One of the most common visual mistakes a business makes is inconsistency. This means, the brand, or graphic elements used to represent the business are different every time they are used. What if a potential client can never seem to remember you?
The good news is it’s easy to fix, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. A business owner simply needs to pay attention.
Take Joe, for example. Joe opens up a restaurant which requires a sign, so he contacts a sign company and gets a sign designed and installed. It’s beautiful, everyone loves it, he’s happy. Then he needs to put an ad in the paper to let everyone know where he is. The newspaper designs something, he is just as pleased, and the ad is published. Then Joe needs some business cards because as he talks to people, and wants to leave something with them. So he contacts a printer, same story, and a business card is born.
Here how the three pieces look:
The problem is, the in-house designer at the newspaper hasn’t seen Joe’s sign. The printer’s designer hasn’t see the newspaper ad. And now, Joe is left with three disconnected pieces – the start of a bad brand.
Now, it isn’t so much that the products were not well produced, it isn’t even that they were poorly designed (in this case). The problem is: They don’t match! The only thing in common here was the name of the company.
When a potential client sees the ad in the paper, and then drives by the store… He/she has to make a very conscious effort to make a connection. (How many of us are extremely conscious of anything but the road when we’re driving? And I often wonder if some of us are conscious of the road…) Joe is asking his potential clients to remember him visually 3 different ways.
Here’s a conundrum: When you make your client work to remember your design, your design isn’t working.
What if there wasn’t enough time to read the sign, but only see it out of the corner of their eye?
Try this: Can you identify these companies out of the “corner” of your eye?
Pretty easy.
If Joe’s designs matched, a potential client could connect colour, images, font, pattern, shape, and more. They could say, “Ah, that’s where Joe’s restaurant is!”
As opposed to, “What was that?” or worse “Are there 3 new restaurants in town?”
So how can Joe fix this?
A graphic designer that works for you can monitor all of this. Even if Joe doesn’t hire a graphic designer, he can simply communicate with the current in-house designers at each respective establishment. A good designer respects the brand.
Show him or her the first item designed and ask them to make something that matches.
Easy peasy.