Is your new company ready to build a brand identity? Do you want to give your existing brand a new image? Most people think think this means you just need a new logo.

And, while a logo is one of the key elements that you will invest in when building your  company’s overall identity system, it is not your entire brand.

But where did the idea of a logo as a brand come from?

Great corporate branding for businesses takes a mix of creative brand strategy and superlative graphic design. The combination of meticulously crafted visual imagery, carefully selected colors and typestyles, and just the right words can communicate with others in ways that can't always be articulated. The branding—an emotionally connective experience—helps us return as customers again and again. The ideal brand identity speaks to the head and to the heart, connects with customers, ignites imaginations, and builds loyalty. 

But how do we come up with that great brand identity? Do you hire a creative services company to create a logo design and take care of everything?

Your website is the hub for everything your business has to offer, which is why web design best practices are important to follow. It is an all-in-one center for your biography, products, portfolio, and insights (including bragging rights). You know what content is available, where to find it, and where to go if you can’t, but can your customers?  How well your website works is just as important as how it looks.

We find ourselves in an age of digital technology and information. People are no longer popping into stores to see what’s available. Instead, they are searching online. Think of your website as the first impression your company gives. When a customer clicks on your URL, they want to be greeted in a warm, friendly manner. Imagine if you clicked on a webpage and were directed to this:

Website planning can be an overwhelming task; so much is involved. You have to gather information and plan where you want that information to live. The design team comes in before the website is even developed, and all of this precedes testing, delivery, and maintenance on the site once it’s launched.

This quick guide will walk you through the necessary aspects of a development strategy, including timelines involved in the overall process.

Here is a broad layout of the main steps for your business:

Content planning for your Lansing business is one of the most critical elements to web development. The purpose of content planning is to tell the organization’s story with the present information, and the information that needs to be created on the website. If you already have a website, the content plan is more about mapping. Mapping involves defining page titles and URLs. Yet, defining what content to present on your website can be a difficult task for a client and their website design firm. In fact, content is often the biggest delay when it comes to launching websites.

Once clients start writing and organizing their content, the website redesign process can quickly evolve into a lengthy endeavor. New content on a website can mean additional features need to be added. Scope creep (often times referred to as requirement creep, function creep, or feature creep), is a project management term that refers to uncontrolled changes or continuous growth in a project’s scope. What can make the journey toward your new or redesigned website easier, is the wireframe process.

You’ve started thinking about a website redesign project plan for your business and wondering, do I really need to redesign my site right now? We just launched it a few years ago. Your website serves many purposes and the optimal time to update may depend on several factors, but a company website’s primary goal is to generate leads.

Whether it's on the west coast, east coast, or right here in Lansing, Michigan…a website is accessible to visitors across the globe. The design of a website should greet visitors in a warm and welcoming matter, functioning to serve their needs and provide them with the information they came to find.

Although the content differs across any and all websites depending on the organization, there is one element that is (usually) featured on every page: a company logo. (If the logo isn’t on the website, we have a bigger problem).

A logo is a single piece of a company’s branding strategy. It acts almost like a small, 24/7 advertisement reminding people, “hey, this was made by us” or, “this is offered by us.” Ask yourself: what does the logo say about the company? Even more so, how is it influencing the website design?

Marketing and advertising firms play a critical role in communicating information between business and customer. What are the differences between the two? To begin, let’s run through a brief definition of each.

Entrepreneur.com defines advertising as, “calling the public’s attention to your business, usually for the purpose of selling products or services, through the use of various forms of media, such as print or broadcast notices.”

Marketing is defined by Investopedia.com as, “the activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service...marketers try to get the attention of target audiences by using slogans, packaging design, endorsements and media exposure.”