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When does a company need a new logo?

July 12, 2011 in Random thoughts | Permalink

“Hey, let’s do a logo. Maybe a new logo will help people pay attention to us.” Whoa! Why do you think that will help? Might it just be throwing something out and hoping it sticks?

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?

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Pictures at an Exhibition, the garden July 2010

July 27, 2010 in Creativity, Green living | 9 comments

The Garden Center Association Open Garden Tour of my garden was a success considering the temperature was 90+. I had a great time. What gardener doesn’t love showing off her/his personal plot. We had twice as many visitors than the GCA usually has for these events. I’ll have another post about that. But, for now, I want to show some photos of the garden and some things that people found most interesting.

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.

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The power of “Yes”

March 18, 2010 in Creativity, Marketing | 2 comments

I love this post from Sam Meers. For some people saying “No” is an automatic reaction to anything that takes them out of their comfort zone. I suppose that some of us have had the immediate urge to “just say no” to a question then worked up the courage to say “yes.” I have done this many times and rarely regretted saying “yes.”

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.

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The Tweed Ride: Marketing jolly-good style in a high tech age

March 12, 2010 in Design, Marketing | 3 comments

I was supposed to go bicycling tonight but I let the wimp factor overrule my desire to ride. It’s March. We’re in that nether world where winter and spring are negotiating the eventual take over.

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.

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The creative and the client try to understand each other

February 24, 2010 in Marketing | 2 comments

Here’s an article that hit home with me. Right now I’m trying to work with a mechanical-minded, heating and cooling client who is trying to work with me, a graphic designer. We send each other e-mails from our respective points of view hoping that the other person understands what we are trying to say. We have meetings. We talk on the phone. During these exchanges I find that I am trying to understand the trials and successes of home energy marketing and he tries to understand focused marketing plans, effective messages and design. Whew! It can be an exhausting learning process.

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.

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How to make your holidays white

December 28, 2009 in Creativity, Marketing | 1 comment

Because I enjoy walking, I’m always looking for interesting, visually stimulating places to go. One of my favorite walks takes me through the Plaza in Kansas City, our local upscale shopping theme park. What makes it a great area is the people watching, human scale of the buildings and lots of windows to peer into.

Earlier in the season I read that traditional colors and themes would be the rule for holiday merchandising so I started looking at Christmas displays to see how that panned out.

What I found in this year of “tough economic times” were several window displays using a cheap material—paper, specifically white paper—in designs that ranged from elegant to playful.

Tiffany’s created two gorgeous winter fantasy scenes out of only a few sheets of paper and added some subtly placed jewelry. The beautifully crafted scenes suggest the ephemeral nature of winter weather and fairy tales such as the “Snow Queen.” I think these would be rather irresistible to a woman, and solidify the romance of the Tiffany brand in her mind. Whether it works for a man, I would think not in the same way though she may want him to become prince to her princess dreams.

tiffany winter

Tiffany's winter fantasy

Our second window display was at the J. Crew store. I love how they took a roll of white paper, white lights and a few props to create a winter environment complete with paper icicles and glistening snow. Such a simple idea well executed! The casual texture of the crumpled white paper is a lovely backdrop that doesn’t visually overwhelm the informal classic clothing in front of it. The wintry white owls and other props give you a pleasant surprise.

crumpled paper

J. Crew's crumpled paper

Anthropologie used giant white, paper snowballs randomly arranged as a background for their fashions. The snowballs frame the clothes and sometimes almost hug them. While these snowballs may suggest cheerleading pompoms, overall I like the ragged, bursting quality of the arrangement. A quirky window dressing for an artsy brand.

paper snowballs

Anthropolgie's paper snowballs

Across the street, Urban Outfitters reinforced their image with a chaotic, urban interior design that included a haphazard arrangement of holiday lights in rooms cluttered with stuff. They used white paper strips in a vertical venetian blind configuration, to suggest icicles? I think it’s icicles. How do you stuff the messy edginess of a city in a window? They’re doing it.

urban outfitter blinds

Urban Outfitters uses venetian blinds

And, just to go against the prevailing wisdom of 2009 holiday decor, Hall’s decides to go retro space-age. Hey, man, let’s get those boomers’ juices going with a Jetsons’ Christmas! Show the old cartoon and add some wacky lime, magenta, turquoise and blue baubles, funky type and requisite bald alien-looking mannequins dressed in trendy formal attire and you’re set. It’s always weird when an upscale store tries to be cool but it can be good for a laugh not to mention a “What were they thinking?” moment. It would be interesting to hear how this works out for Hall’s image. I wish I were a fly on the wall.

Halls Jetsons

Out-of-this-world Christmas

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Hey, I'm a blogger now!

December 14, 2009 in Random thoughts | 3 comments

Hi all, my name is Laurie Chipman and I’m an artist, specifically a graphic designer and illustrator, more specifically a specialist in print media but I hope to broaden my scope to web design, blogging and e-news. So bear with me while I learn to do this.

In a business where you work alone like I do, many times you feel like the only one who is overwhelmed by learning all the stuff you need to keep current. Well, I can tell you that you and I are not alone! There are so many of us out there who are trying to be noticed, to make a living, to figure out social media and e-marketing that it’s just a matter of degree of who knows more and who doesn’t. When I go to networking events like the Freelance Exchange of KC or just talking with people we are all feeling a bit overwhelmed. So I guess we, as communicators or just business people, are in another transition stage. The transitions just seem to come more frequently now.

I have heard, too, that we are in a time of opportunity. Deep down I hope it’s true and really, I believe it is. Set free from the old patterns we can reinvent ourselves which is both scary and exciting. It’s hard not to get paralyzed with the many choices available and how much there is to learn.

So here’s my blog pledge: I promise to be honest, interesting, regular, curious

business computer

It's official. We're open for business.

and I hope sometimes even funny.

And, I want to hear from you! Really. I can talk to myself anytime. Let me know what you think. Send me something funny, something interesting, something thoughtful or challenging. Let’s talk soon.

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