Questions to ask before you design a new logo

No matter how small or large your organization....you need to be as objective as possible about your logo design. This isn't about whether you like the color orange or think trapezoids are cool shapes.

To illuminate and eliminate.
Creative brief...a discovery process ...it is about trying to capture the spirit of your organization in a mark...to give people a clue as to what you do and what you're all about.

Logo creative brief

• Your company name
• Describe your business (your product or service)
• Website address
• Who's your target audience
• What colors do you require in the logo?
• Do you have any preference for you logo regarding image and text style?
• Language you require in logo?
• Any additional thoughts?
  

Additional questions
What, if anything, are you using for a logo now?
If you have a current logo, why are you looking to change it?
What word/words need to be included in your logo?
Who is your competition? How are you different from them?
What is your brand promise/tagline? How do you bring that to life?
What are your organization's values/mission?
What words would people use to describe your organization/city BEFORE their first visit (in other words-what do they think/believe before they visit)
What words would people use to describe your organization/city AFTER their first visit (in other words-what do they think/believe after they visit)
Are there any iconic places, elements of architecture, design elements, landmarks that make your brand unique?
Which of these words is a better fit for your brand? Techno or Active
Which of these words is a better fit for your brand? Warm or Progressive
Which of these words is a better fit for your brand? Old Fashioned or Modern
Which of these words is a better fit for your brand? High End or Cost Effective
Which of these words is a better fit for your brand? Night Life or Early Morning
Who would have no interest in your city/brand?
Are there any color no no's? Image no no's?
Competitors' marks (colors, shapes, concepts, ideas are already being used in the marketplace)
Where will the logo appear/primary usage -- how will you use it?
Any other production considerations (must work extremely small, or will be usually be reproduced in single color etc.)

Logo design inspiration sites:

• http://logofaves.com/
• http://www.logodesignlove.com/best-logo-design-resources
• http://www.wolda.org/showcase/
• www.logodesignlove.com/
• www.logogala.com/

Logo Design blogs

38one.com/cleverblogEN
Logo Design blog
ilovetypography.com/EN
Blog that brings the subject of Typography to the masses.
blogvecindad.comES
Diseño Gráfico y Más.
cosasvisuales.blogspot.comES
Comunicaciòn visual y otras historias del saber
dda.blogsome.comES
Dd'A. Blog de dirección de arte y diseño gráfico.
inconcientecolectivo.cl/ES
Blog de noticias y tendencias del diseño chileno e internacional.
justcreativedesign.com/EN
Just Creative Design is a blog which focuses on graphic design, offering free graphic design tips, articles & resources on all subjects of design, ranging from, but not limited to; print design, logo design, web design, branding, typography, advertising &
logoblink.com/ENG
100% logo stuff
mishef.com/BULGARIAN
Web design and graphics portfolio and blog.
packagingworld.blogspot.com/EN
Packaging World is a packaging blog, full of new packaging trends, news and great concepts, from all around the world.
paragonanubis.wordpress.com/EN
all about copy cat logos and advertising in the middle east and the world
studiografiko.wordpress.com/EN
Official Studio Grafiko’s Blog.
thisisgraphicart.com/EN
Graphic Art and Design news and inspiration
www.albillo.com/blog/ES
Blog sobre marcas, logotipos e identidad corporativa.
www.allgraphicdesign.com/EN
Graphic Design & Graphics News Blog
www.bildirgec.org/TURKISH
Kullanıcıları tarafından yollanan günlük yaşama dair haberlerden derlenen, genç insanların buluştuğu ve bilgilerini paylaştığı bir ortam, bir elektronik dergi.
www.bla-marcelotomaz.com.br/portuguese
Design, branding, and ad blog
www.creativepanorama.com/EN
Creative Panorama is a blog acting as a filter so only the best in the creative world is highlighted.
www.criteriondg.info/wordpress/ES
Blog de diseño, recursos y noticias de actualidad.
www.desaingrafisindonesia.com/INDONESIAN
DGI
www.designobserver.com/ENG
Writings on Design and Culture.
www.dezeen.com/EN
One of the most popular and influential architecture and design blogs on the internet.
www.dezeen.com/category/graphics/EN
One of the most popular and influential architecture and design blogs on the internet.
www.everythingaboutdesign.com/EN
Everything about design! Graphic Design, Fashion, Architecture, Crafts, industrial Design, Websites, Contest, Design news, Design Contests, Designers etc.
www.fubiz.net/blog/FR
Le site Fubiz est axé sur les sujets du monde graphique, de la culture urbaine, des produits tendances et des arts numériques.
www.grafikhaber.com/TUR
grafik tasarım ve grafik tasarım teknolojileri (graphic design and graphic design technologies)
www.identityworks.com/English
Reviews of important corporate identity work, as acts of leadership and for creative excellence.
www.lijeonline.blogspot.com/Portuguese/ English
Lije Online was launched in 2005. It is a blog, weekly updated, that gathers useful information about Design and Arts in general.
www.mattus.web-log.nl/Dutch
A dutch blog on design, brands and branding
www.oeilpouroeil.ca/wp/FR
Un blogue publié par la Société des Designers Graphiques du Québec SDGQ qui se consacre à la réflexion et l’actualité dans le domaine du design graphique à l’échelle locale et internationale.
www.ok-blog.nl/EN/DUTCH
An online source of inspiration. A large international group posts articles about design, art, trends, but also technology and science every day.
www.oneplusoneequalsthree.com/EN
1+1=3 is an Australian blog dedicated to the discussion of design—principally graphic/communication design and interactive design.
www.pixelgangster.deDE
The daily design blog.
www.theserif.netEN
Daily dose of design inspiration
www.vcdc.grGR
Visual Communication Designers Club
www.whitespace.hk/blog/EN
Thoughts and inspiration from Hong Kong based design studio
www.zeroin.grGR/EN
Spot on the web focused on contemporary design.


Design links

www.scene360.com/EN
Online film and arts magazine
www.thaiwebgallery.com/EN
Free gallery of great websites in Thailand and International Wesites. We encourage people to create beautiful, good concept, good structure original sites based on CSS and all technology. Promoting best websites is our main goal for maintaining a communit
www.designineurope.eu/EN
Design in Europe brings you a selection of the best well-designed personal, experimental and corporate sites from the European union.
www.designspotter.com/EN
DESIGNSPOTTER is a design magazine dedicated to everything related to young modern contemporary design.
www.designtaxi.comEN
An international multidisciplinary design network that features the latest design news, competitions, websites, portfolios and events across the world.
www.dexigner.comEN
Delivering design news, events, competitions and links, Dexigner is the leading online information service for designers and artists
www.digitalartsonline.co.ukEN
Comprehensive coverage of the art of graphic design, 3D, animation, video, effects, web and interactive design, in print and online.
www.directory.designer.amEN
A multi-profile design site for designers and other professionals, who are involved in different spheres of design - photographers, illustrators, architects, web programmers, etc looking for state-of-the-art and creative ideas.
www.etcetering.comEN
A platform that presents a diverse level of news , information and services to young, old, new and established designers and artists.
www.graphics.comEN
The shared resource for creative design.
www.logodesignlove.com/EN
Website devoted to logos.
www.culturepush.com/EN
Culturepush tracks cool stuff in art, culture and design in Singapore.
bizcommunity.com/EN
Africa's leading daily advertising, marketing and media news resource for the industry.
bookmarkd.net/EN
bookmark’d™ is a social-driven website that sets out to collect creative portfolios from different disciplines of the design world, deliver design news, events, links and to provide an information service in the field of visual design.
www.logogala.com/ENG
LogoGala aims to be an outstanding resource for fresh logo design inspiration and to showcase great designs in the gallery for your viewing pleasure.
www.lostateminor.com/EN
Online publication devoted to pop culture — art, photography, design, music, the Interweb.
www.netdiver.netEN
Netdiver is a digital culture magazine and luvs everything design.
www.newwebpick.com/EN
NWP (newwebpick.com), an international digital designer union and a community of international digital designers, is one globe designing information focusing on the digital design.
www.designdump.com/EN
The Design Dump is a graphic design resource featuring; graphic design conferences, graphic design competitions, graphic design books, original graphic design and web design articles, graphic design resource links, design magazines, and much more.
www.cgindia.org/EN
An online Magazine and CG portal which provides wealth of information on 3d, Animation, Computer Graphics and Visual Effects (VFX).
designsingapore.com/EN
Design Singapore
digitalthread.comEN
The oldest existing web design community web site.
directory.designer.amEN
Made by designers for designers and other professionals, who are involved in different spheres of design - photographers, illustrators, architects, web programmers, etc.
www.commarts.com/EN
Premier source of inspiration for graphic designers, art directors, design firms, corporate design departments, advertising agencies, interactive designers, illustrators and photographers.
www.creativeireland.comEN
The irish creative design community.
pureaustriandesign.com/EN/DE
Austria's window to the international and national design community.
japandesign.ne.jp/JAPANESE/CHINESE/EN
Japan's largest design portal to support all the people involved with design.
ffffound.com/EN/JP
FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!
www.japandesign.ne.jp JAP / CHI / EN
Japan's largest design portal to support all the people involved with design.
www.mister-wong.com/EN/DE/CN/ES/FR/RU
Mister Wong is one of the leading social bookmarking services with portals in 6 languages and over 4 million visitors per month.
www.gammaidentity.com/ENG/RUS
Gamma Identity is a new portal for professionals involved in branding and design. Portal allows for brand agencies, design studios and firms otherwise involved in branding and design to share knowledge, opinions, communicate and collaborate together with
www.czechdesign.cz/CZ/EN/IT
Design Portal
www.yo-yoll.netIT
Grafica, design, e comunicazione. Seleziona le risorse per chi si occupa di immagine in rete.
www.designgrafico.art.brBRASILIAN
A Lista designGráfico é um grupo de discussão virtual sobre design gráfico e áreas afins que utiliza a internet como meio de comunicação.
www.designmadeingermany.deDE
Ist eine deutschsprachige plattform von und für designer und agenturen.
www.grafiport.com/TUR
Grafiport, artık grafik tasarımı ile ilgili iş ve eleman arayanları bu sayfalarda buluşturuyor.
www.obdesigner.netFR
Design, tendances, concours et emploi.
draft.it/cms/IT
Grafica pubblicitaria e comunicazione.
israelidesign.org.il/ISRAELIAN
המרכז הישראלי לעיצוב, מדיטק – חולון אתר המרכז מידע בתחומי העיצוב השונים בארץ ובחו
www.capdesign.seSE
For Battre Visuell Kommunication
www.chinavisual.comCHI
A leading on-line media, which serves in Mainland China and the global creative community, and also an information service provider of the interactive industry
www.cuatrotipos.com/ES
Diseño periodistico y más.
www.designerinaction.deDE
Design portal mit news zu design, webdesign, typografie, papier, druck, fotografie sowie termine, tipps, tricks,

Anthropologie.com::: how is this website selling itself online?

Anthropologie touchy-feely?

by Vivian Manning-Schaffel

April 13, 2009 issue

Anthropologie is a moderately upscale American retail chain that curates an assemblage of various brands for a decidedly feminine lifestyle.

With stores arranged in impeccably casual fashion, they provide their target consumers (women 28‒42) with an eclectic boutique-like shopping experience where they can gather items such as vibrant dishcloths, an overstuffed antique-looking sofa, a great pair of jeans and a progressive, designer bag—all in one convenient location.

Owned and operated by Urban Outfitters, Inc., the company responsible for its signature chain, Urban Outfitters, as well as the collegiate clothing brand Free People, Anthropologie began seven years ago as a direct-mail business, opening its first retail outlet in a sizable New Jersey mall. Boasting an impressive category growth of 27.6 percent in the past year alone, Urban Outfitters, Inc. and the brands under its umbrella are bucking financial trends with an upward swing in a downward-facing economy.
According to their website, the founders of Anthropologie created the chain to “cultivate a shopping experience unlike almost anything else in retail today.” Their touchy-feely messaging matches their feminine look, describing their collection of designers as artists with “an eye for craftsmanship, the smallest details, and that certain something special that makes each item you find in our stores and website more than novelty but a personal discovery.” Matching the romantic sensibility of many of their products, it also refers to their consumers as “soulmates.”
Despite never having advertised, Anthropologie’s customers stay longer in the stores than most chain shoppers, with an average visit clocking in at an hour and 15 minutes. Brandchannel paid a visit to Anthropologie.com to see if their online presence invites users to linger over their own special brand of boho mojo.
When a brand has such a strong identity woven into their catalog, the ideal would be to match that sensibility online, which Anthropologie does—at least visually. The homepage focuses on trends and “pushes” seasonal items with accompanying tag lines that outline the solutions to your shopping dilemmas (“Wild about bottoms, bewildered by tops? Visit Bottoms Up!”).
Such vast product offerings can be challenging to organize and display, but the folks at Anthropologie take a methodical, traditional approach to online sales, keeping the basics all in order with clear product images and detailed information.
It’s one task to make your brand’s website look as good as your catalog or your stores, but it’s another to entice target consumers to linger by offering tangible benefits from shopping on the site. The “For Your Home” section has found a way to do this with “Dwelling Dos” that provide a combination of information and interaction. For example, the homepage, featuring hardware, informs consumers about the benefits of their vast selection of drawer pulls and leads them to a “Personalize Your Look” page that encourages viewers to drag and drop the drawer pulls on mock furniture pieces so they get a visual of what the accessories might look like in life.
However, the “For Your Self” section, featuring clothing and accessories, is surprisingly devoid of value-added fashion content, save for a spotlight widget that delivers a featured product of the day to users’ desktops. They might consider upping the ante. By providing online shoppers with style guidance to help them assemble that chic Anthropologie look, the brand in turn enhances its positioning as an arbiter of bohemian style.
Overall, Anthropologie.com does a decent job of conveying the decidedly feminine sophistication of the brand. With a few tweaks and additions of value-added content to beef up the “For Your Self” section, perhaps visitors will be inspired to linger online as they do in retail.

Achieving Accountable Marketing: Six Critical Value Levers Must Be Pulled

By Michael Dunn
April 13, 2009 issue

Senior management continues to push marketers to demonstrate a strong return on investment, demanding more accountability and evidence that marketing investment is driving business growth.
It requires marketers to demonstrate disciplined planning, rigorous tracking and evaluation and, above all, continuous improvement in performance. They must also show cause and effect, quickly diagnose the root causes of any spending performance issues and make timely, fact-driven decisions to improve returns.


Call it accountable marketing performance, a goal that requires six “value levers” to be pulled effectively.

Value Lever #1 – Strategy
This critical lever sets up a series of choices that inform most of the subsequent activities across the other levers. It encompasses a series of decisions about strategic marketing choices:

• With which set or sets of customers does your company have the best business opportunities?
• What are the most achievable behavioral responses from these target groups?
• What unique benefits, attributes and ideas are most likely to elicit the desired behavioral response?
• What specific brand or business challenges are standing in the way?
  

Getting smart and shared answers to these questions requires a fact-based foundation involving customer segmentation and targeting, customer-driven analysis, pathway modeling, brand equity modeling and purchase funnel analysis. When combined with equally valid qualitative insights and intuitive thinking, you create a strategic value proposition that is worth its weight in gold.


Value Lever #2 – Content
The strategic foundation must be translated into compelling, engaging and medium-appropriate messaging ideas. The best content platforms originate from a magical combination of strategic insight and creative expression and connect in authentic yet emotionally compelling ways.
Most companies rely heavily on external agency partners at this lever. But it’s the best collaborative partnerships that inspire great work, and great content ideas can come from anywhere—agencies, similarly briefed internal teams pursuing independent and somewhat competitive paths, or single contributors who find inspiration on a walk or in the shower. Whatever the source, smart companies validate multiple messaging ideas with robust testing before deploying them across a full-scale creative campaign.

Value Lever #3 – Marketing Vehicles
Effective vehicle choices should enable your messages to reach and connect with audiences in a timely, relevant, cost-effective and multi-platform way. But you must understand where your audiences interact with media or media-enabled experiences as well as their openness to receiving messages in that setting. You must understand the optimal strategic applications of each vehicle, their trade-offs and the underlying economics.
The wrong choices can endanger accountable marketing. You risk failure by mismatching vehicles with marketing objectives or audiences, or by having inadequate coverage across the mix. It’s equally dangerous to fail to weigh the underlying economics and potential revenue response dynamics. Finally, balance between new and traditional media is a must.

Value Lever #4 – Investment Levels
This value lever should diagnose whether the overall marketing investment amount is too high or too low vis-à-vis the intrinsic financial return characteristics of the proposed marketing activities in relation to strategic marketing objectives. It also helps determine whether the amount invested in particular vehicles, programs or activities is too high, too low or just appropriate relative to intrinsic return characteristics and those of alternative investment options.
But it’s complicated. Marketing program returns are not static. Changes in brand maturity levels or competitive intensity can impact program-level returns. Changing media habits and changing cost dynamics of various vehicles can affect their returns. Nor are returns always linear. Despite such challenges, there’s considerable upside potential to this lever.

Value Lever #5 – In-Market Execution
Great content still needs a great delivery mechanism; execution diligence ensures that your marketing content and your delivery mechanisms work together harmoniously.
Many tactical decisions underpin a successful and cost-effective campaign. Planning requires choices about reach and frequency, geographic coverage, and scheduling in light of insights around seasonality, purchase frequency and key decision points in the purchase cycle across all types of programs. Buying necessitates hard choices in a fluid media landscape, encompassing financial parameters weighed against considerations like media reputation and specific audience demographics. The customer experience must be consistent and seamless. Be warned: if poor in-market execution prevails, your failures may well be amplified in an embarrassingly public way through Web-based channels.

Value Lever #6 – Fixed Cost Management
This lever aims for improved cost efficiency and effectiveness through both cost cutting and cost containment. Your fixed cost base depends on your mix of marketing programs and can account for 20 percent to 60 percent of the overall marketing budget. And savings can be redeployed into programs that may improve overall effectiveness.

This value lever requires applying a purchasing or procurement manager mindset. One way to start is by understanding the ratio of “working” to “non-working” spend on the fixed costs of marketing program production. If this ratio is off, try selectively applying strategic sourcing principles to pay a little less for what you buy, redefine some core programs so they can be executed more cost-effectively or re-engineer overall processes to reduce costs without compromising quality.

Accountable marketing performance is an achievable goal. By focusing on and unlocking the power of the six critical value levers, the marketing organization will prove its value to the business as a whole as the creative yet rational source of future growth.

Michael Dunn is Chairman and CEO of Prophet (www.prophet.com), a global consultancy that helps senior management more effectively use branding, marketing, design and innovation to drive profitable growth. This article is based his new book, The Marketing Accountability Imperative: Driving Superior Returns On Marketing Investments. He can be reached at mdunn@prophet.com.

My Shape.com:::Online Fashion Consultation

Website : http://www.myshape.com/shop/index

Without paying for a personal shopper or fashion consultant, My Shape determines the best clothes for your body type, by asking you to take a variety of measurements and asking you about your fashion preferences as they relate to style, cut, fit, color and more. It then assigns you a letter for your shape based on the measurements you provided, and allows you to shop showing only the clothes that would fit you, that suit your preferences, and that would naturally flatter your body shape.