Brands

What design elements do you think have the greatest impact on your brand? While most business owners think of color as having the greatest effect on the way people perceive their business, the typefaces you use often have an even greater effect.

Choosing the right font can set your business apart from its competitors and give it an unforgettable visual identity. Choosing the wrong font, on the other hand, is one of the biggest branding mistakes your business can make.

From quirky fonts used to promote serious businesses to archaic fonts used in the high-tech sector, there have been plenty of font and business mismatches over the years.

Choosing stock photos for your company’s brochures, print advertisements and online content can be a challenge. With millions of images to choose from, often available for just a few dollars, which should you select to represent your brand?

Stock photos can range from excellent – many may perfectly capture your target audience or company values – to low quality or contrived. We’ve all seen generic corporate stock photos before, and most of us can spot them immediately.

Because of this, choosing the right stock photos for your company’s branding and marketing materials can have a huge impact on their efficacy. In this guide, we’ve shared five tips to help you choose effective stock photos for your branding.

A great deal of brochure design advice is generic – tips about layout, font choice and color with little in mind about the primary purpose of a brochure itself: to generate either leads, sales or interest for the company.

There’s a world of difference between effective brochure design in B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) industries. Each requires a different type of approach, not just to product and copy, but to the design of the brochure itself.

Ignoring these differences and applying B2B design principles to a B2C brochure, or vice versa, can have disastrous consequences for your marketing campaign’s return on investment and results.

The difference between direct marketing success and direct marketing failure can often be incredibly small. Minor factors such as calls to action, headlines and other design elements can turn a campaign from a loser into a winner – or vice versa.

While it’s easy to test these elements online, testing design elements, copy and the other components that go into marketing materials is significantly more difficult in the world of print media.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. With the right strategy, it’s easy to split test your brochures, posters and other print marketing materials to find out if one version is more effective than another.

When it comes to effective branding, many of the world’s largest companies have honed their strategies to perfect. They understand exactly where to include their logos, which language to use and what color scheme is perfect for their offer.

Small businesses, on the other hand, often don’t have an established strategy when branding is concerned. Their brochures, signs and other print items are designed a step at a time, often without a guiding strategy or list of tactics.

If you run a small business but would like to develop it into a well-known brand, one of the best methods of achieving this is by learning from the big brands. Read on and we’ll share six color, layout and branding tactics the big brands use frequently.

Creating the perfect brochure for your business can be difficult, with a wide range of different factors to consider. From color to copy, working out what to include – and what to exclude – can be a challenging, time-consuming process.

The ideal information and design elements for your brochure can vary based on the type of product or service your selling, your target audience and your overall sales and marketing strategy.

Direct sales can demand an information-rich brochure packed with persuasive and informative copy, while a long sales process (such as those seen in B2B) can often require a different, less direct approach.

A great business card can make a huge difference to your sales team’s success. From standing out from the crowd and making prospects take notice to building authority and prestige for your brand, a good business card can have a huge range of effects.

Despite this, business cards are often the one aspect of corporate branding that get the least amount of attention. Entrepreneurs and designers will obsess over logos, taglines and other visual identity, only to neglect their business card’s design.

When designed effectively, a business card communicates your position within your company, your company’s purpose and gives prospects and potential partners the information they need to get in touch with you.