gear up

Ring in the New Year with a Brand Inventory

2012-01-02T17:17:00.000-05:00

The week between the holidays, one of my clients conducted a physical inventory. Got me thinking: what a perfect time to do a brand inventory. Sounds painful, you say, complicated. Complicated, no. Painful...? Well, it depends on what you find and if you've been managing your brand. But once you're done, you'll be glad you flexed your inventory muscle and you'll have a much better sense of keeping it under control moving forward.
So, what's brand inventory? Simply put, it's looking at anything and everything your business uses and has in circulation, internally and externally, that has your business name and/or image on it. This includes:

Business cards
Email signature
Website
Brochures
Signs
Letterhead
Envelopes
Apparel (shirts, hats, etc.)
Postcards
Publication ads
Promotional items (pens, cups, tote bags, etc.)
Business documents and templates (invoices, power point presentations, etc.)
Etc., etc., etc.

Ok, I think you're getting the picture. Absolutely everything with some form of business identification stamped, embroidered, printed or in any way marked on it. That's Step 1.
Step 2 might be the most painful part...compare everything and ask yourself some questions:

Am I/Are we being consistent with our brand identity?
Is the logo being used consistently?
Is there consistency regarding font use?
What about logo placement...is it in the same place every time or all over?
What about color? Is it randomly used when the mood strikes? Does it go with the logo or clash?
Are we being consistent?
Do we have a brand?

Sensing a pattern? Consistency is key in maintaining your brand and absolutely critical in showing your customers, stakeholders and the world that you and your business are professional and worthy of consideration for hire.
I'm not saying you have to have a logo or your name embroidered on a golf shirt that wicks away perspiration or a magnetic sign on your car. The point is this: be consistent in the way you use the elements that make up your brand identity, whatever it may be. It doesn't matter if it's just you working out of your basement office or nine people renting a space in a office park, how you present your business to the outside world and how it perceives you makes a big difference in the success of your business.
So Step 3 is this: If you've pulled everything together and need some help in creating your brand, cleaning it up or have questions, shoot me an email or call me to see how we can whip your brand identity (and inventory) into shape!

Objects and Pixels and Paths, Oh My!

2011-12-20T22:41:00.003-05:00

Vector (eps) vs Raster (jpg, bmp, etc) - Part 2 - Why it Matters
So what's the big deal between these two anyway? The short answer is - three reasons:

The file structure/makeup (vector elements vs pixels)
Edibility (or not)
What's your need

Now for the little bit longer answer or, the three reasons explained:
First, there's a huge difference in the file structure from vector to raster (more commonly/simply referred to as bitmap). Vectors are made up of objects/elements, like shapes and lines, that can be selected individually or in groups and manipulated in all kinds of ways. Bitmaps are made up of pixels, each one being a solid color.
Second, editing capabilities are vastly different between the two formats. With a vector, you can:

Scale its size up or down without losing sharpness of quality (think billboards to ballpoint pens)
Move specific elements around to fit the space better (is your logo or artwork appearing on a horizontal, vertical or square space?)
Easily (with exceptions, of course) convert your artwork to one or two colors (usually less expensive on promotional items)
You can export the vector to any number of bitmap formats (tif, jpg, gif, png, etc.)

But with a bitmap:

You can only scale the image down. When you try to enlarge it, your increasing the size of the pixels and the image quality goes right out the door.
If you need to fit bitmap artwork to a certain area, you'll either need to crop it down, shrink it proportionally or distort it to fit the space.
Not so easy (or pretty) to convert to two color (one color would just be a big blob - probably not the marketing look you're going for). Two color will look like a half tone print and again, probably not you're goal here.
You can't export, save or easily convert* a bitmap to a true vector. Just doesn't work that way.

Lastly (actually there's so much more, but trying to reign my rambling self in...), your need will dictate which format is required. Raster images make beautiful photographs, they're perfect for web graphics and most formats can be viewed by anyone.

But, if you're going to have business materials printed, promotional items (pens, shirts, tote bags, you name it) or most any professionally-related marketing materials, you're going to be asked to provide your logo and/or other artwork in vector/eps format. Most processes work with this without question, from screen printers to embroiderers to engravers and so on.

*Now for the asterisk (wink wink nudge nudge)...So what do you do if you never had your logo and/or artwork as a vector, or had a vector version at one time but can't locate it? You'll basically need to have it recreated in a vector drawing program by a graphic designer and, as you may have figured out by now, I can help you out here. It usually only takes a couple of hours at most to do and then you're set; unless you go changing your logo (which isn't recommended very often, but that topic is a future blog) you'll be able to send your vector file to the next supplier who needs it. Piece o' cake!

What's Your Vector, Victor?

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Vector (eps) vs Raster (jpg, bmp, etc.) - Part 1 - The Details

So you have a client (or you are the client) who's ordering a promotional item to hand out to their clients. Grrreat! They decide on their handout of choice and you say, "OK, I'm going to need your logo in a vector/eps format. Will you or your designer email it to me?" Following that are any number of scenarios, but unless they've done this before, some painful teeth-pulling over the next few days, even weeks, usually ensues until you have the correct file to forward on to your vendor, embroiderer, or 'other-er' who will make the final magic happen.

Here then, is hopefully a quick comparison of the differences between vector and raster images. (The next post will cover why this all matters - so stay tuned.)

Vectors are:

Made up of points, lines and curves
Scalable. They can be enlarged or reduced in size and won't lose any details
Easy to edit
Typically much smaller files
Created in drawing/illustration programs (Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, etc.)
Formats are: EPS, SVG, AI, CDR, WMF & DRW
Color modes: CMYK, RGB, Pantone/Spot
Used for: logos, branding & marketing materials (letterhead, business cards, signage, etc.)
Able to be saved or exported to raster/bitmap formats

Rasters are:

Made up of pixels, each one assigned to one color
Only able to be reduced in size; they cannot be enlarged without losing sharpness and image quality
Difficult to edit
Typically larger files, especially high resolution images
Created in photo editing programs (Adobe Photoshop, PaintShop, etc.)
Formats are: BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF and PNG
Color modes: RGB, CMYK, WebHex
Used for: photographs, web images
Cannot be converted to a vector image without either manually redrawing or relying on specific software

Example:

Image via Wikipedia

That's the quick and dirty comparison. Next post will talk about why this matters.

Jumping in...

2011-12-14T17:34:00.001-05:00

First post, and more to come I promise.

Introductions first: my name is Sara Cousins and I own Small Business Outfitter. I offer graphic design, web development, marketing and more to small businesses and non-profits.

I'll cover topics important to my clients (maybe even yours), my peers and partners in crime, weekly. We may even be visited by a guest blogger once in a while.

Will talk about (in general and in depth):

Logo design
Branding
Web design
Website development (yep, different from design)
Site maintenance
Electronic communications (email blasts, newsletters, etc.)
Marketing
And oh so much more...

Look forward to finally putting one foot in front of the other and getting this off the ground.

Cheers!