Monkey Business Agency - Blog

Crafting your Brand. Part 3 - Font or Typeface selection for Logo Nameplate design

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 EDT

In the previous blog, Crafting your Brand. Part 2 - Layout Options for Effective Logo Composition, we analyzed the 2 basic types of logo layout options available for effective logo design.

In this blog, we will continue by examining the role fonts or typefaces play in visually communicating the right image of the Brand.

In the next blog, we will take this further by examining the role corporate colors play by complementing the font typeface, to evoke the complete emotional response to the Brand.

The font is the basic face of the Brand

While any logo symbol needs to be diligently marketed to become a successful brand identifier, the font / typeface achieves that position with or without any such effort.

Hence, it is critical that we approach corporate font / typeface selection with strong and clear appreciation for its role in defining or redefining brand image.

Crafting your Brand. Part 2 - Layout Options for Effective Logo Composition

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 EDT

In our previous post, Crafting your Brand. Part 1 - Constructing an effective Logo, we established a simple definition of what makes a Logo effective, and primary requirements that should drive logo design.

To recap, for a logo to be effective, we must approach logo design with the primary goal of achieving Effective Visual Identity Communication. That is, the Logo must help the customer clearly recognize and remember the Company Name.

The Company Name

In the human experience, the most important signal of independent, autonomous beings is the Name. Therefore, all efforts of branding, including Logo design, must be approached with clear understanding of the innate significance of the Company Name.

The Company Name is the most important component of a Brand. In the rush to design a great looking Logo, it is easy to overlook this.

The choice of Company Name do have significant implications and constraints on the choices available to us in effective logo composition. This is a topic we will explore even more in-depth in a separate blog.

However, it should be clear that an organization can call itself whatever it wants. The job of effective logo composition is to reflect the needs and demands of the organization's Brand, and create a logo that achieves the effective visual communication required by its Company Name.

With this in mind, let's explore the 2 basic types of logo layouts for effective visual identity communication.

Crafting your Brand. Part 1 - Constructing an effective Logo

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 EDT

In How to build a winning Brand!, we note that the first step is crafting the image early on in the business startup process.

The Logo is the most obvious signal of a Brand. As such, having an effective logo can prove either a great asset or a great liability for any organization.

For example, according to Forbes, Apple is considered the world's most valuable brand for 2010. From a marketing perspective, Apple's iconic Apple logo, pictured here, is recognizable to consumers worldwide, making it an extremely efficient Logo for the company. It was adopted in 1976.

However, even design-savvy Apple did not start out with an effective Logo. Their original pre-1976 Logo, pictured here, is an example of a complex, interesting but ultimately inefficient logo.

Examining these two Logos, side by side, it's easy to see why the former will ultimately fail in the marketplace and the simpler iconic brand we've all come to recognize succeed so well as a brand identifier.

Too often, the task of creating a logo is approached from a creative standpoint, with business executives leaving its definition up to creative designers. This often leads to logos that may look different, cool and even hip, but very ineffective and remarkably unmarketable.

Business Managers must be drivers of brand definition

To build an effective Logo, business managers must be the drivers of Brand definition. In order to do that, business managers must understand some basic rules of effective logo construction, so they can in turn provide creative designers with clear brand design goals that will guide brand design implementation.

In the next series of blogs, we will go in depth on Logo Design Composition knowledge necessary to crafting an effective Logo for a Brand.

In this first part of the series, we start with The Effective Logo.

How to build a winning Brand!

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:00 EDT

According to Craig Ress, Entrepreneur Magazine, creating a brand perception requires intrusion. That is a fancy way of asking, how do you get customers to buy from you rather than a competitor?

The idea here is that a truly successful brand will not only get a customer in need of your product/service to buy from you, but will encourage the customer to pick you over the competition!

His solution, which you can read all about in the March, 2011 Issue of Entrepreneur Magazine involves 3 steps:

Craft your Image
Get Known
Know what the customer wants

Easy enough, right? But, how do you really execute these steps?

Is deceptive marketing really good for business?

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EDT

We received an email from a customer asking what to make of the contents of a service announcement email from her domain name registrar Doteasy.com. ( Redacted copy of email published below )

This raises the question, is deceptive marketing practices like this really, really good for business?

So yes, the IPv4 address allocation is indeed running out. In fact, there is an urgent need for all organizations to expedite full IPv6 adoption and migration plans. Until that happens, all responsible web solution providers are really working hard to allocate use of their existing IPv4 address blocks to customers and systems that critically require unique IPv4 addresses.

So, in essence, what Doteasy.com is doing here is an outstanding example of corporate irresponsibility. For the sake of making an easy sale, they are using FUD / deceptive marketing tactics to sell even more IPv4 addresses, hastening the exhaustion of the limited IPv4 address pool. I guess they don't seem to get the point that running out of IPv4 addresses before IPv6 is fully ready is not really a joke.