionally gives individuals the pieces that compose their self-worth.

In today’s economy, our worldview and culture come from many places. We have an unprecedented amount of choices due to the global community that we live in. Strategists are beginning to ask: what role does a brand play in consumption? What they are seeing is that “brands are symbolic units which are used, along with other symbolic units drawn from careers, music, fashion, religion, etc., to create this mosaic of the self.”¹ Moving beyond entertainment, awareness, and features, brands are now as good as values.

In Conclusion

So, In conclusion, if a brand’s values are compatible with a customer’s values, that product or service becomes part of the customer’s expression of who they are and what is important to them. Contact us to find out how you can promote your business values to customers who are already supporting similar interests.

1 Heilbrunn, Benoit. “Cultural Branding Between Utopia and A-topia.” In Schroeder and Salzer-Morling. Brand Culture. Routledge, 2006.

Whether you realize it or not, the colors of your brand influence people. From the ever-recognizable red of Coca-Cola to the bright blue of Ford, the way we perceive and react to color affects us in a multitude of ways. The culmination of these things is called color theory.

Color theory is more important than you think.

Color theory is a science in itself. There’s a lot involved. Perception of color is subjective to our own personal experiences and our broader cultural experiences. Colors not only affect the mind but also the body. Studies have shown that actual physiological changes occur when people are exposed to certain colors. Color can stimulate, depress, increase appetite, and create emotional responses and feelings of warmth or coolness. For example, red has been shown to stimulate the senses and raise blood pressure while blue has a calming effect. Red has cultural associations of importance (think red carpet), danger (stop signs), and anger. Sometimes, adjusting the brilliance, darkness, or lightness of a color can alter the psychological response. The rules of color harmony and context may also be followed to make sure that the color combinations do not put stress on the viewer’s eyes or make your message difficult to read.

Color says much without ever using words and can add vibrancy and life to a business image.

Find out how Doodl can help your colors speak.

Last time, we considered “what” your brand is, and decided on a simplified answer—what you stand for, how you are perceived by the public, and what ideas are held in an individual’s mind about your business. Now let’s consider “why” your brand matters and “who” it matters to.

If the simple definition we have settled on is true, then your brand is the deciding factor on if you will attract new clients, how much business your current clients will continue to throw your way, how readily people refer your company to others, and will even influence how much effort and care your employees will put forth while on the payroll (Ask an Apple employee what they think about their company). Businesses need happy clients to survive and we are all looking for referrals. The better the brand, the easier this becomes. But a great brand affects other important folks that will have an impact on business productivity. What every business needs is buy-in.

On the contrary, the wrong brand can be a real party pooper for your business. Let’s consider who those party goers are and consider if your brand creates buy-in with them:

• The Public
• Clients
• Potential Clients
• Partners
• Employees
• Those who give referrals
• Recruiters
• Suppliers
• Lenders
• The Media
• Competition
• Peers

Doodl can help your party last long into the night with the kind of energy and excitement that rock stars wish they had. Give us a call or drop an email to chat about how to get there.

In the world of brand marketing, things are so simple that they often become hard. Doodl is always here to help, and in the spirit of helping, we would like to offer a quick way to understand your brand.

A clear definition is helpful:

YOUR BRAND IS What you stand for, how you are perceived by the public, and what ideas are held in an individual’s mind about your business.

You can influence your brand perception through three core areas:

WHAT YOU DO: (Hard Characteristics) Strategy, services, fees, reputation, market position, size, turnover.

HOW YOU DO IT: (Soft Characteristics) Service philosophy or managing the client experience, personality of partners, personality of the staff.

WHAT YOU SAY: (Overall Character) Tone and style of communication, corporate Identity, and image, marketing and collateral, public relations, physical environment/offices. This would be your brand marketing. Another way to say it is taking your brand to the streets.  Getting the message out about what you do, how you do it, and what you say.

Find out how Doodl can help you say what you mean and build a better brand.

Running a business in today’s marketplace is far more demanding than it was 10 or 20 years ago with all the new technology and different forms of competition springing up. Thankfully, some things are still the same, like your commitment to customer satisfaction, client relationships, and the four Ps of marketing. Today we’re talking promotion.

If you’ve forgotten the four Ps from your marketing 101 class, here’s a refresher course:

• PRODUCT. What is the main thing that justifies your business’s existence?
• PRICE. How much do you need to charge and how much more can you charge to increase revenue?
• PLACEMENT. Where will your product be sold? Also thought of as distribution.
• PROMOTION. How will people find your product?

These four Ps are all equally critical to your business’s success. Most companies think hard about the product, how much they can charge for the product and if that price point will make them profit, and where they want to sell their product. However, many businesses stop at this point and leave the fourth P up to chance. Sure, you can throw some money at an advertisement here, or a brochure there, but throwing money at promotion is not nearly enough to address the fourth P. No, if a business wants to be healthy, it should invest in the development of its brand strategy. That is why Doodl exists. Contact us to find out how we can develop a consistent creative promotion that will help build brand loyalty and long-term effectiveness.

Seems like a lifetime ago that I started doing art and design professionally at DesignSight in Seattle, Washington. The year was 1997 but I had already wet my whistle with several freelance projects by then. Then one day, I walked into an interview with my Ross dress shirt and crooked tie. A couple of gentlemen took a chance on me and I will be eternally grateful to both Brent Cook and Chris Settle. They were great at allowing me to screw up and learn from and through their business as a young pup. Now I own my own business and wish I had paid more attention. At any rate. Here’s to you Chris and Brent—thank you!