Why do I need a Logo?

A new logo and identity package will help people recognize and differentiate as well as give your company more credibility as well as a higher perceived value. Additionally a new logo can be used for all forms of advertising and publicity. Newspaper ads, staff shirts, events banners and t-shirts, all contributing to the overall equity of your company image and identity. The options are endless. Your company can be represented by an all type, an iconic, or illustrative logo. I would suggest you explore the intricacies of your company with a logo designer and create a logo that compliments and magnifies you.

How do I choose a Logo designer?

Look at their portfolio. Do you see logos that are similar to what you envision? Does their style fit with your company's image? Does the designer take time to get to know you and your company? Your company has a unique genetic makeup. Your organization has basic parts that make it different than any other, your DNA. Making your company memorable with your customers is where your own design DNA comes into play. find a designer that breaks your design needs down to the basic elements, Content, Form and Target, to focus your efforts to get maximum results. Find a designer that gives you what you want as well as what you need to magnify your company’s individual design needs. Find a design firm with ample experience, specializing in logo and identity design, don't make your decision on price alone. You can get a generic logo for extra cheap but is it what you and you company need? Is it customized to your company? What does it say about your company? Does it look like you got it cheap? Is that the image you wish to portray?

What should a logo cost?

Well, it depends on what you can afford, I would say spend what you can afford to. If you think about it, your logo will represent your company for the life of your company. So if you amortize the logo cost over the 10, 20, 30 year life of your company, spending at the minimum $500 on a logo is an investment of at most $50 per year. What is your marketing budget? Are you willing to spend $50 a year on brand recognition, good readability, and a complimentary corporate image? I am willing to pay more. The websites that will "design" you a logo for a dollar seldom give you what you need and then charge you for changes to the logo. They are also notorious for plagiarism and clip art giving you cookie cutter designs and a discounted corporate image. I realize you might not have a lot of money for logo design, but there ways around it. Find a logo designer that will work within your budget, or trade ad space on your webpage for part of the cost of logo design, or trade services with your designer. there are plenty of ways to save on your logo design, but I wouldn't use a cut rate service.

Thanks for reading, I hope this blog helped.

Mark Combs
Logo Designer

Cre8ivty 101

Show Up!
The hardest part of creativity is getting started. You have to show up. If your writing, sit down and write. If you are drawing pick up a pencil. You have to jump in with one foot!

Brains
Your right foot.    You are the man with two brains. You have a left brain, all sophisticated, logical, judgemental, linear, and you have a right brain, creative, fun, imaginative. Your left brain Knows, Your right brain imagines. If you know too much, you will stop imagining. Kids imagine all the time. They don’t know all the rules or limitations.

So, if we turn off the left brain all we are left with is imagination & creativity. Now we have to trust our right brain to perform. No matter what the problem, if you leave your right brain to the task it will come up with a creative answer.

10 ways to be more Cre8ive!
1.    Listen to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. If Bach doesn’t make you more creative, you should probably see your doctor - or your brain surgeon if you are also troubled by headaches, hallucinations or strange urges in the middle of the night.

2.    Excercise your brain. Brains, like bodies, need exercise to keep fit. If you don’t exercise your brain, it will get flabby and useless. Exercise your brain by reading a lot (see #9), talking to clever people and disagreeing with people - arguing can be a terrific way to give your brain cells a workout. But note, arguing about politics or film directors is good for you; bickering over who should clean the dishes is not.

3.    Always carry a small notebook and a pen or pencil around with you. That way, if you are struck by an idea, you can quickly note it down. Upon rereading your notes, you may discover about 90% of your ideas are daft. Don’t worry, that’s normal. What’s important are the 10% that are brilliant.

4.    If you’re stuck for an idea, open a dictionary, randomly select a word and then try to formulate ideas incorporating this word. You’d be surprised how well this works. The concept is based on a simple but little known truth: freedom inhibits creativity. There are nothing like restrictions to get you thinking.

5.    Define your problem. Grab a sheet of paper, electronic notebook, computer or whatever you use to make notes, and define your problem in detail. You’ll probably find ideas positively spewing out once you’ve done this.

6.    If you can’t think, go for a walk. A change of atmosphere is good for you and gentle exercise helps shake up the brain cells.

7.    Don’t watch TV. Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your brain to slowly trickle out your ears and/or nose. It’s not pretty, but it happens.

8.    Don’t do drugs. People on drugs think they are creative. To everyone else, they seem like people on drugs.

9.    Read as much as you can about everything possible. Books exercise your brain, provide inspiration and fill you with information that allows you to make creative connections easily.

10.    Brainstorm. If properly carried out, brainstorming can help you not only come up with sacks full of new ideas, but can help you decide which is best.

Rules of Brainstorming
1. There should be no criticism of any idea from any member of the group
Criticism inhibits the free flow of ideas. Ideas that appear to be crazy or outlandish may well be the solution to the problem at hand. Crazy or outlandish ideas may spring forth workable variations that may not be available had those crazy or outlandish ideas not been there in the first place.

2. There should be no evaluation of the ideas generated
Evaluation of an idea requires some thought. There is a time for the evaluation of ideas, but the ideas must be available in the first place. Brainstorming elicits as many ideas as possible in readiness for the evaluation stage in order to make the creativity process much more efficient.

3. The more ideas generated, the better
Quantity and not quality is the order of the day in a brainstorming session. All activities should be geared towards extracting as many ideas as possible in a given period.

4. Combination or modification of the ideas generated is encouraged
To create more ideas, participants are encouraged to combine or modify the ideas already presented to come out with more ideas.

Trigger the Storm
1. Show up/Jump in
If  you don’t set out to solve the problem you can’t be creative. Schedule time for brainstorming. If you don’t show up and jump in it will never be solved.

2. Observation
This method involves looking around you and making connections with things whether they show similarities or otherwise. The Tamagotchi “virtual pet” was invented when its creator linked the fondness of the Japanese in keeping small pets in their cramped apartments with their fondness for flashing their mobile phones and pagers. The result: a “pet” that they can hang around their necks!

3. Random Word
You use your finger for this method to point to any word in a dictionary, newspaper, magazine or book. Then you relate whatever problem you have with this randomly-chosen word. Choosing a word totally at random and making a connection with your problem this way forces you to be creative in arriving at the connection that may well be the solution to the problem!

4. Quotations & Proverbs
This is similar to the Random Word technique except that you use a phrase, quotation or proverb. These phrases can be general enough to trigger off all sorts of connections with the problem at hand.

5. Crazy Idea
You can use the most crazy ideas in your brainstorming session to create connections between them and your problem for the purpose of arriving at a solution. The name of the game here is forcing the connections - in doing so you are actually putting on your best thinking cap.

6. Ask Questions
Ask yourself some questions that will spark Ideas.  Questions that you wouldn’t at first. You can use just one or ask all of them. You can ask these questions to the answers of the other questions. The possibilities are endless!!

A. Who? - Pick a figure out of history (i.e. Napoleon, Freud, Churchill, SunTzu) and ask how would they solve this? You might even make a list of some of your favorite people in history and do some research on them. Make the your Board of Creativity, call on them when you need inspiration.
    Or take a n everyday person. What would a disk jockey do to your problem? A choir director? A trash collector? A mystic? A barber? A butcher? A rocket scientist? A brain surgeon? A nerd? A bounty hunter? A stuntman? A ventroloquist? A mime? An astronomer? A long distance runner? A pirate? A travel agent? A soldier? A witch? A used car salesman? A doctor? A gardener? A jazz drummer? A Buddhist monk? A nurse? A bartender? A shepherd? A policeman? A prostitute? A priest? A spy? A gourmet chef? A politician? A fisherman? A magician? A cheerleader? A coach? A professional gambler? A circus acrobat? A truck driver? A astronaut? A poet? A mother? A violinist? A philosopher? A nun? A taxi driver? A jailer? A prisoner? A choreographer? A cartoonist? A diplomat? A science fiction writer? A hermit? A union organizer? A lawyer? A garbage collector? A toll taker? A investigative reporter? An executioner?
B. Why? - Da Vinci ask why a rock makes ripples, why birds can fly, and he is considered one of the worlds most creative people. Ask why.
C. When? - Pick a time period, past or future, how would this be solved then?
D. What if? - Take down all parameters and just explore all possibilities. What if gravity had only hal of its pull? What if you fell horizontally? What if all animals flew?
E. How Big? - Change the size or scale. What if the banana were 300 ft. long. What if it were minuscule?
F. Opposite - What is the exact opposite? How can we use that? what does the product not do?
G. Dissect - Take it apart. What are the pieces? How can we use them?
H. Odd Couple - Pick something (profession, object, animal) that is totally unrelated and marry the two.
I. How Fast? - can we speed this up? Can we slow it down?
J. Perspective - How does everyone see the problem? How can you look at it differently?
k. How Weird?   Make fun of he project. Laugh at it.
K. What other questions can you ask?