An effective logo is like putting a front door on a house. Would you put up the front door first and build the house around it?  Well-built houses like successful organizations, aren’t made without a plan. With a plan, you will know what the house will look like before construction starts. Without planning, you may be wasting your time and money on a logo that doesn’t serve your company and doesn’t resonate with your audience.

The plan we refer to here, is a strategic branding plan. It will reveal your company’s position in the marketplace and give you a base for creating your identity and deciding  your marketing goals. The questions below are a few that need to be answered to define the company path and to develop relationships with your customers. Even if you are an established organization, answering these questions can add focus to your future endeavors.

1. What is the mission of your organization?
2. Why does the organization exist?
3. What does the organization stand for?
4. What makes this organization different?
5. What are the key beliefs?
6. What is the core idea of your organization?
7. What value does the organization offer the customer?
8. Who is your target audience?
9. What is the organization’s competitive advantage?

The answers to these questions will tell you why people should love, trust and be loyal to your brand/organization. Successful companies plan strategically and do things intentionally. Companies with devoted followings such as Coca-Cola, Apple, Southwest Air, Whole Foods Market and Costco would not think of making a move without creating a brand and making decisions based on what they want the brand to say. On a local scale in Kansas City, we love Harvesters, Boulevard Beer, the Plaza, SPIN! Pizza, the Roasterie and Christopher Elbow Chocolates among others.

Few of us are lucky enough to have success fall in our laps. So why not increase the odds with strategic brand planning?

Let me show you an example of what professional work can do for you.

This year I was asked by the Greater Kansas City Master Gardeners to design for their spring seminar called Sustainability with Style. Previously they had had just anyone who would do it, do the design and communication. After several years of working on this event, the committee is really honing their skills and taking stock of what works and what doesn’t. They decided a new marketing attitude was in order and brought me in to have some fun!

After studying the results of this year’s seminar, the verdict is a happy one for all of us. Attendance was up 30% and profits were up a whopping 83%! Hey, I won’t take all the credit. But professionally designed materials that gave the event a brand identity and a look and feel, do work. Good design gets people’s attention amid the many distractions that we all have. Just the fact that the seminar had professional graphic design said, “We’re doing things different this year. We’ll deliver the goods and we’ll do it well.” And, the committee did deliver the goods. The seminar was the best one ever, well organized, seemless and with great food. Good job women!

Good design supports the message. Like an I-beam, it’s needed to keep the house standing.

I love this video. Not only is it a great marketing idea but it’s totally authentic and funny. He’s frustrated and he loves to PRINT, dammit! And, dang, I just want to send some printing his way!

Yes, the printing industry is having a hard time but I wouldn’t proclaim it dead just yet. Perhaps it’s just in a transition period like the rest of us, but I’m still getting oodles of direct mail, printed items at events, calendars, magazines and books, etc.

Compared to electronics, printing is more of a sensory experience for the producers and the users. Some of us don’t find the feel of a keyboard and look of a computer screen is as comforting as printed paper. But then, everyone wants to be talked to in the ways they like best—just one of the current challenges of the marketing industry. Every audience needs the right message sent through its favorite medium.

So now, I look around my desk with it’s MacBook Pro and the 24-inch monitor and the paper is piling up as usual. It looks like printing still has a hold on me.

Yes, and now, in spite of the 100 degree temperatures, is the time we fig lovers have been waiting for. Once you taste a fresh fig, you’ll never go back. Fig Newtons don’t even begin to resemble the sweet, soft flesh of a ripe fig. In fact, you may have to do as I did, run out and get a tree of your own.

I have been growing a fig tree in a pot for about 10 years. The tree makes a great focal point for your garden with its hand-sized, bright green, 5-lobed leaf. Smooth gray bark covers rather gnarly, spreading branches giving it, in my mind, an old world look.

Three years ago the tree really started to bear fruit in abundance, so much in fact, that from one tree I can have a small bag of dried ones to stash for winter. The variety that I have is known as Italian Honey fig or Peter’s Honey fig. When ripe, the fruit is a lovely yellow-green with a luscious, honey-like flavor. Yum!

Italian Honey Fig in full yum mode

The honey fig prefers zones 7 – 11 and can get up to 15 feet tall and wide but my potted tree is about 6 feet tall. It tends to get root bound and needs root pruning every 2-3 years. Because of this tendency, the tree requires lots of water in the summer. Organic “Fish and Poop” is my current favorite fertilizer for all edible plants. I fertilize starting in March, with monthly doses during the growing season until September.

In the fall the leaves drop just like any other deciduous tree so I roll the pot in an unheated garage where it goes dormant until March.

About two years ago I decided to try another smaller fig. This time “Petite Negra,’ which has a dark fruit with rosy interior.  Another advantage is that PN starts setting fruit at 1 foot tall even though it will grow to 2 – 3 feet tall. This year, it has lots of little figgies so I’m eager for the taste experience to come.

The 'Petite Negra' in June. It's not ripe yet in August.

In case you are wondering what a fig flower looks like, so am I. The flower is inside the fruit so what you see are fully formed wee figs sprouting from the tree. The fruit will be upright as in the photo but when it is ripe, the fruit becomes soft and the stem will bend until it droops. This is a good clue if your figs are the green type.

Baby fig in spring

The honey fig gets a little bigger

In our climate, zone 5 or 6, many varieties of figs will grow directly in the ground. If you leave the plant to fend on it’s own the branches may die to the ground every year. But, if you want to keep previous year’s growth, many people put a large wire cage around the plant, fill it with leaves and wrap it. Some figs recommended for zones 5 or 6 are Brown Turkey, Desert King, Osborn Prolific, Hardy Chicago, Honey fig and Bornholm’s Diamond.

If anyone out there in the mid-west is growing figs, I would love to know what works for you and what varieties you like.

Anja the kitten, learns about homegrown produce.

I first noticed this plant with its summer berries a couple blocks from my house and I had to know what it was. I finally found one at a local nursery and it has been a success in the shade under my cherry tree. This fall it will send up new leaves that will last all winter to the end of spring.

This photos was taken in spring but the leaves look the same. Notice how much they look like the houseplant, Arrowhead vine, Syngonium. In the spring, a strange looking bloom will appear.

Thank you Wikipedia commons for this photo.

After the sheath goes away, the center thingy becomes the berries. If anyone can fill me in on what you call that vertical appendage, I would appreciate it.

So here we are in July with lovely orange-red berries. Even though my wikipedia source says this plant can be invasive in warm climates, I have never noticed that happening here in Kansas City. It also recommends planting with hostas so the new fall foliage will cover the spent leaves of hosta in the fall and remind you where you planted your hostas. I think the orange berry stalk would look smashing in between hosta leaves as well.

Here’s what Missouri Botanical has to say about it. Mobot to the rescue! That vertical thingy is called a spadix.

People loved the bike wheel fence and the bicycle gate (not shown). This photo includes from bottom left Kaleidoscope lemon coleus, purple basil and a meyer improved lemon tree with green lemons. To the right of the fence is parsley, chives, pepper and oregano.

I love growing plants up a tuteur. Barely visible this one is covered with pole beans and burgundy sunflowers inside. Surrounding it are broccoli, peppers and eggplants. Behind is a montmorency cherry tree.

Doesn’t every dog need a patio for sunning themselves? Actually this area has become a slope so the mulch would never stay put. I dug it out a bit and put the limestone, filling the cracks with mexican black rocks. The irregular edge makes a nice transition from the concrete to the free shapes of the garden.

Speaking of mulch, people really enjoyed the ingredients of wine corks, peach pits and wooden nickels. Who would have thought it so fascinating?

Nothing edible here but soul-satisfying none the less. From the back, Nikko blue hydrangea, hardy geranium, amaryllis and sedum mixed with hens and chicks.

This dramatic plant is lemongrass, the same plant used in southeast asian cooking. I think you could make some fabulous faux lemonade with it but have yet to try. Anyone have a recipe? Right a miniature rose, front China doll polyanthus rose and more sedum.

Here’s the “garden magazine” shot. I just can’t resist mixing purple plants with green. Lime green really makes a striking accent to the garden. Purple opal basil with Kaleidoscope lemon coleus share a pot with New Zealand phormium.

An eggplant still attached to the mother plant. Leaves always get chewed by flea beetles. French tarragon peeks out from behind the eggplant.

Squash blossom with visitors. A bee does its job pollinating the lower flower. These are winter squash. Cross your fingers to see if they live because I’ve had to do stem surgery to remove vine borers and then there are always the evil squash  bugs that many time frustrate efforts to grow yummy fruits. But, we can enjoy the flowers. Aren’t they wonderful?

The tomatoes are in! These luscious beauties are Country Taste, a hybrid that is supposed to have the old-timey taste of heirloom tomatoes with disease resistance. Looks like a little of ever-present leaf blight got them too.

And last but not least, many people were intrigued by this plant. Do you know what it is? Let me know your answer and if you guess correctly you can be a winner of a raspberry pixie daylily as a prize. Here’s my favorite site for looking up plants: The Missouri Botanical Garden. Sorry, only local delivery.

Edible landscaping is hardly a new idea. It dates back to ancient times in Egypt and and Persia where people combined fragrance, beauty and food in their gardens. It has gone in and out of fashion ever since.

Truly until recently most people haven’t had the luxury of landscaping just to look at it unless they were wealthy. But, because we in America don’t have to grow our own food, our lack of connection from the source of our foods, our relative wealth and increased leisure time, we can afford to plant gardens purely for pleasure. Gardens that in many cases try to emulate estates of the wealthy except on a smaller scale.

We in the US, where lawns are an ingrained part of our culture, have never seemed to wrap our brains around the idea of combining food with beauty in the yard. Even proponents of food growing seem to find the need to separate the two. The food growers want to grow all food in as big a patch of land as possible and the ornamental lovers seem to relegate food plants to pots on the porch or a hidden spot in the yard. As for tearing out your grass for either flowers or food? Well, that’s almost sacrilegious.

My garden is about beauty, about creative expression, about fresh organic produce. It’s about having a wonderful, soothing place to hang out when the work is done. It’s even about having a great place to party. It’s not about whoever has the most money wins or about perfection.

The garden in 2009. Upper left chard, center top broccoli, pink flowers are Autumn Joy sedum with red chard at right and at left rosemary.

Come over to see it. Contact me if you don’t know where I live.

Petite nigra fig with lemongrass in the back

Daylilies and oregano

Saying “no” means nothing new will happen to you—no challenges, no trouble, no thinking, a safe life. It could also mean you are repeating the same mistakes that keep you and your business in the same spot.

Saying “yes,” well, it just makes me smile inside. What new opportunities lay ahead? I can have a life that makes me happy. I can have success in business. Like it or not, “Yes, we can!” is a powerful dose of optimism than can change your life.

To learn to say “yes” may require baby steps—small yeses until successes mount up to inspire more confidence. You know how babies do it—a few steps then a fall—then getting up and going forward again. If the outcome isn’t what was wanted, it’s not a failure but a learning moment. Learn from it and move forward.

Saying “yes” will not make your life easier. But it will make life better, more challenging, more satisfying, more what you want it to be.

In these lean times where many of us want to hold back and say “no,” try a little “yes.” See what happens. You may like it.

While I sit here at my warm desk, hope rises anew. For the past month several of us cycling nerds have been planning, working on and getting donations for the first Kansas City Tweed Ride for April 3rd. Tweed Rides are about fantasizing on the “Golden Age of Bicycling” which was the 1890s. The guiding philosophy is “Style not speed. Elegance not exertion.”

So imagine yourself living in an age where sporty clothes are itchy woolens, knickers and argyle socks, snap-brim hats and long skirts or bloomers. Then gather with like-minded folk at noon in Loose Park for some civil discourse before forming a parade on penny-farthing bicycles or modern “safety bicycles,” to tour the elegant neighborhoods of Kansas City. Jolly good!

As a designer of the Tweed Ride website and other collateral, this is a fun project for me. Good . . . because the price of free work is to have fun and do whatever I want. Otherwise it’s work, right?

To brand the ride, I wanted to make a design with elements that evoke the period, the fun, some humor and spring! For me, another important element to include was a woman with her bicycle since women of that period found a means of liberation, mobility and physical fitness through bicycling that frankly, women still feel today. There are many old photos of proud women and girls with their bicycles. Cartoons of the day show that people didn’t know what to think of those wild women riding bikes in those new-fangled bloomers!

I thought our marketing materials should have a contemporary feel yet use elements from the past. To create the look, I scanned a white shirt for the speech balloon background and of course, scanned some tweed. The other items I used are:

• A copyright-free photo of a woman and her bike from the Library of Congress. Sepia tone added
• A Raleigh heron logo chainring and bike chain border made in Adobe Illustrator. Who knew hardware could be so beautiful?
• Victorian clipart man on bike, daffodils and butterfly, color added
• Victorian type styles

Our marketing mediums are WordPress, Facebook, flyers, word-of-mouth and spoke cards. On our website we added links to sources with British-influenced clothing, photos to get people in the mood, a bit of tomfoolery and links to other Tweed Rides including the full Tweed Report. We have lots of great prizes to give away and for all our extra wealth, a couple worthy charities (Revolve, and The Urban Kansas City Community of Cycling) that teach children to ride bikes.

With the event still to come we will be watching to see how effective our marketing is. Of course, the eventual outcome will depend a lot on the weather. For now, I hope to see lots of people in various vintage finery on April 3 at noon in Loose Park, so we can take many grand photos to post. Cheerio!

Laurie Chipman is an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and marketing consultant. She specializes in designing for sustainability, energy, gardening and active transportation clients. Contact her if you would like to discuss marketing your organization or event.

Many times we have clients that we clash with. We consider them ignorant, elusive or just plain dense. I expect they could think that we are difficult and don’t have their interests at heart. I do care about my clients. After all their success can be my success—a win-win to use that cliche.

So in the interest of peace and good relationships between clients and creatives, here is a post that I thought presented the issue from both points of view. Because no one wants to end up with a result like this cake.