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How To Increase Brand Value Through Design

The visual representation of a brand is just the tip of the branding iceberg, often seen almost as a separate entity from the rest of the brand strategy, and yet it is crucial for the brand image to derive from and contribute back to all the other brand elements. Visuals designed in alignment with the overall strategy and used consistently help communicate your brand message, promise, personality and more, as well as significantly increase brand value.

If we dive into this close connection between design and value, three main points arise.

Alignment
Think of the look of your brand as the extension of its essence; if your brand is your gift to the world, your brand’s image is the alluring paper the gift in wrapped in. Obviously, the presentation needs to match the content, or the recipient’s – or, in our case, the prospect’s – expectations might not be met, causing disappointment and loss of trust. For more impact and income make sure your logo, your choice of colors, contrasts, shapes, ornaments, images, fonts and other visual components, and your brand image as a whole reflect your brand identity.

Besides looking professional and trustworthy, they need to speak to your ideal client, emphasize your brand personality, support your brand promise, mirror your offerings, radiate your brand values, and facilitate building brand awareness. Proper alignment prevents the unwanted scenario of “a confused mind always says no”, and results in faster growth, more clients and more money in the bank. Consequently, brand value skyrockets as well, should you ever decide to sell your brand or bring investors on board.

Consistency
Consistency is key too, if you want your brand value to keep rising. Brand image plays an important role in creating a memorable, recognizable brand that conquers a corner in your ideal prospect’s mind. Using the same visual elements over and over again will help your audience remember them and associate them with your business, putting you on their radar every time they’re searching for the type of solution you provide. To ensure a consistent use of all your graphic designs keep them organized in a brand manual to be shared with your team. The more consistent you are, the more memorable and profitable your brand is.

Up-to-dateness
When it comes to brand image, you also want to pay attention to how fresh and up-to-date it is. Does it keep the pace with the fast changing business environment, especially online, or does it seem stuck in 2005? To get to and stay at the forefront of your industry, your designs need to evolve in time just as the rest of your brand, showing your target market that you’re a serious change agent, thought leader and trend setter, and spotlighting the advancement of your expertise. Cutting edge designs reenforce your go-to position in your field, bring in more high paying clients who tend to prefer working with business owners who are just as serious about growth and reinvention as they are, and help you stand out in the crowded marketplace for all the right reasons. Plus, relaunching your brand with an updated look adds excitement and generates buzz, both excellent for business.

Freelance Photography: How to Begin Your Career

Photography is a vast world. There are many different types of photography and many different kinds of people that enjoy it. It’s a hobby that be relatively inexpensive or one that you can invest a lot of money on. Photos are so special because they give us memories of times and places and events in our lives. We can hold onto these memories forever with a photograph.As much as people love photos, many people love taking them even more. Whether it’s a mother who takes photos at every of her children’s moments in life (first smile, first step, first spaghetti meal) or maybe it’s the father who never forgets his camera for a football or basketball game, or maybe it’s the young girl who loves nature hikes with her camera; these people are not exceptions. They all have an eye for those special moments and they all appreciate the camera’s ability to capture that moment and freeze it in time forever.- What is Freelance Photography?What if you love photography so much you wish you could do it for a living? I mean, you actually get paid for your photographs! But you work solely for yourself, selling each photo or series of photos individually. You don’t have a boss. You work sometimes on assignment and you may sell to magazines. That is freelance photography.Freelance photography may be your entire career or it may start out as something you do in your spare time but begin making money from it. It’s just like freelance writing in this sense that many people turn it into a career and enjoy the freedom of working essentially for themselves on their own time and making money doing something they love doing anyway.- How to Build a PortfolioTo start getting jobs as a freelance photographer, you need a portfolio. A portfolio will show samples of your work. Even if you have never had photographs published or publicly displayed, you can start a portfolio of your best work and then add onto it if you win photography contests or start receiving paid work.- How to Get JobsAs we mentioned, building a portfolio is the first step in submitting your work for pay but when it comes right down to it, it’s the quality of the photo that will determine if you get paid for it. Some people have more of a natural talent for taking great pictures than others but it is a skill that anyone can learn. There are schools dedicated to the art of photography and you can even get a degree in it. If you are just getting started, you can look into classes provided by your local community center or community college. Some cities have photography groups that meet to share photos and tips. There are also many groups online dedicated to photography and freelance photography.You need to view as many famous photographs as possible. Take a look at what is getting published and compare it to your own photos. This allows you to compare and learn from other’s work. It takes more than just point and shoot to get a great photo. You need to learn about focus, lighting, colors and backgrounds and much more.Once you start learning about photography and creating a portfolio, you can start submitting your photos to contests and magazines. Get a list of photography markets and start submitting to ones that accept your type of photos. Don’t expect to make it to the big times right away. Few people actually achieve this but you can start small and eventually make your way into a nice living from freelance photography.

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After Work Drinks, Everyone?

As the days get warmer and beautifully longer, there is always an increase in the amount of alcohol that office workers consume. The allure of a beer garden is just too hard to resist when the sun is beaming down. After all, you never know when it will be this sunny again so of course you must make the most of it.Problem being that a stark increase in drinking inevitably leads to a stark increase in hangovers, carryovers and many other ghastly things from the night before. Whilst prevention is better than the cure there’s not much you can to do to curb your workers drinking habits. In this situation it seems that pre-empting is the only cure.Whilst a few naughty workers will pull a sick day, plenty more will still come into work despite the fact that their productivity and general usefulness is at an all time low. Dig through your office supplies to see what things can help snap your workers out of their alcohol daze.Hydration is paramount to beating a hangover. Water coolers or water filters are ideal ways to make sure workers have as much access to the liquid gold as they need. Do not over look another key refreshment – coffee, the caffeine will surely give them a much needed kick start in the morning. A few emergency packets of biscuits should also be on hand for a sugar boost. Offices can be unbearably hot in the summer, especially when trying to recover from the night before. Invest in some good quality fans and instruct whoever arrives first to turn them all on, thus creating a cooling environment for when the stragglers arrive.The day after a heavy night drinking is probably not the best time for your workers to be on the phone. So use this opportunity to encourage them to catch up with filing and any other tasks that are usually ignored. By the end of summer you could have yourself the most impressive and organised files in the country. The glare from a computer screen can also be unbearable when you’ve got a headache. Treat your office to some anti-glare screens to help employers work to the best of their ability.This may seem like a lot of extra effort to attend to the hangovers of our workers. However when you consider that hangovers cost the economy around 2.8bn each year due to productivity loss, it seems a small price to pay.

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