This week we have been looking at the concept of a visual system for your travel practice – the graphical elements that represent your brand. Now, let’s zero in on the creation of an advertisement as a concrete example. Creating great visual advertising is both an art and a skill. The graphic design of a print or banner ad has to be clean and uncluttered, yet interesting enough to grab the viewer and pull them in. Good graphic artists know this and use a mix of graphic elements, text, color and white space in exactly the right proportions to create an attractive and professional advertisement.

The travel professional hoping to also become a great advertiser has to become a student of advertising. Look at the advertising on websites, in magazines and in your local newspaper. Study how the larger tour companies advertise in print and online. Note the font sizes for headlines versus body text and determine how placement and areas of white space are used. Read the rest of this entry »

The graphic design of marketing materials is certainly about pulling the viewer in and keeping them there long enough to recognize a benefit to remembering your brand. Competing for the attention of a busy reader, however, is no small feat. Your choices in graphical design are key to hitting the emotional keystones necessary to influence your readers. The layout of your graphics, font and whitespace are central to the effort.

Most of us know graphically pleasing promotional material when we see it, but we seldom analyze how the graphic artist achieved the result. This is an area where, if available to you, professional assistance is invaluable. If you are designing a brochure or handout, templates are often available. If designing an advertisement,  the media from which you are purchasing ad space can be a prime resource. Most media have templates and even in-house graphical artists that will assist you in the design and layout of your advertising.   Read the rest of this entry »

Make a quick list of all of the places your company’s visual system is evident. This will most likely be on your business cards, your letterhead, your web site, presentations and Facebook page. Perhaps your logo and other visual elements appear on the window of your office or on your fliers. Now, evaluate whether over time those elements have remained identical or whether they have drifted into similar but slightly different variations.

Sometimes the variations are subtle.  Taglines are re-positioned and wording changed.  The orientation or position of logo elements are altered on differing media. Colors and fonts change from format to format.

Variations in your company’s visual system confuse the public.  Read the rest of this entry »

This week we have been discussing the visual system used by companies to identify their brand. We have spoken about matters as big as your logo and as small and seemingly unimportant as font and white space.  The very valid question remains: so what?

After all, it really is your skill set clients seek out, right?  Your 20 years in the business means your clip art logo and Hotmail or AOL email account don’t really matter so much to clients.  They know you for the travel genius you are and the rest is really just padding.

Well, not so much. Let’s look at Starbucks for a couple of lessons. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you recognizable?  Take a look at the items within your line of sight.  Recognize any brands?  Who made the phone, the computer you are working on, the printer sitting on its stand?  The chances are pretty good on each is a logo which acts as a symbol for the company’s brand.  When you see the apple with a bite taken out of its right side, you know it’s not an apple – it’s an Apple.

As I indicated in my Publisher’s Corner article today, a company’s visual system is a very important aspect of marketing. Most visible is the company’s logo, but the type face, the colors you use and the layout are all key components of making the whole work.  We tend to pay the most attention to the logo, but over time the elements may begin to drift away from the standard you originally set. Read the rest of this entry »