So you got a brand new logo from that place online for just $99 and are in marketing heaven, ready to set forth and show the world your new visual identity with that low resolution jpg they supplied you with. You go to that other place and get your 250 business cards for 10 bucks and anxiously await their arrival while you go to yet another site and start to build your website for free, even the slogan says “why wouldn’t you do it yourself?”

A few weeks later your cards finally show up, but wait a minute, “my color is a royal blue, not this washed out blue… that can’t be right!”. You get on the phone and demand an explanation and quickly find out that you get what you supplied to them, and your 10 buck offer is now used up and the next set is $75 plus shipping for the exact same thing. “Well, I am gonna have a talk with that designer” you say, only to find out that your designer is about 200 people in a “logo mill” cranking out generic stuff in less than an half hour each in 11 different countries and it will cost you $499 to make a color change, you know, to “customize it”. Meanwhile the frustration of still not having a working website that they said “Why wouldn’t you do it yourself?”, is becoming, “I shouldn’t do this myself”, after all you already have a job to do outside of all this, and still need to get that social media thingy up and running for the business.

Not all of us have been in this boat, but those that have quickly learn a valuable lesson. Professionals make some things look easy, so easy in fact you start to think “I can do that myself”, when in reality your time spent building your business is far more important than the time spent on logo development, website design, stationery and even in some cases signage. Many issues with color, stem from a simple fact of not knowing what colors to use. Professional logo developers will most likely supply you with a identity style guide that spells out what colors to use, how to use the logomark and often how not to use the logomark. All this comes into play to help create a consistent and memorable visual identity. Yes, the style guide will cost you some money up front, but look at this as an investment in your company. The consistency they will create, helps create the brand awareness you were looking for when that sparkly “$99″ flashed before your eager eyes.
A identity style guide is a set of rules or guidelines as to how your logo should be used, think of it as a road map.

Business cards are considered a commodity, but I personally have seen a shift from “how cheap can I get my cards” to more of a “how professional will these cards make me look” attitude in recent years. Your business card is often times your first impression, if you lay your self designed card on a table with 20 other cards, which one stands out? Is there anything about yours that says..Pick me! If it does, fantastic, if it doesn’t, we may need to sit down and have a talk, I’ll even give you one of my cards.