business Archives - Kaizen Brand Evolution

What a logo says about your business

Posted on October 16, 2018September 15, 2020 by YBmMqGwLx0

A logo does the talking for you; it’s your salesperson in the room when you’re not there, it’s your badge of honour, your declaration that you run a successful brand. A logo can ‘say’ these things correctly for you as long as it is crafted carefully based upon your ambition for the business. Ambition setting is a really important factor in this process and can dictate how your logo says anything about your business. From a typeface to a symbol, the elements and shapes need to be addressing how the business wants to develop or be a truthful representation of what you do now. So, ambition setting goes a little bit like this, ask yourself the 5 key questions before embarking on a new logo design and look at your current logo to see if it’s ‘saying’ what you need it to. Ask yourself, Why are we doing this? Who are we doing this for? How are we different? What is our personality and finally what does our brand do? With these questions answered we, as brand designers can make a start on the logo design. Let’s look at the variables you need to think about when you are in the process of a possible new logo.

Does the symbol have a meaning? Symbolism has a greater power over someone’s decision-making process in this day and age than maybe you realise. If your symbol has meaning and a truth to it you create a relationship between you and your customer. Also with this in mind, if your logo isn’t designed well or isn’t correctly communicating what your offering or service is, then, unfortunately, you could be attracting the wrong customer or even putting people off. Meaning is formed with a symbol and can be traced back to ancient times when people used symbols for entire words to communicate with each other, tapestries were written with symbols, the hieroglyphics, the cave paintings, all symbols mean something. You may have a random logo that does okay, but most of the time you will see successful brands with well constructed and strategic logos that usually tell a tale. Our logo for example (the forward slash) represents the definition of Kaizen, (continuous improvement) which we see as a form of evolution, forward slash = forward thinking. Now, what were we thinking when choosing a forward slash to symbolise evolution? Well, if you have ever seen Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a scene, which involves 2 rival prehistoric man-monkey gangs, amidst a raucous encounter a monolith appears and one of the monkeys touch the monolith and begin using tools, sticks as weapons, evolving them as the triumphant man-monkey tribe. All once again symbolism for evolution, and of course without this great reference we always refer to ‘forward slash – moving forward – evolving.’

Does your typeface convey the correct tone? Have a think about typography for a minute, look around your workplace or home at products or even books and how typography plays a part in the communication. We see bubbly, bold typefaces on children’s products, we see sophisticated serif styles on coffees and teas, we see clean, legible typefaces used on laptops, computer brands. This is all to do with how type creates an emotional connection the same way a symbol can. Achieving logo Valhalla is the perfect balance between the two – a typeface that represents what you are doing as a business and a logo that sums it up, simply. Simplicity is key because if a customer is confused about your brand message they will simply go elsewhere.

Think your business logo needs a refresh? Perhaps it doesn’t convey the tone you think it should? Feel free to call us on 028 9507 2007, email the designers on studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com and book an appointment. Take the next step to evolving your brand today.

The importance of a logo

Posted on October 9, 2018September 15, 2020 by YBmMqGwLx0

A logo is a symbol that is synonymous with your brand, a sign of your business, your seal of approval and more often than not, the key for a consumer’s decision making. In a world that is saturated with branding and symbolism having a logo that not only represents your brand correctly but one that also stands out amongst your competitors can be a challenge, that is where branding agencies (such as Kaizen Brand Evolution) step in. Your logo says a lot about your business, from the typeface to the mark or symbol, the logo you chose to represent your business should do this as truthfully and as tastefully as possible.

A businesses logo depends on the type of business you are in, for example, a village bakery might choose something nice and soft, maybe some texture or handwriting and perhaps even throw in a little ‘established 1946’ in there to make sure everyone knows this is a family business – fantastic. There is and should be a clear difference in choosing logo styles and formats to suit what you do, not saying that there is a right way to create a logo for a bakery, but recognising that distinction that as a consumer we have an idea of what a logo should and should not look like. With this in mind, picture the likes of Facebook or Google with this style of logo. You can’t, as it wouldn’t really happen in that industry landscape – this is important in the understanding the power of a symbol, of a typeface and of course of a colour. Google’s logo is clean, modern, reflects their mission “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It is EXTREMELY important to get these elements right when thinking of or designing a logo.

One big difference in getting your logo right is the investment in it, of course for a start-up with no design experience or money, calling upon a family member with a B in GCSE art can seem like the easy option and you have something, anything to get you started, right? – Wrong. Realising that your logo is as important as your product, your workforce, your computer, is a head start that you will have over other new starts in your industry as well as existing competitors. The logo has the power to create intrigue, develop a reputation and make you look perhaps more established than you are, intern making people trust you more. Your logo, done right, by a designer can help you reach your ambition way before you have reached it yourself. Preparing you for your ambition at the start will make selling your product or service a walk in the park because you already look like you are ready for bigger and better things and also you have a strong brand presence at such an early stage.

A logo (abbreviation of the logotype,[4] from Greek: λόγος logos “word” and τύπος typos “imprint”) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordmark. At the level of mass communication and in common usage, a company’s logo is today often synonymous with its trademark or brand.

The power of a logo is undeniable. Easyjet’s name may be written in a weird, gooey orange font, but it’s memorable and friendly. IBM’s stripes have become synonymous with technology. Apple and Shell? They’ve done away with writing their names altogether. That truly is the power of a great logo. – By Michael Johnson

It shouldn’t be a personal taste when having a logo designed, your logo represents a business, no one cares about your favourite football teams colours and you shouldn’t mix these ideas when thinking about your business. Believe it or not, when creating logos in the studio we take the full personal taste out of the scenario when creating logos for businesses. What we do is… well come and talk to us and we’ll show you.

Belfast Central Business District

Posted on November 20, 2017 by YBmMqGwLx0

We successfully won the Belfast City Centre Management pitch to create a brand identity for the new Belfast Central Business District. Following the success of Belfast City Centre Management establishing Belfast One as Belfast’s first Business Improvement District (BID) on 1st of April 2016, Belfast Central Business District (BID) is now in development for the BT2 area of Central Belfast. This area of the city centre functions as Belfast’s ‘square mile’ with many large offices in the finance, technology, professional services and government sectors. The area is also home to many reputable restaurants, historic bars, quality hotels and a range of independent retailers.

After a year of preparation Belfast Central Business District (Belfast CBD) has now reached the ballot phase. The publication of the final Business Plan for the business improvement district on the 14th of September formally launches the six week long campaign to secure a ‘yes’ result on 27th of October. The ballot involves over 420 votes from 350 businesses across 10 sectors. Businesses have an opportunity to secure an investment of over £2.4 million in a wide range of money-saving and promotional projects over a five-year period in the BT2 postcode area south of City Hall.

The identity and brand system that we created for the project brings to life the area involved in the Belfast Central Business District, visualising the footprint that it will have in the city in a contemporary, almost architectural way. The brand encompasses the area as well as the nature of the businesses and residence in the zone allocated to the BID. As you can see in the brand visuals the device is flexible when addressing different streets in the area, becoming the talking point for the likes of Adelaide Street or Linen hall Street. The colour palette is reflective of a forward thinking, corporate area in Belfast.

We needed to address and connect with the businesses and tenants that currently occupy the Belfast Central Business District, as they would be the ones ultimately sealing the fate of the Bid. We provided a trustworthy, corporate identity that the businesses could get on board with. The ownership comes from the craft of the ‘MAP’ logo to which the businesses can almost point out where they are located. The identity and type family used solidifies the positioning of the BID with a forward thinking approach and timeless brand direction. We used Omnes as the brand typeface, a soft, corporate face that has a big personality when used throughout brand collateral and business materials. As you will see on social media we created a series of props and point of sale items for Belfast Central business District, which really stood out from the crowd at the BID events.

The versatility of the device really comes in to play when housing the likes of ‘VOTE YES’ messages or “I’M IN” statements in their marketing collateral. The strong primary blue palate also helps marry the brand language with the visuals and mark helping the BID take ownership of the area in a contemporary fashion.

We are delighted to say that following the branding project and campaign the BID for the Belfast Central Business District was voted for and passed successfully. We can’t take full credit of course but the brand identity and vision from the offset was always on point with the ambition of the BID providing a solid path to success. We thoroughly enjoyed working on the branding for the Belfast Central Business District and look forward to working with them in the future as the BID formulates and is realised. Another successful corporate identity made for purpose in the KBE studios.

The power of Snapchat

Posted on October 31, 2016September 15, 2020 by YBmMqGwLx0

Snapchat is one of the most powerful ways of communicating today, short and sweet bursts of messages between you and a friend on your phone that disappear before you have a chance to react, it’s the fast-paced engagement and the exchange of information keeping us hooked. From Snapchat’s origin in quick fire picture exchange, its has significantly evolved offering text exchange between users, highly interactive and engaging video filters, story telling video diaries, worldwide event coverage and most prominent – Brand advertising. Just as the evolution of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Snapchat has quickly overruled as the leader in brand awareness. The user interaction analytics secure Snapchat as the most used social media platform and with this information comes a responsibility as a business to jump on board and get your brand out there.

There are many tiers of Snapchat advertising that can be easily achieved at any business level and what makes it better is Snapchat advertising is surprisingly affordable. For instance, our first use of Snapchat advertising at Kaizen brand Evolution was a simple Geofilter (interactive branding watermark over the top of the live feed camera) at Culture Night Belfast 2016. For this, we simply created a mobile sized, branded template, which could be used on the night of the event. The brilliant thing about Snapchat is that you set your location; timings and radius reach to pinpoint exactly where you want the Snapchat Geofilter to appear. What an unbelievably personal, in the moment and engaging form of advertising. It was so exciting seeing people interact and use our own Kaizen Brand Evolution filter on the night, and it appeared on your selections just after the main Snapchat filters. Following the interactions and success of the evening at Belfast Culture Night 2016, we reviewed the analytics of our simple Geofilter design and the stats were staggering. Let me put this into perspective, we set the location radius to an area of Belfast about the size of a football stadium, we had it running on Snapchat for 6hours and we told maybe 100 people who came to our stall at Belfast Culture Night 2016 about its existence and how we were testing the new medium. Our analytics report on user engagement was staggering: We had 17.3k views of our filter and 346 uses.

This only sets to prove my point on how powerful Snapchat is as a brand awareness tool. Following our first use of Snapchat we have been providing the branding service for our clients. Most notably for Boojum and their Halloween campaign. The premise of the campaign was to draw customers to each of the 3 locations of Boojum restaurants in Belfast City Centre. We created and designed 3 separate Snapchat filter designs for Boojum to use across their Great Victoria Street, Chichester Street and Botanic Avenue sites. Each design is different and alongside a Facebook and Twitter post we encourage customers to attend each Boojum location to essentially ‘catch ‘em all’ (not to paraphrase the Pokemon Go craze, but you get my point). There are two key points to this campaign, brand awareness, and brand engagement. Alongside the fantastic Halloween themed design the plans to involve their customers and locations will certainly prove successful. This forward thinking brand medium provides a new platform for brands to showcase their business in a new way, and the results speak for themselves. If we can achieve 17.3k views with hardly any marketing or build up, imagine the possibilities for your brand.

We now specialise in the design, creation, and customisation of Snapchat Geofilters and advertising. If you believe in your business and would like some design intervention online, engaging and interacting with more potential customers that ever, get in touch and we’ll be happy to set up a meeting.