Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to start your business. Now, it’s time to make sure you have the business communications essentials understood and under control. Call them the AGDBs: Atlanta Graphic Design Basics. You’ll need to answer four questions:
Do you have a logo? – Though it might begin as a fun and creative exercise, developing a logo for your business is the first step in establishing the visual that will represent your business… especially when you aren’t personally present. This is the first step in defining your brand. Make the effort to consider why you want to use specific colors, lettering types or fonts, and graphic elements for your logo, and how those elements relate to your business and its operations. Are you providing a service? Make certain your logo is engaging and conveys friendliness. Are you selling a product? Consider a logo that communicates a sense of trust and stability, and clearly identifies your brand. Does your logo need to include an image or a certain style of lettering? Sketch out your ideas, but plan to consult a professional graphic designer who can assist you with graphic design elements that creatively communicate what your business stands for, rather than something that looks hurried, unprofessional, and incomplete. Atlanta Graphic Design creates good logos with clean design and balanced use of color… which make a favorable impression on potential clients and customers. A bad logo has poor design elements, may look like it was slapped together in a rush, and leaves the viewer with a poor impression of your business.
Do you have business cards? – After deciding on a logo, this is the most popular item that will represent your business. A business card tells the world you are ready to do business and it should look the part. Make sure to use the standard 3.5”x 2” size, and avoid odd cuts and oversized shapes. While it is a good idea to make your business card stand out from the competition, it should still fit easily into a potential client’s palm, pocket, or Rolodex (yes, people still use them!). Your business card should include your name, your company’s name, your logo or a graphic design element, your location, a phone number, an e-mail address, and your website’s domain address printed on one side of the card. The experts at Atlanta Graphic Design can help you select a solid card stock, or paper weight. You don’t want a card that will bend and crumple easily, and most likely get thrown away quickly.
Do you have a brochure that represents your business? – A brochure serves as the paper or digital introduction for your business and its products or services, and provides a “foundation of information” for your brand. The most common types of brochures are 8.5”x11” tri-fold, 8.5”x11” bi-fold, and 8.5”x11” sell sheets that are not folded at all. Since it will function as a handout or leave-behind item for a client or a group of potential clients, the piece should be professionally designed and error-free. For tighter budgets, Atlanta Graphic Design’s team recommends a two-sided 4”x6” or 5”x7” postcard or flyer. After all, the brochure is a paper version of you, and it is absolutely important that you make the best impression. An e-brochure is a digital version of the paper brochure saved as a PDF, or Portable Document Format file. Having an e-brochure design can save you on the cost of printing since it is in a digital format. These brochures are easy to e-mail, and is a must for including on your website. And by the way…
Do you have a website? – If you want to raise awareness about your business, sell a product, or make a profit of any kind, you must have a website. A web presence says your business is legitimate, and your website can’t be treated as an afterthought. Consult a professional web designer to help you build your website with clean design and easy-to-navigate pages. Atlanta Graphic Design can design your website, assist you with writing your site’s content, host your website, and help it get “found” by search engines such as Google, Bing, Ask.com, and several others. If a 5-page website is not a fit for your budget, consider having a landing page, or one-page website, built as a temporary fix. Other budget-friendly options include creating a page for your business on Facebook and taking advantage of blog sites, such as Blogger and WordPress, that offer free websites.
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