Dezign Asylum, inc.

7 Steps to Building a Better Brand

2011-11-13T15:12:00.001-08:00

You’re standing in the elevator with a prospective client who turns to you and says, “I’ve heard of you guys. Tell me about your agency.” Here’s your chance to describe what makes your firm interesting, compelling and different. Instead, what comes from your lips is something like, “We’re a full-service integrated marketing communications firm serving a wide variety of clients.”
Alas, you’ve just missed an opportunity.
Unless you’ve made the effort to define your agency’s position in the market and to describe it in interesting, engaging language, you’re likely to miss one opportunity after another.
Here’s another way to look at it: Can you describe your agency positioning in a sentence, in a paragraph and in a page? You’ll need a version in each length to use in applications like your website, your online brochure and your listings in agency directories. Follow these steps to build your brand.

DECIDING WHAT YOU’RE NOT
Many creative-agency professionals believe everything in the universe can be branded except one thing: their own agencies. They preach differentiation but behave like commodities. They’re so eager to convince clients they’re “full-service” that they try to stand for everything.
But standing for everything is the same as standing for nothing.
It’s easy to define what you are. The hard part is defining what you are not. That’s because agencies want to be universally liked and appealing to everyone. But the nature of positioning is sacrifice. The goal of defining a strong agency brand isn’t to appeal to a larger number of clients, but fewer.
Imagine the credibility problem of a restaurant claiming to specialize in French and Mexican and Brazilian food. Ad agencies are no different. An agency that puts everything on its menu might as well have no menu at all.

GOING BEYOND AWARENESS
Just because others have heard of your firm doesn’t mean you have a brand. Name awareness and brand equity are only indirectly related. A lot of us have heard of agency names but we have no idea who they are, what they do or what they stand for.
These agencies have name awareness but no brand equity.
Branding puts meat on the bones of simple awareness. Once a prospective client knows the answer to the question, “Who are those guys?” the next question he has is, “What are those guys all about?” Just like any other product category, clients like to buy brands, not generic products.

DISCOVERING YOUR BRAND
You don’t define your brand as much as you discover it. It’s already there, deep inside the company’s soul, in the form of natural strengths and core competencies. As a starting point, consider what has made your firm successful up to this point. Consider these questions:

What kind of clients have you been most successful in attracting?
What types of assignments have you completed over the years?
In what areas do you have superior knowledge or expertise?
What do you do particularly well, perhaps better than most agencies?
What do you most enjoy doing? What do you hate?
What target audiences have you come to know and understand?
As a result of your experience with the clients you’ve served, what distribution channels do you know best?
What methods, approaches or philosophies is the firm known for?

CONNECTING VALUE & AUDIENCE
What qualifies as an effective agency positioning strategy? For starters, you have to have a good answer to each of these three questions:

What value do we provide?
Who do we deliver the value to?
How do we deliver it?

At the intersection of the answers to these three questions lies a differentiating position: “We offer (your service) for (your market) by (your method).”
This process is challenging because it involves sacrifice. It means giving something up. In branding your firm, the goal is to be exclusive, not inclusive. Appeal to somebody, but not everybody.

VALIDATING YOUR POSITION
There are three critical criteria for a strong agency positioning strategy:

It’s authentic. The position is an honest reflection of what the agency is capable of. It plays to the firm’s strengths. It can have aspects that are aspirational, but only if the agency has the knowledge, experience and firepower to truly deliver what the positioning promises.
It’s exclusive. The position excludes as many prospective clients as it includes. It’s focused on what the agency does best. It demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice. It reflects an understanding that you can’t be known for everything, but you can be known for something.
It’s polarizing. The position is designed to appeal only to a limited group of prospects. Some prospects will be attracted and some won’t. Some will be interested in what the agency has to sell and some won’t. It may even inspire controversy (kind of like good advertising).

MATCHING POSITION WITH PRACTICES
Now comes the really hard part: aligning your position with your practices. It’s through your practices that you bring your agency’s brand to life. Your positioning strategy points the way to your destination. But your practices are how you get there.
Ask the question “What needs to change in our organization in order for us to bring our brand to life in everything we do?” It’s not just a matter of ordering new letterhead, producing a new brochure and revising your website. Branding starts from the inside out. It’s reflected in five important areas of your business (which, coincidently, all start with the letter ‘P’):

Your product
Your people
Your promotion
Your process
Your place of business

Socrates said, “The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” Said another way, to be successful, we must align our practices with our position. When it comes down to it, the real difference between truly outstanding agencies and everybody else is that they not only talk the talk, they actually walk the walk. They have a strong alignment between what they say and what they do, between their brands and their practices.

TURNING THE MIRROR AROUND
Finding a brilliant positioning strategy for your own company is one of the most important and rewarding experiences a design-firm executive can have. You’ve spent your entire career working on other people’s brands. Now here’s a chance to work on your own.
As one agency executive remarked after leading his firm through this positioning process, “Why try to be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?”

Check us out at www.dezignasylum.com

Useful Logo Design Tips

2011-11-12T18:29:00.001-08:00

1. Learn what a logo is and what it represents

Before you design one, you must understand what a logo is, what it represents and what it is supposed to do. A logo is not just a mark – it reflects a business’s commercial brand through the use of shape, fonts, colour, and / or images.
A logo is for inspiring trust, recognition and admiration for a company or product and it is our job as designers to create an identity that will do its job.
One must first know what a logo is before continuing.
For further Reading on what a logo is, check out Wikipedia’s definition or CreativeBits’s discussion on what is a logo?

2. Know the rules and principles of logo design

Now that you know what a logo is supposed to do, and what it should represent, you now must learn what makes a great logo aka; the basic rules and principles.
As David says:

A logo must be describable
A logo must be memorable
A logo must be effective without colour
A logo must be scalable i.e. effective when just an inch in size

3. Learn off other’s successes and mistakes

Successful Logos
Now you know what the rules are, you can distinguish the difference between a good and a bad logo. Knowing which logos have succeeded, and why, gives an insight into what makes a good logo.
For example, let’s look at the classic Nike Swoosh (shown above). This logo was created by Caroline Davidson in 1971 for only $35, yet it’s still a strong, memorable logo, effective without colour and easily scalable. It is simple, fluid and fast, and represents the wing in the famous statue of the Greek Goddess of victory, Nike (something perfect for a sporting apparel business). The Nike logo is just one of many great designs, think about other famous brands that you know about and check out their logos. What makes them successful?
For more quality, lesser known logos I recommend browsing LogoPond or visiting your local book store or library and reading some books on logo design.
The Not So Successful Logos
We can also learn from logos that have not been too successful, such as the ones on the right of the above picture. Some more very bad logos can be seen in the post is your logo design phallic? As seen in that post, some logos can depict things that may not always be noticeable to the designer (as in the middle logo above) or they could just be plain bad design, as in the logo to the right (above).

4. Establish your own logo design process

Now that we know what a logo is, what the principles and rules of logo design are and what makes a successful logo, we’re now prepared to begin the design process. This is the hardest part of these 5 tips, and is a whole topic in itself. Each person’s process is different and experience is usually the key factor when creating your own logo design process. For an example of a well established method, take a look at David Airey’s design process.
In short, a logo design process usually consists of:

The Design Brief
Research and Brainstorming
Sketching
Prototyping and Conceptualising (See Step 5)
Send to Client for Review
Revise and Add Finishing Touches
Supply Files to Client and Provide Customer Service

5. Learn the software and complete the logo

After you have got your design process sorted out, it is usually a good time to begin mastering your software (here’s a selection of Adobe Illustrator tutorials for reference). But before I get to that, I want to point out that Step 4 and Step 5 overlap, as it’s a catch 22 situation – you can’t design a logo by just hopping straight onto the computer, nor can you complete a logo design without knowing your software (the Adobe Creative Suite is a popular choice with professional designers).
Putting this aside, once you have arrived at your initial ideas and sketches from brainstorming, you can then move onto the computer to start digitizing your logo. After you have digitized the great concept(s), your client is ready to review your work, ask for possible revisions, and complete the design project. Thus, you have successfully created a professional logo.

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Short Lighting Photography

2011-11-12T18:23:00.001-08:00

Short lighting by definition is when the main light illuminates the side of the face that is turned away from the camera. This lets light fall on the narrow side of the face leaving a shadow on the broad side of the face, which is facing the camera. The actual position of the light or lights will depend on the style and mood of the portrait anticipated.
The positioning of lights when shooting portrait photographs is by no means an exact science. There are many variables which affect the final outcome. These include: the models facial features, the exact position of the head, the position of the camera and the position of the lights.
Positioning of the light in relation to the subject and camera

Starting point

Start by placing the subject in the centre of an imaginary circle. Place the light and the camera on the circle perimeter so that a ninety degree angle is formed when you draw a line from the camera to the subject and from the subject to the light. At all times the subject, light and camera remain within one quadrant of the circle. Set both the light and the camera to the subject’s eye level. When the subject faces the camera directly you will have half the face lit and the other half in shadow. In effect this is side lighting.

Short lighting

When the set-up has been achieved, ask the subject to turn his or her head to camera right, or subject left, which exposes the broad side of the face to the camera and the narrow side of the face to the light. This is how the term short lighting is derived (the short side of the face is closer to the key light). This exercise is best done with a constant light.
This can be your studio flash’s model light or a light similar to a redhead (used in television). This will allow you to see the effect of the light position on your subject immediately. Using a flash only will mean lots of trial and error, which is enormously time consuming.

How does short lighting affect the portrait?

The face appears slim when the shadow is on the broad side
Adds character to portraits
Suits masculine portraits through exploitation of texture

The effect of short lighting technique will depend on:

The facial features of your subject
The horizontal angle of the light
The vertical angle of the light (how high or low the light is in relation to the subject)
The exact position of the face (especially for Rembrandt lighting where the nose shadow must meet the shadow on the broad side of the face to create the famous Rembrandt Triangle)
The distance of the light from the subject
The quality (hard, soft)
The amount of fill
The position of the fill

Pay attention to each shot

Short light requires precise attention to detail when shooting portraits. It is easy to change the lighting mode to broad lighting by accidentally moving the key light in relation to the subject, but even more so, by the subject subtly changing poses. It only takes a small movement in the wrong direction to affect the desired outcome.

Short lighting must be compared to other lighting techniques

Exposing the key light to the narrow side of the face is one of many lighting techniques which should also be studied. These include:

Rembrandt
Butterfly
Beauty
Broad
High key
Low key

This will help you make the best choice for your particular portrait needs.

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Tone Mapping in Photography

2011-11-12T18:16:00.001-08:00

When creating HDR images one must be concerned with the HDR look. But what exactly is the HDR look? If one wants to be technical then the look is defined as a tone mapped look; an image that is the product of the merging of three or more bracketed exposures that is the result of tone mapping and not the merger alone.
So what! In reality, the HDR look is a creative look, the tone mapping that produces an image that resembles a traditional photograph but no longer looks like a traditional photograph. Colors are richer, more saturated. Edges are better defined and detail is clear across a wide tonal range. High levels of localized contrast along side richly detailed areas of shadow luminosity where tonal barriers are crossed to the point of surreal presentation.
Now one is coming close to a definition of the HDR look. It is recognizable if not definable; much like the definition of pornography when someone said, “I can’t quite define it but I know it when I see it.” the HDR image is clearly recognizable by all who see it.
Tone mapping software, especially Photomatix Pro, offers one a wide range of creative control. One may use controls to keep the image looking more natural, more realistic look, much like a single image shot or one may use controls to achieve what some have described as painterly, cartoonish, or surrealistic. In my own work, I tend toward creating the more surreal look which often prompts people to ask if I enhanced the colors. In fact, the rich saturation I achieve is the result of the HDR process and nothing more than that.
That being said, one must also realize that tone mapped images are rarely perfect, hence the need for a powerful image processor such as Photoshop.
Tone mapped images may look flat, may lack overall contrast, and often suffer from ghosting, halos and other artifacts. Depending on the amount of a surreal look one wants to achieve, the first step in adjusting the final image file is to use curves to enhance contrast. The S-curve that appears over the histogram in Photomatix is a simple adjustment that adds contrast to a flat image. One must be careful to not go overboard in making curve adjustments. I like to do curves adjustments on a separate layer so I can also take advantage of masking, blending and opacity adjustments separately. The object of the curve adjustment is to preserve highlights and shadow detail while boosting the contrast of the midtones.

"LaFonda Hotel in Santa Fe New Mexico" captured by Bob Root (Click Image to See More From Bob Root)

You will notice a significant improvement in the appearance of your tone mapped image with the application of just a slight S-curve adjustment. There are other ways to creatively approach your HDR imagery. But I will save some of those for a later post.

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Photography Service

2011-11-11T18:19:00.001-08:00

Dezign Asylum’s approach is dedicated to capturing the essence of your business
and life in a creative, dynamic, photojournalistic style. You have the freedom to
select any location and we can tailor our art to meet your needs, from a natural
Moment-catching candid’s to portraits.

Photography include but not limited to:
Portrait Sessions, Weddings, Head Shots, Marketing,
Commercial, Publications, Group Photos and Special Events

Check us out at www.dezignasylum.com

Website Design

2011-11-11T18:18:00.001-08:00

Consider your search to find a web designer successful. Testified to be the best
web design company in by its clients, Dezign Asylum has what it takes to move
your business.

DZA is a professional web design firm that provides custom web design services
and solutions to businesses across the globe. As a leading web design company,
we focus on merging innovative ideas and tailored web page design to achieve
the most effective online results at the most affordable rates. Our services offer
tremendous personal attention to each our of clients, regardless of how large or
small the project.

Check us out at www.dezignasylum.com

Logo Dezign

2011-11-11T18:16:00.001-08:00

Give your company an identity with a clever and creative logo. Dezign Asylum
can help you establish a brand image. A logo design gives you an added degree
of professionalism that will move you ahead of your competition. DZA is a leading
logo design company, offering business logo design services domestically and
abroad.

DZA offers logo development services at very affordable rate plans, thus
keeping your budget in consideration. A website logo design is a strong medium
of creating a strong first impression to the target customer. We will offer a logo
design samples with alterations. After you choose a specific logo, its color and
fonts size can be adjusted accordingly at no additional cost. We make use of the
latest logo design software and create designs in JPEG, GIF, and TIFF formats,
Illustrator, and others.

Check us out at www.dezignasylum.com

Graphic Design

2011-11-11T16:48:00.001-08:00

Web graphic designing plays an integral role in establishing your firm’s web identity on the internet. Apart from search engine optimized content, the addition of graphics to the website increases its value and attractiveness. The site becomes more interactive and appealing for the site visitors. Dezign Asylum has gained popularity as a best graphic design company due to pristine quality of services provided at very affordable prices. We offer graphic design services to domestic as well as international clients, thus delivering world-class graphic design solutions for your website.

Our graphic design company helps in developing brand identity of your products/services especially if your business is website based. We provide web graphic design that has a professional look with relevant designs and images.

Dezign Asylum has an experienced and skilled pool of graphic designers that have the insight to meet all of your graphic design requirements. Whether you want graphic design solutions for a new or existing website, we help you find website graphic designers that create high quality and professional graphics.

Our graphic design firm uses the latest technology and designing tools to create impressive graphic designs. We offer a broad range of services like brochure design, logo design, advertisements, mailer design, banner design, promotional designs, web design, etc. A well-framed graphic design should be meaningful enough to deliver the message for which it is created. As a graphic design company, we give individualized attention to all our client’s designing projects irrespective of its size or type. Contact us now to get more information about our graphic design company near Chattanooga, TN

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Imagination.....Brought to Life!

2011-11-11T16:13:00.001-08:00

Imagination....Brought to Life!

At Dezign Asylum, Everything starts with a blank sheet of paper and ends with your imagination brought to life.

DZA offers all types of custom graphic design work including: Website Design, Logo Design, Custom Graphic Design and anything you can imagine.

DZA is also thrilled to provide clients easy access to full service photography including: Weddings, Commercial, Marketing, Publications, Group Photos and Special Events.

Dezign Asylum is located just south of Chattanooga, TN in Trion, GA and serves many companies world wide.

Check Us out at www.dezignasylum.com
or Email Us at info@dezignasylum.com