Archimedia Studios

Branding Made Easy

Successful brands are anchored in propositions that are desirable, distinctive, and credible in people’s minds. Following are eight pieces of advice that anyone working with a competitive identity should know and put into practice. These concepts are key to developing a bond with consumers and fans, which is the essence of branding.

1 Stand out
Having a differentiated, relevant product is critical to success. Distinctive branding stems from clear brand positioning—knowing who the brand targets, what the competition is and how to beat it.

2 Stake your claim
The majority of leading brands got where they are by staking out a distinct territory and capitalizing on it. The ultimate measure of success? Discovering that your brand name is generic for its category, like Band-Aid, Google, Kleenex, or Xerox.

3 Find the insight
Sometimes the simple difference at the core of a brand is an obvious universal truth that no one has acted on. Great insights couple human need or desire with a market opportunity.

4 Keep your promise
Brands that resonate strongly with consumers are typically motivated by the desire to exceed expectations. Living up to your word not only builds brand loyalty, it also encourages word-of-mouth promotion.

5 Get emotional
However important rational claims may be, they cannot touch the powerful connection created by anchoring a brand in the psyche of the consumer. Nor can emotional ties be easily replicated by competitors.

6 Begin at home
An engaged and passionate workforce should not be overlooked as a highly effective mechanism for driving brand awareness. Firms that empower their employees to carry out the brand promise develop a network of passionate brand advocates.

7 Own your media
Relying on your own media to carry your message not only makes great financial sense, it also speaks to customers more directly than advertising can. This is an area that your competitors can neither access nor influence.

8 Start a dialogue
Old-world marketing involves a one-way flow of information from brand to consumer. Today’s savvy brands open the door for two-way communication through digital platforms and interactive experiences that help consumers bond with and even influence the products and services they favor.

Reasons why a Website Design a Fails

Everyone has witnessed really absurd website designs that instead of appealing, repel the visitor and force them to revert to a different page.

To design a good website, it is important that you have some knowledge about design conventions. Without knowing  about these conventions, you might  be able to create “at best” an interesting  web design. There are many “would be” designers that are doing that just – “creating interesting pretty websites”.

“In any competitive marketplace, the inability to differentiate will ultimately lead to obscurity”

  • Does your website  reinforce your businesses’ or personal professional identity in a competitive marketplace?
  • Does your website have the professional well established appearance that gives on-line customers confidence in your products or services?
  • Does your website have a creative impact that will get customers and clients excited and enthusiastic about you or your company? Professional creative and quality design is an important part of your investment to ensure a positive return.

If the answers to the above questions are “no” then your website may be failing you. Your website design may be failing to adhere to some basic, yet important,  important website design conventions. Some of the reasons why website designs fail are given below.

1. Lack of Balance

Balance is the basic premise when designing websites. Balance allows you to connect all elements of the website and create a proper flow. The balance might be symmetrical or asymmetrical. Symmetrical balance is based on equal weight to both sides resulting in a formal and traditional website. An asymmetrical balance means that all elements comprise of different weights leading to a unique and distinguishable website.

2. Use of Bevel and Emboss

New website designers typically use bevel and emboss a lot. This is because they believe that it will bring a nice effect to their website. However, this is not true. Bevel and emboss should not be abused, rather, these should be used sparingly so as to create an effect. Many useful tutorials exist that allow you to understand how you can transform emboss into a useful and strong technique. However, if you don’t really know how to use bevel and emboss, it is best that you avoid its usage.

3. Distracting Backgrounds

At times, people use backgrounds that are otherwise very appealing to the eye; however, when used as a background for the website, they may prove to be very distracting. Therefore, if you use a busy and heavy background, it will end up distracting the user. The user would lose the focus and the message of your website will be lost on the user. Therefore, do not use backgrounds that have a higher visual impact than your website. The users would feel that your website provides no specific information and they will leave the website very quickly.

4. Lack of Detail

Sometimes, users find a website useless because it lacks detail. If you think you have finished everything and covered every aspect of website designing, think again. You might be missing the detail of some minor things. Therefore, as a rule, always check the website design for small details.

5. White Space

White space is the space that is created between elements and is important in enhancing the readability and design flow of your website. It is also used to provide a clean look to the website making the website more readable.

Photographic Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition seems like such a hard word, doesn’t it, but it is a concept quite easily grasped when explained using pictures.

Juxtaposition involves comparing two or more elements within a photograph, bringing out either the similarity or dissimilarity between them. Juxtaposition also can involve contrasting elements. In such cases, we will see elements that are strikingly, and often incongruously, different. We can compare and contrast elements by placing them side-by -side, above or below each other, or layer them in the foreground, middleground and background.

Juxtaposition can play a crucial role in creating expression in incongruity, street photography, landscapes, opposites and contradictions, and layered imagery.

The next time you see a grand mountain or large monument or building you want to shoot, try to think of how you can further the idea of that grand subject with juxtaposition. For example, something into the foreground can help create the feeling or idea you’re trying to get across. In a grand landscape scene, try to look for something small in the foreground to place in contrast to the large mountain in the background. Look for something that tells the story of the place, such as a river leading into the scene or boulders that are slowly falling off the face of the mountain and are destined to become pebbles at the bottom of the stream.

Getting “Out of the Box”

We always like to tell designers when approaching a new project  to “Think Outside of the Box”  – Idea generation or problem solving that is not constrained by self-imposed limits or conventional barriers.

OOB thinking will often lead to novel ideas innovations and solutions. Here are some of our examples of OOB creativity in Ad Design.

The Art of Selective Color Photography

Selective color is a post-processing technique where most of a photo is converted to black and white, but some parts are left in color. This is usually achieved by using layers and masks in photo editing software (Photoshop, SilverFast, Adobe Fireworks or The GIMP for example). This technique is often over-used. Use it to  enhance your composition storytelling, not to merely demonstrate that you know the technique.

Here’s a link with some more great inspirational selective color photographs

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