All Posts in Branding

March 3, 2023 - Comments Off on Salon Savvy

Salon Savvy

It’s a good hair day.

“A good hair day is the most amazing day ever!”, to quote the Urban Dictionary. Helping clients have more of them is the raison d’être for elle.b Salon’s Central location in West Denver. When the award-winning studio added skin, nail and brow services to complement their cut, color and extensions expertise, however, the word salon no longer seemed enough. EnZed Design was invited to collaborate on renaming the enterprise to communicate its expanded offerings and distinctive style. (A savvy decision, if we do say so.)

The new moniker, elle.b Savvy, was directly inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit and creative genius of the owners, founder and master stylist Lindsay Guzman and Dani Tavbin, COO. We collaborated with them on the renaming, then created custom patterns to brand their new space. Here are the highlights. 

The starting point was Lindsay’s vision for rehabbing a character-rich 1930s building. A true tastemaker and stylist beyond hair, she worked with local artist Birdseed Anthony* to craft the exterior look, landing on horizontal stripes in green hues. We worked with these repeating lines and art deco curves of the architecture to create a suite of patterns for the interior elements and signage. 

Branding with a bang. 

Hunter, Gold and Blush from the brand palette are evident in the exterior paint and lettering and the perforated steel dividers defining stylist stations. The panels feature a custom pattern that was routed into the steel with a CNC, then powder-coated in Blush for a sleek finish. The Pincurls pattern, inspired by the capsule-shaped windows and green stripes, graces the doors for branding, adds a degree of privacy, then climbs the interior walls to define each space.

While Lindsay’s interior design set the tone, the patterns and signage pulled elle.b Savvy branding through the entire building, helping to realize her big picture vision. We thoroughly enjoyed brainstorming together and springboarding off the ideas and talents of these creative clients. Hair extensions are one of their strong suits … becoming an extension of an internal team to bring a project over the top is one of ours. 

*Worth a deeper look: Civic-minded artist Anthony Garcia, Sr. and the nonprofit BirdSeed Collective he co-founded. 

February 10, 2023 - Comments Off on French Diamonds & French Toast

French Diamonds & French Toast

“I do,” was my reply when Denny’s creative services popped the question: Do you design wallpaper? 

I’d just completed a custom pattern and a dozen or so templates for the corporation’s to-go boxes, cups, bags, and seals. This new request was a special invitation — to design the wall covering for their Las Vegas Wedding Chapel* on the iconic strip. 

With unbridled enthusiasm, I reviewed the creative brief. My task was to marry icons from the bride and groom t-shirts with the iconic French diamond shape housing the restaurant’s logo. A childhood of road trips and a decade of designing wrapping papers groomed me for this very moment. 

Initially, I presented seven designs featuring a bow tie, diamond gem, and French diamond, adding some additional symbols of love and location. They selected two motifs to see in a variety of color ways that complemented the new restaurant interior materials, then settled on one design. We further looked at color and scale with mock ups of the wallpaper in the space. Denny’s creative team selected a tone-on-tone print on a pearlescent paper. 

The project was a grand slam. This background will be photographed behind many happy couples, cutting into their wedding pancake stack and linking arms to sip mimosas. 

Elvis may have left the building, but the wallpaper is here to stay.

Thank you, thank you very much.
— Helen

*Yes, chain restaurant weddings are a thing. Rate the best “cake” - post below!

P.S. Need a custom pattern for your project? Check out our Custom Collections offering.

January 27, 2023 - Comments Off on “I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

“I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

Custom patterns can bring your brand fashion forward.

Does your logo deserve a bigger, better sense of style? Whether making an online or in-person appearance, a brand requires a suite of assets — or wardrobe — to differentiate the organization it represents. Brand guidelines typically cover the basics, such as logo colors, fonts, maybe photo style and copy tone — the white t-shirt and jeans of marketing. But maintaining a powerful presence by ensuring visual continuity is far more complex – not unlike fashioning the signature look that makes a day-to-evening transition effortless. 

By providing my clients more options, customized options, they’re able to rapidly claim brand recognition beyond the obvious. Custom branding patterns, when designed as an integrated part of a client’s branding assets, add the flexibility to “mix and match” with ease. This creates brand recognition with variety — the difference between wearing a uniform, and choosing classics with the added flair of accessories. Plus quality branding begets quality products. A well-crafted brand communicates success subliminally, if not overtly. If great care has been put into presenting information, then it must be valuable. 

Case in point. When we revitalized the FCCS brand, part of the process was creating a suite of patterns that ranged from “boldly forward” to “background conversation.” The client knew a range of applications would be needed, even though specifics were still being determined. A child brand was born the same year, with the launch of their Accelerate Center. It, too, required patterns uniquely its own. Cross-over patterns worked to maximize flexibility, unify presentation and link the brands into a cohesive, powerful presence.

A suite of brand patterns and complementary assets can also work wonders to tie everything together. Patterns can grab attention and quietly accent. So if your logo is the cashmere of your brand, the pattern serves as the designer shoes. The gemstone ring, the platinum watch, and the diamond earrings appear via brand devices — bullet point, page divider, and quotation marks. 

The upshot? The ensemble is everything. Add a surface pattern collection to your brand wardrobe and brand recognition soars. And you’ve taught a master class in style.

***

What’s your go-to wardrobe piece? Comment below.

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. — Helen

January 19, 2023 - Comments Off on Family Tree: Branching Out 

Family Tree: Branching Out 

Creating a surface pattern collection from one central design.

It began with a single leaf. My contribution to a calendar promoting Chicago’s Newberry Library debuted in the month of April, then went on to become much more. The initial task was to represent the library’s Genealogy Floor by creating an image encompassing multiple American heritages with their global origins. I chose to design a tribute leaf for each country or culture based on the motifs and colors I’d researched, then loosely assembled them to form our nation’s Family Tree.

Fast-forwarding to 2022: As the creative brief provided by the client had been limited to representing select continents, I expanded on the original tree by adding new leaf designs reflecting indigenous art from Latin America, Asian Pacific nations, and New Zealand, where I was born. The leaves were arranged into a repeat, while keeping the same loose placement on the bough. 

Can you match up the leaf to the motif? Comment below with the leaf letter and motif name.

A budding new collection. Next, I challenged myself to design to a full collection of surface patterns, iterating on the single-leaf motifs. I chose a shape or section in each motif to craft new, seamless repeats and simplified the initial color palettes. The new motifs turned out to be very different from one another, yet an umbrella aesthetic holds them together. 

Next, I toyed with the original motif as a repeating pattern in a new colorway — a soft palette for my bedroom, including a duvet and sheet set, plus an accent pillow. These designs came out of that motif and color palette.

A pattern collection is akin to a family, where the siblings are unique while the parents’ genes are expressed differently in each. I think of my brother at 6’4” with auburn hair, freckles and fair skin, and me standing a foot shorter with an olive complexion and dark curls. Eyes, toes, nose. Fun, puns, buns.

Seems evolution is its own artform.

***

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. — Helen

June 10, 2022 - Comments Off on Is Your Website Rigged to Win?

Is Your Website Rigged to Win?

Welcome “your people” with an easier opt-in.

I’m a skipper now. I earned four American Sailing Association (ASA) certifications on my recent vacation floating on a 42-foot catamaran across  the Sea of Cortez, puffer fish hovering in the shallows below. I learned the ropes (aka sheets), how to anchor, and rescue a human overboard, which was actually a personal flotation device that got a little rowdy. 

I love learning new things. That’s why I signed up for B-School, a program by Marie Forleo, to help me focus on the next chapter of my business. I took the six-week online course to gain clarity, purpose, and a plan. I ended up also gathering some very simple, implementable action items for myself and my clients. As a graphic designer who supports marketing directors and small business owners looking for branding, marketing strategy and content development, I expected to sharpen some skills, but the higher-value takeaways truly surprised me. 

The first thing I will be doing— and recommending to all my clients — is to make a very small website change that will make a big difference. How big? 4400% big.

Make joining your mailing list easy and obvious 
Apart from “Save X%” pop-ups on retail sites, most “join” calls-to-action are relegated to the footer and Contact Us page on a website. We use SEO to pull people to our site and then get all shy once they arrive! If we’re intent on growing a mailing list of qualified prospective clients, aka “our  people,” ensuring visitors sign up is paramount. After all, they’ve navigated to your website because they want to hear what you have to say, right? (Call me Captain Obvious. I am ASA certified.)

Opt-in to owning it
When you think about opt-in or permission marketing, it’s like owning vs renting. Owning your house pays you back over time, and you can paint the wall purple if you want. The same is true with marketing — you want to own your media and control your message and branding within its walls. “Capture” people who value and want to pay for what you offer. How? Just ask. That’s it.

Well, sort of. Some may be thrilled to hear from you, but if your inbox is as full as mine, you need a really good reason to join another list. So, give it to them. Offer an exchange — something of value for their email — and be clear about how often they’ll hear from you. This gives them a nibble of what you offer to experience it directly. Your opt-in offer can be a download, percentage off, free trial, sample, etc. Keep it simple and — most importantly — thank them when they join. 

“We use SEO to pull people to our site and then get all shy once they arrive!”

On-the-fly fishing
SEO, press releases, advertising, affiliate links, and social media are the focus of many. But social media is passive marketing — people have to work to find you. Most small companies relying on social media for growth will be swimming with the puffer fish. Why? You don’t own the medium. Meta owns many platforms, so they make the rules and change their algorithms often. This, and the growth of ads, make connecting with your followers ever tougher.

Coming aboard
According to B-School research, email marketing is the most qualified medium with the highest control and return. Email boasts a 4400% return on investment.1 A reader is 6x more likely to click through from an email to your content than from a tweet 2 and 5x more likely to read your email message than your post on Facebook.3 If you're selling a product, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), and people will place an order that’s 3x larger in response to an offer on email vs social media.4 

The Why is simple: They signed up to hear from you and you deliver. Consistent communication builds trust, relationships, and community. They get to know you. People do business with people. Make it easy for your people to be part of your circle.

“Email boasts a 4400% return on investment.”

Taking the helm
During our Mexican sailing adventure, each student had their day as skipper. On Wednesday, I was in charge of plotting a course, choosing a heading, and instructing the crew on trimming the sails to capture the wind. The teaching captain was there to guide me. In that spirit, I’m captaining my own ship starting with these four action items I’ll share with you:

  1. Create an opt-in offer that rewards those who trust me with their email. 
  2. Add an obvious “join” call-to-action on my website.
  3. Set up a thank you message that delivers the offer.
  4. Craft a 6-month plan to send out interesting content once per month. 

Yes, part of Step 4 is writing a blog about my sailing adventure. Join my email list and I’ll let you know when it’s ready. (See what I did there?)  Jibe ho!

If you would like EnZed to craft a plan for optimizing your email list opt-in, contact Helen today.

References: 1. Data & Marketing Association  2. Campaign Monitor  3. Radicati  4. McKinsey

August 27, 2021 - Comments Off on Be a designer. (Or… just look like one.)

Be a designer. (Or… just look like one.)

As creative software becomes more accessible through subscriptions such as Adobe Creative Cloud and online platforms like Canva, clients now have the power to create better looking materials to promote their ideas and services. While most Marcom professionals and savvy small business owners can tackle the technical side of communications capably, there’s a level of finesse that only comes from formal design training and years of practice. (This is where having experienced creative partners in your corner can make a major difference in branding and marketing impact.) But by applying some basic design principles to your presentations, proposals and social media posts, you can elevate your messages and your brand. 

Here are five tips to help when you can’t hire a graphic designer.

1. Choose your color palette. Keep it to three colors, plus one or two lighter hues as backgrounds for sidebars (e.g. orange type in a cream sidebar). Select a dark color for legible type, a brighter color for headlines, and a medium color for subheads, pull quotes, etc. Keep in mind universal color meanings, too: red can be aggressive and signal stop or a warning; green is softer, optimistic and can indicate something is eco-friendly, etc. 

One of my go-to combinations: Navy headlines, lapis blue subheads, black body copy, dark gray sidebar copy on an ice blue background. I’ll have more ideas on great color combos with palette examples to share in a future article.

2. Choose your typefaces. Only two. Select a sans serif family (e.g. Helvetica) and a serif family (e.g. Garamond) and use them together to create a hierarchy of information. A hierarchy is like an outline — it indicates how you read through the information. Headlines, subheads, pull quotes, sidebars, tables, and captions are typically in a type hierarchy. 

Within each typeface, you have many fonts so you really can use 6-8 styles in a document. (Whew!) A typeface is a family, such as Garamond, but a font is a specific style (aka weight or cut), such as Garamond Bold. Think of it this way: typefaces are to an album, as fonts are to songs on an album. 

Example of a type hierarchy: 

  • Headlines are 24 point Helvetica Light
  • Subheads are 12 point Helvetica Bold
  • Body copy is 9 point Garamond Regular
  • Tables use 8 point Helvetica Regular & Bold
  • Pull Quotes are 12 point Garamond Italic

In a future article, I’ll cover why you should limit the use of ALL CAPS, how to select typefaces that communicate your brand personality, and show you some great hierarchy examples that are easy to implement on your own.

4. Keep it simple. If everything “pops,” all you have is a bowl of popcorn. So figure out your hierarchy and make sure that you present the information in a way that your audience will understand it. Use imagery, color and copy to draw the reader through the material or focus on a single message you want them to remember most. 

“Less is more” was Mies van der Rohe's mantra that defined the modernist aesthetic and it can define your presentations too. Avoid being tempted to use all of the effects the creative software offers because it’s fun. Choose one effect that you think adds to the communication and stick with it throughout the document as part of your hierarchy. Consistency is key to a good looking and user-friendly communication piece.
I’ll address common graphic mishaps and how best to use imagery and graphics for a consistent, branded look throughout your documents in a future article.

4. We love alignment. Set your margins and stick to them. Start your copy at the same point on the page from the top and left edges. Maintain the styles of  your headlines, subheads, and body copy (size and leading, aka line spacing) throughout. Don’t change the sizes to fit content, rather edit the content to fit the space. If it doesn’t slim down enough, then add a page.

Avoid flush-right and justified text as it is less natural to read and can often create awkward white spaces (called rivers) flowing through the copy. I’ll discuss flush left and centered type options, plus how to draw the eye through bullet points and positioning of elements, plus header and footer options in a future article.

5. Present one idea at a time. Pick the most important take away that you want your audience to remember and make it the most clear and prominent item on the page or post. If you’re presenting a deck, you really just need a couple of top-level bullets as an overview, not a full sentence that they are reading as you speak it. Place the minimum amount of content you need to get your idea across on the first slide. Then use a page to further explain each item individually. People will listen to you more and understand better if the page is minimal.

Choose imagery to further communicate your ideas, not just fill space. Also, give yourself and your audience a place to rest their eyes between large blocks of information. They will appreciate the visual break and let the information they just absorbed sink in. I’ll provide insights into how to use photography and other imagery to maximize comprehension in a future article.

One last pro tip, never, ever use Comic Sans unless you’re creating a comic book.* Designers everywhere will thank you. 
— Helen C Young, owner & creative director, EnZed Design, LLC

*Curious why? Search “Why do designers hate Comic Sans?”