These are conversations that we have been having day in and day out for over a decade now and you know what? Other than technological advancement, the fundamentals remain the same.

Whether you prefer to do it yourself or get some help, here is a roadmap to marketing in 2020. In this series, we will walk through the essentials you need to build a brand, define your proposition, hit the web and push into your market. Digital advertising doesn’t need to be difficult. The fundamental principals of marketing and advertising remain the same.

Here is where you need to start.

Phase 1 – Core

a: Logo
b: Style Guide

So you’ve got an idea. Awesome.

You’re going to take over the world, get out of the way Jeff Bezos, this is going to show you a thing or two. Starting a business is incredibly exciting. The ideas, the opportunity, the creation. It’s an amazing thing. You’ve got to start somewhere with your brand and this is a pretty good place. You’ve got this idea, now it’s time bring it to life.

There are no shortage of ways to attack this. Ask a friend to help, give it a crack yourself, chat to an agency or use one of the hundreds of online logo competition sites. How you choose to approach a new logo is up to you.

But here are some things to think about.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

I have seen no end of elaborate, difficult to read, swirly writing, complex and downright awful logos over the years. Think of any prominent brand. Any. Any at all. Your favourite shoe, computer company or mobile phone manufacturer.

Visualise their logo.

The elegant simplicity.

The simple use of colour.

The clear, easily identifiable brand mark.

There’s a pattern going on here isn’t there?

Clean, concise, simple, elegant.

Also as a side note, if you use Papyrus as your logo font, we can’t be friends.

Moving right along, do some research on colour theory. If you don’t know your complementary colours, try this neat tool from Adobe – the colour wheel

Before you sign off your logo, do your future self a favour and make sure that you get your logo as an EPS or AI file. This means that the image is a vector, so it can be scaled to any size. If you don’t have one of these at the end of your logo project, do not pass go or collect $200. Please don’t miss this crucial step.

So you’ve managed to avoid papyrus and an overly complex logo. Here’s how to ensure no-one else stuffs it up.

Get a style guide.

What’s a style guide? It’s a thing that tells anyone else that will ever interact with your brand, how your brand looks and behaves.

If you want to see how it’s done in the big leagues, check out this one from Uber

You don’t need to go quite that far, but it’s fascinating to see how carefully crafted a brand needs to be.

This is where you list the correct colours with their relevant PMS colour code, your web RGB, your tone of voice, your brand usage and layout, your fonts. What your brand says and how it says it.

It doesn’t need to be a monster of a document, it just needs to be clear and to the point.

That’s all for today, stay tuned for the next installment. Getting online.