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Psychology-Driven Brand Design. Creating and Refining Remarkable Brand Identities.
- Brand Identity
Branding Services
- Logo Design
- Websites
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A blog about branding, marketing, and design, mostly through the lens of practical psychology, intended to be a resource to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
It’s a wonderful thing to have choices. The reality, however, is that we often rely on the default instead of making conscious decisions to the contrary. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but this tendency does affect all areas of our lives, including our business marketing.
Have you ever wished you could accelerate your administrative tasks? Streamline your spreadsheets? Fast-track your follow-ups? Guess what — there’s a Zap for that. If you’ve never used or heard of Zapier, you may be working harder than you need to. Read on to see if Zapier is the life hack you’ve been dreaming of.
With the summer Olympics right around the corner, I’m sure you’re excited to watch the world’s best in swimming, volleyball, and gymnastics. And the one player making an appearance at every sport? The Olympics logo, of course. Read on for the fascinating story of how the official Rio 2016 logo and font came to be, and some lessons you can learn from the process.
“We try to help as many families and kids as possible. We want to be a voice for children and families…We are always out spreading the word about the need that exists for children in foster care.”
Want a surefire way to get graphic designers all riled up? Replace a good typeface with a bad one… all over America.
“The greater joy and positive personal transformations we create, the greater the amount of energy we will have to help others, and the greater positive energetic imprint we will leave in this world as our legacy.”
Business owners can learn an important lesson from Nike’s latest showing at Wimbledon. Mainly that “just do it” should never supercede “just think it through”. In this case, that means designing products with the end-user in mind; which, in the world of web design, comes in the form of user testing or user experience.
Could YouTube be the magic bullet for all of your marketing goals? In all honesty, you could develop your entire business marketing plan around YouTube. I’m not saying you should do that, but since YouTube is recognized as the second largest search engine, you might want to think twice before you decide to ignore it.
No, I’m not referring to the singing competition with the ever-delightful Simon Cowell. Good news: you don’t need to be able to sing or perform in order for your brand to have an x-factor. Do you know what yours is?
We all have a wild side, and the Outlaw brand archetype taps into our deep desire for nonconformity, to the point of rebellion. The Outlaw throws aside societal norms and seeks to destroy, if only to build things up again the way they should be. Viva la revolución!
Just think where we’d be without structure and order in our lives. While power, control, and authority may be easy to abuse, chaos still needs to be managed. Brands that are able to provide the world with the security and stability we all desire are the ones that earn the title of Ruler.
Who doesn’t like to have fun?! The role of the Jester archetype is to bring everybody together to play and appreciate the joy in life. As the ultimate entertainer, the Jester is able to make people feel good — a feeling that any brand would like to have associated with it.
Watermarks grace dollar bills, important documents, and checks and are there to prove authenticity, origin, or ownership. But what role do they play in online images and your marketing images?
It seems one of the highest compliments bestowed upon a celebrity is that the superstar “is so down to earth!” The comfort and appeal of knowing that something or someone who is larger than life is actually “just one of us” is the pull of the Everyman archetype, and brands who are relatable in this way will go a long way in capturing the hearts of their consumers.
You just got off the phone with your graphic designer and your head is swimming with terms like vector, bitmap, and raster. Even though it may have sounded like it, your designer wasn’t speaking a foreign language! Let’s look at these different image types and clear up the confusion.
We have all seen one-page websites in our Internet travels, but are they a trend worth latching on to?
Finding oneself — self-realization through discovery — is the ultimate goal of the Explorer. In our Western culture, the Explorer archetype is an undercurrent running through all of society. Brands that spring forth from this current are those that speak to the need for freedom, adventure, and independence.
So you dropped a few grand last year on a new website. You also paid for a domain name and some web hosting, both registered in your name. Congrats! You are now the proud owner of a website. Or are you?
Transformation, change, renewal, metamorphosis, magic. No matter how you say it, the Magician archetype leaves others standing in amazement. Characterized by curiosity and foundational knowledge, the Magician finds solutions in science or the supernatural to create something from nothing — or turn a mess into a miracle.
Possibly the most expensive typo in history was made by NASA in 1962. The omission of a single hyphen in a mathematical calculation resulted in the destruction of Mariner 1 mere minutes after launch and cost $80 million. While your typos may not cause rockets to explode midair, they could keep your profits from skyrocketing.
What’s that your momma always said? “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” But ma! The flip side — “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, right? No. That’s not even what that means. Listen to your mother and beware this common email scam.
