This week saw the arrival of small canvas bags that we’ve designed for long-term client EIP. These will be used at their myriad events and meetings as a little ‘leave-behind’ promotional device, containing a mini brochure and a branded USB stick. Lovely.

And much, much more EIP print stuff coming too. Quicker, in fact, than we can photograph and write about..

Most graphic designers would say the question should be asked the other way round; can you afford not to have proper branding done for your business? But the question is a valid one. There are many essential services and purchases when starting a business and with genuine, considered graphic design often costing thousands of pounds it’s important that it constitutes value for your business, particularly in financially turbulent times!

It would be foolish to say that every small business needs to call in a branding team to help them establish a brand. Many plumbers, corner shops or public libraries simply don’t need expensive brand design… but perhaps it’s not quite as simple as that.

What is a brand?

At this point it’s important to point out that your brand and your graphic identity are not the same thing. Your graphic identity is the visual style of your business and can include everything from your logo to the line-spacing you use, your brand is a little more intangible than that.

A brand is best summarised as the abstract feeling customers have about a business. The brand encompasses your reputation, the people who work for you, the way the phone is answered, the layout of your office, even how you get to work, and of course your graphic identity.

So even the plumber from round the corner has ‘a brand’, but what brand consultants and graphic designers will help businesses do is identify your target market, formalise your brand and create a visual style which personifies and projects your brand values.

So can a brand identity add value?

Or in particular can a good brand identity add value to a small business? There are two conditions under which the answer to the above question is yes.

Firstly, if a business’s customers will be influenced in their decision to use it based on whether they think it professional or not. We can forgive the corner shop for not looking too professional  since it’s a convenience, but I would never use an estate agent that doesn’t look professional – I wouldn’t trust them.

Secondly, if a business wants to grow. Any growing business will need a coherent brand to attach its successes to, and a recognisable brand to grow its customer-base and recognition. It’s a simple fact that medium sized businesses cannot survive without a well thought out, coherent brand identity; and you can’t become medium sized without one either!

So if the corner shop has a successful brand identity and everyone in the area knows and trusts it, that corner shop can grow, open more shops, and become Sainsbury’s.

Creating a successful brand identity

Obviously choosing a professional graphic designer whose work you like is a good place to start, but I think it’s even more important to choose someone who you believe understands branding as a whole, and who you trust.

The most successful companies are those where the CEO has a good relationship with the brand designer/creative director, since the choices that need to be made are not always the obvious or easy ones, and the CEO will obviously be in a better position to grow a brand if they work closely with the brand designer.

I’d like to finish this post with a quote from one of the most influential designers of the 20th century – Dieter Rams – in a rare recent interview with the Telegraph:

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists – between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive. This was the case at Braun where I always reported to Erwin and Artur Braun or, after their departure, the chairman of the board. It is the same in my relationship with the furniture manufacturer, Vitsoe [...] a period now spanning more than 50 years.

This week we received the latest bit of work we’ve done for EIP. Fresh from the printers, it’s a complex folding brochure intended to launch and explain their new ‘practice groups’.

The covers are white-foil-blocked on super-thick black card, while the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are printed lithographically.

The first fold as you open it reveals a concise introduction to EIP.

The brochure is then opened out fully, showing information on the six EIP practice groups.

The other side elaborates on the strengths and expertise of EIP itself, naturally in black. The brochures are set entirely in DINpro, EIP’s designated house typeface that is used across all branded materials.

Having worked with EIP for the last 4 years – creating their identity, stationery, website, signs and various event invites – it’s good to continue applying the brand’s voice and visuals to new projects and formats, letting the bold typography and strong colour scheme add to an ever-more familiar set of communications both online and in print.

We’re currently putting the finishing touches to a new website for The Boathouse, a holiday cottage in Fowey, Cornwall. Here’s a look at the logo we created, which is based on the wood-carved sign on the cottage’s facade (complete with idiosyncratic, slightly-condensed type).