Archive for category website design

People often confuse the terms “logo” and “brand” as having the same meaning. However, the only way you end up with a logo that reflects the values held by your company and the promises you make to the buying consumer is to define your brand before you begin the logo design process. Your logo is the graphic design that conveys your brand name and character to the buying public. Think of it as the “face” of your brand.

3 Tips for Logo Design

1. Keep the logo design simple. In a world full of complexities, the simple logo is usually the logo that stays top-of-mind.

2. Simple logo designs are enduring. They won’t go out of style. They are timeless.

3. They are more easily remembered and recognized.

It’s not unusual for business owners to dabble with a little creative logo design work. Anyone with a PC and Microsoft applications has access to a library of ready-made clipart. You can create a logo with just a few hours (or evenings) of frustrations. Of course, the entire point of having a brand is so you stand out from the competition. However, having a self-made logo may make you stand out in a manner you didn’t intend. It also may break any promise of quality and professionalism you intended with your company brand.

Working with a Logo Designer or Graphic Artist

A logo designer should ask you questions prior to creating any draft logo designs. If he or she doesn’t, how can you expect them to capture the essence of your brand in the logo? That’s why it’s so important to have worked through your business mission, vision and position in the marketplace. Those unique characteristics that your company delivers to the marketplace are part of your brand. You want your logo to capture those characteristics.

Here are some things to present to your logo designer.

• Your company mission statement and vision
• Your primary business
• A description of your target audience
• If you have one, a tagline
• Your brand promise
• Your brand character
• Mood or tone of your communications
• Words that describe your brand
• Logos you like and don’t like
• Colors you think represent your brand
• Colors you like
• Colors you hate
• Font styles you like

Finally, to support brand awareness, you must maintain a strong logo identity. Your logo has to appear exactly the same every single time it’s used without exception. Use brand guidelines to maintain that consistency.

These are description guides to provide to advertisers, as well as to your internal organization. They include guides for logos, colors and fonts to use in all types of communications.

Selecting a web design agency can be quite difficult if you don’t know what you should look for—especially nowadays when there are a lot of companies that claim to be the best in the industry. You need to be extra careful of who you hire. Remember that a poorly designed site can cost you a huge amount of money, drive away potential clients, and hurt your credibility.

To help you choose the right web design company that meets your needs, here are some useful tips to look into:

Portfolio – Ensure that the web design company has some experience to boast of. And since any agency can claim to be the best, you should check out their successfully accomplished projects. To effectively evaluate a website, you should asses the quality of design; ease of use and navigation; and overall look. Also, they must have a broad range of past works in a variety of industries.

Services – More than just a web design agency, it’s better if they as well offer other relevant services to meet your requirements. These can be anywhere from e-commerce, Internet marketing, to list a few of the things that can help you promote your website. To save time and effort, choose a company that can provide all your needs.

Customer Service / Technical Support – Apart from creating professional design, a good web design company should possess a reliable customer service and technical support. This means that they should be able to provide prompt responses to your queries, as well as timely assistance should you encounter any technical issues.

Pricing – While everyone wants everything cheap nowadays, unfortunately, you’ll just get what you pay for. As you know, prices vary from a few hundreds to thousands of dollars. So, assess whether you can afford them. What’s really important is that the price quoted is reasonable enough to accomplish what you’re looking for.

With the tons of web design agencies in various sizes and shapes available these days, it’s really quite tricky to choose one. So, remember these practical tips above to ensure the success of your website and your business.

Lately, there have been positive changes here at Total Marketing Australia, and they are so good that we wanted to share them with you.

First of all, Total Marketing Australia is glad to unveil its newly revamped website — fully functional and very informative, and contains all of our latest marketing projects (link to portfolio). Feel free to browse it and we are sure you will love it as much as we do.

Along with this launching, we would like to introduce to you our newest team member, Stuart Anderson, who is in charge of Search Engine Optimisation & Hosting. Stuart’s boundless creativity will definitely be a great asset to the team.

Also, we would like to extend our warm greetings to one of our clients, Macchiato Pizza Bar and Grill, who are celebrating their 10th anniversary. Their birthday celebrations include the launch of their brand new website, mix 106.5 FM broadcasting from their restaurant every Monday of September, and a range of amazing Birthday Specials.

Some more good news! We want to you to meet our newest clients: Peta Hastings – Famous make-up artist for Movies and celebrities, Peta Hastings has styled various prominent icons, such as Susan Sarandan, Emily Blunt and Eric Bana.

Vodafone – Top mobile network phone provider which actually means Voice-Data-Fone, is geared towards further delivering innovative wireless services to Australia. TMA has been enrolled by one of their longest clients Successful Executive to support Vodafone in the development of one of their Internal sites.

We will keep you posted for the next buzz. Meanwhile, enjoy our new website!