Logo and Business Card Design for Middle Ear Media

I’m very excited about my new logo and business card design. Along with the redesign of my site middleearmedia.com, the logo and business card design are part of my 2012 rebranding effort. I’ll talk more about the website redesign in another post, but right now I want to explain my new logo and business card design in more detail.

Logotype Design

Great care was taken in selecting a clean, modern, sans-serif typeface for my business name. This is also the same typeface that’s used on my website for page titles, widget titles, and navigation menu links. An italic typeface was carefully matched to the sans-serif and used for the descriptive tagline. The size of each typeface fits a scale that is based on a two-stranded Fibonacci series.

Logo Design

The new logo represents my attempt to simplify my business name into an icon. I started with a slightly-faded red square over an off-white background. After superimposing the letter M (using the same sans-serif typeface) over the square at an angle of roughly 40 degrees counter-clockwise, I removed the part of the square that was covered by the letter. That left only two, small, right triangles and a trapezoid, but the viewer shouldn’t have any trouble seeing the letter M.

Business Card Design

Using my new logo and logotype separated by a horizon line, I created a powerful, minimalistic identity. The placement of the horizon line is based on the golden section, which is considered by many to be the most elegant proportion. I designed both one-sided and two-sided business cards, but ultimately decided to go with the two-sided version because it allowed for more white space in the design.

Front

Back

One-sided Version

Brand Identity

A strong brand identity is important to the success of your business. When potential customers see that you don’t have a logo, or one that’s poorly designed, they are much less likely to be impressed and therefore less likely to do business with you. If you’d like to enhance your image and increase the perceived value of your business, work with me to get your new logo and business card design started.

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency

5 Ways to Promote your Website

As the new year rapidly approaches, you might want to think about how to promote your website better. This is the perfect time to set goals and make plans. So, I’ve compiled five techniques that you can and should be using to increase traffic to your website. Some of them are free and some require money. Some are quick to do and some require an ongoing process.

1. Include Your URL on all printed material.

Including your URL (aka your web address) on all of your other promotional material might seem like an obvious thing to do, yet there are many people who don’t take full advantage of this technique.

Your URL should be printed on anything and everything possible including stationery, business cards, brochures, invoices, literature, store-front signs, and even vehicles.

By doing this, you are maximizing the use of existing materials to advertise your site as well as reinforcing your brand to all existing clients.

2. Social Media

First of all, what is Social Media? This is a term that includes blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and forums. These sites encourage people to interact with each other and make it very easy to get your message out to the masses.

There are millions of people using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn everyday to make comments, share personal information, and share links.

Social bookmarking is a way to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Technorati, Delicious, and Slashdot.

So, go create a profile for your business at any or all of these sites and use it as a way to expose more people to the content on your site. Of course, this will be even more effective if you actually engage in conversations and interact with other users rather than just “spamming” them with promotional links.

3. Submit your site to Online Directories

There are a ton of different directories online. Some are all inclusive, some are industry specific, and some cater to local businesses.

Two free options for listing your local business are Google Local Business Center and Yahoo! Local. These are both great ways to make sure people can find your site when doing a local search.

4. Traditional Advertising

Yes it is true that the print media industry is declining as more and more people realize how much more efficient and effective the internet is. That being said, print media is still important. This is even more so for local businesses.

Many people still read newspapers and magazines for their news and a nicely designed print ad could draw them to your site. Another traditional form of advertising is the radio. Radio ads can help attract listeners to your site as well.

Keep in mind that these methods may not work well for certain types of businesses. It is important to know your intended audience before shelling out the cash for traditional advertising.

5. E-mail Marketing

When I say e-mail marketing, I don’t mean unsolicited mass mailings, also known as spam. I’m talking about things like starting a Newsletter, or including a custom signature at the bottom of all e-mail correspondences.

A periodic e-newsletter is a great way to keep people interested in what you do. It is important to include and emphasize a sign-up option on your site. Make sure it is easy to sign up. Also, using a well designed HTML e-mail template will make your newsletter more appealing.

A custom signature at the bottom of all e-mails should include your name, business name, URL, with an active link to your site and can also include an image of your logo or a custom designed banner ad. This signature will be seen by everybody you communicate with through e-mail. It will make it easy for them to get to your site and reinforce your brand.

After doing all these things, how will you know if they are working? The best way is to use some sort of statistics program to track activity on your website.

Most commercial hosting packages include statistics tracking abilities, but I recommend Google Analytics because of its great depth, flexibility and visually appealing reports and graphs.

If you need help setting goals or analyzing your data, I offer this as one of my services. Please contact me to discuss in more detail.

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency