Say cheese!

As a designer, you see it all the time. The perfect brand, amazing corporate styling, ideal layout, fantastic print job and the most atrocious photo you’ve ever seen in your life!

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Toilet talk

A conversation held with some girlfriends over the weekend made me realise the true power of the customer toilet. It occurred to me that without even realising it, we had judged a whole organisation by the standard of their toilets, or whether they had any at all. All the male readers of this blog will be switching off now, but I urge you to read on and I guarantee you’ll agree with me.

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Corporate styling

A logo is made of four basic elements: typeface, colour, icon and name. And it is the design of these elements that create instant identification of the organisation/product or service. There is another element that while not part of the physical logo, is as readily identifiable and even more identifiable in certain circumstances. This part of the equation is corporate styling.

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Brand abused

I have always been a firm believer in continuity when it comes to branding but never did I realise just how much impact the subtleties of branding can have until I worked in Canada for a winter.

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Branding UBD

It’s pretty simple really…just take the third left on your right. Go up about 500m then turn around. Follow that to the roundabout and take the fourth exit and you’re there! Got it?

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Talk is cheap

If you have a product with a core target market of anyone aged 15-25, you’re probably finding them very difficult to communicate with. Unless you’re on Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter, you may as well give up. Many companies are sharing your pain. But one very popular and fast growing method, building on the concept of participative marketing, is the ‘brand advocate’ idea.

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When a boy becomes the master

In the midst of ‘writer’s block’ I am suddenly and mercifully awakened by the joyous chorus of a little boy’s voice. It was excited, impatient and innocent. The words rolled flawlessly into one long gasping parade of sentences as he provided our ‘front of house’ personnel with a recitation so full of emphasis and enthusiasm I feared he might explode.

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