There are visible elements of a brand which include colours, fonts, symbols and overall designs style, but a brand also encompasses the qualities, values and experiences that your customers associate with your business. These can be communicated through the visual elements of your brand but they can also resonate through chosen language, on site experience and design, service, marketing campaigns, PR and many of these not so obvious factors.

All these together identify and distinguish the ‘brand’ in your customers mind and they must and can knit together in such a way so as to create smooth transitions between the individual and separate experiences your customers may have of your brand over time.

I think it’s actually easier to do this as an SME because there are less people involved and less to control! I do hear you shouting, “Yes, but our budgets are less” – with less to control that shouldn’t be a problem! We can help with ensuring the visual side of things knits together with the other key elements. 

Posted by Sara Brown, 01/09/08

Excuse number 1 – I’m very very busy. I run 2 businesses and I’m involved in launching a third! (Why? Well opportunities knock and you either take them or you don’t – I took them and I’m not regretting it yet!) I know blogs need thought and maintenance and I don’t want to start something I can’t commit to and actually do.

Excuse number 2 – Design is such a bottomless pit of potential endless debate, often misunderstood and just done very wrong by many that I didn’t really want to go here! But I guess that’s why it would potentially make a good blog right?

Excuse number 3 – I specialise in graphic and web design for small to medium sized businesses and being one myself I wonder if they’ll have time to read or contribute to this blog… There’s always a fear that one sits here blogging away and no one really cares – when the blog stats reflect that it is discouraging but I’ve come to realise blogging isn’t an overnight success story. But then what is in life?

So I decided to put all my excuses to bed because I chose to specialise in working with small businesses because they often get a raw deal (agencies often don’t want to work with them because they just aren’t worth it to them and then they get done by the multitude of ‘bad little guy freelance designers’). And yet these guys are the big guns of tomorrow right? Working with small businesses means you grow with them, this is the formation of something precious, something new.

So my commitment is to blog 3-4 times a week on all things graphic and web design orientated with a special focus toward the people I work with – SME’s…

Posted by Sara Brown, 30/08/08