I have the fortunate privilege to not only be the owner of
my graphic design company, Kristal Clear Graphics, but I’m also a full-time mom
who gets to stay home with her two kids. So now as a mom of a four and one
year, I have a fun variety of topics I talk about during my day from branding
and design details to Barney and Bottles. A couple months after my son was
born, I was feeling stumped in trying to come up with a topic for a newsletter
that I was writing to my clients and contacts. I asked my daughter, who was 3
years old at the time, "What should I talk about in my business
newsletter?" She replied with an obvious answer … "princesses!"
I don't know how she became obsessed with princesses as my
husband and I tried our hardest to DIScourage the princess phenomenon, but it
still came. So I thought to myself, "Ok, Kristal, you've got a creative
mind for your design projects, why not put a creative spin on princesses for
your newsletter. So this is how it turned out, and I’d like to share it with
you:
Remember the last time you were in line at the grocery
store looking at the tabloids and you saw that regular article about the
celebrity that looked less than perfect. Maybe they gained a lot of weight,
were caught by the photographer without their makeup and dressed in sweats, or
just looked intoxicated. Whatever the mishap, it's our human nature to think
what we're seeing on the celebrity is undesirable.
The next step of the process is to decide what to believe
about the celebrity. Was their image taken out of context and you give them the
benefit of the doubt or do you develop negative feelings from that image that
make you dislike them and possibly even boycott their music/movie/TV show/etc.
So the moral of the story is it's in the celebrity's best interest to always
look like a princess (or a prince)!
How does this pertain to your business? Well, a celeb's
face, personality, actions, etc are the brand and image they create for
themselves. It's a little different from your business's brochures and web
site, but both market to their audiences with these tools. Just as a celebrity
could lose popularity and eventually money based on bad decisions they make
with their image, businesses who don't put a "pretty princess" face
on won't thrive amongst their competition either.
For instance, imagine you're a customer looking for a
tailor to make alterations for that special "princess/prince" attire
you need for a wedding. An acquaintance gives you a business card of someone
from their networking group. The paper is flimsy with a random clip art image
of a dress and suit on it. It has their company name in text but no logo and
you can tell the owner printed it off their computer. It doesn't feel like a
very professional establishment, but you go look at their web site anyway. It's
quite obvious they made it themselves as well. It's very plain, hard to
navigate, and little sense of design organization. Not completely comfortable
with trusting your formal attire to this place you google other area shops.
It's no surprise you didn't find the first shop in your google search, but you
do find one nearby who's web site gives you a much better feeling. Their logo
and design style is prominent, professional looking, plus it's consistent
throughout the pages of the site as you discover it's quite easy to navigate.
Your last discovery is that both shops quote you at the same price. Which
company do you feel more comfortable going with? Obviously the one who's first
impression was a professional one you could trust.
Now there's no reason both companies couldn't perform
upright, quality service, but there is a reason they had to come up with the
phrase, "Don't judge a book by its cover." It's because it's human
nature to do just that, and in this day and age when people's attention span is
so fast your business can't afford to not look its best. Instead, you always
need to make your business look like a princess.
If you'd like more information about how you can give your
business an attractive cover that will make your clients choose your product or
service from amongst your competition, contact me today and let
Kristal Clear Graphics turn your business into a princess.
Kristal Young, owner and graphic designer of Kristal Clear
Graphics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers creative services in print, web and
beyond. Now specializing in social media design for business identity, you can
visit online at http://www.kristalcleargraphics.com or like
Kristal Clear Graphics on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/kristalcleargraphicsllc.
