Are You Proud of Your Logo?

If you’re not, it’s time to get a new one. Even the best logos need freshening up every now and then, so if you’ve had yours for a long time (or worse, you don’t have one at all) think about getting a new one you can be proud of.

Logos are tricky to pin down when it comes to choosing one that represents the best of your business. That’s why many people hire the services of an experienced graphic design team like Ratio7 to get the job done for them. Experience in this area is vital in order to understand how effective a logo can be in defining everything a business stands for.

So you can see how important it is to be proud of your logo. Take a good look at the logo you have now and see what it makes you think of. Some people will immediately think of when they started their business, because they’re still using the same logo they had then. Certainly, if your business logo is outdated and tired looking, it will convey the exact same message about your business. This isn’t a good thing, and it is why so many logos eventually reach the end of their lifetime.

A logo should make you feel positive and enthused about your business. If you feel this way there is a good chance your customers will feel the same way too. Another point to note is not to be too complex with your logo. Again, a professional logo designer will come up with something that is relevant, eye catching and gets the right message across in the right way.

There is no defined period of time that a logo can or should last for. In reality there is no reason why you can’t use the same logo for many decades. But of course it is very unlikely that one logo could ever last that long, owing to how quickly the world changes.

Just be sure that when your logo finally looks dated and tired, you change it as quickly as you can. It could be the start of something new for your business.

What’s Important to Ratio7

In speaking with a potential client about what she is looking for in a graphic design/web development firm, she said “it’s important to know what’s important to that firm, what they are doing and working on”. I thought this was a great idea for a post. Here are some thoughts on what makes Ratio7′s team tick and thrive:

First, and foremost, we are driven by our Christian values and beliefs. This is what fuels us to deliver our very best, in an ethical, honest fashion. This also motivates our commitment to giving back through the Ratio Foundation.

We love supporting companies who give back as well like this great organisation, and this one. And we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being part of your success!

We know that creativity requires curiosity and learning and staying on top of technology trends. We read a lot, we interact with other designers and tech-y professionals, and we pay deep attention to our clients’ needs (including budget and timelines).

Flexibility is important to us, so we employ a broad variety of creatives, both on-staff and freelancers, so we can meet specific needs nimbly.

Of course, in addition to faith, humour, family, friendship and COFFEE are important to keeping us happy, alive and fueled! What’s important to YOU?

Going Green

Ratio7 has a strong ethical sensibility that incorporates our Christian values and our business integrity. We also are acutely aware of sustainability and the need to green our business and to help clients green theirs, as well as to successfully promote the fact that they are considering this important step. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it is also a valuable marketing tool. But you want to use it sensitively.

Begin by asking clients, staff and leadership what changes they want to make to increase sustainability. Several meetings with key stakeholders will be necessary to narrow down the list from what everyone wants to do to what is feasible to do first, from a logistics, affordability and impact standpoint. You can start with something as small as installing recycle bins by each trash bin, by buying recycled computer paper and by improving energy efficiency in basic ways (replacing traditional bulbs with CFL bulbs).

A helpful tool is to draft a sustainability mission statement and incorporate measurable goals. Keep your website and intranet, if you have one, updated with what changes your company is making. This will increase search engine traffic when potential customers look for sustainable companies. Adding a green or nature-themed side or bottom banner with “sustainability improvement updates” or similar is an excellent way of both informing your customers and marketing yourself as a company that is environmentally aware. Doing this with integrity is key. You’ve got to walk the walk, even if it is just small changes. Just as it is important to inform potential clients about your charitable work, it is also important to keep them informed about your “greening”.

If improving your company’s impact on the environment is a goal, reach out to us. We’ll work with you to convey this message in a tasteful, yet useful way!

Colour Trends for the Web

Colour trends vary by genre: home decor, fashion, automotive and, not surprisingly, digital media. Like fashion, certain colours and colour combinations are often in or out, hip or passe’. Who can forget peach and teal from the 1980′s or burgundy and hunter green from the 1990′s? But, like fashion, certain colours and combinations gain new popularity because of their retro feel.

Some colours have staying power and what your digital media needs to say and who it needs to reach is often affected by these standards. Red=power and confidence. Navy or grey=tradition. Green=organic (and now, sustainable). E-commerce sites for little girls are nearly uniformly pink.Generally speaking, you can’t go wrong with some of these colours in graphic design if your business needs to send one of these messages.

But if you need to re-brand or start a brand based on the cutting edge, current trends, here are some suggestions:

Vintage Wine per Benjamin Moore

Lemon Citrus Yellow from Colour Futures

Organic Meets Industrial (think soft green and silver or brown and copper)

Retro (yes folks, keep your eyes open for both turquoise, burgundy and hunter green)

Colour is trending a bit more muted, less electric orange and citron green and, instead, more soft clay-like colours.

Keep in mind. Colour, like branding, needs to be updated periodically. Consumers eyes grow accustomed and they stop seeing your logo after many years. A great way to re-brand is through the use of new contemporary colours. If you feel that your business needs a new look to signify new growth or to attract a new demographic of customers, contact Ratio7 for a free consultation. Our web and digital media designers understand the message that colour sends and how it translates onto computer,  television and mobile screens.

Is Your Site Ready for Mobile?

Smartphones are ruling the technology roost. More than 2.5 billion will be sold worldwide between 2010-2015 and by next year, smartphones will be the most common form of mobile phone in use. This means a vast majority of your customers and web visitors will be visiting via their mobile phones and a computer. But is your website ready?

If you go to companies like Amazon.com and Yahoo on a smartphone, you will find that the site looks different than it does on a computer. Their sites, and those of many other companies, large and small, are configured to be more user-friendly on a mobile device and tablets like iPads. Considering how many people are going to be viewing your site or blog this way, it makes sense to have a graphic design re-tool it for mobile.

Ratio7 is experienced in these redesigns and understands the importance of capturing the most necessary features of your site for the mobile version while maintaining a strong and visually appealing design. We’ll help you determine how this mobile site should look and function and do it within your budget and time frame.

Don’t let the mobile world pass your company by! Contact us for a free evaluation and estimate for a mobile conversion.

WordPress SEO Plugins: Ratio 7′s Top 10

Ratio7 loves WordPress for clients, not just because it is user-friendly for designers, but because it is user-friendly for, well, users AND Google and other search engines love it. They also have handy little bits of code, called ‘plugins’ that are easy to install to customize your site. If you are a Ratio7 customer, we take care of these for you! For search engine optimisation, these plugins are the best:

Scribe. Scribe is not free. It is from the same developers who’ve created the very popular (premium) theme “Thesis” and is a handy keyword/SEO analysis tool for bloggers. It scores your post for SEO-friendliness, guides you in making improvements and, for heavy duty blogging, is invaluable.

All-In-One SEO Pack is a really popular free plug-in which creates “meta tags” (little snippets of code that the search engines use to crawl, i.e. read) for your content, title and keywords.

Platinum SEO Plugin helps you avoid duplicate content, offers permanent and temporary page redirects (301 and 302 respectively) and also generates meta tags.

SEO Friendly Images: Images make your blog more enjoyable but it also adds another avenue for search engines to find your page. This plugin helps you with adding title tags and keywords to your images.

SEO Tag Cloud plugin allows you to create a cloud that search engines will actually search.

Sitemap Generator is an important plugin. Search engine crawlers like to crawl a neat, organized site map and this plugin helps you with categories, pages and more.

SEO Smart Links is a plugin that takes care of an important part of blogging: interlinking (linking to other pages within your blog) which can be time consuming. This plugin does the heavy lifting for you.

HeadSpace2 is another meta data plugin that helps you create custom titles, tags, and descriptions to improve page ranking.

wpSEO does what many of the other SEO plugins do but also allows you to add an SEO monitor as a dashboard widget, renames files to make them more SE friendly upon upload and prevents indexing of RSS feeds by search engines.

W3 Total Cache improves the speed and overall performance of your WordPress site. Thus, impatient search engine crawlers are likely to spend more time finding content on your site which improves optimization and page rankings.

XML Sitemaps: Google Likes Them

Google XML Sitemap? Ugh. Running a small business involves managing thousands of details, many of which you don’t know much about. Ratio7 understands that (we’re a small business too!) and we have your back. Managing your WordPress site is a science in and of itself and its most important purpose is to attract new customers. There is a lot of data in a site and some of it is behind-the-scenes stuff that is important to search engines. Of course the king of search engines is Google and Google likes a sitemap.

What’s a sitemap? It’s exactly what it sounds like-a map of your site. Luckily, you don’t have to build or design one! There are plugins (tiny pieces of code that are available to add to your site) that will build this sitemap for you. When Ratio7 or any other reputable designer builds your site, it should be installed for you.

Why is it important? Without a sitemap, Google can overlook content, links, and entire pages of your site. A sitemap helps point Google (and other search engines like Yahoo) to the appropriate information on your site and, thus, improves your search engine results and traffic.

Ratio7 offers WordPress set up, theme design and customisation and will get your blog and site up and running quickly and affordably. We know which plugins are crucial to improve your traffic and your WordPress site’s functionality. Let us know if we can help!

Advertising On Your Website

Advertising on a blog or website is a way to generate additional income, even if it was designed to market your own services or business. You can refer business to other sites and get a potential commission for the sales. This is referred to as “affiliate marketing” and can end up earning you some significant cash! The most well-known affiliate program is Amazon.com’s Associate program. You can add links or images to your site that go to your account page and earn a commission for any purchases that were directed from your site.

There are affiliate programs for nearly every type of business so it is easy to find companies who’s products are compatible or support yours. For instance, you might sell electronics but not want to deal with the peripherals like extra cords and batteries. You can become an affiliate of a company that does just this and with each sale through your affiliate account, you both benefit! Just do a search for “affiliate programs” and you’ll get more hits than you know what to do with.

If you set up a WordPress site, you can have banner ad placeholders added in on development and either use this for your affiliate marketing companies or you can sell this space like a classified in a newspaper. Be sure to ask your designer (hopefully it’s us!) to do this for you.

Ratio7 can help you build in an affiliate program as part of your website design. Contact us here for more information.

The Importance of Whitespace

The average consumers of graphic design (which means all of us!) don’t consider the blank spaces on a site or business card or flyer at all. Designers give this great consideration however. Whitespace (the technical name for blank space, also known as negative space) is as important as your text, colours and images. It is crucial to have the proper balance on a page or site for several reasons.

Your eyes need a place to rest. That seems odd but visually you can be overwhelmed when there is too much going on on a page. We’ve all encountered websites that were just too busy and then information gets lost. Designers always face the challenge of presenting the necessary content without straining the reader.

Whitespace helps important points or images stand out. It says “this is important so it is all we are showing you right here”. Surrounding an image or subject line or logo with whitespace gives it extra “weight” or sense of importance. It is also like a path in a garden…it leads the eye on where to go.

Ratio7 has a team of experienced designers who know how to use the various elements of design to create a print or online presence that captivates your market and conveys your business vision.

5 Ways to Make Print Memorable

We are all consumers who are faced with marketing materials every day. From brochures to leaflets, stickers to business cards, we pick these things up and often discard them before they are ever read. If you are a business owner, this can be a challenge if you want your marketing message to be heard. At Ratio7, we know some ways to help your message stand out and GRAB ATTENTION!

If you are in need of new or upgraded print materials like brochures or business cards, you can get more attention by doing the following things

1. Make it an odd shape. A typical square leaflet or postcard doesn’t stand out at all. Most are pretty uniform and standard in shape or size. But consider what it is like to receive a round postcard or to see a triangular shaped flyer posted somewhere. It stands out immediately because it is so unexpected! A good designer can help you use your logo to do a cut out edge or a whole piece that is built around it.

2. Make it out of a unique material. Designers have access to a large variety of materials, not just paper. Today’s technology allows you to easily print on thin wood, metal, plastic, vellum and various other materials. You can order balloons, stickers and other items to shake things up a bit!

3. Have a tear-off or freebie added. Turn your business card into a magnet, have a free tear-off bookmark, insert a coaster with your business logo. All of these make your marketing message more memorable and allow it to be seen in several different places in a home or office.

4. Use strong, eye-catching colours. More traditional businesses tend to lean on colours like navy and beige which is often appropriate. But if you want to get attention for a younger company with a youthful message, make sure your designer is caught up on colours trends. Neon colours are easy to find in a pile of papers. Few people do really bright business cards. Have your designer draft samples in really bright colours to see what you think.

5. Use powerful, bold words. Don’t let your design firm’s copywriter get away with weak language! A good copywriter understands the importance of persuasive, powerful language that is easily understood. The single word WOW! in large print catches the eye quickly. Make sure your pieces are well-written.

Feel free to contact us for a quote on any of the items mentioned or for other graphic design services!