Logos we designed for IPRO and Koinonia have been selected for inclusion in TradeMarks USA a logo competition and digital resource developed by legendary designer and author David E. Carter — one of the founders of the American Pixel Academy, and serves at its Executive Director. Carter is a multiple Emmy® and Clio® winner, and has a long history of media innovation. He is the author of 100+ books on logo design, serves as editor of the Creativity Annual, and is the founder of the Telly® Awards.
IPRO
IPRO is one of the nation’s largest independent, not-for-profit health care consulting organizations. The logo was developed to express the breadth of services and national reach of IPRO which has outgrown its roots as a small county-based organization. Click here to see more.
Koinonia
Koinonia is a center for spiritual renewal and leadership development, providing retreats, camps and conferences for families, youth, adults and church groups.
Langton Cherubino logos win TrademarksUSA competition
Your website is key to social media success
We know what media is and we know what marketing and networking mean, but what is the “social” part that is so revolutionary? Anthony Bradley, from Gartner Research, defines it like this: “Social media is a set of technologies and channels targeted at forming and enabling a potentially massive community of participants to productively collaborate.” Social media becomes the place where people connect, relate and communicate which in turn affects their perspectives, judgments and choices in how they spend, save or invest money and ultimately influences who people choose to advise and manage their money.
Website as primary tool
Your website is still your most important communication tool. It serves as the portal to your company, it’s services, it’s people and it’s mission. “You shouldn’t be committing staff to Facebook if you don’t have a decent website home page or can’t email supporters,” says Katya Andresen, COO of Network for Good. If your website is not inviting and engaging your clients and prospects, how can you expect your social media tools to do any differently? The way that you communicate with your audience is how you will express your brand in the tools of social media, the website is still the most powerful tool in your repertoire. Get the website right, and the Facebook Fan page is a lot easier to build.
1. Making it Mobile
The website should be redesigned or maximized for smart phones. These devices are now the primary mode of communication for most of your clients. Making it mobile does not just mean making it smaller. You need to re-think the workflow of the website, minimize tabs, shorten links and offer content in a smart and accessible manner.
2. Blogging with comments
Beside making your content relevant, you need to offer frequent updates, new perspectives, and reactions to real world events. Many of this can be done on a blog. Your blog can archive commentary and link stories and demonstrate your unique approach to investing. You can add new blog posts very quickly and easily offer new content on your website. This is where you may add a “comments section” and begin real dialogue with clients and prospects.
3. Linking to Social Marketing Tools
Add ShareThis or Add This plug-ins to your website and blog so users may promote your website using their own social networking tools. For your email blasts use a social media link that adds a tiny little tag that simply grabs your email’s subject line and creates a tiny URL using bit.ly to share a copy of your email to the world. Social media links help people share and open emails more often. The “Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report” found that email messages including a social sharing option generated 30% higher click-throughs than emails without any social sharing links. Messages with three or more sharing options generated 55% higher click-throughs. Emails with a Twitter sharing option returned 40% higher click-throughs than messages without any social media links.
4. Using Video and podcasts
You should begin using video clips and audio clips (or podcasts) from press appearances, or conferences where you or one of your executives are speaking. Post them on your blog or on your website. A simple Flip camera for $149 makes videos that you may instantly upload to your computer, edit and post. See our first Flip video.
5. CMS-Based
Your website should have a Content Management System like WordPress or Drupal that allows you to easily update the content on your website and blog…and to accept comments and feedback from your users. The days of static brochureware websites are over.
Conclusion:
Your brand encompasses the personality of your company, products or services. You must build your brand across all platforms and be especially aware of how your website relates to your Facebook page, your Linked-in profile as well as the language of your Twitter feed. Learning how to best use the new tools of social media may enhance your public image, but if handled poorly these same tools may dilute your brand and confuse your audience. Start getting “social” by getting your website right.
Making it Right as Rain, Part 1
Meet Sarah Dale Olvera, founder of Right as Rain. Sarah started a nonprofit where artisans donate their artwork to raise funds for people who encounter unexpected tragedies. See the video (at right.) This summer we will begin sketching new logo concepts and we’ll share our progress in a series of brief videos.
Web vs Webb wins best of Web
Play the game that proves you are a baby-boomer!
Our interactive game won a 2010 American Web Design Award from Graphic Design USA. The award celebrates the power of well-designed websites and online communications. Web vs Webb is a game based on the style of an old-fashioned quiz show that challenges players to distinguish between words from the “World Wide Web” and phrases that might have been uttered by Dragnet’s Jack Webb. Play the game here.
Color My World.
Choosing by Color
The colors we use define us, from our walls and clothes to our cars and pets. How do we decide what colors things should be? Hans Hofmann said, “The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.” What if we used color to help us make our decisions? Here are examples of websites and apps that let Color make the decisions for you.
Etsy.com
Etsy sells crafts from independent artists around the world and they’ve developed a color system that lets you pick out a color, then see what craft is available in that color.
Idée Labs
Perhaps you’d like to pick your images by color? The Multicolr Search Lab is a part of Idée Labs’s technology playground for visual search. With the Multicolr Search Lab, you can browse through 10 million images on Flickr and choose up to 10 colors from a palette of 120 different shades.
ben Color Capture iPhone app
And what if you see a color you like and want to start there? Benjamin Moore has the app that can do that. The ben Color Capture app for iPhone lets you capture any color that catches your eye and instantly select its match from Benjamin Moore’s thousands of paint colors. Just snap a picture of your color inspiration, tap on the image, and instantly reveal the closest paint color. Download your free ben Color Capture app at the iTunes App Store.
Choose Your Color, Change Your Life
What do your color choices say about your personality? Can color lead you to your next career choice? Take the Dewey Color tests and see how your color selections may color your career choices. This non-language test gets beyond your preconceived career notions to recommend additional occupations.
Color your trip abroad
Journey to the center of the color universe at the Pantone Hotel, a new boutique property in Brussels that invites you to experience the Belgian capital “through a lens of color and a spectrum of comforts.” Designers Michel Penneman and Oliver Hannaert selected a distinctive palette for each of the hotel’s seven floors (which range from “daring and fiery” reds to “captivating, esteemed, silky” shades of violet) and upped the contrast with clean white walls and the saturated outsized photographs of Victor Levy. Pantone consultants are on call to assist with any color crises. Our favorite touch? A rooftop bar serving color-matched cocktails. Choose from Pink Champagne (Pantone 12-1107), Lemon Drop (12-0736), or Daiquiri Green (12-0435).
A or B? Test and See!
It’s important to keep evolving your creative executions, but it’s not always clear which direction will resonate best with your customers. So next time you’re presented with several options, instead of going with your gut, select your favorite two or three and test them. A/B Testing is a great tool to determine which of your new designs or subject lines will really ‘wow’ your audience. Our email marketing partner, OpenMoves offers a platform that automatically splits your mailing list into multiple segments, and sends your different creative options to each group. After the mailing, the system will show you the results of which version performed better. If testing subject lines, you should measure which line generated the best open rate. When testing creative, the click through rate will reveal which look got more people to visit your site.
Case Study
Our client Hanover Fire & Casualty Insurance Company recently tested new subject lines and creative layouts, in an effort to drive higher response rates and sign new policies. Starting with subject lines, they tried the following:
A: [Name], Do you care about protecting your Home or Apt. from fire?
B: [Name], affordable renters insurance
The first employed an emotional tone, while the second was based more on a value proposition; in this case, A was more successful.
The results of your split test results can easily be seen on the email marketing dashboard:
Hanover also tested two different visual designs. Both related to the company’s branding, but organized the space within the email differently:
The A layout performed best, and throughout the campaign, Hanover leveraged the same template but substituted in several different images to make each mailing feel fresh.
Conclusion
Throughout the testing phase, Hanover learned which combination of tone and style would get them the best results. As a result, they are more in tune with their customers’ preferences AND are able to drive more business.
Where do logos come from?
NYC Designer shares a guided process for developing a new brand.
For a printable version of this blog entry, click here.
I have one of those minds that doesn’t do well on standardized test. I question the questions too much. I read into them and scrutinize the many ways that each question may be interpreted. I once flunked my driver’s test renewal in New Jersey when I was in my late 20s. The question that did me in was one that asked what to do when you come to a steady yellow light. The correct answer — in New Jersey — is to slow down and prepare to stop. I consider a yellow light that is about to turn red as not in a “steady” state. To me, a flashing yellow light that consistently flashes is doing something “steady.” I selected, “Proceed with caution,” and had to wait another 30 days to take my exam again. The kind of thinking that interprets things differently may not excel on standardized tests, but it does come in handy when brainstorming a new logo concept. Seeing things from different angles presents the client with new perspectives of their brand.
(more…)
Langton Cherubino logo design featured in new iphone app!
Renaissance Capital just introduced a new app that offers IPOs at your Fingertips. The first IPO App for Apple mobile enables investors to stay abreast of the IPO market by delivering the best features from RenaissanceCapital.com. The logo design created by Langton Cherubino Group is based on a Greek Revival ionic architectural column that spells out “I-P-O” and “RC.” The identity design is featured in Letterhead and Logo Design 11 by Design Army (Rockport Publishers).
To download the free IPO App, click here.
Listen Up!
Here’s our first podcast. Langton Cherubino Group featured on Greenwich Entrepreneurs.
David Langton spoke with Belray Asset Management’s president, Greg Skidmore and wealth manager Pedro Ramirez, Jr. in their Greenwich office about how Langton Cherubino Group began and how understanding an organization’s goals is the key to creating work that meets strategic communication objectives.
Do you know Jack about the Web?
Do you know Jack about the Web?
Remember when traffic was just something that police officers used to direct? Now it’s something your website strives to get! Can you keep up with the new web terminology? We created a new online game that tests your knowledge of the past and present. Play Web vs Webb and try to guess if a word is a computer term associated with the World Wide Web or a police term that Jack Webb, famous TV detective and star of Dragnet, might have uttered.
And why play games?
Use the power of online games and promotions to engage your clients and customers. At Langton Cherubino Group, we have developed games and online promotions that people have fun using while they learn. These games may be incorporated into your websites, customized with client logos or used as-is. This is a low-cost, innovative way of promotion. Visit our blog and play the Afternoon Snack Game or Push My Buttons.