As we work on material to get ready for the Poinsettia Bowl, we want to congratulate Sonny Dykes and the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs on their WAC Championship and bowl bid.

The Bulldogs received numerous individual and team accolades this season including Sonny Dykes’ WAC Coach of the Year award, Adrien Cole’s WAC Defensive Player of the Year title, 7 All-WAC First Team honors, Ryan Allen’s Ray Guy Award given to the nation’s top punter, and of course, the aforementioned conference championship.

It is an exciting time to be the designers for Tech Athletics!  Go Bulldogs!

We’ve used the word “brand” on here a lot. Mainly, it’s because branding is what we do as a marketing and graphic design firm. We use our talents to help companies/foundations/organizations project themselves everywhere. I’ve discussed rebranding and logos several times, but this time I’m going to hopefully explain why those things are important in the overall scheme of your business.

There are millions of brands. What will yours say?

A brand isn’t a tangible thing. It’s the overall appearance and image the public has of your company, meaning people define it, not the company itself (although if managed correctly, the public’s perception will match yours). Where Donnie Bell Design comes in is that the foundation of a brand is the graphic design — logo, packaging, colors, fonts, promotional materials, and (more recently) social media.

We do a lot of branding for personal companies. For those, the founder usually decides how the brand wants to be perceived. We help them decide what attributes of themselves as well as their business they want to attribute to their brand.

Burger King is a great name. It is memorable, easy, original and perfectly sums up the company.

Just like when starting a band, the hardest part is picking a name. It has to be original, likable, memorable, appropriate and easy to say/spell. Make sure it matches your core message — the driving force behind your brand — or is malleable enough that it doesn’t exclude or harm your message. Picking your core message is as simple as finding out who your target audience is, what you’re trying to do, and whether your message will fulfill what you’re trying to do for your audience. Once you have your core message, be consistent with it. People don’t like to be confused and if you change your message mid-stream, people will be confused. Your graphic design elements must be uniform on all your promotional materials — website, print promotions, blog, social media, etc.  Again, that’s where we come in to help you decide on something that you and your audience will like and make it consistent.

Apple's image was built on being different.

Even though high school may have tried to tell us otherwise, you want to be different. Being different gets you noticed. Find out how you’re different and run with it.

The world of fonts is a jungle. Make sure you make it out with the right one.

Colors and fonts are important. Colors have meanings and if you pick the wrong one, you will handicap your brand from the start. Think about your favorite brands, what their core message is and what color schemes they use.  Fonts have meanings that convey more of an appearance than feeling. The right font can make your product look fun, modern, or stylish. Again, with your core message in mind, find a font that suits you. And relating back to being different, custom fonts are definitely the way to go (another one of our abilities).

This is a brief rundown of the concept of a brand, and it gets much more in depth. Hopefully I’ve shed some light on what a brand is, what we do, and how important it is to not take good graphic design for granted.