Sneak Peek of Cedric & Crystal’s Wedding
- Published in Marketing, Photography
Rebuilding Logos
When it comes to logos, we all understand the importance of having a great one.
Your logo often gives customers and clients their first glimpse into your brand identity. Is your organization a fun one? A serious one? One that innovates? Customers will get an idea of what your company is all about the moment they see your logo!
A logo combines several different elements to paint your brand’s overall picture, with each piece displaying something about your brand identity. But before we delve into each component a logo should have…
What is a logo, anyway?
A logo is a catchall term for an emblem or other custom mark that serves as a visual representation of your company or organization! Alright, alright! Enough with all the technicalities. The actual reason that I’m writing this article is to show you all my latest logo project. I was asked to rebuild a logo that was already created (some time ago). My client was sure to express how she “DID NOT” want to change her original logo (which is understandable…it’s her brand’s identity). She mentioned…
I’m driving my agenda further, and I need a reliable logo package that can represent my brand; with very little changes.
I told her that I’m the man for the job. So, without further delay, I want you all to take a look at the remodified version of her logo looks.
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- Published in Branding, Logo Design
Jessie & Kyle.
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- Published in Uncategorized
Hello world!
Welcome to Kallyas MU. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
- Published in Uncategorized
Building A Successful Brand
There is no one definition that actually captures the essence of brand building in its entirety. Many people think that brand building is all about communicating and exposing your brand. That is just one side of it. The best way we can define it is that it is a process of creating value to consumers. It encompasses all things that consumers know, feel, and experience about your business in its entirety.
Having defined brand building, let’s take a look at 3 popular types of brands and what they stand for.
- Service brand- this brand is built on knowledge, culture, and experience that one has with the service delivering agency/company/people. Think of Geek Squad or Molly Maid.
- Retail brand- this brand is built on a mixture of products and service experience. Think of Chick-fil-a, Kroger, or KFC
- Product brand- is built on the experience that one has with a specific product. Think of Nike, Ford, or Sony.
Having looked at the 3 popular types of brands, let’s now proceed to look at steps involved in brand building.
1.)Define Your Brand
The first stage in brand building is defining your brand. This is a very critical step as it ultimately determines what your brand truly stands for. When defining your business brand, you should create a checklist of its core strengths. Similarly, if you’re defining a personal brand, you should look at the skills and expertise that you possess especially those which stand out. On the same token, you also need to know what your brand stands for and what is important for your brand (brand values). Your values should in one way or another show that you are contributing to environmental, social, and economic well-being of consumers. You may not realize some of these important aspects of brand building immediately, until you look at them objectively.
2.)Differentiate and Position Your Brand
Before embarking on brand building, you have to take time to differentiate it so that you can attract attention and stand out from competitors. To differentiate your brand, you have to create a unique advantage in the mind of consumers not merely getting attention by brand building colors or logos or other superficial elements. Once you come up with a unique value proposition, you should use a good branding strategy to position your brand in a way that will help consumers see and appreciate the greater value of your brand over competing ones in the market.
3.)Build and Expose Your Brand
As I indicated earlier, brand building is not a one off thing. Building a unique and powerful personal or business brand takes time and consistency. To build your personal brand, you have to keep reinforcing your values and skills by taking up new roles and assignments that will give you more exposure. Alternatively, you can use promotional channels, blogs, forums, and social media (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook) to create a voice for your personal or business brand.
When building your brand, you should also endeavor to develop brand personality (what people know, think, and say about you). This is what drives or motivates people to identify with and engage with your brand. The truth is; if you execute your brand building strategies consistently, then you will easily establish a pattern that will forever be associated with your brand name.
4.)Personalize Your Brand
If you want your brand building campaign or brand to be successful, then you have to personalize it. It is important to give your brand an identity. Let consumers see and experience the personality of your brand in its entirety. Look at your brand as something that a consumer wants to identify with pretty much as they would with their favorite cars, cellphones, or computers.
As you engage in brand building, you should also invite customers to be co-creators of brand values so that they can feel that they also own it and relate with it. Top brands encourage consumer-brand interaction by personalizing products to meet the needs and preferences of consumers. When you personalize your brand, you give consumers reason to participate and engage with your brand for a lifetime.
5.)Review Your Brand
Your brand is not static; it will go through a range of motions in its lifetime. Depending on your brand strategies, your brand will either grow in strength, or remain dormant, or recede with time. In the brand cycle, new events, changes, and circumstances bring challenges and opportunities to enhance the value of your brand or re-establish it. All these possibilities should give you the impetus to take charge of your brand building activities.
As your brand name grows, so do the responsibilities and expectations to continue with brand building. The best way of ensuring brand growth is reviewing your activities and evaluating your successes through metrics such as levels of brand awareness and levels of engagements. Regular reviews will help you seize and exploit new opportunities while upholding your commitment to remain true to your vision and brand strategy. It will also help you steer your brand in the right direction and keep it relevant as you move into the future.
As you can see, brand building is not a one off thing. You have to define your brand, differentiate, present it, and review what your brand stands for from time to time. It is very important to be clear about your branding strategies and how you’re going to implement them. You should also adopt brand strategies that will add value to your consumers and help them develop the right impression of your company and what it truly stands for.
- Published in Branding, Marketing, Networking
Kentyla Arts Designs | Your Personal Task Force
Kentyla Arts Designs (K.A.D.) is an innovative design studio dedicated to providing creative breakthrough solutions that enable our broad-based clientele to elevate their brand. we have substantial experience in Web Design, Multi-Media, Graphic Design and branding. We pride ourselves on developing a close relationship with our clients to ensure we design and produce the optimum product.
A well established brand name and position is critical in determining longer success and shareholder value. Although financial position, strategic vision, strength of management, and operations are important criteria, ultimately, the strength of the brand name will sustain long-term growth and create opportunity for continued success.
History has proven that being first to market with a product or service which satisfies a consumer’s or client’s needs and develops consumer loyalty is critical. Effective branding and value creation continue to represent the cornerstone of every successful company. In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace for services, retaining a customer’s loyalty is critical. This puts even more emphasis on the need for effective total brand management.
A brand isn’t just a pretty logo, engaging website or strategic marketing plan. It is a deliberate, cohesive message. A story. An idea and connection transformed into an experience. Your brand is an ecosystem powered by all the things you represent – from your core values to the way you interact with your clients to the form and function that exists within your design. Here at Kentyla Arts Designs we understand how to apply the colors and fonts of your logo to your business cards, letterheads and compliments slips in order to create an image your clients will remember.
OUR GOAL IS TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT IS HIGHLY-TARGETED TO YOUR INTENDED AUDIENCES, INTUITIVE, — USEFUL, MAYBE EVEN FUN.
- Published in Branding, Marketing, Networking
Personalized Stationery Items | Print’s Not Dead!
Personalized Stationery Items | It’s safe to say that the way we communicate nowadays is a lot different than the way our parents used to communicate. It’s a huge leap going from one generation to the next one, and when you think about it, we’ve seen many means of communication change, evolve to keep up with the times, or go completely extinct. We live in the age of emails, smartphones and social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, after all. So why should you care about stationery items? Aren’t they a thing of a long-gone past?
Not really! Even though the way we use stationery items changed, it doesn’t mean that print is dead. Printed stationery items are still alive and well, and are just as important for your business as ever, if not even more. Your stationery can say a lot more about the services and products you’re providing than you think, and it will oftentimes represent your business and make an impression long before a potential client decides to pick up the phone and call.
Do Your Homework | Personalized Stationery Items
Stationery is defined as writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous stationery, and other office supplies. Stationery included materials to be written on by hand (e.g., letter paper) or by equipment such as computer printers. Since business stationery covers a wide range of supplies, you’ll want to take a step back and determine the items that you’ll actually use. It doesn’t matter how appealing your stationery items are, or how much you invested in them, if you don’t actually use them.
Who, What, Where, Why? | Personalized Stationery Items
Let’s get the basics out of the way first here – the point of stationery items is to provide your potential clients with all the information they need at a given time. And just like each stationery item will be slightly different, so will its intended purpose – some items will only provide your potential clients with your contact details, like your business cards, while others will allow you to include other information, such as a list of the services you’re providing, which means you’ll want to figure out the most appropriate contact information for each item, as some won’t be large enough to fit all of them.
Don’t Be Afraid Of Using Color | Personalized Stationery Items
Even though using too much color in your stationery design can add to the cost of printing, keep in mind that color can be an incredibly powerful tool when used right – it can help make your stationery stand out from even the largest pile, and it can actually guide the reader’s attention to the most important information. However, when choosing the color scheme, make sure you choose the one that matches your other branded materials, and that the color actually work well together.
Never Underestimate The Power Of Simplicity | Personalized Stationery Items
You’re investing a considerable chunk of your budget into the stationery for your small business – and you want to make every inch of it count, so you pack your stationery items with all the information that comes to mind. However, this might backfire and end up only overwhelming your potential clients. Never underestimate the power of white space in design – it can be used to organize long paragraphs of text into digestible chunks and help you emphasize the important information.
Ensure Readability | Personalized Stationery Items
You want your stationery items to stand out and be memorable, sure, but you don’t want to put their visual appeal before the functionality. At the end of the day, your stationery items are a delivering mechanism, whether for your message or just the contact information, and you want to make readability one of your top priorities. No matter how interesting that calligraphic font you like is, if it’s difficult to read, instead of straining their eyes, your potential clients will simply move on and throw your piece of stationery in the garbage.
Invest In High-Quality Stock Paper | Personalized Stationery Items
Humans are tactile beings, which means the quality of the paper you use for your stationery items is just as important as the design itself – a thicker paper often feels more luxurious and can help portray your business as an established and reliable company, while a thinner paper can seem tacky and cheap. Is that a message you want to send to your potential clients about your products and services? Think of your stationery items as you would of a handshake – no one likes limp handshake, so why would they like limp stationery items?
Double-Check Everything | Personalized Stationery Items
When you decide that the design you came up with is just perfect and you’ve chosen the right paper for each stationery item, it’s best to order a test print to make sure everything looks just as good on paper as it does on your computer screen. Make sure the colors are just right, that the fonts aren’t too small, that there are no typos, and that all the contact details are up to date and correct.
If you’re between jobs, moving between two locations or simply changing your phone number, don’t have your stationery printed before you have all the relevant information ready – even the most appealing business card won’t do you much good if you scratch information on it and write down a different phone number with a pen before handing it to a potential client. As great as your business card might be, this will only portray you as a bad professional that doesn’t care about their business image.
- Published in Branding
Using An App To Enhance Your Business
The Importance of Mobile Apps for Your Business
The customers in today’s world are on the move and they’re using mobile application platforms to get there. Whether they use mobile phones, tablets, or other mobile devices they have all the information they need. That’s why mobile apps are so much important in today’s market.
You need to understand that mobile apps allow customers to have all your information at their fingertips. Also, it is important that your app works on multiple mobile application platforms. But for beginning, start with one platform.
No matter what your business is, a mobile app can help you get and retain customers., and that’s a fact. We all know that the first place customers go to search for a product or service is online. If your business is available online, and plus you have an app that users can download to their devices, your business will make really good impression. At a glance they will be able to see and open your app and purchase from your business.
Here are some of the biggest benefits of mobile apps for businesses. You can:
- build loyalty
- reinforce your brand
- increase your visibility
- increase your accessibility
- increase sell-through
- increase exposure across mobile devices
- connect you with on-the-go consumers
There are more of course. These are just some of the biggest. As you can see, benefits can be huge.
Not only that your business will have benefits, but your customers as well. Here are some of the benefits of mobile apps for your customers. They can:
- easy access to your inventory
- get notifications of special events, launches, etc.
- have one-touch access to your contact information
- get directions to your location from wherever they are
- make fast, seamless appointment scheduling
Until now, it should be really clear – the future of your business depends on your ability to get your business implanted on the phones of customers all around the world. You need to go mobile and be prepared to grow.
Important fact to note: Promotional email messages receive about a 4% read rate. PUSH notifications 97%.
Not only will your mobile app be a cool marketing tool (allowing you to say things like, visit our website to download our free app!) that will help get people returning to your website, but it will allow you to engage with your customers in a whole new way.
- Published in Mobile
The Importance of Quality Logo Design
More than 40 years ago, Nike bought its logo from a college student for $35.
When companies hear that logos can come with such a low price, they often don’t understand why we might charge more than that.
Non-designers also sometimes think that a logo shouldn’t cost much because of its scope — since it’s just one measly design, it should cost way less than, say, a website.
When KAD offers a logo design proposal, we present every option available, but our statement is this:
“You’ll use this logo everywhere.”
Logos are used hundreds — if not thousands — of times. Potential clients must understand that the logo will appear on everything from websites and business cards to email signatures and social media profiles. Depending on the organization or business, the logo could end up on movie screens or billboards, too.
Kentyla Arts Designs is most certain to communicate to potential clients the important fact that, because a logo is so widely used, it’s incredibly valuable. It is not just a simple file.
“It takes time to make the perfect logo.”
People tend to think that a skilled, professional designer should only need a few hours to throw a logo together. Non-design types don’t always understand all the intricacies of a quality logo design.
There are a few reasons logos take a long time.
- A designer should spend some time getting to know a company’s values, goals, and mission to design accordingly.
- Because logos are so important, the revision process is often lengthy — which is expected and OK, but important.
- Finally, the company should want the logo to be pixel-perfect. And perfection takes time.
“It’s more than just one image.”
Some clients seem to think their logo design will come in one 300-pixel square. They don’t always understand that a professional logo design will result in a folder full of different sizes and formats of the image.
Here at KAD, clients are educated and made aware of a list of images they’ll get:
- They’ll receive full-color, one-color, and black-and-white options.
- They’ll get horizontal, vertical, and square designs.
- They’ll get colorful backgrounds and white backgrounds.
- They’ll get images with and without the company name.
- KAD will also throw in a style guide, detailing the specific colors, fonts, and other elements the brand could use in other projects moving forward.
The above list has option packs that do not comprise of all the above. None-the-less, our clients understand that the more quantified the final product, the more value it will appear to have.
“A Brand You Can Trust.”
Our experience will show in our design. And, we have a clear understanding that, clients don’t care about your personal experience — they just care about their logo. However, we will always take the opportunity to explain to them how our expertise will affect their corporate image. Hiring an amateur will result in an amateur-looking logo — which won’t reflect well on their company. On the other hand, hiring an experienced (albeit pricier) professional will give them better results. Ultimately, they’ll look more credible, authoritative, and trustworthy.
“It’s not just an image — it’s a copyright.”
When KAD sends over the final logo design, the client will gain copyright ownership of the image (depending on your agreement). Oftentimes clients are not be well-versed on copyright law. That’s our opportunity to explain the value of ownership. We explain that they’ll have unlimited access — they can use it wherever, forever.
That might not be the case with a less-than-professional (read: cheap) designers. We let them know that the cost of ownership is factored into your fee.
“You get what you pay for.”
Sure, the client could go the way of Nike and purchase a quick $20 logo on some sketchy website or attempt to design their own in Microsoft Word. But there’s a big chance it won’t look as good as a experienced designer could produce.
As a design company, KAD knows more than just how to make something look pretty — we understand how to make a design match your brand’s style and values.
Ultimately, when it comes to logo design, value-based pricing is more important than the time it took to create the design or the complexity of the project. A logo is a company’s identity — it’s invaluable.
Why Use Motion Graphics
Why Motion Graphics?
Motion graphics are staging a coup when it comes to communicating the most information possible in just a short time. Content creators and marketers everywhere are embracing the motion graphic as a sort of salve for the ever-shortening attention span of Internet users.
A great deal of video content is created and consumed every day by Internet users – indeed, something like 72 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube alone every minute. That’s a lot of raw content, but most of us can admit to scrubbing through longer videos to get to the most relevant portions, or quitting altogether if the video goes on a little longer than we’d like.
That’s where motion graphics come in. They condense a great deal of information into a short and visually appealing presentation. They’re a great way to help decrease the risk that a viewer will miss a call to action because they’ve skipped through portions of a longer video.
Here at Kentyla Arts designs, we incorporate motion FX into quite a bit of projects. Simply put, Audiences are engaged more, and for longer periods of time; as opposed to using standard motionless graphics. — Dewwond Mapp
How Are Motion Graphics Created?
Part of the reason motion graphics are so popular is that they’re easy to make, particularly in comparison to other types of video content, like a commercial. Animators use one of two methods: they either build the animation from the ground up (the more time-consuming/expensive route), or they begin with a “flat” graphics and animate it from there (the easier/cheaper option).
Beginning with a static graphics and animating it is easier, as long as you make the right preparations as you create the design. You should create the flat image(s) in vector format if possible, which means that they can be enlarged without any loss in quality. This allows for better control when it comes to animating. For example, when CJ Pony Parts wanted to do some content marketing around the idea of taking a stay-cation, they first had a designer create an infographic on the subject. Since the file was in vector format, it was easy for an animator to take it later and put it in motion.
Starting from scratch will require at least a little bit of forethought and vision. Creating a storyboard, not unlike those used in the creation of feature films, is usually a good idea. You don’t want to have to toss out a bunch of hard work later on if your vision or the needs of your project change along the way. Clarity Way’s recent motion graphic about the effects of bath salts took a lot of work – requiring the collaboration of a researcher, an illustrator, an animator, and a voice-over artist – but it all paid off when The Huffington Post featured it in their Weird News section!
The tools to create motion graphics are readily available, though they may cost a bit. Adobe After Effects and Apple Motion are great choices that make it easy to layer your content and add 3D effects to give the impression of movement. It’s infinitely more appealing to the average viewer than static content.
- Published in Branding, Marketing, Networking
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