By: Jennifer Varner @ www.glyphgraphicsstudio.com

When you start a business, you need to create the quickest possible route to visibility and success. A well-researched and designed logo helps to establish your credibility. Many new businesses fail within a few years. One reason for this is lack of an identifiable brand or ineffective marketing. If your marketing materials do not stand out, your image, and therefore your Continue reading

By: Jennifer Varner @ www.glyphgraphicsstudio.com

When you start a business, you need to create the quickest possible route to visibility and success. A well-researched and designed logo helps to establish your credibility. Many new businesses fail within a few years. One reason for this is lack of an identifiable brand or ineffective marketing. If your marketing materials do not stand out, your image, and therefore your sales, can suffer.

An initial slow start and low cash flow often cause new business owners to put off paying for a professional logo and marketing materials “until they really get started.” But the truth is that designing their own marketing materials to launch their businesses, instead of having them professionally designed, will make getting those first clients difficult and may result in a business failure.

Rather than choosing to design your own marketing materials for your business, we recommend hiring a professional designer, experienced with branding, to take on this task for you. These days, it’s easy  to design a business card at the local office supply store or online. With word processing software you can experiment with typefaces and layout. But if you do not have a good sense of design principles, trends in type and design, or a strong sense of color, you could cause more problems than you solve. Some reasons why you shouldn’t put off a professionally designed logo and other printed materials:

• Your business could seem unstable: Starting with one logo/brand and then changing a few months later creates confusion for existing or future clients. Is it the same business? Did it change owners? This can give the impression that the business owner can’t make up its mind.
• Your business might look amateurish or unpolished: Using self-designed materials looks unprofessional and also might communicate that you cannot perform to or meet the standards required. Lacking a professional “look and feel” can appear that your business does not matter to you. Customers can get the impression that you don’t care about the quality of your work or the way that your work reflects upon their business.
• You will look unfocused: Unprofessional, uncoordinated marketing materials can make your business look jumbled or confused. If you have a business card with one look and a website with another, it can cause an identity crisis. It’s best to tie everything together from the start.

So, while putting off your logo development may seem like a prudent idea from a cash-flow point of view, it could result in your business never getting off the ground. and establishing a reputation as a professional, stable entity.

If you think that you can’t afford to hire a designer to brand your business, consider the outcome. Can you afford not to?