Author: YBmMqGwLx0

If you are an entrepreneur, then you must be aware of what the brochure is and what its significance is. A brochure is considered as a common marketing tool used to publicise any business, its product, or services. It is also a great way to introduce your new business products and services to existing customers or increase their reach to new prospects. You can hand them out in person, through the mail, or leave at specific businesses that are ready to help you reach their customers. A brochure typically has one, two, or three folds and is different from a direct mail letter, flyer or catalog.

HOW TO MAKE A BROCHURE?

Making a nice-looking and business-friendly brochure is tricky. You need to hire brochure design services or professional brochure designing company as it will save your time so that you can focus on other areas of marketing of your business. They may provide you different templates of a brochure from which you can choose the most suitable and good to go brochure template. They will replace dummy text, graphics, and logo of the template with your company/business logo and information and contact details. They will upload photos related to your products/services and arrange them on the brochure so that everything looks uniform and great. Many companies also put forward logo design and graphic design services as well so that clients don’t have to roam around and get different business elements designed from different places. They serve as a one-stop-shop for clients that are looking for help in designing graphics, logo, and marketing materials at affordable rates.

PURPOSES OF BROCHURES

The idea behind the development of a brochure is to extend your customers’ knowledge about your business and make them familiar with your product and services. Brochures can help you:

· Catch the attention of your target audience with its amazingly beautiful visual design.

·         Promote your products, agency, or service in a natural way.

·         Build trust between you and your potential customers.

·         Promote your business in a cost-effective manner as compared to advertising on TV or in newspapers.

·         A tangible, physical, and subtle brochure become more precious to the customers.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF BROCHURES

If you are planning to get a brochure for your business, you may have to choose the right type of brochure that you can create to make your customers familiar with your business.  There are different types of brochures, and each type has got a different role to play. It can be categorized into the following five types according to format and layout.

·         Gate Fold Brochure: This is not a very common type of brochure as it is a bit expensive. But this brochure has a great influence when it is used properly. It has an inward folding design that makes it easy to carry. The quality of paper used for this type of brochure is of excellent quality; thus, readers can keep it for a long time.

·         Bi-Fold Brochure: Bi-Fold Brochure is a commonly found brochure type. It is also one of the most popular and widely used brochure types among businesses. It has a more formal layout than tri-fold brochures. It is primarily used for product catalogs, trade shows, presentations, and corporate meetings, etc.

·         Tri-Fold Brochure: It can be easily imagined by its name, i.e. three folds brochure. This is also the most common type of brochure that we can see everywhere. This brochure has sufficient space for designers to display information about the company and graphics, thus attract more attention to the reader.

·         Z-Fold Brochure: A Z-Fold brochure, mainly an accordion fold, is a wonderful brochure folding option because of the adaptability it offers. Designers can separate each element of this brochure while designing, making each panel separate, or design the brochure so that it finally opens out to a full spread with a single large, vivid image.

BENEFITS OF A BUSINESS BROCHURE

They contain huge information in a small area: Brochures are compact in shape and sharing data, but you can share a lot of information about your business, its services/products in that given size. You can use brochures to introduce your company, provide a snapshot of products and/or services, as well as share exclusive features, benefits, and contact information. 

They are extremely versatile: As compared to other print materials, brochures are highly versatile. It can be mailed, used on location, or distributed at events.

They can be easily distributed to a targeted audience: Whether you are handing out brochures in a large event or distributing them door-to-door, the biggest advantages of a brochure is that they are a simple yet effective way to target a group of people. This method is particularly beneficial for local businesses or small franchises.

Brochures are cost-effective marketing material: There are so many companies that offer brochure design and printing at highly affordable rates. Get your brochures printed in bulk as it will cost you less and you can use them in many different ways over time. Larger orders often mean lower prices.

They offer an easy referral system: It may appear to be simple, but brochures can be passed from person-to-person. This referral method still works today, and shouldn’t be ignored.

To speak to our team about your brochure design, don’t hesitate to contact us through our contact form, by emailing us on studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com or by calling our offices on
028 9507 2007

After the first week at Kaizen I was given my first project, which was to design and build a website from scratch. Although I found the task challenging, I believe that this was the best way to enhance my skills in Web Development. Ever since my first project I have built over 10 websites fully, from scratch, and worked on over 40 other websites. In the past year Web Development wasn’t the only area I was able to improve on. I also got to work on my Animation & Design skills, learning from my team leaders. I feel like Kaizen has helped me prepare for final year of University and I’m confident that the skills I learned in Kaizen will help me get the best grades possible. 

One thing I loved about working with Kaizen is that Connor (Company Director) was always willing to listen and try any ideas I had. He would also be willing to give them a try, which is great as it encouraged me to speak up about any improvements I thought would help me to make better work. One of the best things about working in Kaizen are the good vibes you get from working in the office. The music is always blasting, and you can have a good laugh with your work colleagues and the pay day lunches are the cherry on top. A workday in Kaizen doesn’t feel like work at all!I would really like to thank Connor and the rest of the KBE team for the past year. It really was my favourite year from my time at University and I would highly recommend that any student considers taking on a company placement year as it will develop their skills to a whole new level. 

Oskar.

The company’s annual report is an important document that tells about the health of any company to its stakeholders, shareholders, media publications, and your community. You can find different annual report designs, formats, and shapes. It ranges from basic typewritten pages to full-color, glossy print of your company’s yearly progress. You must understand the purpose of the annual report as it will help you make sure that your report contains relevant information for your company.

Prospectus, interim report, financial press release, and personal contact with company officials are some of the ways through which you can communicate about the company’s affair. Despite the existence of several sources of information, the annual report is considered as the most significant source of sharing and communicating information about a company’s affairs. It is really focused on the community at large; to whomsoever, it may have been formally addressed. Let’s discuss more reasons why annual reports are preferred over other sources:

• Annual report is comparatively more and easily accessible as compared to any other source of information.

• Annual report encompasses audited information which develops confidence among the public.

• Annual report includes additional detailed information besides financial statements, such as historical summary, important business results, statistical data, company’s plans, and policies that cannot be accessed in other sources of information.

• Annual report represents the most commonly available source of information based on past performance. Therefore, the statements within are used by both professional and amateur investors to forecast the future performance of the company, thereby giving a fair idea about the future share prices and the related cash flows to the investors.

Therefore, every company must publish corporate annual reports so that investors and other users don’t need to go through other sources for the company information needed by them.

Now, when we have fully understood the significance of the annual report for the company, it’s time to recognize the importance of annual report design. The design of your annual report is an important element as it will help you inform the progress of your company in a positive way. A well-thought-out annual report design can guarantee the engagement of all investors, even those who don’t evaluate such documents on a regular basis. That’s why you need a great team that can understand the engagement of this manner openly and will convert your dull and boring word document report to an exciting and engaging annual report.

Because an annual report consists of valuable corporate and financial information about the company, it doesn’t mean that it should be just a book of numbers. Your annual report is a vital communication tool for your business, so it has to be interesting, highlighting the achievements, investments, and successes to your potential stakeholders.

TURN YOUR ANNUAL REPORT INTO AN OPPORTUNITY

It’s time to make your annual report stand out and engaging with some great designs and formats. It’s high time to create a report that reflects your company’s vision. It will definitely help you deliver an impact on your investors and let you connect with them through great design. An annual report with plain data, stats, and financial figures will fail to engage your audience. In fact, it might actually put them to sleep. There is an important fact about the annual report, i.e. those who will read your annual report have a valid interest in your company. This can turn out to be an excellent opportunity for you. Don’t let this opportunity pass due to dull and uninteresting annual report. Find out the ways through which you can make your report attractive yet informative. You can take the help of designing experts who can convert your plain text into a graphical format.

COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS THROUGH MEANINGFUL DESIGN

We are living in an era, where things that look good are sold well. Because customers truly acknowledge the fact that pictures speak a thousand words and human attention is the rarest commodity. When it is about impressing investors, stakeholders, and shareholders, you cannot simply represent your company’s success on a plain paper. It should be in a nice format and represented excellently so that it can grab their interest. A nice and presentable report might force them to invest in your company. Great designs help you communicate complex concepts or grab an emotional response quickly from the investors.

You will need the help of a designing company that can make the best use of creativity and experience to represent your brand that outsmarts the competition. Companies, global giant, or start-ups, visit the designers with some objective in mind and look for a passionate team that can offer them comprehensive annual report design and strategic thinking. They look for professionals who can help them achieve engaging communication through reports. Apart from designing reports, a creative design company can help you increase your company’s reach ad reputation by trying hands on the latest marketing products like:

If you have any plans for moving your company digitally, then you could also choose several digital solutions like websites, social media platforms, and other channels that can help you reach more and more investors.

To speak to our team about your annual report design, or any other design project, you can contact us through our contact form, by calling us on +44 (0)28 9507 2007 or by emailing us on studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com.

When crunching the numbers, good graphic designers in your camp can often be considered a nice-to-have rather than a business necessity. Well, truth be told, design is as important as any other part of your business, if not more so. Great design is about providing visual solutions to user problems, whether it be reducing the time it takes for a customer to read your advert, ensuring your sales messages are remembered or changing the way your customers think or feel about your brand, product or service, design is an integral part of the whole process and should never be underestimated. 

So in what ways does design help your marketing efforts? Here’s our run-down; 

Design makes people feel good

First and foremost, design provokes an emotional response. You’ll know this from your own experience. Whether you have a positive or an adverse reaction to a piece of design is usually decided within a split second of viewing. So as good as your product or service may be, and as valuable as it might be to your customers – if the design flops then they are unlikely to give any more thought to it. On the other hand, if your design appeals to your intended audience, then you will be on the front foot from the very start. Your audience will immediately feel more positively about what you have to say, and you can begin to show the value behind what you have to offer. 

Design is functional

Far from being a “fluffy” part of business, as it is sometimes wrongly thought of, good design serves a very practical and functional purpose. Whether it is helping customers to find their way around a website, or acting as a source of information to teach or inform your audience about a particular topic or subject, design is there to make your customer’s lives that little bit easier. It is also there to help bring your business sales. Because if you can make your customer’s lives easier and help guide them to the right answers, then you can also guide them to your business and to buying into your brand. 

Design is everywhere

Design is so commonplace that we often forget that it’s even there. Design isn’t just about the glossy two-page magazine spread, the billboard display, or a stunning looking website; design is also about how easy the payment gateway on your e-commerce site is to use, or whether or not a button on one of your marketing emails is big or clear enough. And while these seemingly minor details may not seem all that critical, they are as important to your marketing efforts as any visually beautiful piece of advertising, and will no doubt take up as much thought and work in ensuring that your marketing efforts are on the right track. 

Colours and fonts really do make a difference

Depending on what it is you are trying to achieve, seemingly minor elements of your design, like the colours and fonts that you choose to use, can make all the difference. Whether you want to make people feel happy, sad, inspired, creative, or motivated to buy, the colours and fonts you choose to use will subconsciously be doing the leg-work for you before your customers have even read the first word of copy in your advertising or the first sentence on your website. 

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we’ve worked with numerous businesses and organisations to improve their design and branding. We understand the difference that great design can make to your marketing efforts and how to use it effectively to help increase brand presence and sales. To find out more you can visit our contact page or get in touch by calling 02895072007.

Strong website design is vital for any business and organisation, not just those selling online. At Kaizen Brand Evolution we match creativity and passion with the technical capability to develop your website into one your customers will love.

Online business has never been more competitive and so customers use our experience of working on many website projects across multiple industries to guide them through the online journey. We design basic brochure websites through to e-commerce mega-stores with thousands of SKU’s.

However, while each business may require a website, not every business will require the same type of site. Brochure websites and ecommerce websites are two totally different types of websites, both with different aims and advantages; it will really depend on the type of business you own and the aims you have for it. 

Today, we will go through both types of sites and why our clients choose either or.

E-Commerce Websites

What is an ecommerce website?

Simply put, e-commerce means to complete a transaction online, so an e-commerce website is a means of buying and selling goods and services online. Just as in a traditional shop you’d find on the high street, online retailers, or companies with an online presence, need a platform on which to build their online store and carry out transactions.

There are two aspects to an e-commerce website: a storefront and a checkout. The virtual storefront allows you to display your products and/or services so customers can find out about them, and the checkout allows them to securely pay for those goods and/or services

Why do our clients choose them?

For many businesses, their website is the first point of contact between buyer and seller. Many people do their shopping online now, for all sorts of goods and services. This means that having a website that’s both a visually pleasing and easy to use brochure of your website may not be enough. Depending on your business and industry, having the option for users to purchase your products or services directly from your website can be vital to ensure you don’t lose out on custom, or even fall behind competitors already offering this as an option.

Brochure Website‘s

What are they?

A brochure website is essentially a digital version of a printed brochure. They show the products or services your company provides, however, unlike an e-commerce website, they do not sell the product or service online. With a brochure website, the goods and services are only displayed, so customers will have to contact the company to place an order.

Brochure websites tend to be visually engaging, and the best brochure sites make the most of search engine optimisation to really get the noticed in search results. These websites can be accessed on desktops, smartphones, and tablets through any browser, so you can be sure your company is reaching the maximum number of people.

A well-made brochure website is great for promoting your business. Using effective words and captivating images, they can draw people in and really sell your products.

Why clients love them

Brochure websites are also great if you don’t want to have to spend too much time updating and managing a website. By simply designing a brochure website, you can leave it up on the internet and only update it as and when your services or prices change. 

Whatever your web design project, we’d love to hear from you. To discuss a website design project with our team, please fill in the contact form below or call us on 028 95072007.

If you have established a new business and are thinking of making it popular through print media, then you must understand that this is not going to work. It is important for businesses to be present online these days. Because most of the people have started opting for online channels to buy, shop, and hire goods/services. Print media is a good way to inform people about your existence but it could prove successful locally. For the worldwide or nationwide reach of your business, you should be present online and must have a business website at least.

Merely having a website is not just going to help. You will have several competitors who are sharp and at a much higher position. You have to meet their standards and work in a unique way so that you can stand out among them. Your customers should recognize you which can only be possible if you have a strong brand personality. An attractive website, engaging content, and outstanding graphic design Belfast can make your website complete with all essential elements. Apart from this, it would later need a smart marketing strategy so that it could reach its potential audiences.

How Graphic designing is a silent ambassador of your brand?

Graphics designing plays a significant role in branding. People think that branding is done by marketing specialists, but the fact is somewhat different. It is a graphics and logo that are silent ambassadors of your brand.

If we talk in terms of business, a brand is a unique sign, symbol, words, design, or a combination of any of these that are used in creating an image that recognizes a product and distinguishes it from its competitors. In other words, a brand is a graphical illustration that audiences compare with a company or a product. An effective brand identity is the one in which customers associate with a high level of integrity and excellence.

Let’s check out our division of a branding process into some important stages which designers have to experience while creating any brand.

BUSINESS GOALS AND BRAND NATURE

Though it’s not the designer who decides business goals or defines its personality, still a designer plays a significant role in laying a foundation for the branding process. Of course, they would need to identify the character of the company or brand first before they start working on a visual part. If being a client you don’t give a designer a brief description characterizing your company, then how would he create graphics for your company.

One more thing that a business owner should know is that there is a big role of psychology in design. It can help designers understand user behavior and their possible reactions to the design. So, think from the designer’s perspective when you create your business goals.

MARKET AND USER RESEARCH

When the goals are set and the personality of the business appears to be clear, it’s time to start research work. The research helps to plunge into the situation of the upcoming brand and understand the fads which may impact its success.

Designers discover potential competitors and all about the current market trends. This could help them create a unique and effective logo and shape brand identity.  Designers cannot completely depend on the sense of beauty for designing website elements. They would need data on user preferences and their psychological peculiarities to come up with something unique as well useful.

LOGO DESIGN

A logo is the mark of brand identity and the most prominent symbol of a brand image. One cannot underestimate the role of logo design. It is considered as a foundation of an effective marketing approach empowering its connection with the target audience.

Here are some essential stages of the creative logo design process. These include:

• Setting the Task
• User Research
• Marketing Research
• Creative Search
• Choice of Style Direction
• Choice of Colour Palette
• Testing in Different Sizes & Environments

After thorough research and collecting core information, designers move further to the artistic stage, i.e. logo creation. They choose the most suitable style direction and colour palette after going through various studies so that it will work best for a brand.

VISUAL ELEMENTS OF BRAND

Logo designing is not where the story of the designer ends. It is not the only visual representation of a brand. There are some more elements that deserve attention like mascots and typography. Every company wishes to personalize their brand and designers have a solution for them. Mascots are the custom design characters formed to signify the brand in an emblematic manner. They can be made as a part of a logo or present as a discrete element. A mascot can serve as a communication and interaction tool that can interact with users and help in transferring the message in a unique way. Typography is another visual element that is responsible for brand identity. Many logos look unique with the best use of typography.

CORPORATE BRAND STYLE

When the logo is ready, the color palette is selected, and other visual elements are all set, it’s time to bond them together into harmonic corporate style. It is necessary when a designer is working on branding tasks.

CONCLUSION

It can be concluded that branding is a complex process. Each step should be carefully performed based on the business goals as well as the needs of the target audience. 

An annual report is a lengthy document that represents a comprehensive report on a company’s transactions or activities (selling & buying of products, investments, charities, etc.) throughout the preceding year. It transparently explains the expenses, profits, growth & degrowth, and the financial status of a company on the day of the annual meeting. It is a must for every listed company. Basically, the purpose of preparing this report is to present the report of all the activities of a company including profits and losses to the stakeholders, partners, investors, employees, and other people who are interested in it.  

These days, a company’s annual report is no longer only a representation of financial figures and statutory reports of the company for the preceding year, but it is much more than this. It has become a strategically designed marketing tool for a company through which a company tries to maintain the interest of existing stakeholders and attract more stakeholders and investors for the growth of the company. Therefore, it is very important that the design, structure, and representation of the annual report of your company reflects your brand, vision, and business values. If you try to prepare an effective design and structure for your company’s annual report without having expertise in this field, you will definitely create a mess. So, it is better to hire professional annual report design firms. This approach will help you to design an attractive, interesting, and engaging annual report of your company for the preceding year. 

Why Design and Structure of An Annual Report are Important?

During the recently passed decade, the trend of designing a company’s annual report emerged. Before that, for most companies, it was just a representation of financial figures with some statutory reports. In simple words, it was only the responsibility for a company toward the stakeholders. At that time, giving information about the company’s activities and financial status for a preceding year was the only purpose of preparing an annual report. But, today, several smart marketers use their company’s annual report strategically to attract more stakeholders and investors and make strong relationships with them. And that’s why an annual report of a company must be attractive and interesting so that the stakeholder and investors can connect and engage with your brand’s vision.  

For making your company’s annual report attractive, interesting, and engaging, you need to hire professionalannual report design firms. They are available every corner of the world and you can reach them over the internet and through their contact numbers. 

Three Things to Make Your Annual Report Interesting and Engaging

Generally, a representation of an annual report of a company is quite boring for even stakeholders and investors due to its simple and lengthy data. Sometimes, the audience starts yawning and even sleeping during the representation of the annual report of a company. It often happens because nobody takes interest in a lengthy and boring presentation of data. That’s why the need for designing and structuring annual reports emerged. 

Here in this section, we have mentioned three things which are very important to make your company’s annual report interesting, attractive, and engaging. Make sure you always include these data in your company’s annual report.

Use Infographics

Using infographics for statistical analysis and achievements of a company in the annual report is a great idea. It is far better than representing the statistical data only in text form as infographics are attractive and easy to understand. Basically, infographics are graphical or visual representations of data. It tells a story in a proper way. The best things about infographic representation of data are:

The statistical data look really very attractive and interesting. The audience pays their full attention during the whole presentation of the annual report with excitement. 

The data is easily readable and understandable for the audience that includes stakeholders, investors, partners, the board of directors, employees, and other interested parties.

The data tells a story of the whole preceding year in a series and that looks quite interesting.

The infographic representation of statistical data is also easier to represent correctly in front of the audience for representatives of the company. 

Bold Fonts and Colors

Leave the old-fashioned way of preparing an annual report with a white page, black text, and no colors. This is really unattractive. If you want to maintain the interest of your stakeholders, investors, and other people who are interested, then your approach must be trendy for designing your company’s annual report. Make sure you use bold fonts and colors smartly in all pages of the annual report. Your brand name and logo must be bold and highlighted throughout the whole document. This approach will make your company’s annual report interesting and vibrant and inspire stakeholders to be with your vision and promote your vision. For the best results, you should hire professional annual report design firms. Their experts will do the job for you. 

Show the Portfolios of Your People

It is a great idea to include portfolios of your company’s people in your annual report. This will motivate the audience and leave a positive impression on those. Use their pictures in which they are looking professional and briefly explain their role in your company. Explain about their expertise, experience, and achievements, these things will inspire both your company’s people and the audience. 

It is better to put the portfolios of your company’s people after the introduction part in the annual report. Make sure you do not make this part too lengthy. Put those people in your annual report which are pillars of your company and play a vital role in the development of the company. So that the interest of the audience remains high throughout the representation of your company’s annual report. 

A pitch deck is through which businesses, companies, and professionals try to effectively interact, influence, and engage their clients, business partners, investors, and employees with their business. We can say, it is one of the most important and valuable tools companies have. It is something that briefly describes the company, and its owners, investors, products & services, business plans & strategies, business models, etc. 

While compiling a PowerPoint pitch deck, even the professionals often make very silly mistakes which actually decrease the value and effectiveness of a pitch deck. And this directly affects business meetings with investors, business partners, and employees. So, as a business owner, you must be very careful while creating a pitch deck for your business. 

For creating a pitch deck for your business, you generally get two different options that are “create yourself” and “hire a brand evolution company.” If you want a professional to create a pitch deck for you, this is actually the best option as the professionals serve the best product. On the other hand, if you want to create it by yourself, you need to be specific. In this post, we have compiled all the dos and don’ts you must follow while creating a pitch deck for your business and presenting it in the meetings and conferences. Let’s start with the do’s points. 

Dos For Pitch Deck

Narrate the Story

People love to listen to well-constructed interesting and engaging stories rather than long-lasting boring speeches. Even investors love stories. So, whenever you start creating aPowerPoint pitch deck, make sure the narration of the content flows like storytelling. Try to organise all the content in a sequence so that the audience can understand your point of view and engage with your vision. This is one of the most important aspects of making investors think about your proposal. 

One Slide – One Idea

We know content is the king, but the well-constructed presentation of content is equally important. So, never forget this point. No doubt, the best way to make a pitch deck presentation powerful is to use new customised feature-rich templates. If you don’t want to spend on buying customised feature-rich templates, still you can create a powerful presentation of a pitch deck. For that, you need to follow a few simple steps which are mentioned below.

• Use one slide for one idea only. Whether the idea you want to put on a particular slide has only a few words or only an image, don’t put other ideas on that page. 
• Avoid repetition of content or specific words. It will decrease the excitement level of the audience. 
• Use different colors, highlighting features, underline, outline, and other features to make the slide look attractive. 

Focus on Making Great First Impression

There is a saying “the first impression is the last impression.” This is very true. You must dedicate all your skills, creativity, focus, discretion, and experience in making a great first impression. A great first impression will aid you to engage the investors and other audiences to your business proposal. They will take interest in your proposal and respond better than as per your expectations. So, make sure you leave a long-lasting impression on investors through a few first slides of yourPowerPoint pitch deck. 

Prepare Yourself Before Presenting Your Business Proposal 

Once you complete creating your presentation, prepare yourself accordingly. You must know all the calculations or metrics mentioned in the slides so that you can confidently present them. The best advantage of the preparation of the presentation is that you can confidently present all the data with just having an overview of slides. You don’t need to read all the slides word by word if you are prepared. 

Don’ts For Pitch Deck

Avoid Using Too Many Bullet Points

Presenting the content in bullet points is a great idea. It is an effective way of presentation. However, if you use too many bullet points in your PowerPoint pitch deckpresentation, it will be a poor presentation. So, avoid it by limiting the uses of bullet points in the pitch deck’s slides. In replacements of too many bullet points, you can create short 2-3 line paragraphs. This will increase the value of your presentation. 

Don’t Make Your Pitch Deck Too Long 

This is a really very important point. Make sure you create a short and average slides pitch deck. If you don’t have enough knowledge about creating a PowerPoint pitch deck, you can take assistance from professionals. 

Remember always, the words and statistics you say by your mouth is more important than what slides show. People are not interested in slides, they are interested in what you say about your business proposal by referring to your pitch deck. So, make your pitch deck not longer than 30 slides. 

Don’t Create a Picture-Poor, Text-Reach Presentation

The investors sitting in the conference hall to listen to you cannot read and listen at the same time. So, create a balanced presentation that has more pictures and graphical statistical content than text content. This will allow investors to listen to you more than paying attention to slides. So, make sure you follow this step wherever you create a pitch deck for a business proposal. 

Don’t Use Small and Too Many Fancy Fonts 

Sometimes, people use small and fancy fonts in presentations to make it more attractive. However, they don’t know that small and fancy fonts will only create disturbance in pitch deck presentation. You should not use these types of fonts but you should use simple and commonly used fonts such as Ariel and Times New Roman.

These pitch decks do’s and don’ts are very effective to help you to create a powerful pitch deck presentation. At the same time, these points will help you to present your pitch deck confidently and make investors accept your proposals. So, whenever you have any business proposal and you want to create a pitch deck for that, make sure you follow these effective dos and don’ts tips. 

A pitch deck plays a vital role in businesses and industries. It helps them to easily and effectively explain to their clients and staff about their products, services, visions, achievements, status in the market, etc. Today, every business, small and large companies prefer to have an effective PowerPoint pitch deck of their company, and approximately more than 80% of companies already have their pitch deck. This helps them to effectively attract, interact, and engage their customers, business partners, investors, and employees. Likewise, companies and businesses become able to expand their market and boost their sales and revenues.  

What is a Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck is a brief introduction, presentation, or an overview of a business or company that is used to describe all about the business including its vision, proposals or offers, achievement, employees, products or services, etc. Mainly, it is used in face-to-face meetings, online meetings, B2B, and B2C dealings. It is generally made using PowerPoint, Keynote, or Prezi. Out of these three pitch deck creation platforms, PowerPoint pitch deck is the most commonly preferred platform by the companies. As an owner of a company or business or a business entity, if you still don’t have your business pitch deck, you can hire a brand evolution company near your locality. They will do the job for you. 

9 Important Slides Your Pitch Deck Must Contain

The content your business pitch deck contains plays a vital role to educate, attract, and engage the clients, customers, business partners, and investors. Therefore, a pitch deck must contain all the important information that can leave a lasting impression on clients, customers, business partners, and investors. Here is some important information that your pitch deck must contain. 

1. A Brief Introduction of Your Company

The first and foremost thing that your pitch deck must contain is a brief introduction to your company. Describe who you are, and why you are here? Try to keep this short, concise, and effective. If you make the intro part in thePowerPoint pitch deck too long, it would be boring and irrelevant. So, keep this point in mind when making your business pitch deck. 

2. Introduce the People Behind the Vision

The second most important thing to remember when creating your pitch deck is to introduce your team, business partners, or people who are behind the idea and who are associated with your vision. Keep it short and effective. Try to add their professionalism and big achievements to their profile. It will help you to leave an impact on the audience. One thing you should take care of that this content must be on the second slide or second topic of your pitch deck.

3. The Idea Behind or Problem

After effectively representing briefly about your business and business partners, come to the problem part. Describe what is the problem that led you to establish your business or vision or what are you trying to solve? But before this, explain where the idea of creation of this vision comes from or what is the story behind this. Keep in mind that you have to keep all the content short and concise so that it could be more effective.

4. The Benefits

Once you explain the problem, come to the benefits and solution part. Explain what are the benefits of their solutions and how your solutions are different? How will you be contributing to benefitting your clients, customers, business partners, and investors? Also, if it is possible, explain how you will be contributing to society, government, economy, and environment. 

5. Products & Services

After describing problems, solutions, and benefits, come to the part of introducing your products and services. This part must carefully be designed as it is the main part of your business. It is something that you will be offering to your clients. So, keep all your products and services organized in your PowerPoint pitch deck. Cover all the important products and services in slides and remove all the unnecessary stuff. One thing that you must present in the products and services parts of your pitch deck is their specification. So, keep this in mind. 

6. Scope or Market

This is another most important thing you must nicely cover in your pitch deck. Describe what is the potential market or scope of your products and services and why people will buy your products & services? Make sure you present some statistical data, reports, and surveys about the current market situation. Also, present what are the aspects that will force the customers to buy their products and services.

7. Competition and Competitors

For this, you need to do comprehensive market research and analysis. You will get the data about the competition in your field and your competitors. Explain what are the strategies you are following to beat the competition and what are you doing differently to attract more and more customers. This part is as important as Products & Services and Scope or Market.

8. Business Model & Investment Plans

Now, you need to disclose your business model, investment planning, and market strategies to expand and increasingly grow your business. This is one of the most important parts of a PowerPoint pitch deck. Your business model, investment plans, and market strategies must be impressive to grab the attention of investors, clients, and business partners. This part, you need to comprehensively elaborate in your pitch deck. 

9. Contact Details

Lastly, you need to provide all the important contact details of your business and business partners for business inquiry. Add mobile numbers, landline numbers, email addresses, fax numbers, website links, and others that you have in your pitch deck. This is also very important. 

So, that’s all your business pitch deck must contain. If you have more information that you want to add, you can. But make sure it should be relevant and impressive.  

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we have helped many many businesses from innovative start-ups to clients like Coca-Cola, Hellenic and Mirror Media Ireland with considered graphic design and engaging presentations. As part of our design process we seek to understand the real message you are attempting to communicate with your pitch deck, and then we go about creating beautiful looking pitch decks for you to wow your audience. If you’d like a printed version to hand out after your presentation, we can also provide an exceptionally high quality print service to support your digital presentation. To find out more you can visit our pitch deck design page, or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 02890022474.

Getting your name out there can be tough.

But, as a business, it’s vital to your long-term stability and profitability that you make your products or services known in the marketplace.

While that once required a sizeable advertising budget, the options for promoting and marketing a business have changed dramatically over the past few years with the advent of marketing.

It still takes time and effort, but many of the best methods for marketing have changed and become more accessible–especially to smaller businesses.

One of the most effective ways to market a business these days is through online content and blogging.

Whether you’ve never considered blogging for your business or have already made the leap, keep reading for an in-depth look at the benefits of blogging and some of the top reasons why your business needs one.

The Benefits of Blogging – And Why You Need One

If you still think of blogging as a personal endeavor where the writer pours out their heart and soul or rants about the latest political outrage, think again.

Blogging has matured into a serious tool that’s used by business all over the globe to sell more products and make more deals.

With so much content out there, you have to stand out somehow. If you want to stand out in the sea of information that is the world wide web, you need to make your way to the top somehow. And blogging is a great way to do just that.

Content Matters

If you want your business to be found, well-written, useful content should make up the base of your strategy. If you don’t start with great content, it will be really hard for new customers or clients to find you, no matter how great your products or services are.

The content filling the pages of your website gives the other elements of your site context and structure, letting visitors know what you’re all about and why they should stay on your site.

One of the best ways to fill your website with lots of useful, customer-attracting content is with a blog that relates closely to your customer’s needs and desires.

If you’re on the fence about starting a blog, remember how important content is to building an effective online presence.

Improved SEO 

Blogging is a recognised way of improving your website’s SEO. By producing fresh content on a regular basis you are giving search engines fresh content to index and providing yourself with more opportunities to include keywords.

A study by Hubspot found that the average company that blogs receives 55% more website traffic than the average company that doesn’t blog. In regards to marketing, where numbers/statistics are sometimes hard to pin down an improved SEO that generates web traffic is a valuable metric to use when calculating the ROI of your marketing effort.

Increased Website Traffic

Blogging gives your business the opportunity to create relevant content for your website’s audience. Your social media platforms should constantly be pulling content from your blog in order to drive traffic back to your site. Social media posts should include the correct website links to the blog article(s), along with attractive and creative visuals, so your followers will click through to your site.

Become an Industry Leader

Having thought-out and well-written content can demonstrate your business as an industry leader in a certain matter. By posting blogs that are designed for your market, you will show your target audience how knowledgeable and informative you are in that industry.

The goal is to become an industry leader in what your company’s niche is. The more you can show your potential audience that you are well-versed in your field, the more likely they will trust you to supply them with the information they seek.

“Branding” is one of those terms that is often misunderstood – but it’s crucial that you get it right in order to make it work for your business.

People often mistake branding for simply having a logo or mark that identifies your business. But, while a logo is part of your brand, it isn’t your brand itself. Your brand is actually emotional rather than physical. 

As one of the most important factors to your business’s success, branding is the promise you make to your customers. More specifically, your brand is the set of emotions and perceptions that you intentionally cultivate around your business, which you constantly communicate to your customers through a series of visual and verbal cues. 

That’s all fine, but why do you really need to spend time to developing your brand? 

Because, branding helps to identify your products or services, distinguish you from competitors, and create a persona that your customers can connect with. In other words, it’s not just the physical products or services your business provides; it’s also the emotions your audience feels when thinking about your business – emotions that you can help to create. 

Ask yourself: What do people say, think, and feel about your business? That is your brand, and you have the ability to form that impression.

“Good branding (or brand identity) effectively communicates a business, service or product’s truth. When I see a fantastic business represented with a poor brand identity it’s really quite upsetting, it’s an imbalance, confusing and most importantly untruthful” 

Ryan Stanfield, Design Director at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Why branding is important for business success 

Branding is one of the most important things in a business. It is basically a marketing strategy under which the business creates a name along with a symbol or a design that is easily identifiable as belonging to the company. It is very important for all the businesses to understand the value of the branding as it helps in identifying a particular product or service and comparing it against competitor products and services. Through the branding, the customers get attracted to a particular business and it makes the client know what actually they are expecting from your company. 

Brand identity is actually one of the smartest ways through which you can distinguish yourselves from your competitors and under this, your business can clarify about the different things that they are offering. Your business can explain to various people about how they can make a better choice by choosing your business over others. 

The brand you are making for your business will be the true picture of who you are as a business, and how you want your business to be seen

It is true, that branding is one of the most important parts of your business as it makes an overall impact on your business. There is no doubt that branding can definitely change how people will see your brand. Through this, you can actually make people aware of your business. In order to have a professional branding make sure that you take the help of the professional brand design agency who are experts in their field.

How to grow your business through branding 

Your brand is more than selecting a few colours and deciding upon a font that you like, your branding is the gateway to your business. It tells your audience and your customers who you are and what you stand for. Whether or not your customers decide that they want to spend their time and money on you, will always in some way be determined by the relationship that they have with your brand. In essence, your brand is all-important. Here’s our top tips on how to use your branding to help successfully grow your business;

Branding to be proud of

Before you can go about growing your business from your brand, you’ll want to make sure that you are not only 100% sold on the branding that you have decided on, but that it has been designed to function effectively across multiple different devices, platforms and print runs. Once you know for certain that your brand can be taken into the market without any issues then you can rest assured that you won’t have any hiccups, embarrassing mistakes, or unprofessional branding letting you down.  

Stick to the brand guidelines

Calling them “guidelines” can sometimes misconstrue the purpose your brand guidelines are intended to fulfill. They’re not really guidelines in that sense of the word at all, they are clear and unbreakable rules that can damage your brand perception if they are not kept to. As much as your brand is all important, it is also easily damaged if you are not strict about the ways in which it is used. 

Set out your objectives

Once you are both clear on your brand and how to use it, then you’ll want to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your branding. Are you running a lot of events? Do you want to get your name out in the local area? Would you like to improve your relationship with existing clients and customers? Do you want to keep front of mind with your existing clients or customers? Do you want to help your sales staff to seal the deal? How you choose to use your branding can help you in all of these areas. 

Get your name out there

With your objectives in mind and your key target audience to impress, it’s time to get your name out there (quite literally). Here’s a few examples of uses for your fantastic new branding;

Sales Collateral

Smart and professional looking branding is great for creating a good impression with your clients and customers. If you want to help your sales staff look the part when it comes to their sales pitch then branded Business Cards, branded Booklets & Brochures, and branded Presentation Folders, is a fantastic way to do this. First impressions are everything, and by ensuring that you have high quality sales collateral to offer to clients and customers you can rest assured that they are armed with everything they need to seal the deal. 

Advertising Materials

So you’ve just completed your rebrand and you want to show every man and his dog. And why wouldn’t you? Well, what better way to get that great looking brand out there than with branded posters, flyers, and plotted stickers? Investing in branded advertising materials is the perfect way to raise awareness of your new brand and to get people talking. 

Events

If you do a lot of events but never quite manage to do as well as you’d like, it might be that your branding is letting you down. Beautifully designed and professional looking events collateral can be the difference between success and failure at your next event. Branded events materials such as roll up banners and selfie frames are a great place to start. 

Branded Merchandise

Want to keep front of mind with your clients & customers? Why not try branded notepads & desk pads, or branded wall calendars. Providing your customers with high quality branded materials that they will use every day is a fantastic way to ensure they never forget about you. 

Our Kaizen Brand Evolution team have developed have worked with businesses right across the UK and Ireland. If you would like to speak to our team about your brand identity, simply contact us through our contact form, call our team on +44 (0)28 9507 2007 or email us on studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com

Generally, people misunderstand and misuse the term “Branding or Brand Designing.” They often consider branding and marketing the same thing but it’s not so. Both are completely different aspects of business promotion. Branding is simply a creation of an identification of a brand while marketing is an act of promoting or selling products and services. Both are equally important for the growth of a business, yet branding matters more than anything as it builds a name, reputation, and identification. And you know better what a brand identity matters for business owners. 

What Does Branding Include?

Branding is a comprehensive term. It’s only not about logo designing and slogan writing but it’s more than these elements. It’s a comprehensive process of building a brand identity that a brand design agency does. It mainly creates or shapes the brand in a particular way in the minds of people by using specific logos, symbols, names, slogans, color combinations, packaging, and presentation. This is a strategic process that includes market research, market analysis, planning, execution, testing, and eventually launching the brand identity publicly. This actually influences the mind of people so that they never forget about the brand. Overall, the main objective of creating a brand is to make people know about the business, products, services, and influence them by explaining how good a brand is.  

Why is Branding Important?

In this 21st century, the world we see today is a new world. Everything is advanced, modern, and high-tech here. From our homes to streets, restaurants to marketplaces, shopping malls to tourist places, small businesses to large businesses, all have become advanced today. And the rapidly growing technology is the reason behind the origin of this new world. Every individual, business, and organization wants to keep at the top and earn money, fame, and reputation in the industry. All we mean to say, it’s a competitive world where nobody wants to lag behind. 

If you are an owner of a business, you would be very well-versed about the tough competition in the industry. And you would also know what are the things that can help you to beat the competition. Branding is one of those things and for this you have to hire a brand design agency. If you have a great brand identity then you would be able to generate manifold sales and annual revenue. And one of the best things about having a great brand identity is you don’t need to advertise your products and services too much. Your brand identity would be enough to meet your revenue goals. 

Let’s take an example of Coca Cola. Approximately, more than 75% of the world population know about the brand Coca Cola. The stats can be little up and down but the fact is the same. And have you ever noticed that they rarely advertise their products? Yes! Because they have a great brand identity. If they will not advertise their products, yet people will buy and consume their products. This is all because people have a strong brand identity of Coca Cola in their minds. So, this is how brand identity works and this is why branding is very important for a business. 

The Importance of Hiring a Professional Brand Design Agency

Several businesses and organizations hire a brand design agency for their companies’ branding or rebranding. Nowadays, this is very common as every business wants to keep ahead of others in this competitive industry. 

Basically, branding agencies convert businesses, companies, organizations, services into a brand by building a strong brand identity. They strategically (based on the market research) design brands’ logos, punch lines, product packaging by using graphic design and digital branding tools, and the effective combination of these all create a brand identity. 

Branding can make a huge difference in your business. Today, as a business entity with low brand identity, if you are generating two billion annual revenue in consecutive years, and if you want to manifold it, branding can make it happen for you. Yes! It’s not only we believe but the expert businessmen believe this. 

Branding is not a thing you can do on your own. It’s a strategic process that needs plans, market research, logo designing, brand name framing, punchline writing, packaging printing, and many more things. It’s a lengthy process that may take six months, one year, two years, and sometimes more than that. As a business owner, you need to have patience as branding takes time. However, once your brand identity will comprehensively strike the minds of people, you will soon see a difference in your monthly and annual revenues. 

For building your brand identity, you need to hire a specialist brand design agency. They will do the job for you. Whether you wanna make your brand popular within your home country or you wanna make it globally well-recognized, a branding agency can help you in the best way.  

Here are a few reasons why you should hire a professional brand design agency 

• Branding agencies have expertise in this field. They generally carry more than 10 years of experience in this field. They know all the ways to effectively build a brand identity and make it popular nationally or globally. 
• They do market research and design your brand identity based on the trend and customers’ behavior. 
• They provide you assurance of their professional branding services. That means you can sit and relax without worrying about the branding process. 
• They prioritize your requirements and preferences and based on that, they design your brand’s logo, packaging, and punchline.
• Branding services are very affordable. If you invest a small amount by hiring a professionalbrand design agency then you can manifold your business revenue in the future. 
• They provide guaranteed brand designing services to all the businesses. Whatever your requirements are, they will provide you the best branding solution to your business. Their impeccable services ensure your brand meets its goal. 

Concluding this, as a business entity or start-up, if you are planning about increasing your monthly or annual sales, focus on building or strengthening your brand identity. If you hire brand design specialists to rebrand or brand your business, you can make a huge difference in your business sales and revenue. Several businesses did so, now it’s your turn. 

If you’d like to find out more about what we can offer you can visit our website page. Alternatively, you can get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007

As a design studio working with businesses engaged in delivering new ideas, raising awareness or indeed looking for funding for their start up, Pitch Deck Design is one of the most popular design services we undertake. We work with brands you know and brands you’ve never heard of, helping craft their content into a manner that will communicate efficiently to the target audience and as a branding agency, we are perfectly suited to creating perfect pitch decks.

Like me, you have no doubt sat through hundreds of presentations. From those hundred or so pitches, how many truly stand out? How many captured your attention and presented the information you needed truthfully and in a manner you could easily digest. I guarantee you it was a handful at most.

Our role as pitch deck designers is simple: We must understand the intent of the content and interpret this through effective, engaging design.

If we achieve the above and nothing more, your pitch deck design will already be in the top 1% of presentations. However, we’re not here to be in the top 1%. We’re here to help create the best presentation.

This post assumes we’re going to be the designers on your upcoming projects. We make no apologies that this post is to show our wares and to entice you into the Kaizen family. However, if you choose to take our advice and go solo, these actionable tips will evolve your presentation beyond the standard powerpoint templates of yesteryear.

What makes a great pitch deck design?

Content, Content Content

Before we get into design elements, the most important factor in creating a top tier pitch deck is content. The old adage that less is more, could not be truer than in the design of a pitch deck (The irony of this lengthy post is not lost). Make your content short, simple and easy to understand. Use short phrases and truncate the information you intended to show on screen. Use your presentation skills to expand upon each point and leave the design alone. Make the intent of each page obvious, so that anyone can understand this with only a glance. Where your content is data or content heavy, consider breaking this up into multiple slides 

Presentation Design Transcends Borders and Timezones

Because of the digital nature of presentation design, we work with clients worldwide. This week alone we had a three-way call with Hong Kong and Dublin discussing the heritage of Irish Whiskey for a suite of new brands we are working on. We live in a truly global village and our studio is adept at delivering engaging presentation designs to meet any business need.

Why you need a perfect pitch desk design 

It’s your chance to showcase your expertise

You’re the experts in your industry and you know what you’re talking about. But, if all that information is thoughtlessly packed into a presentation deck it can quickly alienate your audience.

If you combine your expertise with a deck-full of well-considered, eye-grabbing visuals your audience will find the information easier to understand and digest.

The team at Kaizen have worked endlessly with companies to create the perfect pitch deck design, ensuring that they leave with a design that will capture their audience, engage them, and effectively display their information. 

There’s a science to it

When presenting to an audience, you need to get a lot of information across as quickly and as effectively as possible and, to do that, you need to design the information in a way that will flick that switch in people’s brains from off to on.

For example, did you know that bullet points are considered to be presentation killers? Or how about that the colours you use can evoke different emotional responses from your audience. A well-designed presentation will be able to tell a story, influence people and make information easier to digest and remember.

Essentially, there’s more to it than just words and pictures on a page, and getting it right can mean the difference between winning or losing new business.

It will reinforce your brand 

Presentation decks are essentially an extension of your company, your brand, and of you, so it needs to be consistent. If you give a presentation for a new project with a deck that looks and feels nothing like your existing business brand, then you’re going to have one confused audience.

At Kaizen, we work with a huge variety of businesses, from start up companies to fully established businesses. Each and every single pitch deck design that we create, will be bespoke and reflective of your business aims. 

Startup Pitch Deck Design

With a thriving entrepreneurial and technology industry here in Ireland, we have been fortunate to help many startups or those looking to raise capital with the design and development of their pitch decks. Our true strength is understanding the intent of your pitch deck and delivering an engaging design. This understanding, coupled with creative ability and experience puts us far beyond our competition in the marketplace.

Strategic Presentation Design

Aside from start ups, our strategic presentation design service has helped many of the brands you know and love, develop strategic communication documents for both internal and external audiences. We’re delighted to support international’s such as Coca-Cola Hellenic and Mirror Media Ireland with considered graphic design.

Powerpoint Presentation Design

As a graphic design studio with 11 graphic designers, all working in-house, we are experts in meeting deadlines, no matter how tight. While many of our pitch decks remain flat PDF files, each of our designers is proficient in Powerpoint and Keynote, ensuring that regardless of your chosen output format, the presentation / pitch deck is fully compatible with your needs.

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we have helped many many businesses from innovative start-ups to clients like Coca-Cola, Hellenic and Mirror Media Ireland with considered graphic design and engaging presentations. As part of our design process we seek to understand the real message you are attempting to communicate with your pitch deck, and then we go about creating beautiful looking pitch decks for you to wow your audience. If you’d like a printed version to hand out after your presentation, we can also provide an exceptionally high quality print service to support your digital presentation. To find out more you can visit our pitch deck design page, or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 02890022474.

Focal Media is Ireland’s leading digital solutions provider. From their headquarters in Dublin, they serve a wide range of markets including: Retail, Automotive, Hospitality and Military the experience Focal Media brings to running and managing digital signage networks is second to none. Over the past 20 years in business, they have developed and delivered digital content for organisations all across Ireland, North and South in innovative and engaging ways.

Recently, we were engaged to review the Focal Media Branding and Web presence (focalmedia.com). Our aim was to show a true reflection of the business and how it has pioneered technology to deliver data driven digital campaigns within organisations and businesses nationwide. 

With any project of this scale and output, our first task is to understand the business, its stakeholders, what differentiates Focal Media from the competition and why. Through both interviews with the leadership team and research by the studio we were able to develop a great understanding of the market. What opportunities are available and what threats the business might need to navigate in coming years.

Focal Media Brand Development 

Through a brand audit, we developed a narrative for the new brand position of Focal Media. We also delivered a language set that would be understood by the business stakeholders. With careful consideration to the brand a new typography and colour palette was chosen to accurately reflect the digital and forward thinking business. Each of the above elements was displayed in 3 concepts alongside 3 unique logo options for the brand.

Showing our research and understanding of the business alongside its position in the marketplace, we were able to deliver 3 wonderful brands, we would be happy going to market. From this the business leaders were able to make an informed decision on their new creative. The chosen brand as you can see, is a mix of contemporary fonts, intelligent language and a bold colour palette that works equally well in print as it does in the digital arena.

Almost overnight the entire brand suite was rolled out across the company and utilised across all communication channels and market verticals. We are delighted to support the in-house team with brand assets and best practice guidance. As part of the brand roll out we created a suite of business stationery design, a pitch deck presentation design template and case study designs that will be utilised throughout all business functions.

Website Development

In addition to the brand development, we were engaged to create the new website for the business. Being such a visual brand and having a wealth of experience in the digital marketplace, we were able to draw on some fantastic imagery to help portray the business. 

Using user experience best practice, we delivered an outline of this extensive site and on approval, developed the wordpress CMS in line with the brand guidance. With an incredibly extensive portfolio of products and services we utilised a robust mega menu to deliver categories and services in a neat and easy to navigate manner. All content and design was reviewed in line with current best practice techniques ensuring that when live, the website has the best opportunity to perform well in the search engines.

Covid-19

During the project, Covid-19 became an integral part of the future planning for the business and as such provided an opportunity for the business to serve new and existing customers with a new range of products including thermal imaging cameras. With the website being built in wordpress, we were able to develop a new category and product content in a matter of hours, ensuring the business can have first mover competitive advantage. 

Conclusion

In conjunction with the new range of products, a new brand and website, Focal Media are in a prime position to deliver their business in goals now and in the future. The brand is reflective of the high level of experience and quality of work / service the business brings to organisations right across the country.

If you want to chat about your brand development, a brand refresh or developing your web presence, we would be delighted to chat to you about this. Simply fill in the contact form or call our brand team on 028 9507 2007.

Writing content and providing a structure for a website can be a daunting task. There is so much information to include, how do you make sure that you say everything that you need to say? And beyond this, how do you say everything you need to say in the most succinct and user-friendly way possible? The answer is to do your research and follow a clear plan.

Here’s our guide to ensuring you have all the relevant information you need for your site;

Bring your whole team into the conversation

Perhaps your first point of contact when it comes to ensuring your site has all the relevant information is those around you. It is sometimes easy to forget that one of your most valuable resources to completing a task is your fellow team members. It is also easy to omit important information when completing a task on your own. Naturally when completing tasks, we are swayed in one way or another towards our own particular preoccupations, or our own expertise. By opening the conversation out to your team you can help to iron out these omissions by taking advantage of the expertise that you have available to you. 

Ask your sales team

In particular you may want to speak with the members of your team that have the most direct contact with customers. Your sales team for instance are likely to be answering questions from customers on a daily basis. If there are any questions which occur repeatedly, then make a note of them. These questions should provide a framework for your website. By resolving as many of these questions as possible you can help to take the strain off of your sales staff and subsequently free up their time to spend on the things you really want them to be doing – i.e. selling!

Take inspiration from other sites

While you don’t want to simply copy your competitors it can be helpful to review their sites and what they are doing. As a task, why not do a review of the site of a competitor and make a note of all the elements you like and all the elements you don’t like. What information have they included that you think is good and what have they left out that you think is needed? Beyond this, how well have they communicated this information? Is it easy to read and to navigate? How might this be improved?

Monitor what your audience are searching

Asking your colleagues and reviewing competitors are two good ways to gain the insight you are after. But you can also go further than this. When deciding what to include on your website it’s important not to forget your customers. While your fellow team members have an insight into customer behaviour it is still not a completely objective one. The frequently asked questions they are asked may for example be a product of a number of different factors that are specific to you and your brand. Monitoring your audience using analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Google Trends, or social listening tools such as Hootsuite, can help add some objectivity. Having visibility of what your customers are searching for can help to provide a framework for the kind of site that will be useful to them.  

Survey your customers

Surveying your customers is another possibility for ensuring that you are providing all the information that they require. Your customers are likely to have opinions about how you can improve their experience, so why not ask them directly? The advantage of surveys is that you can control the questions that you are asking. If you have specific questions that you would like answered, then surveys are one of the most effective ways to achieve this. 

If you’d like to find out more about how to create the perfect website then visit our website design page or get in touch via our contact form or by calling 02895072007.

As marketers and business owners we are all currently faced with a unique challenge. One that has and will change our industries forever. It will change the way we do business, change how we sell our services and also change how we conduct marketing in times when our businesses face the greatest threat of our generation.

However as responsible marketers, sales managers and business owners, we are also focused on the future. Although hard to fathom right now, this time will pass. Those who use this time wisely, planning and implementing their marketing strategies, will come out stronger on the other side.

Today we’re going to run through some of the projects we recommend you start moving forward with now. The results from each of these will long outlast the current period and will set your business up for the seasons ahead of us.

1. Get Ahead With Your Marketing Plan

The one thing we have right now is the luxury of time. We’ve had countless chats with marketing teams this past week and their big focus is getting their marketing plan started/finished and putting effort into the challenge that will come after this lockdown. Namely everyone will be marketing! Use this time to create an overarching marketing plan and then a monthly/weekly schedule of activities you can start now and then introduce more normal marketing activities in a later period.

We are in new times and as marketers we need to think beyond this lockdown. What is likely to happen immediately. With less travel restrictions within the country likely happening first, we fully expect staycations to become a much bigger focus for people right across the island of Ireland. Those hoteliers who hope to capture more of the niche markets such Ramblers, Adventure Seekers, Solo Travellers as examples will find it easier to cut through the noise of the mass marketing activities we will see. Think about your ideal customer, who they are, what they are interested in and what drives them to stay away for a night, two or more.

• Locale Focussed Blogging

One of the most important and long lasting actions you can take right now is to start, deliver and grow your blogging capability. Right now, this is the one channel we can communicate effectively through without additional noise. 

If you don’t have a blog on your website, we can of course help you with that very quickly and easily, but if you do, start writing content now. 

• Why focus on your own locale?

Many of the hotels we work with rely on 3rd party booking providers to deliver bookings for their businesses. We can help flip this reliance on its head getting our brand and website out in front of users before they start researching accommodation. For example if you are a hotel on the North Coast, you might create a well written piece about the Giants Causeway, Portrush or the filming locations of Game of Throne on Portstewart Strand or Ballintoy Harbour. Not only are you writing good content for your site, but you are localising this to the area your hotel serves. This adds authority in search engines such as Google and will help you rank higher.

2. Refine Your Menus

Although you are not physically at your hotel, there are a number of ways in which you can prepare for when you will be.

Refining your menu being one. Changing a restaurant menu can be a difficult task while you remain open, so now is the perfect time to look at how changes can be made to better your offering. 

In doing so, your menu can bring many benefits, to both your customers, your staff and your bottom line. Do you want to review a menu item, reduce the offering or focus more heavily on the most profitable items. Knowing the expected outcome, we can focus on delivering a more robust menu design.

With regard our customers – Updating your menu will help with keeping your customers interested and excited. The hospitality industry is a busy and competitive industry, with trends changing at every turn. By taking the time to reimagine your menu, you give customers a new reason to come back to your hotel restaurant when you reopen. 

Allowing your kitchen staff to co-create your new hotel restaurant menu will increase your staff’s engagement through what will be a difficult and challenging time. Through enabling staff to co-create the new menu, it will allow them to invest time, thought and creativity into something which they will then nurture when rolled out.

If you are unsure about creating a new restaurant menu, another way in which you can refine your menu, is to fully evaluate what currently works and what doesn’t. You can replace outdated dishes with newer ones and keep popular dishes that serve your restaurant well.

In making the above changes successfully, your hotel restaurant will be able to move towards increasing your bottom line. Through hopefully creating a new interest around your menu, and keeping your customers interested and happy

3. Review Your Customer Journey

While it can be easy to overlook things like your customer journey, in favour of other elements of your restaurant. It is an essential task for all marketers and business owners. 

You can start to maximise your performance if you manage to break down a customer’s journey into smaller sections and then build a plan to address each section of that journey.

One of the best ways to gain invaluable insight into your customer journey, is by getting someone outside of your business, a person you trust to act like a customer, and to critically analyse each and every move they make from the moment they make the booking, until they pay the bill. 

The three main stages you can break this into are the first point of engagement, dining in your restaurant and leaving your restaurant.

With each of these stages, make a note of every emotion your customer would feel at this point of their customer journey, this can be a number of emotions. You should also look at potential thoughts your customer may have at this point of their journey. By looking at both their emotions and thoughts, you can begin to build up an idea of what exactly the customer is going through at that point of their journey. You are able to look at ways in which it can be improved and developed on, to improve their journey

4. Audit Your Website

We are living in a digital age, whereby every single thing we do is now being adapted to suit and work seamlessly with technology. If you already have a website dedicated to your hotel restaurant, you are in a position to update and make changes to this as you see fit. 

Using this time to re evaluate your website could be a great way of moving your business to the next level for when you reopen. 

Here are some of the top way in which you can update your restaurant website;

• Update all your online information

This may seem like an obvious suggestion, but there are a high number of business websites that are not updated from the minute they are put live, and naturally, things can change over time. It may be small changes to your opening hours, or bigger changes to your location, booking system or contact information. 

Making sure that your details are correct and up to date is the first step to updating your hotel restaurant website.

• Updating all imagery 

Images are the one thing that lets customers get an insight to your hotel restaurant before even setting foot inside. So make sure you are making a good first impression. Remove old and dated photos, and replace them with clear and eye catching imagery that would make you want to visit a restaurant. Spend time with your chefs, and plate each dish so that it can be photographed and uploaded to your website.

• Adding a downloadable menu 

Having your menu available online can be a real deal breaker when it comes to customers choosing your hotel restaurant. 

By uploading your menu online, and allowing customers to download it before visiting can prove beneficial in so many ways. 

Not only does it let customers see what you are offering, it lets them get an idea of the type of restaurant you are and how it would suit them. For instance, if you have a customer with a dietary requirement, they will be able to check online if you cater to this, ahead of visiting you. 

• Optimising your website for SEO

Spending time on the SEO of your website will prove invaluable to your business. It looks after your marketing when you are not. 

One of the best ways to optimise the SEO on your website, is through the use of Blogs. They are a great way of promoting your business activities, changes and offerings whilst also helping with your marketing.

A big thing that sites like Google and Bing look for are keywords in the content of the blog. These keywords need to be related to whatever the end user is searching for!

For example, if you own a hotel restaurant in Belfast and your user is searching for ‘best restaurants in Belfast’. You can create blogs to cater for this search, with keywords including ‘Belfast’, ‘Restaurants’ & ‘Dining near me’. These keywords can help show are Google or other search engines that your website is a good source for getting information about restaurants in Belfast. 

5. Look at your Customer Data

Looking at your customer data is an essential part of your marketing plan for your hotel restaurant. 

The information that you can get from customer data can hold the most valuable insight to your hotel restaurant. 

Many restaurant owners do not realise that they are sitting on a goldmine of restaurant customer data, and therefore, don’t use it to their advantage. This data is not just numbers, but really useful information which if identified and tracked, can help improve performance, give you a competitive edge and increase your profits. 

For instance, by collecting customer data including names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses you can start to built your customer CRM database. Using this information will be invaluable to your business.

With this information, you can then start to contact customers through targeted emails and texts. Whether you are promoting a new restaurant night, changing your opening hours, or even hosting an event – You will have direct access to your valuable customers and will be able to notify them straight away. This allows you to quickly and easily kick off your next marketing campaign, as you already have a database of past and current customers.

Another way in which you can utilise your customer data is through identifying customers who come to your hotel restaurant frequently, and then reward them for their custom. Be that through a loyalty scheme, or through a discount code. Your customers will appreciate your reward, and feel like a valued customer of your business. The aim here is to show your customers that you appreciate and remember their custom time and time again. 

6. Engage Directly with You Customer

Now is not the time to be selling, in fact those businesses who are pushing sales are likely to be thought of in a less than suitable light. However those businesses that engage with clients, not to sell, but to build relationships and develop an understanding of their needs and plans, will be better positioned  after the current state of play. If suitable, a call will greatly received. Explain you are looking forward to welcoming the customer back also and when they are there, we’ll try to make the experience as delightful as possible. You can follow this up with a customer service email from the reception with an offer or discount on extras during their stay. Whatever is appropriate in your hotel.

How can we help?

We’re very much in this together and we at Kaizen Brand Evolution are happy to share our experience of what is working and what isn’t working in any industry we work with. We are fortunate to work with businesses all across the UK & Ireland that intend to come out of this situation much stronger.

Both Ryan Stanfield and Connor McAuley are available for video chats on all projects, to arrange this with the Studio, please email studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we’re all about helping brands achieve fantastic results with smart design. Our many years of experience and expertise help us to get the very best for our amazing clients. We work closely with our clients to get behind their brand and really understand what they are all about. Whether helping with formulating a brand from scratch or in evolving and developing existing brands, we know how to take brands to the next level. 

What you can expect when you work with us

Passion and dedication

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we know that expert design is about more than simply qualifications. Great design comes from a combination of hard work, creative spark and a street wise understanding of design in practice. At Kaizen Brand Evolution, our design team helps to create powerful advertising through a combination of these attributes. 

Knowledge and Expertise

Our expert design team has a huge amount of knowledge and expertise. As well as being loaded with qualifications, they also take a hands-on approach to all of our clients design projects. At Kaizen Brand Evolution we understand that true knowledge and expertise stretches beyond creating great design. It’s also about finding an advertising channel and focus that is right for you and your business. 

Working as a team

Advertising design is not a one size fits all process and we treat each client on their individual needs and requirements. Our highly qualified design team works with our clients to understand their campaigns and projects. We also work closely with our clients to understand other important factors including their;

• Customer base
• Broader business objectives
• Brand identity and core values
• Previous campaigns and projects

At Kaizen Brand Evolution our best advertising projects have been the ones where our clients have fully cooperated and participated with us. Think of us as an extension of your team. We’re here to help you get the very best.

How we can help with your advertising design

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we pride ourselves on trying new and innovative ways to help you stand out from the crowd. Our advertising design services can be broadly split into four key areas: branding, digital, design, and video. And we work tirelessly to push the boundaries in all of these areas. 

Branding

Brand evolution is the heart of our business and is fundamental to all of your advertising design. When planning your advertising campaigns it is imperative that they are not only attractive and distinctive, but also that they remain true to your brand. When working with clients on advertising design campaigns we will either work with your existing brand guidelines, or help to create these for you. Either way we can help you to maximise the effect of your brand in the mind’s of your customers. 

Digital

We work with clients to increase engagement, drive action and increase sales through effective digital design. Whether you require web design, social media, email design or any other channel, our design team can help you get more from your digital advertising. Focusing on your audience and their preferences and typical behaviour we will help you to optimise your online presence. 

Design

High quality design is integral to any successful advertising campaign. At Kaizen Brand Evolution our team of world class designers will help you create powerful advertising campaigns. 

Video

Working around your brief we’ll also look to integrate innovative video  campaigns that help you stand out from the crowd. We can help you to craft evocative brand stories that engage and entertain your audience. We’ll also look to introduce the latest technologies wherever possible. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

To find out more about how we can help you with your next advertising design project get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007. 

No matter how good your product is, first off you need to convince consumers to buy into what you are offering – Thats where packaging design comes in.

While quality is of course vital to a product’s success (or failure) it is a mistake to consider this the be all and end all. Typically consumers will choose products on the basis of a combination of the following factors;

• They have purchased the product before
• They have purchased similar products before
• They have purchased a product by the same brand before
• It has been recommended by a friend
• They have seen it in an advertisement
• It is on offer (as part of a broader sale or otherwise)

A key factor will be packaging design. Good packaging design can mean the difference between your product flying off the shelves and being ignored. So why is good packaging design so important?

Packaging Design tells your customers what your product does

One of the primary functions of your packaging is to tell the world what your product actually does. This might be self-evident in many cases, but this is not always the case. Beyond this you’ll want to ensure that your packaging covers off all of the necessary detail. You may wish to know the ingredients or calories that go into a cake for example, or the finish on a tin of paint. Whatever it is that customers may want to know in more detail you’ll want to consider including in your packaging design. This is an extremely important consideration when designing your packaging. If you fail to answer the questions that customers may have before committing to purchase then you risk losing them.

It does your pitching for you

Great packaging can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to increasing brand awareness and sales. Think of your packaging as your silent marketing partner. Your packaging can sell what you have to offer when you are not in the room. 

It makes your product stand out from the crowd

Perhaps the most important function of packaging is to help your product stand out from the crowd. With so many products out there and so much choice, it can be difficult for consumers to make a choice one way or another. Your packaging can help to sway them in your product’s direction. When designing your packaging you’ll want to consider the following questions;

• How does your packaging compare to similar products?
• What makes your packaging different to these products?
• What is the incentive to buy your product beyond the price?

By answering these questions you can go some way towards fulfilling a brief for your packaging design. 

It contributes to brand awareness

Your packaging design fits into a broader branding project. To ensure that you maximise the impact of your branding it is important that every element adds up. Consistency is key. If shoppers have come into contact with your brand before, you’ll want to ensure that they remember it at the point of purchase. The more your customers come into contact with your brand the more likely they are to remember it. This familiarity is a powerful advocate that you won’t want to miss out on. 

It acts as advertising in the homes of consumers

Packaging does not just exist on shelves in the shops or as images on your smartphone. Your packaging continues to play a role in the homes of your customers. Once your product has made it into your customer’s homes it acts as a daily reminder of why your product is so great. While we do not keep the packaging for every item we buy it is still important to consider how your packaging might be used beyond the initial purchase. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we have a dedicated team of world class designers to help you create the perfect packaging design. To find out more about how you can benefit from our help you can visit our packaging design page or get in touch via our contact form or by calling 02895072007.

As a restauranteur your menu is a critical piece of brand collateral. Your menu is both a necessary requirement and a piece of marketing material. Unlike the majority of your marketing efforts, your menu will be seen by all of your customers and visitors. This is a unique advantage that few other businesses have. For other businesses it is rare that there would ever be an occasion where this kind of marketing opportunity is available. And while all businesses have branding and advertising opportunities at the point of sale, few are quite so pivotal to the customer experience. It is very important therefore that you make a good first impression by presenting your customers with a good menu. So when is it time for an update?

When you have made changes to your menu

To keep things fresh and your customers interested it is always a good idea to revisit your menu and consider updates. By updating the choices that you give you can show that you are a restaurant that is regularly looking to improve and move things forward. 

If you are selling more of one thing than another

As a restauranteur you will know the importance of giving your customers what they want. Any menu update therefore should be careful not to remove any firm favourites. At the same time however, it is also important to take some calculated risks every now and then. While it is impossible to please everyone all of the time, by giving your customers new choices you can help to keep things new and exciting. If you notice any trends in customer choices this can inform the kind of new additions you choose to add to your menu.

If you are prioritising the wrong menu choices 

If you notice that your customers are choosing one menu choice over another regularly, then it may be time to update your menu design. Your menu should reflect what the majority of your customers are interested in. If you notice a firm favourite emerging, then you may want to consider making this option one of the focal points of the menu. This can be achieved by adding a photograph of the meal or by naming it as a favourite of regulars. 

If you aren’t offering variety

While your menu design should fulfil the needs of the majority, it should also offer variety. You don’t want to ostracise customers with allergies or with alternative dietary requirements. These options may not always be your top sellers, but they are essential for providing overall customer satisfaction. 

If your menu design is confusing

Sometimes when designing a menu (especially for the first time) it can be easy to forget one or two important elements. While, as a restauranteur, you know your menu like the palm of your hand, sometimes this can actually be a disadvantage. As with many design projects, the closer you are, the more likely you are to miss out certain elements. If you are designing a menu for the first time we’d recommend asking an unbiased party with no connection to your restaurant to have a look over it. If you already have a menu, then ask your waiting staff to make a note of any element of your menu that regularly causes confusion. By making a note of these points of confusion you can make sure that they are addressed in any new menu design you have planned. 

If your menus look tired and old

The experience of your customers does not begin and end with the food. There are a number of  important factors that will determine whether or not your customers leave satisfied with their experience. If your menus are looking old and frayed, or the design looks outdated, then your customers will pick up on this. They will immediately be framing their experience and expectations by this initial contact with your restaurant. 

There are a number of ways you can spruce up your menus. A great looking menu design will immediately put your customers at ease. They will know straight away that they are in for a good meal. At Kaizen Brand Evolution our amazing team of designers have worked on thousands of menu design projects. To find out how our dedicated team can help you, visit our menu design page, or get in touch via our contact form or by calling 02895072007.

Scarlett Aubrey

I was hired at Kaizen Brand Evolution in January, starting the year off on the right foot. New country, new year, and a new job.

At the end of last September, I decided to move away from my home in Vancouver, Canada and change my life entirely. I have dual citizenship and a bunch of family in Northern Ireland, so I thought the transition would be a little more possible. I concluded that I had to challenge my career and creative environment. To do that, I had to live somewhere other than Vancouver.

Fast forward through the trials and tribulations of moving to the other side of the world and bam, I landed a job with Kaizen Brand Evolution!  I was so happy to get my foot in the door of Belfast’s design industry.

In the last month, I have been thrown right into the thick of it. I had started at one of KBE’s busiest times. It seems ‘New year, new me’ definitely had an effect on the creative industry, and to its benefit!  I hit the ground running tackling a variety of jobs; from print/digital marketing material, branding concepts, brand asset development, some motion graphics and anything in-between. 

One of the highlights is that I had the opportunity to work on motion graphic jobs right away. Motion graphic is my newest skillset, so as you can imagine, I would naturally have the urge to develop it. At Kaizen Brand Evolution everyone’s unique skills are recognised and put to use. You are also given the opportunity to grow your skills or learn new ones through training sessions online once a week; for me, that was a great thing to see a company do. 

What I have enjoyed so far is the detailed process of developing brands from scratch. I have especially enjoyed the first research stages and development. However, these stages can be creatively ‘painful’ because as a creative, you end up taking each project like these personally. It makes the final result ever so sweet when you see it coming alive before your eyes in the concept presentation. 

I haven’t been here long, so the challenges I have faced have been subtle and not what I would have expected. I would say most of them have to do with cultural barriers. The other day I had the receptionist of one company on the phone thinking I had the wrong number and that I was calling from America, I had to confirm that I was calling from Northern Ireland.

On a more serious note, the differences I have been the production processes between Canada and here;  it has been a little bit of a learning curve, but that is what I wanted right?  ‘A’ paper sizes are more strictly referenced here while in Canada I was just given the dimensions in inches for each job (though we do know about ‘A’ paper sizes). I really like the universal use of these ‘A’ paper sizes and that the clients usually understand them too. I wish that would be something that was better adopted in North America; it would make life so much easier.

I hope to grow further with Kaizen Brand Evolution and work more on jobs that challenge my creative thinking. I would love to develop my copy-writing as I am not a copy-writer and could benefit from building that ability. I feel that through challenging branding projects, I will get that opportunity to do so. I am eager to see how my future unfolds here at KBE and to see what kind of designer I will become as a result.

Rightpath Recruitment, based in Armagh approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create a new name and identity for their brand to develop into an innovative force that makes an impact on the recruitment industry across the construction, IT and finance sectors.

Rightpath Recruitment are made up of a team of passionate, highly skilled and knowledgeable recruiters with over 20 years combined industry specific recruitment experience in the 3 main sectors. To commence the corporate naming project, our team of 12 designers set to brainstorming name generation concepts that could represent the business.

After a filtering process by Design Director, Ryan Stanfield, and close liaison with the client the name was selected.  The outcome of the naming process was ‘Informe’ which highlights the experience and building trust provided as part of the service. The word Informe has been designed to include the number three as this represents the three industries within recruitment; construction, IT and finance. This has been cleverly incorporated as part of the E within the brand mark. 

The informe brand mark is a modern and contemporary, simple type logo. Forming is the key representation of this logo which is taken from the small sections taken out of the F & 3 which represents the forms taken shape in the construction, IT and finance sectors. It has mileage that doesn’t fit any trends and will be timeless for years to come.

The brand mark is shaped from a san serif typeface called Termina. Amongst the landscape of geometrics, Termina breaks the norm with its generously wide letterforms. It is bold and stands out with industrial and technology connotations. We have customised the typeface taking a small section from the F and the 3 which represents three and allows the letterform to represent three. The 3 number format has been custom sculpted for inform brand. 

The tagline ‘We form careers’ has a nod towards the industrial landscape which the candidates are from with forming being a key part of construction. The word form is also taken out from the brand name Inform which is a clever note towards it. Forming a relationship between the ideal job and the candidate. This is developed in the three brand pillars, where the language changes to ‘Forming Construction’, ‘Forming IT’, and ‘Forming Finance’ the candidates and inform are forming the careers, relationships and future for the UK and Ireland. 

We have created a set of three icons for Construction, IT and Finance, the 3 core sectors of the business, these can be used across the brand as the brand pillars. For art direction of photography for Inform we want the viewer to be aware of the type of candidate that Inform would be recruiting, the type of candidate that is clean cut, wears a suit. High end shots including lifestyle imagery of buildings, computers or technology related fields. The balance between lifestyle photography and candidate shots is important to show a variety. 

When researching into the competitors we came to the realisation that red is heavily used in the recruitment industry. We have used a bright yellow to stand out from the crowd, yellow is friendly and approachable, it also gives meaning of energy and loyalty. This is particularly important in recruitment industry so that the client is trusting to them. Yellow is paired with black to give a corporate approach. The colour black which represents strength, seriousness, power, and authority.

The brand is rolled out considering the device, strapline, brand language, art style, and how primary colour palettes will look. This will be in line with market research conducted in your landscape. The new branding will be tested on a range of relevant applications such as website, business stationery, presentation folders, signage and internal collateral.

Creating branding for a recruitment company has been a challenging and rewarding project for the design studio. The roll out is when it really comes to life and starts to increase interest and return revenue for the client. 

PJ Brogan Opticians are a pillar in their respective communities across Lisburn and Ballynahinch, known for their expertise and reputation in optometry. This family-run business has kept ahead of the curve in terms of their offering and adapted with the ever-changing demands of modern customers. 2020 brings a new opportunity for PJ Brogans in that they have chosen the team at Kaizen Brand Evolution to re-fresh their brand identity across all stores.

In the initial phases of the re-brand it was clear that PJ Brogan’s where a modern, forward looking company with a clear objective at hand – attract new, younger customers whilst retaining their core audience and expanding the brand reach, becoming relevant in 2020.

We approached the re-brand project with a look to modernising and re-stating the business through strong, simple communications that would easily fit into the buying persona of a modern retail audience. Firstly the logo needed re-thinking and with this we wanted to introduce a smart yet subtle link between the letters in PJ Brogan and the immediate visual representation of the business – in this case a pair of glasses. A large part of the re-brand was actually in the name – we asked the question, do people still say the full moniker “PJ Brogans’ or is it simply known as Brogan’s? The answer was Brogan’s – and in the best interest of telling the truth about the business we shortened the name to Brogan’s.

In their own words: “We aim to delight our patients with our personal service, innovative eyewear and clinical expertise.” Pairing off with a unique statement which under-pins the logo we introduced ‘eyes and ears’. This was a result of careful attention to what Brogan’s work for and where their passion lies. Language in situ we had the ingredients for a real ‘eye-catching’ brand system.

One of the ways I rate success in a logo design is when someone perhaps doesn’t see something and is surprised (in a little way) when something hidden within the logo is revealed later. We achieved this with an intertwined glasses icon which hides in the ear, links and loops of the G in Brogan’s.

Paired with a modern, luxurious and almost trendy colour palette, we have created a retail/specialist brand identity in line with the company’s trajectory and the buying patterns of its ideal customers. The symbolism and logo versatility sit strongly across signage, internally and externally as well as online, importantly on their new website (designed and built by us at Kaizen Brand Evolution) and social presence. The brand now sits firmly in the 2020 landscape and is ready for the next phase in Brogan’s business journey.

It was a pleasure to craft and create the language, identity and brand projections for Brogan’s and we all thoroughly look forward to how the brand rolls out and more importantly how the customers engage with the new brand system in place. We continue to work with Brogan’s as they embark on this re-brand for 2020 and beyond, creating all marketing assets across print and digital. Keep an ‘eye’ as Brogan’s hits the high street with their shiny new identity.

Your website is the heart of your business. And yet whenever it gets mentioned you feel the need to apologise for it. If this is you then that is probably a tell-tale sign that you need a new website. There are many instances, however, where you may not be so sure about whether or not it is the right time for a change. So how do you know when is the right time to take the plunge and invest your time and money?

You’re getting traffic but no sales

You may well be in the position where your website has previously worked for you and your business, but you have noticed that sales seems to have dried up. If you find yourself in this situation then it’s time to take action. A large amount of traffic without sales suggests that you have an established website in the search engines, but there is something blocking your visitors from buying with you.

Before you go spending out on a new website, it’s important that you make sure that there isn’t anything simple that you may be missing. There are many reasons why your customers may not be buying through your website that could well be because of a specific issue on your site. Rather than a more general usability issue, it could be that you are experiencing one of the following problems;

• Part or all of your payment gateway is broken
• Vital information isn’t displaying or is broken
• Your site works on some devices and browsers but not others
• You experience regular server errors or problems
• You haven’t updated the website in a long time
• Competitors are offering something you are not

If however, after looking closely at possible problems, you can’t find any blocks like the above, then it may well be time to think about investing in a new website. If you’re getting traffic but no sales then you are leaving money on the table. Here’s when it’s time to spend some cash;

Your website is unresponsive

Over half of web traffic is now made via mobile. And depending on your industry, it can be much higher than this. If you work B2C then your customers will invariably access your site via mobile phone. If your website isn’t responsive then you may as well be cutting off over half of your audience. 

Your site is difficult to navigate

Besides responsiveness, navigation issues are the next biggest killer when it comes to your sales. Your customers are not patient when it comes to their experience with you. If you can’t fulfil their requirements in a few shorts seconds or within a few clicks then they will disappear into the ether never to be seen again. Making your website as easy as possible to navigate is vital to ensuring you convert the traffic that is coming to your site. 

You are getting left behind

With ever-advancing technology comes ever-increasing expectations. While your website may be more or less functional, is it capable of providing the solutions that your customers expect? If you’re not looking forward then you will soon be left behind. Make sure you keep ahead of the curve and seek out the advantages made possible by new technologies. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

If you think that it may be time to invest in a new website but you aren’t quite sure, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team. At Kaizen Brand Evolution we can help you diagnose any issues that may be affecting your site. So, if you’re looking for honest and open advice on whether or not to take the plunge then get in touch today via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007. 

In a world of ever-increasing noise, making your brand stand out from the crowd has never been so hard. There has never been so much choice and there have never been so many different ways to buy or research. So how do you stand out in a world full of people aiming to achieve the exact same thing – and often while selling the same products and services? 

Be you with your brand

You can be the biggest, best or loudest brand in the world, but if it doesn’t feel authentic then you are unlikely to get the results that you want. You don’t have to try to pretend to be something that you are not in order to get attention. Providing a service that people want, need or value means that your brand has an important purpose. The secret to how to present your brand should start from this point. If you can find a way to encapsulate the value that you provide your customers then you are halfway there to creating a brand that stands out from the crowd. 

Be different with your brand

Once you’ve come to understand your brands KSP’s, the next step is to think of a way to communicate this. Being different, however, is easier said than done. There are very few brands that can say that they are genuinely unique. Most brands occupy a crowded space where choice is plenty for the consumer. 

So how do you build a brand that can differentiate itself from the crowd? The answer to this question also lies in what it is that makes you valuable to your customers. While there are numerous brands that either do what you do or do something similar, there is only one brand that is yours and yours alone. Find out what makes you different and amplify it. 

Being different might come from any one of the following values;

Innovation

Does your brand push the boundaries in your industry? Is there anything that you do, or any process that you follow, that no-one else does?

Customer Service

Do you take pride in giving exceptional customer service? There are fewer more valuable selling points than a brand that can demonstrate genuinely great customer service. 

Care

Does your brand make a positive difference to the world? Whether directly or indirectly your brand will provide a service that helps others. 
Whatever it is that makes your brand tick. Find it, and tell the world about it. 

Be high quality

Once you’ve got your message right, you’ll want to make sure that you do it justice. You don’t want to stand out from the crowd for the wrong reasons. Knowing what your brand should say and how it should be presented is one thing – executing it is another. Great brands stand out from the crowd, partly from a great underlying message, and partly from great design. Understanding how to encapsulate what you do in a few short words or images, or in a logo, is not an easy task.

Kaizen Brand Evolution

And that’s where we come in. At Kaizen Brand Evolution we have spent years honing our craft. Our expert design team have worked with countless brands to increase their brand presence. We know what works and what doesn’t. Our many years of experience of finding design solutions to brand problems make us perfectly equipped to take your brand and give it the x-factor to make it truly stand out from every other brand out there competing for the same space.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help then get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007.

Where did the last 10 years go? This is the question that has been on everyone’s lips since the turn of the decade. Ten years on and (if you’re anything like us) added a few distinguished-looking grey hairs and wrinkles. But what about your brand? Has your brand aged quite so gracefully, or is it time for a rebrand? Is your new year’s resolution to give your brand a revamp? And if not, should it be?

Here’s how to know when it’s your time to rebrand. 

You’ve lost momentum

A brand is only as fresh as the people behind them. If you are passionate about your brand and what it stands for then this is half the battle. If, on the other hand, you feel like your brand has hit a bit of a rut, then this is likely to show over time in your brand too. Typical examples of this include brands that have;

• Brands that have never considered branding to be all that important
• Brands that have stopped trying to evolve what they already have
• Brands that have forgotten what they initially stood for

You’ve taken a wrong turn

A brand should be in a constant state of evolution, but this does not mean that you should abandon or forget about where your brand started. Brands that have lost their way typically;

• Try to appeal to everyone all at the same time
• Send out contradictory messages
• Seem confused in their approach 
• Contradict themselves in their presentation and sales messages
• Break brand guidelines or do not have any

If you feel like you tick any of these boxes then it’s probably time for a rebrand. 

How a rebrand can help

Without a rebrand, it can often feel like you are throwing money at problems that you can’t ever seem to solve. A rebrand can diagnose where you may be encountering problems and put a plan in place to get your brand back on track. A rebrand gives you a solid direction to take that you know you can use as a guideline for all of your marketing and sales messages moving forward. If you are confident in your brand and your message, then you can feel confident in all further investments in it. 

What’s involved in a rebrand?

A rebrand will look at your business in detail and attempt to understand what it is that makes it tick. It will also look at your customers and potential customers and how you fit into their daily lives. Once you know who you are and who your customers are a rebrand will bridge the gap with brand and design assets. Finally, it’s time to get your brand out there with targeted and tailored marketing and branding campaigns. 

Where should you put your new brand?

You’ll want your new brand to be seen by as many of the right people as possible. Depending on your customers and what you are trying to achieve this can include any number of the following assets;

• Your website
• Digital marketing campaigns
• Branded stationary
• Branded promotional material
• Clothing (work or otherwise)
• Printed marketing materials
• Letterheads & business cards

And the list goes on. If it doesn’t already then your brand should live in as many places as is feasibly possible. No stone should go unturned when it comes to using what you have to get your name out there. 

Successful brands consider their brand in everything that they do and every decision that they make. Over time, this is likely to mean making some difficult decisions and making some sacrifices. But this is all part of what it takes to drive a brand forward.

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we understand the difficulties that brands face in evolving their brand and in keeping it fresh. If you’d like to find out more about what we can offer you can visit our rebranding page. Alternatively, you can get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007.

Billboard advertising can be a little daunting for a lot of marketers. Many brands may be put off because they think billboard advertising belongs to bigger brands. They may view it as a higher risk project than other more measurable forms of advertising, or they may think it may be outside their budget.

In fact, billboard advertising can be a lot more affordable than people think. And there remain few quite so powerful means of getting your message across.

So how do you go about designing a billboard to get the attention that you are after? Here’s our top tips;

Keep it simple

As with all marketing campaigns, the trick with billboard design is to make the complex and difficult, look simple and easy. It can be even more tempting with billboards however to fill all of that space available with as many sales messages as possible. The trick with billboard design, however, is to make your sales message both stand out and be understood instantly. Whether your audience is pedestrians walking the streets, commuters on the train or drivers, you only have a few seconds to make the impact that you are after. 

Your message, therefore, needs to be concise and to the point. It needs to encapsulate exactly what you have to offer in as few words as possible. The images you choose to use should also tell the story of what you’re selling. You need to ensure that every available piece of space is working to trigger a response amongst your audience. 

Have fun

While your billboard design needs to be functional that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun. Adding humour or something a little different to your design will make your advertisement stand out.  As well as having an instantly recognisable message, add a little intrigue or creativity to your message. You will engage your audience and encourage them to spend more time viewing what you have to say. 

Be bold, be different

Your audience will appreciate you taking a risk. Simply telling them that you have a sale on is a good way to attract attention.  But, by being bold with your design or message and trying something a little different you can reap the reward of the element of surprise. We’re all subjected to hundreds of different sales messages each day, many of which are almost identical in approach. By doing something different you can stand out from the crowd and dictate your own terms. 

Be targeted

When we think of billboards we might not always think of targeted advertising, but we should. When planning your media buying you can also decide the geographical areas that you’d like your billboards to occupy. Understanding the typical traffic of these areas and the kinds of people that are going to see your billboard can really help you tailor your design and your messaging. If you have a store nearby to the billboard you might even want to tell passers-by how far away they are so they can stop by. 

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we are experts at getting your brand attention. Looking for adshels, billboards or backlit lightboxes?  We know how to help you make the most of out of home advertising to drive brand engagement and sales. To find out how we can help you can visit our billboard and adshel design page or get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007.

In the businesses, an annual report plays an important role in highlighting the company’s growth and other important activities throughout the year. It informs and educates the clients, partners, employees, and shareholders to see how the company has performed during a period of the year. As it is having a huge impact on the representation of your business data, its visual appearance must not be taken lightly.

The information inside an annual report must be clear enough so that the viewers can understand it properly. The content flow must be logical and backed by powerful words. Your annual report is representing your growth and even the losses, so everything inside is important for your company. 

It is always an important thing to give it a proper design and structure. The easiest way to do this is to hire annual report cover design firms. As per the industries and your business activities, the content inside an annual report may vary. But, when it comes to designing, some important rules apply to each type of report. 

So, here in this article, we are going to know five key elements to design your annual report in a much professional and interactive manner.

1. Choose the format carefully

The information inside your annual report may carry anything as per your desires. But, when it goes to anyone’s hand, it must look professional. To do this, you will have to pick a format wisely. Do not just pick a traditional and simple booklet carrying a number of pages inside it. Instead, go for a stylish and professional design that can give an impact on its readers. Its outlook is going to be like a first impression. And, you will never want the first impression to be bad. So, choose a format that can suit your industry and type of people who are going to read this report.

2. Visual data is the key

Using appropriate visuals to show the information will be a good step for interactive annual report design. Make sure to use charts, infographics, tables, and other types of things to share the data properly. 

Instead of adding thousands of words that are going to take hours to read, the visuals are going to explain the things in a much better way. Sharing any type of details and company’s statistics is easier with the infographics. In order to show your growth rate, revenues, and areas of improvement, you can easily pick any type of visual graphics to make things easier to explain and understand.

3. Use appropriate fonts

The fonts play another important role in enhancing the attractiveness of your report. Whether you are using any type of format and design for your annual report, using proper fonts is also an important part of its effectiveness. 

If you are capable to handle the typography work properly, it will give an amazing outlook to your report. Also, using proper bold fonts to highlight import points is good. Use font color combinations to make important points easy to be seen by the people. While inserting any type of paragraphs, headings, and other fonts in your annual report, do not forget the take care of the available space too. You will have to manage the available space properly depending upon the total length of your report. 

4. Take care of the space

Using infographics and proper space is an important thing. But, without a proper space management strategy, you will never be able to make your report effective for the readers. Pick images, tables, and informative charts properly at the space they are required. But, do not forget to utilize the space properly. 

Add the texts wherever they are required. It will not be good if you are adding numerous images and other visuals continuously on multiple pages and then you add texts on the next multiple pages. This is going to be frustrating for the readers too. So, make sure to add the things where they will suit them best. But, do not forget to mix up everything and give a great outlook to your report.

5. Keep the covers in your consideration

You might end up making a highly attractive and easy to understand business report after reading and understanding the steps above. But, the cover is the first thing that everyone will see. So, making it attractive is also important. Pick a good cover format and customize it as per your desires. You can add related business images and your major achievements on this page. Use attractive headlines to let the people open it as soon as they see it. Do not forget the back cover page too. It is another important aspect of a creative annual report design. The cover itself must be able to tell a story about how you did in this business year. 

Why an attractive annual report is important?

The annual report is a big business asset that can easily be used to show you what are the things you are focused on. It reflects your hard work and empowers you to give your consistent efforts towards perfection. To create an attractive and knowledgeable annual report, you must know its benefits for the business too. So, let’s reveal some of those below.

It promotes your company

We know annual reports are good to show your achievements to others. But, do you know a business annual report can also work as a great marketing tool. By promoting it to your potential customers, you can build a good reputation and relations with them. It indirectly helps your business to get more sales and hence increased business revenues.

Building confidence

When you show your achievements to others, positive confidence starts to build up among your customers, clients, partners, and shareholders. It helps you to attract new and productive customers for your products and services. Also, it will help a lot in employee retention. In a nutshell, a good annual business report will work as a great tool to enhance the sales for your next year too.

Informing Media

You can easily use your annual business report to influence and attract the media. If you are capable of highlighting your achievements, the media can give it a big boost and increase its reach among lots of people around the world. 

Show your competency

The annual business report gives your competitors an idea of how you are growing in your industry. It will let you become dominating over others. But, to do this effectively, you will have to focus mostly on the areas where you have grown. So, a good business annual report creation and development strategy become crucial for this.

Financial Information

The annual business report also helps us to confirm and highlight our annual financial transactions. Along with the profits and losses, you are going to have a brief overview of everything. This will help you to prepare better for the future. Also, you will become proficient to grab the upcoming growth opportunities too.

Final Verdict

As compared to any other business documentation asset, the annual report must be created with proper care. It shows others how you are serving in your industry and how committed you are. It will motivate your employees and give your investor a sense of relief by working with you. To get the most out of these reports, you can also connect with a good company that can help you with this.

Ulster GAA, have recently appointed Kaizen Brand Evolution as their creative agency, after a competitive tendering process. Ulster GAA is the provincial council and governing body of the Gaelic Athletic Association sports of Hurling, Gaelic football, Camogie & Handball in Ulster.

The two year contract will run from November 2019 through to November 2021 and will involve the management of Ulster GAA’s brand identity, the design and planning of creative campaigns across all Ulster GAA games and initiatives, management of design and of all Ulster GAA Match Programmes and the collation and design of annual reports and presentation materials.

To achieve this contract, Kaizen Brand Evolution competed successfully against a number of other design and branding agencies including a written submission, case studies and a panel interview.

Ulster GAA Public Relations Officer, Declan Woods, commented:

‘‘ We want to continually enhance the marketing and communications activities of Ulster GAA and in Kaizen Brand Evolution we have an excellent partner to help us achieve that objective. We look forward to exciting times ahead working together.’’

The managing director of Kaizen Brand Evolution, Connor Mc Auley said;

‘We are delighted to have been chosen as the Creative & Branding agency for Ulster GAA. Their contribution to Irish life is immeasurable, and their success story is undisputed – We are excited to be a part of the future of the GAA in Ulster”.

The account win for Kaizen Brand Evolution continues an incredible year for one of the countries leading design agencies. Working with some of the most recognised and influential brands on the island of Ireland, they have become one of its most noted design studios.

Headquartered in Belfast, Kaizen Brand Evolution have grown to a team of 37 and recently moved to a new 5,000 sq ft base in Jennymount Business Park in York Road following a £250,000 investment.

Kaizen Brand Evolution focuses on brand creation, brand development and graphic design. They work with clients to develop clear company vision and strategic direction which they then support with Visually developing their brand to reflect both their vision and company culture.  Their unique approach delivers deep and meaningful change across clients’ businesses.

Belfast Live Press Release here

Belfast Telegraph Press Release here

It is very important for you to understand that, how you present is very important as what you present. So, you would never want your design to let you go down anyway. If you are not a designer, there is no need to worry as there are various online platforms who are professionals in creating the best presentation deck designs for your business.

All you have to do is investigate the printing services you are planning to hire in order to get the best results. Never choose printing services for your business without investigating them, as nowadays there are many online platforms who are actually bluffing the people. Try to get the best advice from the people who have already taken these kinds of services before. 

There are actually a few secret weapons that every business owner should use in their business. And one of them is creating a professional and creative deck design. There is no doubt, that your presentation deck design can work as your key in order to get the dollar bills in order to give life to your business. Presentation deck designs should be of high quality if you want your business to grow. 

There are various tips that you must follow if you are planning to make a professional-looking presentation deck for your business. 

Here are the certain tips that you should follow in order to make a creative presentation deck designfor your business: 

Consider your audience

If you are planning to go to the meeting with the various investors, you have to make sure that you are basically pitching the right people. For example, the people who are always ready to invest in your business plans. It is very important for you to ask yourself, whether they are into you or they will go to pick up whatever you will throw down. 

If you are having plans on focussing on changing the world for better, you will definitely be going to point out the VC firms, as their motive is to invest in the businesses that are basically looking for making a social impact. 

There is no doubt, that you will have much better luck in locking in a particular investment with a like-minded VC firm than with the one who is all about launching the latest and the most beneficial and profitable technologies. 

Keep it simple

There is no doubt, that you must never try to include the various words, graphics, colors, data as due to this you will definitely end up visually overwhelming your audience and your message will definitely going to lose in the shuffles. 

Make sure that you are not exceeding the 20 words per slide. The professional way of doing this is by adding one headline phrase, one sentence caption, and that’s it. The slides that you have prepared are not basically the scripts as they are the visual guide for your audience. 

You should have the main motive of grasping a slide the moment they glance at it. 

If you will add more information on your slide, the less information your audience will be going to process. If they are reading that means you are in trouble, because that means that they are not listening to what you are explaining to them. Which can be a huge drawback for you. So never try to add extra information on your slide at the time of your presentation.

Keep it honest

This is one of the most important points when you are putting together and presenting your pitch deck always try to make it a rule to practice full transparency. 

Because if you will try to hide anything, thinking that it will reflect very badly on your business, then trust us: that your VC’s will definitely be going to find out about it. And later on, it will actually come back to you in you know what sort of conversations. 

In order to get the professional presentation deck for your business, you have to hire the best printing services. As they will be very beneficial for you and your business needs. 

Here are some of the benefits of hiring the best printing services for your business: 

Online printing services will definitely save your time

By hiring professional online printing services for your business you can manage to save your precious time and efforts of your employees as well as the services of your desktop printer which most likely would not be able to handle the print job in bulk.

There are many things you don’t have to worry about such as: 

The details of learning the process of organising your printing job as well as the aggregate binding process. You can save your time like this and focus on other important things in your business.

You can get experts advice and suggestions

The online printing company has all the professional printing experts along with smart printing machines. All you have to do is, ask them about their ideas so that you can also use them for your business requirements. 

The commercial printing companies have the design experts to help out the clients by making sure that the designs are correct and good enough for their business projects. 

Introducing our Web Development Team

If your company is considering a website refresh, Our team brings experience and knowledge to help overcome those issues. If you are keen to improve your user experience, achieve a higher conversion rate or improve your website’s appearance, the Kaizen Web Development team are ready to tackle every issue.

Say hello to Lizi, Ryan Mc, Ryan S & Oscar…

Lizi – Our Leading Lady

We also welcome back Lizi from maternity leave, who will be on hand to ensure that all websites and designs are forward thinking and progressive.

Lizi has been with us at Kaizen Brand Evolution for 5 years, working as a web and graphic designer.

Lizi is also the team leader for our team, ensuring everything runs smoothly and that her team are working on jobs that they love and thrive on!

Ryan Mc  – Our Designer Dynamo!

Ryan Mc has a background in brand design so his eye for colours and fonts matched with his web development knowledge makes for an interesting pair and helps him to create eye catching web pages that have great functionality.

Oskar  – Our Animation Artist!

He brings his passion for animation to the web development team, helping him to create a truly dynamic and engaging website experience for all users. 

Ryan S  – Our Coding Connoisseur!

Ryan is the go to guy for all your coding issues, with a calm and collected attitude, he is ready to tackle the most perplexing coded issues! 

So if you are in need of some Website Development – We have the team for you!

Contact us today on 028 9507 2007 or visit out website.

It may seem unfair, but a great logo design can make or break a brand. While it might seem like such a small part in the grand scheme of what you have to offer, it is vital that it sticks in the minds of your customers. Your logo is at the heart of your branding and is attached to everything that you do. If your customers can’t remember your logo, they are unlikely to remember your brand, and they are therefore unlikely to think of you when it comes to forking out their hard-earned cash. But what makes for a great logo? Here’s our list of the 5 essential qualities of a great logo;

A great logo is simple

The best logos forego the bells and whistles. When you think of the most famous brand logos in the world, you probably think of Nike, McDonalds, or Apple, all of which are of course incredibly simple logos – a tick, the letter m and an apple. 

A great logo means something

A logo is intended not only as a means of advertising your brand but also as a means of symbolising something that it stands for. A logo should not only tell your audience who you are, it should have some kind of meaning. Whether this meaning is immediately obvious or not, is not necessarily the point, but what is more important is that the logo feels like it has a story behind it. 

A great logo is authentic

Which brings us to authenticity. A great logo feels authentic. It feels like it is inextricable from the business, as though one cannot exist without the other. While much of this is to do with audience recognition and perception, and how well the logo is used in practice, it is also to do with how authentic it feels to your audience. If your logo feels like a mismatch of corporate ideas, it’s probably because it is one. If your logo, on the other hand, feels natural and like it belongs, then you know you are doing something right. 

A great logo is relevant

A great logo is relevant. Not only relevant to what you think the brand stands for, but also for how your customers and colleagues feel about the brand. A great logo should feel at once universal and personal. It should say something, however small, about what it is that the business does (even if it is simply in the choice of colours), while at the same time saying something broader about what it is that the business stands for. 

A great logo is timeless

If a logo has been designed with current trends or fashions in mind over and above the qualities aforementioned then it is likely that it will soon look dated and forgettable. While it is always a good idea to take inspiration from what is going on around you in the market, by copying or imitating something that looks cool, purely for the sake of it, it’s likely that this lack of authenticity will come across in the final design. 

If you look at any of the most successful brands in the world, they all have these five qualities in common. And while they may have made modifications to their logo over the years, ultimately the basics behind them remain the same. And while they may look simple in their finished state these logos would have taken a huge amount of time, effort and hard work to get right. Great logos don’t happen by accident, and thinking that they can be produced in a couple of hours is a mistake. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have worked with numerous brands on creating and developing their brand logos. As branding experts, we know what makes for a truly outstanding logo and with our guidance and help, we can help you achieve the results you are looking for. To find out more about how we can help with your logo design you can visit our logo design page, or get in touch via our contact page or by calling 028 9507 2007.

An annual report is one of the crucial elements for every public company. It is basically a marketing opportunity for businesses as one can show their organization’s identity and vision through the annual report. Moreover, an annual report also helps in attracting new investors while keeping the interest of the existing ones.

Since an annual report has such a huge significance, it is extremely crucial to choose the best annual report design so that it can convey your message loud and clear. Believe it or not, but focusing on the report design is as important as the content you want to publish inside.

A poorly designed annual report can cause havoc for your organizations, whereas an appealing annual report can captivate shareholders and encourage them to trust your brand. It means that one should never compromise with the annual report design whatsoever.

In order to help you design the best annual report, we have compiled a list of tips you should remember while designing the annual report for your brand.

Add Graphs and Graphics

With the annual report, the goal is to attract prospects and shareholders. And, that’s only possible when your report contains graphs and chart illustrations to connect with the readers more effectively.

You can use these types of visual elements to draw the reader’s attention towards your achievements such as milestones covered and other important things your company has accomplished in the past.

No doubt, you can also illustrate these figures with the help of numbers, but graphs and charts make the entire report visually appealing and they are easier to understand at the same time. So, make sure that your annual report design has all the essential graphs and charts.

Convey Your Message With Appealing Headlines

Here’s the thing; readers don’t have plenty of time to read the entire report. So, there’s no point in writing fluffy text that takes forever to read. Instead, try to convey your messages by writing compact yet powerful headlines.

You can also incorporate the text with appealing images so that the reader doesn’t get bored and reads the majority of the report. You should focus on limiting the text while adding more visual elements (images) to convey your message loud and clear.

Talk About Company Vision

If you have designed an annual report in the past, you already know the significance of talking about the company vision. However, one thing that you must keep in mind is that the entire annual report should talk about the vision.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make while designing the annual report is to conclude the company in two-three lines. Try to design the annual report in such a way that company vision is the center of the topic.

Use High-Quality Images

We have discussed several times the importance of adding images and we can’t stress this point enough. However, make sure to add high-quality images that looks extremely appealing. The images will captivate the readers and help you connect with them more effectively.

Conclusion

An annual report is one of the most crucial elements of an organisation. Moreover, designing the annual report is also important as it will have a huge impact on the future of your organisation. That’s why we recommend hiring annual report design firms that have professional designers who have expertise in designing a captivating annual report for different businesses.

Know Your Objective

Before looking for brochure design services and moving ahead with the designing process, take your time and have a clear vision about the objective of the brochure. Are you going to promote a concert, a newly launched product, or a contest?

When you completely know what is the objective of your brochure, it becomes way easier to move in the right direction. So, gather as much information as possible and list out all the important details that must be added to the brochure.

Since everything that you add on the brochure will communicate with the customers, it is important to pick out the most suitable pieces of information that are likely to attract potential customers.

Know Your Customers

As we mentioned earlier, a brochure will act as a communication tool for your brand. That’s why it is extremely important to know your customers so that you can easily capture their interests.

Having clarity about who your customers are will make it much easier to design your brochure accordingly. For instance, if your target customers are tech geeks, you’ll have to choose a design that relates to the latest technologies.

Similarly, if your target customers are fashion enthusiasts, you can pick a design that talks about fashion. In any scenario, make sure to research thoroughly so that you can design bespoke brochures that attract your potential market and bring in more customers.

Showcase Your Creativity

Showcasing your creativity is extremely important, especially if you want to stand out from the competitors. Keep in mind that if you use the same old designs, like everyone else, you are less likely to be noticed by the customers.

In an era where competition has become extremely fierce, it is imperative to utilize your creativity in the best possible way so that you can captivate as many customers as possible. While picking a design, try to be unique so that you can add the uniqueness factor to your brochures.

In addition to this, it is also imperative to focus on every small detail of the brochure. For instance, make sure to be picky while choosing the right font colour and size for the text. Your main objective should be to design a brochure that sets you apart from the crowd.

Avoid Big Fancy Words

With brochures, you are not supposed to impress the audience with your vocabulary. Try to use simple words so that you can easily convey the message around. The more complex words you’ll use, the more likely will the customers drift way.

Since you want to convey a specific piece of information through brochures, try to stick to the point. This will engage the readers and they’ll easily comprehend the message you wanted to convey across in the first place.

Make the Brochure Customer-Centric

While designing the brochure, it is important to keep customers’ interests at the back of your mind. There’s no point in showcasing your creativity if it doesn’t reach and engage the target audience. So, make sure to keep customers’ interests your top priority so that you can design customer-centric brochures.

For instance, if the target audience prefers pink colour, make sure to keep the colour texture pink, even if you hate it. This will help you captivate the customer, that’ll eventually lead to a new sale for your business.

Brochure Design 101-Final Words

Using brochures for branding can do wonders for your business. Not only it draws attention of the target audience, but a brochure will also help you build the brand authority of your business. The above-mentioned tips will help you design the most suitable and captivating brochures for your business so that you can promote your brand without any hassle. If you are looking for the best brochure design services, we can help. At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we utilise the best-in-class tools and the latest techniques to design captivating brochures for our customers.

Branding is one of the most important things in a business. It is basically a marketing strategy under which the business creates a name along with a symbol or a design that is easily identifiable as belonging to the company. It is very important for all the businesses to understand the value of the branding as it helps in identifying a particular product or service and comparing it against competitor products and services. Through the branding, the customers get attracted to a particular business and it makes the client know what actually they are expecting from your company.

Branding is actually one of the smartest ways through which you can distinguish yourselves from your competitors and under this, your business can clarify about the different things that they are offering. Your business can explain various people about how they can make a better choice by choosing your business over others.

The brand you are making for your business will be the true picture of who you are as a business, and how you want your business to be seen.

What is the importance of branding?

It is true, that branding is one of the most important parts of your business as it makes an overall impact on your business. There is no doubt, that branding can definitely change how people will see your brand. Through this, you can actually aware the people about your business. In order to have a professional branding make sure that you take the help of the professional brand design agency who are experts in their field.

Through branding your business will get recognition: 

If you are planning to grow your business, it is very important for you to have branding for your business as your business will definitely get the recognition and people will get to know about your business. As most of the people all around the world usually get attracted by the branding of a particular business. In order to impress and attract the people towards your business make sure that you are creating an attractive brand design for your business.

The logo design of a company is an important element of branding as it is essentially the face of the company. This is why hiring the professional logo design company for your business can be powerful for your business requirements. As through this, it is very easy for your business brand to make an impression on a person at a first glance.

The business value increases through the branding:

There is no doubt, that branding for your business can be very important if you are trying to generate your future business. And if you are creating a strong brand for your business, it can definitely increase your business value bu actually giving your company more importance in the market.

Branding is the most important investment opportunity because of its firmly established place in the marketplace. Through branding, it will become very easy for people to search for you on the internet.

How can you generate new customers through branding?

If you are having a strong brand for your company it actually means that you have a strong and a positive impression of your company amongst the various customers. Through strong branding, the customers will like to work with you because of the familiarity between your business and them. Once you built a strong branding for your business, oral communication will be the companies best and the most effective advertising technique.

Business becomes trustworthy within the marketplace:

Through a professional and a well trusted, well strategised it will be easy for the business organisation to build trust with the potential customers, and clients. It is true, that many of the people always prefer to work with the business that actually has a polished or a portrayal professional. Through the professional and a well-established brand, the public will actually believe in you and companies products and services they offer and the way they handle their business.

Helpful in the advertising process:

Advertising is another component of branding, and there is no doubt that the advertising strategies will actually reflect the brand along with its desired portrayal.

A well-designed brand is one of the easiest ways to convey potential customers about their business and how they can professionally provide the best quality of goods and services and how trustworthy they can be.

In order to look for the best business branding services UK, you can go and search them on the internet. As there are many online platforms that are providing the best logo design services.

Make sure that you investigate each and everything about them as there are many online platforms that are bluffing the people and are charging them with high prices.

 It is very important for you to look at the prices that the different online platforms are charging for their services, and choose the best service provider as per your business needs.

Building a more premium brand is more easily said than done and moving from one type of brand to another brings with it a series of potential hurdles such as the challenge of;

• Adapting internal processes
• Adapting long-standing employees
• Overcoming audience preconceptions of your brand
• The time and expense of creating something new

So how do you go about doing this successfully? How do you move from one type of brand to another seamlessly and without any teething issues? 

Be Patient

Building a premium brand won’t happen overnight. To create a premium brand, you’ll want to put in place a long-term strategy as to how you are going to achieve it and the steps that you are going to take to get there. 

Position your brand

To build a premium brand, you’ll need to position it as a premium product. Increase the price of your product and put the extra revenue back into ensuring a premium service for your customers. You can position yourself as a premium brand by incorporating a few design and content tricks like emphasising precisely what your customers will get in return for the extra expense or reducing the urgency of your advertising. Your brand won’t be considered to be premium if you don’t position it as such. 

Be high quality

This perhaps goes without saying, but to be considered a premium brand, you must provide a premium service. For your branding and design to shine and be considered authentic, it needs to be followed through with exceptional service. There’s no point in promising a premium product or service through your brand positioning and not being able to follow up on that initial promise. You’ll soon be found out, and once you are, your credibility will be tainted. 

Offer a seamless brand experience

When building a premium product, you need to ensure that every part of that product is of high quality. It is imperative that your brand guidelines are abided by, that any piece of design and branding is completed by professionals who know exactly what they are doing. Any hint of amateurish design can threaten the brand you are trying to build.

Be exclusive, be different

Customers turn to premium brands because they want something extra. Whatever that little bit extra is, as a brand, you need to own it and make sure that you absolutely appeal to your target audience. Offer your customers something that they can’t get anywhere else and back it up with a premium brand that they can trust, and you’re on to a winner. 

Be Persistent

Don’t be deterred if you don’t see results overnight. It can be easy to backtrack back to old ways if you don’t see an immediate return on investment. It is important to be patient and to stick by your guns and your new price points. To attract a higher paying audience, you’ll need to ensure that your brand remains true and resolute to its foundations and that you do not weaken your brand by compromising in any areas. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

As our name suggests, at Kaizen Brand Evolution, we are experts at helping our customers evolve their brand. No matter what the direction that you want to go with your brand or business, we can help advise you on how to get there. To find out more about how we can help you build a more premium brand you can visit our brand identity design page, or get in touch via our contact page or by calling 02895072007.

Have you ever seen a big brand without a logo? No, because there is no brand that does not have a personal logo design. It is true, that through the logo design your customers will perceive your brand. In order to maintain the reputation of your brand, it is very important for you to create an outstanding logo. 

There are many people all around the world, who are a little bit confused when it comes to design a particular logo design. So, today we are going to tell you the exact way through which you can create an amazing logo design for your brand. 

Now, let us discuss a little about the designing process.

Here is a process that you are in need to follow while creating an outstanding logo design for your brand: 

Research about the field:

It is very important for you to make proper research about a particular field as it will definitely help the designers to get a sense of the environment under which the logo would be living in. This process is actually very helpful for the designers who have not done any prior work in that particular field or the industry. It is a must for you to know all the trends and what’s appropriate for that field. 

There is no doubt, that if you are creating a logo design for the real estate business, it will be completely different from the logos of the restaurant. You have to see which type of logo will be appropriate for the field you are working on. Through all this, it will become easy for you to start thinking about how you can differentiate the new logo designs with the pre-existing ones. 

There are some cases under which a logo should not be radically different because this can actually put the people off. If you are planning to create a logo design for the health care industry, you will make a logo design that will make people comfortable and have some familiarity with it. But if you are creating a logo design for a concert, you should make a logo that is more creative and innovative because people love these types of logos in the concerts. All the logo designs vary from the field to field. 

Sketch on the initial ideas:

It will be a very good idea if you will present three to four possibilities and if you are making more than this, it will definitely help yourself for doing the revisions on all of your ideas. That will actually set you up with a lot of work along with a much higher bill.

Know the Client

Once you have decided to understand the particular field or industry, it is very important for you to understand the clients perspective about what they do and who are their targeted audience. 

There are actually two parts of this step. The first one is when you are trying to collect the information under which you will get to know, what does your client do, what exactly do they think of their industry, and who are they selling to. The second step is the interpretation process. 

Just imagine that you are working with a client who has a construction based company, but on the other hand, your client is telling about how much they are family-based. You will have to face the challenge under the condition like this, as it will become very important for you to capture the essence of your client’s company. 

Get the feedback

The next step is to collect the best designs from the rough sketches in order to target a particular audience and get their feedback. The logo design company will ask the various people who fit the description of the targeted audience and ask them to give their personal opinions on the various logo designs that you have shown to them. Once you get the opinions of the people, you will try to make the improvements on your logo designs, and the process can be taken forward. 

This is one of the most crucial steps in the process of designing the logo as you can make various changes in your designs at this time. The logo design agency should take the proper time in conducting research and take the opinions of the people since it is very important to consider everyone’s viewpoint and come up with design that actually fits all the requirements.

Make sure that you are taking the opinions of your clients as well along with the opinion and the feedback of the test audience.

Deliver the Logo

At the time of delivering the logo design make sure that you are presenting it in a professional style. The designer will show 2-3 logos to the client in a formal manner and along with it, they will present various iterations of the logo design in order to show how it will look on the website, on the companies board, in the newspapers and on the building etc. If the client is satisfied with the logo design, the designer will deliver the logo to them. 

To find out how we can help you, visit our website design page or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 028 9507 2007.

Horse Racing Ireland have appointed Kaizen Brand Evolution to deliver Graphic Design Services to promote Irish thoroughbred horse racing internationally, following a competitive tendering process.

Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) are the national authority for thoroughbred horse racing in Ireland. They lead, develop and promote the industry which is one of Ireland’s best performing agricultural sectors and at the forefront of international sporting success. Its primary functions include the development and promotion of the Irish horseracing industry, the development of authorised racecourses, the administration of prize-money at race fixtures and the control of the operation of authorised bookmakers. The HRI Racecourse Division is responsible for four racecourses, Leopardstown Racecourse & Golf Centre, Fairyhouse Racecourse, Navan Racecourse & Tipperary Racecourse

The contract has a maximum potential duration of four years and will require Kaizen Brand Evolution to provide ongoing Graphic Design Services to HRI, including Event Logo Development, Concept Creation and Design & Development of promotional material namely; Digital/Online Design, Signage, Newsletters, Outdoor Advertising and Booklets amongst others. The contract was awarded to Kaizen Brand Evolution, following a tendering process in which a number of Graphic Design Agencies submitted tenders. 

Managing Director of Kaizen Brand Evolution, Connor McAuley said ‘ We are delighted to have been awarded such a prestigious tender,  for an organisation that has such a great heritage in Ireland. 

It is a hugely exciting time for our studio and it’s a testament to the creative and management team who delivered this result. We are looking forward to working alongside and supporting Horse Racing Ireland for the next few years.’

The account win for Kaizen Brand Evolution continues an incredible year for one of the countries leading design agencies. Working with some of the most recognised and influential brands on the island of Ireland, they have become one of the most noted studios.

Kaizen Brand Evolution have a wealth of experience in the Horse Racing industry, working alongside Punchestown and Down Royal racecourses on their respective rebrands and ongoing creative materials. With this experience they will be able to bring a depth of experience to their new contract with Horse Racing Ireland. 

Headquartered in Belfast, Kaizen Brand Evolution have grown to a team of 37 and recently moved to a new 5,000 sq ft base in Jennymount Business Park in York Road following a £250,000 investment.

Kaizen Brand Evolution focuses on brand creation, brand development and graphic design. They work with clients to develop clear company vision and strategic direction which they then support with Visually developing their brand to reflect both their vision and company culture.  Their unique approach delivers deep and meaningful change across clients’ businesses.

When we think of great website design, we tend to think of the websites that have done something a little (or a lot) different. We tend to think of websites that incorporate a background video, sliding graphics, animations, big and bold images or designs or websites that integrate interactive content like VR or AR. And while making a beautiful and exciting website can work wonders for the brands that do it successfully, it is important to remember that at their foundation, these websites are successful because they follow a few simple rules. So what makes for a great site? Here’s our run-down of the key elements you’ll need to consider to create a great website;

▪️ Always put your customers first

▪️ Don’t put design before functionality

▪️ Reduce clicks

▪️ Do your research

▪️ Plan ahead

▪️ Investigate every single avenue

Always put your customers first

At every step of your website design, you should ask yourself the question. What would our customers want? Whether it’s the navigation in the header of your website, the content of the pages, the tone of voice of the content, or the choice of images, whatever it is, every single decision should be guided by the end-user. 

Don’t put website design before functionality

While there are some great websites out there that can do all kinds of weird and wonderful things, taking advantage of some of the most exciting technology out there, ultimately the good ones remain exceptionally easy to use. Don’t get sucked into trying to out-do your competitors with the latest technology, instead work from the premise of giving the very best user experience possible, and on selling in exactly how your product or service provides value to your customers. 

Reduce clicks on your website

The best possible user experience is one where you can reduce the number of clicks as much as possible for your users to get to the answers that they want. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean just putting all your content on one page in an endless scroll, but what it does mean is reducing the amount of time it takes to fulfil the needs of your customers. Make your content easy to navigate, and intuitive to use, and you’ll be winning in the eyes of your customers. 

Do your research

Putting your customers first doesn’t mean doing what you think they want. Putting your customers first takes in-depth analysis into user behaviour. If you have a website already this means looking at user behaviour on your website in relation to which pages they spend the most time viewing, or which pages they can’t get enough of. If you don’t have a website, this means researching what other successful websites are doing and understanding the key components of web design that help to improve user satisfaction. 

Plan ahead

Once you have done your research, it’s time to start putting the building blocks together in the construction of your website. Any great website starts with great planning. Understanding precisely what you want to achieve from your website, and drawing out an exact framework of how you want your website to work, will save you a great deal of time, money and frustration in the long run. 

Investigate every single avenue

Once you think you’ve got your website all sorted. Go over it again. Get friends, co-workers, focus groups to look over your website plan. Don’t let any stone go unturned. Depending on what it is that you sell, or the service you provide, a website can be an extremely complex beast, so make sure you give it the respect that it deserves. 

If you follow these fundamental rules, then you are halfway there to creating an outstanding website. At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have a wealth of experience of working with brands to improve their websites. To find out how we can help you, visit our website design page or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 028 9507 2007.

How to choose colours and fonts that fit your brand

Choosing the right colours and fonts for your brand is about more than just going for something that looks kind of nice and appeals to you personally. And while this might seem like a fairly obvious statement to make, this is often a powerful driver behind why organisations and businesses opt for a particular font or colour. When it comes to what we like and what we don’t like, it can often be hard to get past our preferences and bias when considering the best direction to go in. It is important, however, to take ourselves out of the equation and to try to be as objective as possible when it comes to our brand design. 

Ask the right questions

Before you start any brand project, you should begin by asking some probing questions about what your brand represents and what direction you want to take it in. When considering fonts and colours that fit your brand, you should try to answer the following questions;

▪ Who do you want to appeal to?

▪ What kind of impression do you want to make?

▪ Where does your brand fit in the market?

▪ What makes your brand different or unique?

▪ What makes your brand important?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start to piece together a narrative or story behind your brand that can help you to drive branding decisions. 

Come up with some initial ideas

There have been numerous studies on the science and psychology behind how we perceive colours and fonts, and while no one person will perceive a colour or font in the same way as another, there are some definite trends worth considering colours and fonts for your brand. Is your brand exciting and innovative, warm and friendly and all about fun, or authoritative and secure? When choosing your brand colours and fonts, you should be aware of the basics behind audience perceptions and expectations. 

Blues can denote peace and serenity, but they can also represent security and authority. Banks often choose blue to reflect this. Yellow’s and Orange’s tend to be more warm and friendly, while purple is usually associated with a more luxurious product. Similarly, when considering your fonts, a bold straight typeface can reflect sturdiness and confidence, while a font that reflects more of a written word kind of style will come across as more personal, stylised and friendly. Choose a selection of options that you think best reflect the answers to your initial questions and start to draw up some initial ideas. 

Do your research

In order to put your objectivity into practice, you should conduct a thorough analysis of your brand and businesses and organisations that offer similar brands and services. When conducting this research, you should try and think of the merits and faults of your competitors and also how your brand fits into this bigger picture. How does the branding of your competitors and other brands reflect what they have to offer? Once you’ve drawn up some conclusions as to what you like and what you don’t like, you can start to piece together the best way to reflect your brand through the colours and fonts that you opt for. 

Try out a few different options

Being too narrow in your approach can result in narrowing the potential of what you have to offer. While your brand needs to be cohesive and consistent, it isn’t a static or singular entity. Your brand is always moving and changing, and you should be doing the same. Draw up a few different options and provide a rationale behind each option. Once you have a few options available, you can mix and match and getter a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we’ve helped numerous brands to come up with colours and fonts that not only look great, and make them stand out from the crowd, but that have also been ideally suited to the brand’s core values and identity. To find out more about how we can help you with your branding you can visit our brand design page, or get in touch by via our contact page or by calling 028 9507 2007.

You’re proud of the work you have produced over the years, and your design portfolio provides a little glimpse into a history of your professional working life. Almost like moving house, or having a clear-out of some of your belongings, it can be hard to let go of some the designs that have helped you clinch work and progress in your design career. However, whether you have been creating design work for two years or twenty, it is always worth regularly looking over your design portfolio and considering whether or not it needs a revamp. 

So how can you tell if your design portfolio needs a revamp? Here’s a quick rundown of questions to consider when deciding whether or not your portfolio could do with a refresh;

▪️How old are the designs in your portfolio?

▪️Is there a single solid narrative or theme to tie your designs together?

▪️Do the designs reflect the kind of work you want to get?

▪️Have your designs moved with the times?

▪️Is the work still relevant?

If the answer to any of these questions, is no, a long time, or I’m not sure, then it may be time to consider revisiting your trusty design portfolio. Here’s our top tips when considering whether or not your design portfolio could do with a revamp.

Have someone else take a look

With so many designs to choose from and with so much personal connection to your own work, it can sometimes be challenging to take a step back and be objective about what to include or leave out of your portfolio. Whether it’s a fellow designer or a friend, it is always worth getting a second opinion as to which work should make it into your design portfolio and what maybe shouldn’t make the cut. 

Take time to think about what you want

Habits can be hard to break. But to keep yourself and your design fresh, you should always try to think about what it is that you want from your work moving forward and how the work you have completed can help you to get where you want to go. If you’ve produced a great piece of design work, but it doesn’t quite fit with your current direction, then don’t be afraid to leave it out. 

Have a look at other design portfolios

While it is never a great idea to simply copy other designers, gathering inspiration is the cornerstone to any design project, and your design portfolio is no different. How does your portfolio match up to others out there? What are the techniques that other design portfolios use? What kinds of designs are they showing off, and what do they focus on? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself when considering whether or not now is for a refresh. 

Could the design of your design portfolio be updated?

As well as the content itself, understanding when the design of your design portfolio needs updating is also critical to ensuring that you are presenting your work to its full potential. The design of your portfolio is in many ways as important as the design work itself. If you have a tired or old looking design portfolio, or if its format is bland or formulaic, then you are missing an opportunity to show off what you can do. 

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have worked with numerous brands in helping them revamp their design portfolios. To find out more about how we can help you update your design portfolio, get in touch via our contact page, or by calling 02895072007.

Having a great design portfolio can be the difference between winning and losing at your next pitch. A sharp well thought out, and tailored portfolio will make you stand out from the crowd and can help you put your best foot forward when it comes to clinching that deal. A stale looking portfolio that doesn’t reflect the best of what you do, on the other hand, can be a real turn off for potential clients and investors. So, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Keep up to date

In the world of design and branding, if you aren’t constantly updating your design portfolio and what you have to offer, then you will quickly fall behind. What worked last year, last month, or last week, may not work today, so make sure you are always up to date with the latest design trends. Take inspiration from the great design examples around you and put your spin on your presentation, and you’ll be halfway to producing a fantastic design portfolio. 

Tailor what you have to offer

No one meeting or client pitch is the same. Your portfolio shouldn’t be a catch-all tool. While you’ll want your design portfolio to show the breadth of what you are capable of, you’ll also want to speak the language of your audience. Make sure you include projects that will be of specific interest, and for the projects that may not seem immediately relevant, think of the cross-overs between the projects you have completed and what you can offer that potential investor. 

Push the boundaries

Playing it safe is a sure-fire way to be forgotten in a hurry. Your portfolio is a reflection of the best of you and your craft, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and show what you can do. As a designer, you are already aware of what makes for great design, so make sure you don’t miss the opportunity of doing something exciting with your design portfolio. Consider how you might use different images, fonts, layouts or materials to bring that design work to life. 

Do exciting work

Having a nicely designed and professional looking design portfolio is great, but if the work you are presenting doesn’t live up to the smart and creative design of the portfolio itself, then you are unlikely to win your audience over. While finding exciting work to produce a great portfolio may seem like a chicken and egg situation (i.e. you need the portfolio before you can bag the work), there are some creative ways you can build up your portfolio, without actually having one to work with. Consider offering your services at a reduced cost, or free of charge to local charities, or sponsoring the design of your local youth football teams kit. Whatever it is, keep in mind that you also want something great to show off what you can do in return. Document your project, keep all of your design work drafts, and keep a log of everything you do. 

Kaizen Brand Evolution

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have worked with numerous organisations and business with their design and brand positioning. We also have an extensive design portfolio of our own, that we use to win over potential clients and use as a point of reference in support of those we work with to help them create their own distinctive design portfolios. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you create a winning design portfolio, then get in touch via our contact page, or by calling 02895072007. 

Branding can mean the difference between winning over your customers or losing them. It can be the difference between being known and unknown, trusted or put off. But why is branding such a powerful tool for your business?

Here’s our guide to the power of branding;

It reminds customers who you are

It represents your authority in a particular area

It breeds trust in you and your business

It makes a statement about what your business is about

It reminds customers who you are

As consumers, we are bombarded with choice on a daily basis. We can’t possibly remember every single brand that crosses our path, and neither can we recall every single brand when it comes to making purchasing decisions. We are all guilty of making snap purchases, or of buying without considering every angle or side to a story – and we do this for a number of reasons. As consumers;

We are time-poor

We simply don’t have time to research every option of every purchasing decision. We all lead busy lives and so we naturally gravitate towards the brands that will give us the quickest answers – even if that answer is simply whether or not you have heard of the brand in the first place. 

We are lazy

As technology gets more and more advanced, we no longer expect to have to put in any leg work whatsoever, so when it comes to our buying or purchasing decisions we expect only the very best customer experience and nothing less. Your branding is an integral part of that experience. 

We are impatient

If we don’t get what we want when we want it, we quickly become impatient. Your branding is there to remind your customers that you can solve their problems, wants and needs, with your product or services. 

Build a solid and memorable brand and you are halfway there to building a successful business. Whether your audience has never bought from you but are aware of your brand, or they have had contact in some shape or form with you (maybe to buy from you or to spend time in one of your stores), if they remember you, then you will be front of mind when it comes to that next purchasing decision. 

It represents your authority in a particular area

Great branding tells your audience that you are the go-to brand in your industry. It says that when it comes to that thing that you do so well, that you are the bees knees. While being amazing at what you do and having great customers service will of course in itself go a long way, there is nothing quite like a piece of great branding to back that service up and to really make you shine. Similarly, if your audience has never head of you, then they will never have the opportunity to find out how great you are.

It breeds trust in you and your business 

With authority comes trust. As in life, if something is familiar to us, then we are more likely to trust it. Rightly or wrongly, as consumers, we are programmed to take our trust signals from very brief encounters with brands. If you can ensure that you are remembered for all the right reasons then you’ll not only be able to persuade customers to buy from you, but also to trust you and become loyal to your brand. 

It makes a statement about what your business is about

Branding tells the world who you are and why what you do is important. The most powerful branding is uncompromising in its message and bold in its communication. Your branding is your chance to get behind what you do and feel proud about it.

At Kaizen Brand Evolution our team of experts specialise in helping business grow their brand through exceptional design and branding. To find out how we can help you develop your brand you can get in touch via our contact form or by calling 028 9507 2007.

The top brands all have a few key things in common.

They provide an exceptional customer experience at every possible customer touchpoint. They keep their employees happy and they have a memorable brand.

Whether it’s Starbucks, Nike, Apple or Google, the best brands refuse to be forgotten. But how do they achieve such a successful brand presence? What is it about the branding behind these that work, and why does it work? What do all of these successful brands have in common? The answer (at least in part) is their branding design process.

Great branding doesn’t happen by accident.

The most successful brands ensure that they make their branding integral to everything that they do. Creating great brand isn’t just a catchy slogan or a nice looking logo, it is the embodiment of everything that your business or organisation represents.

In this sense, your values must be reflected in your brand and vice versa. In other words, while it’s great to have a set of core values and beliefs that your brand stands for, you need to ensure that you live up to these values through your actions, whether this be externally with your customers, internally with your colleagues, or in any other aspect of day to day business life. 

So where does your branding design process come into this? Here’s our rundown of what makes for a successful brand design.

Understand who you were, are, and where you are going

The key to branding design process is in the term “process”. Your branding design is never something that stays still. Like your business, your branding should continuously evolve to meet new challenges and new opportunities. Your branding design process will need to have one foot in the present, and one a step or two ahead to ensure that you are never standing still. If you plan to expand in years to come, then you’ll want your brand to be able to move easily into this new identity without being held back.

Take a step back

With any branding design process, it’s important to take a step back and try and view your brand from another person’s point of view. Hold a workshop with some of your employees, or hold a focus group and ask them to tell you what they think of your brand. You may be surprised by the results when you ask others what they think. It can be very easy to be unknowingly biased when you are so close to your brand, so getting an objective perspective can help to develop and breathe new life into your brand.

Create a few different initial designs

Once you’ve come up with some conclusions about what your brand represents, where it fits in the market, and what the future holds, it’s time to start coming up with some designs to bring this brand vision to life. The colours, fonts, style and content of your design, will be determined by the conclusions you have come to about these questions. Again, as your branding design is a “process”, it helps to come up with multiple options and designs and to whittle it down from there to the designs that best fit your brand. 

Commit to your brand

This tends to be the hurdle that most businesses and organisations struggle at. Committing to your brand and your brand guidelines is easier said than done. Committing to your brand guidelines means abiding by the rules that you have decided upon no matter what business pressures or deadlines you need to meet. It means living and breathing your brand values and using your brand to compliment this by integrating it at every touchpoint possible, be it for customers or employees.

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have helped numerous brands with their design and branding, and in helping them to integrate this into their own internal processes. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you with your branding design requirements, then get in touch via our contact page, or by calling 02895072007.

Your brand is more than selecting a few colours and deciding upon a font that you like, your branding is the gateway to your business. It tells your audience and your customers who you are and what you stand for. Whether or not your customers decide that they want to spend their time and money on you, will always in some way be determined by the relationship that they have with your brand. In essence, your brand is all-important. 

So how do you go about growing your brand? Here’s our top tips on how to use branding to grow your business. 

Branding to be proud of

Before you can go about growing your business from your brand, you’ll want to make sure that you are not only 100% sold on the branding that you have decided on, but that it has been designed to function effectively across multiple different devices, platforms and print runs. Once you know for certain that your brand can be taken into the market without any issues then you can rest assured that you won’t have any hiccups, embarrassing mistakes, or unprofessional branding letting you down.  

Stick to the brand guidelines

Calling them “guidelines” can sometimes misconstrue the purpose your brand guidelines are intended to fulfill. They’re not really guidelines in that sense of the word at all, they are clear and unbreakable rules that can damage your brand perception if they are not kept to. As much as your brand is all important, it is also easily damaged if you are not strict about the ways in which it is used. 

Set out your objectives

Once you are both clear on your brand and how to use it, then you’ll want to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your branding. Are you running a lot of events? Do you want to get your name out in the local area? Would you like to improve your relationship with existing clients and customers? Do you want to keep front of mind with your existing clients or customers? Do you want to help your sales staff to seal the deal? How you choose to use your branding can help you in all of these areas. 

Get your name out there

With your objectives in mind and your key target audience to impress, it’s time to get your name out there (quite literally). Here’s a few examples of uses for your fantastic new branding;

Sales Collateral

Smart and professional looking branding is great for creating a good impression with your clients and customers. If you want to help your sales staff look the part when it comes to their sales pitch then branded Business Cards, branded Booklets & Brochures, and branded Presentation Folders, is a fantastic way to do this. First impressions are everything, and by ensuring that you have high quality sales collateral to offer to clients and customers you can rest assured that they are armed with everything they need to seal the deal. 

Advertising Materials

So you’ve just completed your rebrand and you want to show every man and his dog. And why wouldn’t you? Well, what better way to get that great looking brand out there than with branded posters, flyers, and plotted stickers? Investing in branded advertising materials is the perfect way to raise awareness of your new brand and to get people talking. 

Events

If you do a lot of events but never quite manage to do as well as you’d like, it might be that your branding is letting you down. Beautifully designed and professional looking events collateral can be the difference between success and failure at your next event. Branded events materials such as roll up banners and selfie frames are a great place to start. 

Branded Merchandise

Want to keep front of mind with your clients & customers? Why not try branded notepads & desk pads, or branded wall calendars. Providing your customers with high quality branded materials that they will use every day is a fantastic way to ensure they never forget about you. 

At Kaizen Print we specialise at making brands look brilliant. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you to grow your business with high quality branding and high quality branded materials you can get in touch via our contact form, or by calling us on 028 9002 2474.

How branding and marketing work together.

Branding is all important to marketing. Without a strong brand then any number of marketing activities can fail before they’ve even got off the ground. Great branding on the other hand, tells your audience that you know what you are doing and that your business is one that they can trust. Here’s our thoughts on how branding helps with your marketing efforts;

Raise Awareness

Without branded touchpoints, how is your audience supposed to know who you are? While your employees can put in all of the effort into providing the very best service possible (and making it a memorable experience for your customers in the process) ultimately you are still missing a trick if you don’t back this up with reminders at every turn of the business they are dealing with. Your audience is naturally visual and also naturally forgetful. With so many competing interests and distractions, you want to make sure that you give your business every chance of leaving an impression, in whatever form that takes. 

Remind your audience that you exist

Making your audience aware of your existence isn’t enough. It will take at least three viewings of your brand or advert for the average person to even register your existence. After that they will just as easily forget your existence if you don’t continually remind them why they shouldn’t and the value that your brand and business can bring to them. 

Tell your story through branding

You’ll want to remind your existing customers and prospective customers alike not only of your brand, but also what it stands for. Once you have gotten through to your audience, and once many of them have become customers, then is the time to use your branding to really win them over and make them lifetime customers and ambassadors of your brand. Truly great branding does a great deal of the leg-work for your support teams, to support them with your core values and remind customers why they shop with you. 

How do you remind your customers that you exist and why they should buy into you and your brand?

Make a list

In order for your brand to help in your marketing efforts, you’ll want to make a list of all the possible touchpoints your customers currently have with you and your business, and think about how you might be able to use branding within these particular touchpoints. If you regularly send mail to your customers for instance you’ll want to make sure that you brand any documentation with letterheads. For any advertising that you produce, you’ll want to make sure that it is supported with your logo and other distinguishing brand elements so that it is absolutely clear that it is your brand being advertised. Do you work with clients who invest a lot of time, money and energy with you and your brand? It may be worth spending a little extra and gifting them branded merchandise to say thank you, and to always be front of mind. 

Be high quality

When considering how branding can help with your marketing efforts, it’s also worth thinking about how poor branding can damage your marketing efforts. Your branding is your audience’s first impression of you and your brand. Your audience is time-poor and will make snap judgements based on how well you present yourself with your brand. If you do not make the grade then they won’t hang around to find out more and you will have lost your chance before you have even started. So as much as it is great to consider every touchpoint you have with your audience, and to get your brand out there in front of all of the right people, if you are doing all of this and you still feel like you are not reaping the rewards, then it may be that your branding itself needs to be looked at. 

Branding is all important to marketing. If you have a poor brand then your marketing is likely to suffer, and if you have a strong brand, then it can help in multiple ways that go beyond just bringing in leads to your business. Develop a strong brand and then get it out there for everyone to enjoy!

At Kaizen Print we are experts when it comes to your brand. We can help you with your design needs, and also with high quality cost-effective branded materials to help you really let your branding shine. To find out more you can get in touch via our contact form, or by calling us on 028 9002 2474.

Firstly, what is a pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a set of designed presentation slides used for the purposes of presenting information to an audience. Typically pitch decks are presented on platforms like Microsoft Powerpoint or Keynote by Apple. 

Who uses pitch decks?

Pitch decks can be used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes. If you have an important message that you need to get across to an audience then a pitch deck is where you need to start. This might be to propose a business plan or to pitch your services to a possible client.

Why is an effective Pitch Deck important?

While presenting an idea or service, it is not just the content of what you are saying that you will be judged on. Your audience will consider every part of your presentation, from how enthusiastic you are about what you are saying, to how confident you are in your pitching abilities, right through to how you are dressed and whether or not you make eye contact. Presenting the perfect pitch can be a minefield when it comes to ensuring you make the right impression, but by having a nicely designed and highly functional pitch deck to turn to, you can rest assured that you will be helped along the way. 

Pitch deck best practices

Don’t overload your slides

To win people over in a pitch you want your personality and enthusiasm to shine through. This isn’t going to happen if your audience is reading your slides rather than watching your Oscar winning performance. Your slides are there as a step-off point into the content or message that you are attempting to sell or convey. They are not there as a means of telling your audience the in’s and out’s of what you have to offer.

Don’t get bogged down in detail

Just as your pitch deck shouldn’t be overloaded with text, you should also avoid where possible too much detail. While you want to be specific and smart with what you are saying, you don’t want to be boring. Cutting out the unnecessary elements of your pitch deck will not only make it leaner and more efficient, it will save your audience from falling asleep in their notepads. Your pitch is there to be accurate, but also to inspire, the real detail can come in later. 

Be different

If there is a sure fire way to be forgotten as soon as you leave the room, it’s in not providing your audience with something different from what they have seen before. Now, you don’t have to put on a fire juggling act (although this might wake your audience up a bit), but what you should do is say something that excites your audience. Use your pitch deck to really get this difference or differential across to your audience. Use big bold visuals, take advantage of animated or video content, do something a little different with your design, surprise your audience!

Make it nice to look at 

You might have the best product or service in the world, you may be an exceptional presenter and thrive in the limelight of a presentation, but if your pitch deck looks like a dogs dinner then you’re unlikely to win over your audience. Now while, under exceptional circumstances you may be able to win over your audience in spite of your pitch deck, ultimately it is integral to your success, so ensuring that it is presented smartly is an absolute necessity. 

Now, following the first two points in this list can help a lot here. By ensuring you don’t overcrowd your pitch deck you’re already going some way to making your pitch deck design a little more pleasing on the eye. The next step is to think about how you visually present your ideas. Using well thought out images rather than words, for example, is one way you can both limit unnecessary text and make your pitch deck look great at the same time. 

Find out more

At Kaizen Print we have helped many many businesses from innovative start-ups to clients like Coca-Cola, Hellenic and Mirror Media Ireland with considered graphic design and engaging presentations. As part of our design process we seek to understand the real message you are attempting to communicate with your pitch deck, and then we go about creating beautiful looking pitch decks for you to wow your audience. If you’d like a printed version to hand out after your presentation, we can also provide an exceptionally high quality print service to support your digital presentation. To find out more you can visit our pitch deck design page, or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 02890022474.

Working with businesses across almost every conceivable market sector, we get to understand and learn from many of the most innovative business people across the country. We also get to work within Industries that support this development and innovation within each of these market sectors. Today we’re delighted to publicly launch the Whiterock finance website design and development that has been undertaken following our recent branding project for the organisation.

Who are Whiterock Finance?

Whiterock finance are Northern Ireland premier alternative funding provider for entrepreneurs and businesses focused on growth and require funding between £500k and £2 million. 

Located in Belfast, Whiterock Finance are a locally owned fund manager who have been operating in Northern Ireland since 2012. They understand NI business and what factors are needed for successful implementation of their deployed loans. Initially managing the £55m Growth Loan Fund, Whiterock Finance now has £115m of funds under management through three funds; the Growth Loan Fund, the Growth Loan Fund II (successor to the Growth Loan Fund) and the Growth Finance Fund.

With the launch of the Whiterock Finance Brand, the managers identified the difficulties in accessing suitable finance, and so they set up a Property and Commercial Finance Division to act as a relationship broker and help identify funding opportunities if ineligible for either of their Funds.

We’re in a great position to support the web design and development project for Whiterock Finance. Not only do we know the Whiterock Finance team through multiple past projects, but many of our customers are theirs also. Understanding the needs of entrepreneurs across Northern Ireland, we are able to tailor the website development to them.

Website Design Technical Elements

The Whiterock Finance website was built in WordPress. The ease of usability of the CMS is something that cannot be ignored. With many stakeholders contributing to the site, we need to supply and provide an easy access and management of the back-end. WordPress does this effortlessly. 

With a little focus on search engine optimisation, coupled with best practice user experience and development techniques, the Whiterock Finance website is designed and coded for the web today and in the future.

We’re absolutely delighted with the brand and website as a suite of assets for the Whiterock Finance team to grow their organisation and helping more of Northern Ireland’s entrepreneurs to reach their own business ambitions.

To start a branding or web development project with our team, please get in touch with us via the contact form or call us on 028 9507 2007.

A refresh of one of the world’s most recognised Antibody Humization brands with updates to the iconic antibody mark and a design language that allows the brand to live outside of the lab.

Fusion Antibodies is one of the world’s most trusted and leading Humization brands. Kaizen Brand Evolution has refreshed the Fusion Antibodies visual identity, reasserting and amplifying the brand’s visual expression. The project sought to re-assert the antibody logo, introduced many years before becoming a PLC, and to derive a typographic language that could communicate effectively. The refresh was initiated as part of a larger branding project that covered a full re-design of the Fusion Antibodies website, internal and external facing brand.

One of the primary goals was to reinvigorate the brand identity and optimise the brand for online customers across the world. Fusion Antibodies has a global reach that is viewed on multiple digital platforms and the identity refresh allows for this expansion and scale. The new visual identity brings strength and simplicity to the brand enabling Fusion Antibodies to voice their experience and services.

Kaizen Brand Evolution worked closely with on the project with senior management and stakeholders at Fusion Antibodies. The challenge for the designers was to translate results from a series of workshop answers created from multiple team members on what the business means to them. The designers had to strengthen a recognised brand for a global audience, crossing language barriers in a digital world.

The logo and secondary brands have been redrawn to thrive across brand areas on and offline, at different sizes and scales. The brand typography has been carefully resolved to be more legible and effective across contexts such as the Fusion Antibodies website on desktop and mobile, signage and conference stands. The graphic system along with the colour palette is flexible, engaging and highlights the personality of the brand. The pentagons extend through the applications, including brand stationery, signage, marketing material and the website. The supporting typography is set in the modern sans serif Gotham Pro.

Throughout the branding the use of gradients and pentagons allows information to breathe and be digested, this is especially useful on the website where content is plenty. Kaizen Brand Evolution developed the brand messaging, which was created to engage key clients and create a cohesive voice for services and future activity as the business grows. 

The team created the Fusion Antibodies website from the ground up, utilising creative elements for the refreshed brand identity and typographic system. The colour palette and pentagon shapes enhance the brand expression in digital platforms. Each page on the site has been meticulously designed to suit the content and talk to the customer on their level without any confusion. We sought out to create a useable, informative customer journey from enquiry to sale. The team worked closely with senior marketing at Fusion Antibodies in the customer journey, sitemap and pipeline. 

As Fusion Antibodies continues to evolve so does our creative relationship with them. Antibody Humization is an extremely important field for human kind and we are grateful to have created this important identity.

When it comes to graphic design, obviously the main tools you are going to be using are your software, for example, the Adobe Creative Cloud software package and your choice of machine, whether it is a laptop or desktop computer.

But, believe it or not, that isn’t the be all and end all as there are numerous accessories out there that can make your experience as a designer and the creations that you produce that much more impressive. Within this article, we are going to take a look at a few of what we think are the most important ones.

Graphics Tablet:

What exactly is a graphics tablet you ask? One of the best tools a designer or even just a digital artist for that matter can own. It’s basically a drawing pad that will connect to your machine, allowing you to draw like you would on paper. This makes it so much easier to produce your creations, especially those with curvature than with a standard desktop mouse, or worse still, a trackpad…

There are plenty of options out there for these, however personally we would recommend anything from Wacom. There cheapest will set you back a modest £50 while the most expensive is upwards of £2000, but is a machine in and of itself, coming with a 24” screen built in.

With these, you often get great software that will let you create entire pieces of art digitally such as Art Rage, Sketchbook and of course using the Adobe Illustrator software.

Sketch Books:

Where would any designer be without their sketchbook? That goes for even digital designers, as more often than not it is good to get a good sketch down on paper before bringing your ideas to life digitally. Obviously, there are loads of different types of sketchbooks out there, so it all depends on what it is you are working on for which one you choose. And the size is also something that you should consider. Do you plan on sitting down for a couple of hours to draw something out? Then something like A4 or A3 is the way to go. But if you are more akin to being out and about and sketching for 5-10 minutes at something you’ve seen, then maybe an A5 or A6 one is good for you. Again, it is entirely a personal preference, but a sketchbook is something we feel no designer should be without  

Colour/Pantone Books:

Knowing your colours is absolutely vital when you are a designer, as you need to be able to spot the slightest difference between one colour and the other. This is why it is handy to have a Colour Book or perhaps a set of Pantone colours to hand when you are creating. These will be a great help especially if you are working with a brand that can’t quite decide what their colour scheme should be or even if you are rebranding someone. With these to hand, you can beat determine what goes well with other colours and also what colours beat suit their mission statement as a brand. It will also help with the explanation of why those colours are chosen, as it is sure to be a question that is asked.

Note Pads:

Coinciding very well with the sketchbooks that we mentioned previously in this article, are Notepads. It’s the worst thing for a designer, when perhaps you are out and about or even if you’re in the office and come up with a great idea, but don’t have some paper to write it down. You say “It’s okay, I’ll remember it later” but you never do and half the time that idea is lost. This is where always having a good notepad handy is a great idea. It allows you to capture all of your great ideas and then implement them into your designs. If a writer is never without one, why should you be?

We hope that this article has not only provided some insight into the life of a designer away aside from their computer, but also helped those of you out there that might be looking to kick things off in their design career, and want to know where the best place is to start.  

I think it is safe to make the assumption that we now live in a digital world. When things like AR and VR are becoming more and more common in the real world, it’s hard not to notice. The way people shop has changed substantially over the past few years, with many purchases being made online. For business owners however, this springs the question; “If everyone is living online, how do I reach my customers?” The simple answer? Digital Marketing. You’re guaranteed to have heard of it, maybe even dabbled in it for a bit? But then maybe you thought, “I don’t understand this”. It’s true that within Digital Marketing there is a lot going on, but it doesn’t have to be confusing, in any way shape or form. In fact when utilised correctly digital marketing can and will be your best friend, allowing you to target customers you never thought you could, in ways you never thought you could. Within this article, we are going to look at some of the most important elements of digital marketing and what you need to be looking at to get started

Digital Marketing

• SEO
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click) 
• Email Marketing 
• Benefits of Digital Marketing

SEO

SEO is one of the biggest aspects of Digital Marketing, but first off what exactly is it? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is exactly what it sounds like; you are optimising your website for a search engine (this can be as many as you like). With it, you want your website to rank higher on that search engines web pages of results, so for example, if you start at the bottom of page 5 on Google, your aim should be to get to the first page and ideally become the number one search result. What this will do for your website and ultimately your business, is increase the amount of organic traffic that you receive, as usually, people don’t tend to go past the 1st or second web search page when they are looking for something. There are a few different platforms that will benefit from this such as your own website, blogs and the use of infographics. 

One element of SEO that is vital for it to work is that of keywords. Again, keywords are exactly what they sound like; the keywords that you want your web page or blog website to rank for. Keywords act as the link to what people are searching for, to the content that you are providing. The great thing about them, however, is that you can use short term keywords or long tail keywords, which are more small phrases than just words. These help your business to rank for more specific terms, which could be related specifically to the area or location that you are in. You must be careful with keywords however, as being too vague might lead to unwanted traffic and give you data – such as how many people have visited your website – which isn’t a true reflection. 

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the creation of your content to help with brand awareness, growing your website traffic or generating new leads and new customers. In most cases, content marketing usually falls under having a blog section on your website, like this one. Writing content that people want to read is only going to have benefits for your website, as they will come for that but find something else that they like the look of. Before you know it, you have gained a handful of new customers, who aren’t just visiting your site to view what’s on there, but buying products and using services if you happen to have them. Some of the best content, especially when you have products to sell, is that which will give the customers tips on how to use what you are selling. Therefore, they have two in one, both the product and handy content on how best they can put it to use. 

However, content doesn’t have to just be written, as podcasts are also a great source. Podcasts often allow you to tackle bigger subjects and talk about them for longer, as people are more likely to listen to something for longer than they will read something. What’s great about these, however, is that you can start by publishing on media sites, where consumers will find your content and then this will help drive them to your website. The only downside with podcasts is that they sometimes don’t allow for keywords to be included, which blogs do, so in turn, blogs might be better for driving the traffic of your website up. 

Social Media Marketing

We now live in a world that isn’t only digital, but a world where social media rules. What is one of the first things that we do when we find ourselves alone, perhaps waiting for a friend, or even just bored at night? We whip out our phones or tablets and get straight onto Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. So as businesses, why not utilise this for your own success? Target the platforms where the customers are, not where they were. 

Social Media marketing is great for increasing brand awareness and driving traffic, especially if you are a smaller company who has just started out. The ease of access that people have to it means talking to your customers is a breeze, instead of emailing back and forth. As well as this, however, all of the major social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) allow you to boost or sponsor the content that you put on there, meaning you can pay to increase the reach that it has. Within this, you can also target specific groups of people, industries, careers, even hobbies, meaning your keyword research for your SEO will come in handy here too. 

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

PPC or Pay-Per-Click is a way of generating traffic to your website by paying for it, instead of organically the way the previous forms of digital marketing have shown. Basically what you are doing is paying a publisher each time someone clicks on your ad, for example from the top of a Google search page. This is called search engine advertising and is one of the most popular forms of PPC, as when it is done correctly the amount of traffic that you get from this will greatly outweigh the amount of money you are spending to pay the publisher. 

With PPC, keyword research also comes in very handy as they can be put to use when creating the campaigns and advertisements that you wish to put out. However, again they need to be specific in some cases, especially if your business isn’t selling to a niche market.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is one of, if not the most popular form of marketing in the current landscape and there are many benefits that come from it. For one, it allows you to see real-time results and data. For example, if you put an ad in a newspaper you don’t have any way of telling how many people have actually viewed your website. However, when you put out an ad digitally the analytical software that is available allows you to track everything about who is coming to visit your website, such as their gender, their age, where they are from and what page they have clicked on. This date, therefore, allows you to manage and change campaigns as you go, targeting more or different groups based on the data that you have collected. 

Digital Marketing is a fantastic way to market for any business, especially as I have mentioned due to the digital world that we are living in. It is something that we are very focused on here at Kaizen Brand Evolution and we hope that from this article you have a better sense of what is involved and how it can help you. 

Many of our clients have historically know our business for its brand development projects. However there are a large proportion of our clients who task Kaizen Brand Evolution with the day to day graphic design Belfast services that keep their marketing and sales departments functioning effectively.

What services do graphic designers in Belfast offer?

On any given day we could be creating brand presentations, leaflet design, menu design or any other number of projects for almost every conceivable industry. Depending on how you originally came across Kaizen, you may not know all the services we provide, so today we’re introducing some of the most popular graphic design projects we have recently undertaken:

Leaflet Design – Many proclaim that print is dead, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The volume of print is of course in decline, but this has seen a rise in more targeted leaflet designs and campaigns. We work with your team to identify the best leaflet design for your campaign objectives.
Booklet Design – From magazines to annual reports, sales presenters and training manuals, we design booklets and brochures for all manner of business sectors.
Logo Design – Some of logo projects are not suited to a full brand experience. This could be a sub-brand within an already established company or a start-up identifying new markets and want to do this in a professional manner. Whatever your project, our logo design team can help position your logo in the correct manner for your business opportunity.
Poster Design – Indoor posters or outdoor posters such as Billboards and Adshels. Whatever your requirement our designers are extremely well versed in creating impactful poster design to engage your audience.
Social Media Design – Crafting a considered Social Media presence is critical to many brands who want to grow their business online. With a firm understanding of your business and target market, we are experts in social media design.

Working with your graphic designer

We understand that as a business you may not have a regular requirement for graphic design and so today we’ve put together our top tips for briefing your graphic designer. We’re always here to help and if you have any questions at all, please just ask.

Briefing

The single greatest input you can provide in the graphic design process is a strong brief. Consider the “Who, What, When, Where and Why” of the design and write down clearly the focus of the project.

Quality Assets

“You only get out what you put in” – these words couldn’t be truer and so providing high quality imagery, logos and proofread text is critical to creating a perfect design. Our job as designers is to carefully craft the design and tease out the information that will directly impact the projects’ success.

Working with us

As expert graphic designers in Belfast, whatever your project, we would be delighted to chat to you about the opportunities we at Kaizen Brand Evolution can help with. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland we help local and national businesses meet their ambitions through considered graphic design.

To get in touch with our studio, please call us on 028 9507 2007 or use the contact form.

When making your way into the world of graphic design or when working with a graphic designer on a project, one of the most important elements that you will come across is that of Typography. Typography is stated like this: 

the style and appearance of printed matter.the art or procedure of arranging type or processing data and printing from it.

Wikipedia

It is vital within graphic design, as it can often be the centre piece of the design, helping to draw in the attention of the reader before they begin to notice what else is going on. But there are also so many different things you can do with Typography, from the way it looks to how it is used in conjunction with the actual graphics that have made it into the design. 

However, while typography is great and does so much for a design, it is also important to understand what is being said, so that as a designer you understand what client wants and vice versa, as a client you understand what a designer is saying to you. So within this article, we are going to take a look at the in’s and out’s of typography, looking at some of the popular terms that are used so that when the time comes, you are ready. 

Typography

• Font/Typeface
• Serif
• Sans Serif
• Why Typography is vital in Design

Font/Typeface

When designers started to consciously put letters and numbers together to help accentuate the design that they were creating, a font and a typeface were two separate elements. Previously the Typeface was the specific design of the letters, numbers and symbols that were being used and Font was used to refer to the size of that typeface. However, they are now used interchangeably by designers the world over, which makes things a lot easier for those that don’t know!

Serif

When a designer is talking about a serif, they are talking about the short line or the stroke that is seen extending from the open ends of the letters. These typefaces or fonts would normally be seen in corporate branding, as it gives off an older, more sophisticated kind of vibe.

Why Typography is vital in design

When you see a new poster, flyer or billboard out and about, what is one of the first things that catches your eye? The type. It’s often right where it needs to be and saying exactly what is appealing to you. But this isn’t just pot luck or an accident. A designer has meticulously thought about what typeface to use, where to place it, how big it needs to be and the colour it is going to be, all before actually writing what is going to be said. And trust us, writing the content is the easy part! When working on a design, whether it is a one-off flyer design for a club or bar, or something larger like a re-brand for a business, the typography that goes with their branding is incredibly important. It needs to be something which catches the attention of the reader but also matches what the company is trying to say themselves. For example, if a design is being completed for a law company the typeface that is chosen isn’t going to be something that you might find in relation to a tech company, as it wouldn’t fit. It will be something simple, but serious and professional, more than likely a Serif Typeface, helping to get across the message that they won’t mess about and will get the job done. It needs to match what or who it is being used for so that it makes sense to the readers. 

Typography is a vital design element that a lot of people might overlook and not realise just how much it does for the overall design. Hopefully however, this article has given you a little more insight into the importance of it and made you a little more aware of what a designer might be talking about. 

During my final year studying BDes Hons Graphic Design and Illustration at Belfast School of Art, I was given the opportunity to work part time at Kaizen Brand Evolution. I finished my degree and completed my end of year show at the start of June and I have been working full time at Kaizen Brand Evolution ever since! It is amazing to complete my studies and start a full time design job before I have even graduated. I have always been a jack of all trades when it comes to art and design (I still love fine art too!) but I realised I wanted to specialise in branding when I completed my placement year in a branding studio – so a year later to get a full time job in branding, is a dream come true. The great thing about KBE is the team, I fitted in and was welcomed straight away – they even gave me a photo of my cat Pumpkin in a frame to put on my desk! (you can follow Pumpkin on Instagram!)

In the past month I have got stuck in, working on a very wide range of projects. I have got to work with big clients and small local businesses. I have even had the opportunity to speak to and meet clients myself which is something I have never experienced before – it’s also something I could not have imagined myself being able to do this time one year ago!

One of the highlights so far for me has been my illustration skills being recognised and put to use. I got to work with Ryan, our Design Director, on the Down Royal logo update, seeing this rolled out in the Ulster Tatler and on Billboards around Belfast has been incredible!

At KBE each persons skills are recognised and you are given the opportunity to grow in any area you choose! For me, at the moment I am just developing my design skills in general – so I get to work on a bit of everything!

One thing I really enjoy is getting to be involved in research and brand concepts for clients, I think this is an amazing process – to design a brand’s logo, language, imagery and work it up to be presented. I think it is a great thing for me to be involved in as I learn a lot from the process every time I do it! The results that come from branding for businesses is eye opening – branding really does work wonders!

While working at KBE I have also got to work with our sister company Kaizen Weddings, so I have designed a lot of wedding stationery which has been great, I have even seen some of my designs get foil blocked! Recently I went to the Quirky Wedding Fair with Kaizen Weddings which was great because I got to help design our stand and help guide future brides on their stationery needs!

I think working here full time for a month has helped me develop as a junior designer already. I get to be involved in a lot of projects, it is such a great privilege for a junior to be trusted with work (I do get great guidance from the other designers!). It is great to work with people who inspire me to become a better designer and who are involved and up to date in the design world! At Kaizen Brand Evolution it is so important to attend design events and keep up to date with design trends, so that we are constantly evolving as designers (no matter how long we have been designers for!)

I look forward to the future and seeing where my journey with KBE will take me! By future I mean next week – I can’t wait to see what the next branding project is!

Evolution is defined online as ‘the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth’ or ‘the gradual development of something.’ It is a term that we associate perhaps with ‘the evolution of man’ more often but it is such a true definition of how a business should act when faced with the likes of competition, a change in the market, or after years of established trading. Evolution is the only way to keep your product or service relevant to the ever-changing business landscape. A way of recognising how evolution is already a staple of your business is to look at the changes you’ve made since launch, whether it’s a new product, a new warehouse or a new member of staff, all evidence that your business has evolved. Brand evolution is paramount with such changes. For example maybe you’re entering a new market or trying to win a substantial tender with potential clients, how does your brand communicate what you offer right now?

Case in point – Guinness. In 2016 Guinness evolved their harp icon:
Guinness has used a harp in its branding since 1862. The icon is based on the Brian Boru harp, a famous instrument created in honour of the Irish king who fought against Norman invasion in the 11th century. The instrument was adopted as the emblem of the Irish Free State in 1922 and has featured in Irish heraldry for several centuries.
The redesign sees the brand move from a flat symbol to a handcrafted one with depth and shading. The phrase Estd. 1759 now appears on the harp’s sound board (its straight edge), in type inspired by metal-stamped lettering imprinted on ironwork at the Guinness Storehouse.
The instrument also features wavy lines representing the River Liffey which flows through Dublin (a similar device was used on early labels as an anti-counterfeit measure). A new word mark hand-drawn by Barney, meanwhile – who created the famous British Rail logo and drew an earlier version of the harp in 1968 – combines elements of letterpress type and lettering from John Gilroy’s famous posters for the brand.

The new Harp Icon gives the brand a new lease of life, reflecting how cleverly and beautifully a brand can be brought into this century. This brand evolution highlights the importance of continually moving forward and not becoming static. Brand evolution such as an identity refresh or brand audit can shift the growth potential of a business, communicate with new customers and re-set the connection of long-standing clients.

Investing in your brand is as important as investing in a new salesperson or fleet on the road. Once a salesperson has left the meeting or hung up the phone what are they left with? – Your brand. Your brand stays with the client and is selling your business when you’re gone; it’s what the client is talking about when you’re not in the room. Investing in keeping your brand identity, marketing material, stationery, photography or website up to date are invaluable to staying ahead of your competitors and continually communicating with the right customers. Small incremental changes, just like the re-draw of your icon (Guinness) can pave the way for your business reaching it’s goals. An essential point of evolving your brand is adapting to new technologies, does your website hold up in 2017? How does it look in mobile? With the ever-evolving mediums of brand communication you must ask yourself, does my brand communicate effectively across the outlets that my customers are using? This is where we step in.

At Kaizen Brand Evolution we create and evolve market-leading brands, businesses that continue to grow and develop their brands. If you feel like your brand is in need of a refresh just get in touch and we’ll be happy to prepare a strategy that is bespoke to your clients and market.