Jan
28
Company Logo Design? Brand Identity? Are they really important? Yes, they are!
A corporate identity or brand identity is the visual, emotional and cultural representation of an organization and its mission. It is the public image of the company that strongly identifies it and depicts the message about its business and the services it caters. In an increasingly competitive marketplace it is essential to have a unique identity to stand out and succeed. The base to a company’s brand identity is its corporate logo, which often might consist of a logomark and the company slogan accompanying the company name. A proper combination of these elements can create a masterpiece logo, which in turn can offer a powerful impact on the company’s brand establishment strategy.
Developing a brand identity for your organization involves great deal of time and resources. Identity is a vital asset that must be invested in, leveraged and managed to ensure a company’s success. A compelling brand identity increases recognition and builds businesses. The most important factor to analyze before initiating the process is to define what added value the organization brings to the community and how it differs from all others. A proper perception of the organization based on the views of its representatives, its mission statement and goals are vital resources for developing the brand identity.
While developing a company logo design one should realize that a brand identity creates an expectation, a promise of quality. It can be used to define the perception that the audience has about the organization and its products. A company logo outlines the credibility, professionalism, values and ethics of an organization. Professionally crafted identity can also help project a more credible, professional corporate image, increasing consumer confidence and awareness.
A company logo is the foundation stone for a company’s brand establishment. A carefully managed and well-implemented brand identity program will help carry the company’s message to the targeted audience. Along with the brand mark, typography, color palette and other visual elements, specific directions should be considered to manage your visual communication materials. A unique professional brand identity is extremely instrumental in creating a powerful measurable impact on the target audience while visually conveying the inherent strengths of the organization.
Since brand consistency ensures that consumers will easily recognize the products, branding is especially important to small and growing businesses. For the long term, branding standards must constantly be maintained throughout the life of a business. It is always advisable to approach professional branding or designing companies who have proper experience in conceptualizing your company logo and shaping them in reality. A perfect logo with the right branding message and aggressive communications strategy can be a lethal combo for establishing a brand and helping a company achieve its desired market share.
Christine is an expert internet marketing professional with experience in various industries.
Share This
Jan
27
Microsoft Powerpoint is what I consider the most powerful presentation tool available on the market and whilst there are competitors, it is pretty obvious that Microsoft Powerpoint ranks as the number one presentation tool in the world. Just look at the number of seminars, lectures or presentations you go to and how many people are using Microsoft PowerPoint, in my experience, about 95% of them. Let me ask you a question though. How many times have you seen the same template, presentation after presentation?
Way too many and there is no excuse
I wanted to set about teaching you in this article the secrets to customising your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and how to change those common Microsoft Powerpoint Templates. See whether you realise it or not, all of the powerpoint template presentations that Microsoft provides are in fact customisable. In fact, most of the presentation templates you find in Microsoft Powerpoint 2000, XP or 2003 are simply built on individual drawing objects or shapes that can be found on the Drawing toolbar under the AutoShapes menu.
Lets look at how you customise Microsoft supplied templates
First off we have to create a new presentation, which I strongly encourage you to do at this stage by opening Microsoft Powerpoint and using the shortcut keystroke, [Ctrl] + [N]. Next we want to apply one of those common Microsoft templates, seeing I am working in Microsoft Powerpoint 2003 as I am writing this article, I am going to describe changing the Digital Dots template. So you need to apply this template by choosing the Format menu and then choosing Slide Design from the drop down menu. On the right hand side of the screen the Task pane open. Move your mouse pointer over each of the slide designs till you see the one called Digital Dots and click on it once. You should notice this design now applied to your slide.
When you first see this template, you may probably think it looks pretty complex, something too difficult to modify. Well do not be fooled. This template is simply made up of a series of lines and circles from your Drawing toolbar. Not a single thing more. I know when I am running my instructor led courses, many of my students say to me “It’s a picture and way too difficult to modify”. Ahh, but its not, it is simply a series of drawing objects that are skillfully coloured to look like a picture.
So how do we modify it
Very good question, the secret to modifying these templates, is to modify the master slide. The master slide controls the look and feel of your presentation so to do that you must first activate the master slide. To do this simply goto the View menu, choose Master from the drop down menu and then choose Slide Master. In the left hand pane you should see two pictures towards the top of your screen just before the toolbars. These two pictures represent your Title Slide Master and the Slide Master used by the main body of your presentation. The Title Slide Master should be open in front of you and this is the one we will modify. Keep in mind that the rules we do for the Title Slide Master also apply to the other slide masters in your presentation.
What you need to do is to modify the drawing objects in this slide so just click on one of the buttons in the slide that is away from the placeholders. What you should notice is that a square object select marker appears. This tells you that all of the elements you see are a group. So to ungroup these objects, right mouse click and from the shortcut menu choose Grouping and then Ungroup.
You will then see all the individual objects selected in the slide. Simply click away from the select objects and then click on any one object, actually lets change one of the buttons. Once you have selected the button, right mouse click and choose Format Autoshape. You should notice that the Format Autoshape dialog box is similar to the Autoshape dialog box you use for standard drawing object.
Let us change the colour of the object to green by choosing green from the Fill Colour drop down box. To complete your change simply choose the OK button. Now what you should notice is that you have one green button. You could now go through and change every single button and customise the slide master to look the way you require.
You can even go through and customise the background of the Slide master by going to the Format menu and choosing Background from the drop-down menu. When you change the background on the Title Slide Master and the Slide Master, it will be reflected in all the slides in your presentation.
Just a short side bar
If you want to copy the formatting from one object to another, the simplest way is to first choose the object you want to copy the formatting from. Go upto the Standard toolbar and double click on the Format Painter button and then click on each of the objects you want to copy this formatting to. This tool is really useful especially in this case as you have lots of small objects to be modified.
Once you have finished customising your Title Slide Master and Slide Master simply click once on the Close Master View button on the Slide Master View toolbar. This will take you back to your main presentation. What you should now notice is that your whole presentation has been modified to suit the changes you made to the Slide Masters.
The bottom line is that there is no excuse for you to be using the same powerpoint template as everyone else who has purchased Microsoft Powerpoint. You can now ensure when you do your next presentation, or give your speech at your next seminar that you will have your own customised and unique looking presentation. No longer do we have to see the same boring old templates. Let the Microsoft Powerpoint Template revolution begin.
2006 Chris Le Roy - to help you give absolutely unique presentations I have developed a number of Free PowerPoint Design Templates that are totally unique you can use and customise. I also have available a Microsoft PowerPoint Cheat Sheet to help you learn the Microsoft Powerpoint Shortcuts. I also have available at my website free powerpoint sounds to download to spice up your slide transitions.
Share This
Jan
26
Web content writing always seems as though it should be a relatively straight-forward and simple thing to do, until you sit down to do it, and find out that you not only know what you’re aiming for, but you also don’t know what it means to write web content like a pro. Web design these days dictates that you have a certain font, a certain size, a certain wording, and a certain layout, or visitors will feel uncomfortable or disappointed in your site, and will automatically move on to somewhere else that can better meet their needs and expectations.
To begin with, writing web content is a very careful process that depends on the right information, the right style, and the right keywords, to make sure that it is pleasant to your readers, it encourages them to stay on your site, and it is easy for search engines to index, assuring that you achieve a good ranking and are easier for web users to find. Web content writing is, therefore, an art and a skill, and should only be tackled once you feel comfortable with the fact that you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you may find it much more appealing to hire a professional who can meet all of your needs and save you a great deal of time.
The secret to web content writing is that the wording must be focused on the reader. Therefore, instead of saying “I am the best realtor because I’ve been in the business for 25 years and I have won 16 awards,” when you write web content, you should say “You will achieve much greater results with my 25 years of experience and 16 awards to sell your home”. While the first phrasing gives the reader the facts, the second phrasing shows the reader how the facts apply to them in a beneficial way.
This encourages the reader to continue reading as they can apply the information to themselves, and want to continue to find out how they can relate to what you have to say. The longer the visitor sticks around your website, the better your chance of getting your message across and the more likely you are to achieve your goal, whether that be to inform your reader, sell a product, or brand your company.
Keywording is another important part of web design and web content writing. This means that for every page of your website, you need to select one or two of the terms that would most likely be used by someone looking on a search engine for that kind of page. For example, if you have a website about painting, you may have a page with the keyword “paint rollers”, “professional painters”, or “how to paint”. It all depends on the purpose of the page, and how you think someone would look for that page on a site such as Yahoo! or Google. Further to choosing the keyword, you need to know how to use it. You need to make sure that it is worked naturally into your content, or the page will be useless, even if it brings in a lot of traffic. Nobody wants to read a sentence such as “Our Barking Dog From Neighbor Stop will make sure that you never have to listen to a yappy dog again.” It doesn’t make any sense, and there is no real message behind it. Though “barking dog from neighbor stop” may be a good search word, but once the visitors arrive, they will be put off by the terrible wording and grammar.
Once you have determined what you’re going to say, why, and how you’re going to say it, it’s also important to lay it out properly so that your visitors won’t struggle visually to read it. This means that you need to use the right fonts, font sizes, colors, and spacing.
The following are the most successful specs for the text of your web content writing:
10 to 12 point font is the optimum size for readability.
The best fonts to use are Verdana, Arial, Palatino Linotype, and Helvetica, as they are very clear, and well spaced.
Though black text on a white background is the easiest to read, a white background can be hard on the eyes. Therefore, using an off-white color such as a cream, light beige, or a very light grey will make a much more pleasant change.
With these pointers, your web content writing will be a much more effective and pleasurable experience.
Mark Nenadic
Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.
Share This
« Previous Page —
Next Page »
