As a business owner you are ultimately the person responsible for how your company is perceived. At the same time you are ever mindful of finances. The market is flooded with quickie design solutions that can be bought for a dime. But will they communicate to your buying public effectively? Big decision.

To help navigate the waters it helps to understand the makeup of creative professionals and the range of their ability. Being informed will help you to make wise decisions, and know when to settle for solutions that are okay (inexpensive), and when to invest in creative genius.

“What is professional work these days? In fact, it’s quite easy to tell by the work itself.” – Rand MacIvor

On his blog Rand MacIvor states that the three factors behind creative work are Play, Skill and Passion. He says, “It used to be easy to distinguish between professional and amateur work. I’m talking design, writing, art, photography, film – heck, anything that you sell that you create for clients. The advent of digital cameras, fairly intuitive design programs and online publishing sites means the line between pros and wannabees has become blurred, especially for clients. Technologies allow for many more smaller at-home businesses and entrepreneurs, some of whom are truly excellent. But where everyone appears to be a Creative Director or worse, a Creative Guru, it becomes très confusing.”Read more of this very insightful and revealing article written by our friend Rand MacIvor.

Be wary of the unseen risk of poorly conceptualized solutions, the unintended perception of what it is your company does. Work with an ad or design agency that demonstrates the just-right mixture of Play, Skill and Passion, and takes time to flesh out a rockin’ strategy with you. It’s better to invest more capital upfront in great creative work to ensure that your brand is received the way you want it to be.

Often when clients come to us they have already determined what they do and don’t like about their existing logo. As a photographer Sue Burnett of Memories Forever Photography had determined that she needed her logo to function as a subtle watermark on photos, and that it needed to be simpler than what she was currently using. She liked the flowing descender and ascender of the initial f, so we gave her new logo more panache. Since camera lenses are round we chose to integrate the initials into a circle rather than a rectangle. The resulting mark can stand alone or be paired with the full company name depending on the application.

See other examples of Before & After logos in our portfolio.

“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” - Steve Jobs

Mashable Social Media asked some advertising and design pros to imagine the ways in which the new layout might be used by big brand companies. Check out this gallery of ideas.

Mashable Social Media also asked the question of its readers, “what would you do with the space?” See that article and gallery here.

Make it a part of your plan to spend 15 minutes a week identifying good places to list your business in directories that offer a reciprocal link to your website. This will help to assure that your business shows up on the first page of any search that is relevant to the services / product you provide.

Ewing Creative is located in Port Orchard and Gig Harbor Washington. We also serve clients in Tacoma, Seattle, Bremerton and nation wide.

Generally speaking, all licensing rights initially belong to the originator [designer, illustrator, photographer] of art*. Permission to use the art are granted by the originator, on their terms. Granting usage permission makes sense when we are talking about an illustration or photo that might be used in one place, then re-licensed for use in another place. But when we are referring strictly to a logo it is only fair for the client to retain more exclusive rights.

When Ewing Creative designs a logo we reserve the right to display and reproduce the logo in our print and online portfolio, and encourage clients to copyright or trademark it for their business.

Good sources for more information on the topic of copyright and trademarks are:
AIGA
Library of Congress Copyright Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Should I trademark or copyright my logo? http://www.legalzoom.com/trademarks-faq/trademark-versus-copyright-protection.html

Note: The words “mark” and “logo” are used interchangeably.

* Disclaimer. Graphic designers should not be confused with lawyers – our brains just aren’t wired the same way. We encourage you to seek legal council to assure protection of your logo (a.k.a. Identity Design) or trademark.

Be sure to keep in mind that car wraps, like any other kind of advertising or marketing are only as effective as the message. Some products / services want to be broadcast loudly – think junk foods like Doritos or Coke. Other brands are better served when vehicles have a refined, classy appeal. They may require nothing more than a thoughtful use of company colors, a logo and a tagline – think FedEx or UPS.

According to an article on wikipedia which quotes Outdoor Advertising Magazine “outdoor mobile media billboards have a 97% recall rate.”

Usage permissions at popular stock image agencies are spelled out in the licensing agreement. Be sure to read license restrictions, or prohibited use clauses that one must agree to before downloading art from stock houses such as iStockphoto, Getty Images and Corbis Images. They clearly state that such art cannot be used for trademarks and logos. These companies want to sell the same art over and over again, as many times as they can but they can spot a potential legal infringement and want to avoid that for themselves, their artists and the end users of the art – the buyers.

Even “free” clip art has a creator. That artist, by copyright law maintains Intellectual Property Rights and can sue for usage infringement.

If you use art that another company also used there is a chance that you’ll run up against a lawsuit from the company that copyrighted their logo first. Can you see the sticky wicket of the predicament? Read more about trademark dilution.

Why go there (to court) if you don’t need to?

In the end, it’s so much easier and can be much less expensive to procure an original logo for your business. If you value your business identity then maximize the visual impact of its logo by making sure it is unique and memorable – and make certain that it can be legally trademarked.

When a logo is professionally designed then permission for the buyer to trademark the logo is granted by the designer on receipt of full payment. In other words, rights are transferred as per a contract between the designer and the client.

Exception

There is a movement afoot to offer ready-made logos at stock houses. Currently iStockphoto is putting together a collection of logos that will be sold much differently than their other images. A logo design will be sold only one time, to one buyer. Since the logos are designed prior to any connection, or knowledge of a real company they are bound to be generic solutions — but that is another topic.

Note that sometimes when searching for clip art the word “logo” is used interchangeably with the word “icon”. Do not confuse this use of the word with “trademark”.

References:

1. iStockphoto license restrictions
2. Getty Images license prohibitions
3. Jupiter Images licensing
4. U.S. Trademark Law
5. Trademark distinctiveness
6. Trademark dilution
7. United States Patent and Trademark Office

Sometimes a business is basically happy with their “look”, but recognize that it is outdated. They may be concerned that their competition is looking more contemporary then them. These companies are good candidates for a design make-over.

Design make-overs are a good choice when after carefully analyzing the effectiveness of the current logo no compelling reason can be found to change it. If however, a company’s current identity design isn’t making a clear connection with it’s intended audience it’s time to rethink, regroup, and start anew.

See Ewing Creative’s Before & After examples of logo design.