Tag: Brand Recognition

Determining Your Brand’s Identity

brand identity

Brand Recognition

May 29, 2019

Brand image is everything. Customers prefer companies they identify with. Your brand image is the fastest way for customers to connect with you.

At SlideGenius, we’ve been working with clients since 2012 to develop their message and reach customers while staying within their established brand identity.

Relatability fosters trust, which inspires loyalty. Brand image is how the consumers perceive your brand, and this perception is derived from your brand identity.

That said, how do you determine the right identity for your brand?

Define Your Principles

Decide what kind of company you are. What makes you different from your competitors?

Identify the unique element that you can bring to the table.  Before you can project the kind of image that you want to your consumers, you must know yourself first.

Ask yourself the following:

  • What are your company’s mission and vision?
  • What is your company’s core philosophy?
  • What are your company’s critical business goals?
  • Is there a key message that you want to advocate?

You need to carefully consider and answer the questions above. You are forming the foundation of your identity, the basis of the audience’s perception of your brand.

If you have the answers pat down, you can start outlining your PowerPoint.

Define Your Target Audience

After getting to know your company, the next step is determining the people you are selling to. Who is your target audience? What kind of consumers do you want to attract? What are their demographics?

Go into specifics. Take into consideration their age, their income bracket. Define all the possible data. Research your chosen audience so you can customize a strategy that will address what they want and what they need.

Once you have set the parameters on the kind of audience you would like to attract and have done the research, determine the elements that would appeal to them. Playful? Relaxed? Exclusive?

Define Your Brand’s Personality

What five words would describe you best? It’s a good time to sit and brainstorm on keywords, descriptors, adjectives that would apply to your brand. Consider the emotion or feeling that you want to evoke when people mention your brand.

Never underestimate the power of emotion, the driving force of human actions and motivations. Consumers purchase from brands they are comfortable with and have the same principles as they do.

To create a more compelling identity, take the descriptors that you have come up with and form a brand persona from there.

A persona can range from “cool hip uncle” to “health conscious millennial.” The persona you create should be consistent with your company’s core principles, mission, vision, and the type of audience that you want to attract. Keep your persona simple but significant to the message that you want to put across.

Once you have defined your brand’s principles, audience and persona, you now have a brand identity.

To reinforce the identity, design your logo, establish you company colors, craft the tone of your content and choose the typeface that will be identified with your brand.

Remember the identity that you have determined when making your visual choices, as every element will reinforce your identity.

Here at SlideGenius, our expertise in constructing PowerPoint presentations helps businesses reinforce their brand identity through presentations, content, and imagery. We’ve helped thousands of people stay true to their brand identity while helping to bring their value to their forefront of their messaging. If you find yourself struggling, contact us for a free quote today!

3 Tips to Powerful Logos Based on Design Principles

Brand Recognition

design principles

logo design

Rick Enrico

SlideGenius

Oct 23, 2016

A company logo is crucial in representing your brand. An excellently made logo will increase your brand recognition and help to make your business easily identifiable, representing your brand professionally and encapsulating its image.  For this reason, we’ve collected three points you need to remember in creating your brand’s logo:

1. Design Appropriate with Your Message

Your logo is a crucial customer touchpoint, and will form the initial impression people have about your brand before they even make a direct transaction. Choosing the right design means giving your logo your brand’s identity. For instance, are you aiming to be serious and formal? Or fun and approachable?

Tailor your logo to your message and mission without being too direct or obvious. You can include your company name in your logo, or just leave powerful icons that matter to your brand.

For example, Apple uses an apple as their brand logo. Attributed to graphic designer Rob Janoff, the Apple logo has undergone numerous changes through the years, but has remained consistent in one thing – the iconic apple. A feature on Janoff’s page shows his creative process in visualizing the company logo around the symbolic fruit it’s become known for.

Janoff’s original design, which was a rainbow-striped apple, meant to humanize the products, emphasize the product’s ability to show colored images, and make it more attractive to the eyes, especially to children. Similarly, use an appropriate design to achieve a distinct identity that sets you apart from the competition.

2. Simplicity is Key

Keep your design as simple as possible without being extremely clean and minimalistic all the time, since a design that’s too bare may also bore people. Having a very intricate logo tends to be confusing, and will be more difficult to reproduce on your products. By definition, a cluttered logo is one that has extraneous elements in its design.

Too many colors, characters, or embellishments that aren’t related to your company’s overall message are considered superfluous elements, and should be left out of your logo.

To get the right balance of character and minimalism, maximize your use of white space. White space, or negative space, is the absence of any objects or elements. You don’t have to saturate viewers with too much glamor to get your message across. Applying white space lets people’s eyes rest and focus on the most important parts of your logo. Leave the backdrop of your logo free of extra elements to help it stand out and grab attention effectively.

If you’re aiming for a powerful impact, an image that summarizes your business identity will suffice. For example, social media platform Twitter’s logo, credited to freelance designer Simon Oxley, features a blue bird. Its latest design is rounded, simple, and unembellished, but it manages to explain what Twitter stands for in a single image, which just goes to show that “show, not tell” applies to logo-making as well.

3. It Should Stick

Like a good tagline, your logo needs to be timeless and memorable. To attract and keep people’s attention, consider tapping into the psychology of shape and color. Different colors affect people in different ways, so knowing which ones to use can give your brand a leverage.

Some of the most common colors used, especially in the food industry, are red and yellow. These warm colors command attention because of their vibrancy. In the same way, shapes can stir certain ideas in your viewers. Those with soft edges, like circles or ovals, project positivity and unity. On the other hand, pointed shapes with more defined edges, like squares and triangles, portray stability and formality.

For a logo that doesn’t intend to use images, shape psychology can still come in handy with the fonts you use. Fonts with softer edges have the same effect as circular shapes, while sleeker, more angular fonts evoke similar reactions as sharp shapes.

Some logos also manipulate negative space to create a clever and striking design. The famous WWF logo designed by British conservationist and ornithologist, Sir Peter Scott, mixes white space and strokes of the color black to create an image of a panda. This play with space and color both effectively encapsulates the organization’s ideals, and serves as a visual treat.

In Conclusion: Logos Can Make or Break Your Brand

Logos need to be catchy and relevant to your business so people can easily associate them with your brand. Remember: find the right logo design by having it reflect your message, and use white space to draw attention to the main parts of your logo. Similarly, tap into shape and color psychology to be both noticeable and unforgettable.

Follow these simple design principles to help your logo stand out in the market.

References

Simon Oxley Idokungfoo for You Illustration. Accessed January 6, 2016. www.idokungfoo.com
“Sir Peter Scott.” WWF UK. Accessed January 6, 2016. www.wwf.org.uk/about_wwf/history/sir_peter_scott.cfm
“The Apple Logo Story.” Rob Janoff. Accessed December 11, 2015. www.robjanoff.com/the-apple-logo-story
“The Psychology of Logo Shapes: A Designer’s Guide.” Creative Bloq. Accessed December 11, 2015. www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/psychology-logo-shapes-8133918
“Twitter_logo_blue.png.” Twitter. Accessed December 11, 2015. https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.png
“WWF Logo – Design and History of WWF Logo.” Logo Design Blog. Accessed January 6, 2016. www.famouslogos.us/wwf-logo“WWF Logo.”
“WWF Logo.” Pixel Logo. Accessed December 11, 2015. www.pixellogo.com/sites/www.pixellogo.com/files/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/WWF-Logo.gif

Featured Image: “Basic Logos” by Armando Sotoca on flickr.com
www.flickr.com/photos/criterion/4693090982

3 Reasons Why You Need a PowerPoint Presentation Specialist

audience

Brand Recognition

corporate presentation

Custom Designed Presentations

Memorable Impact

Powerpoint

PowerPoint Agency

PowerPoint Design

PowerPoint design experts

PowerPoint specialist

presentation

Presentation Agency

Presentation Company

Presentation Consultation

presentation design

Presentation Designers

Presentation Firm

presentation specialist

Aug 01, 2013

In an age where computers and technology are rapidly becoming more and more user friendly, it’s common for people to adapt a do-it-yourself mindset when it comes to PowerPoint presentations. Sure, covering the basics of throwing together a PowerPoint is something anyone can do, but to do it well and effectively–that takes expertise.

Here are three of our favorite reasons why leaving your presentation design to the experts is not only preferred, it’s imperative to your and your company’s success.

Consistency and Brand Recognition

An example of a creative, engaging slide by SlideGenius.Many large sales companies allow their sales associates to have a good amount of free reign during corporate sales presentations, but this often includes letting these sales people craft and present their own PowerPoint presentations, which can often lead to lack of synergy and a muddled corporate identity.With a unified, clearly discernible PowerPoint, your company can present itself in a consistently professional manner, avoid ambiguity in your sales strategy, and allow for creativity in the field within a controlled context. It also sets the standard of excellence for presentations throughout the company.

Make a Memorable Impact

Sadly, many are okay skimping by with just an adequate presentation, but there’s a world of difference between a passable presentation and one that’s going to make an impression, and ingrain what you have to say into your audience’s memory.

A great presentation, one designed by the specialists who do it for a living, is a carefully crafted narrative accompanied by graphic designs that visualize your message in a way that’s easily digestible and highly impactful.

We all know the moments where we need to present at the top of our game, and unless you happen to be an expert PowerPoint designer, that wont happen if you show up with a home-made presentation.

Exemplify Your Skills

A PowerPoint presentation is a visual aid. It’s an element in your presentation; it’s not a presentation in itself. You, or whoever it is that will be presenting, should always be the key component in the presentation. However, without a strong visual representation of your message, all the passion and clarity will be diminished.

Furthermore, a presentation that doesn’t show creativity, passion, and competency can have a serious correlation to how your entire business is perceived. You might be a computer programming company, a lackluster presentation will still reflect poorly on your ability to do the job, whatever that job may be. Show that you are a competent, professional company in all aspects, and confidence in all aspects of your work will follow.