The 4 C's of Crystals, PART 2:

I'm sure most of you are aware of the 4 C's of diamonds, cut, color, clarity and carat. It's an easy guideline to help the consumer select a high quality diamond. But have you heard of The 4 C's of Crystals?These are similar guidelines I developed to help businesses and consumers identify crystal clear graphic design. They are: CREATIVE, CORPORATE, COMPETITIVE and CHARMING. While I originally developed the 4 C's of Crystals to tie in closely with a play on words to my company, Kristal Clear Graphics, this is a helpful guide that can be used when looking for any graphic design company or similar creative professional.

In the last newsletter I talked about the creative element of design, and with that under our belts, let's move on to the very important guideline,CORPORATE. Whether the graphic design company is made of 1 or 1,000 employees, whether you find a well-known advertising agency occupying an entire floor of a downtown high rise or your nephew working out of his college dorm, make sure they follow these corporate guidelines. They're comprised of two main qualities, professionalism and expertise. Below are some questions that can help you discover where your designer stands in each category.

Professionalism

1. Do they look professional and therefore practice what they preach? Is their logo and brand image clear and consistent across their marketing platform?
2. Do they listen to you? If you share ideas for a project's direction, do they incorporate them into the design or claim "artist's discretion" and give you an over-the-top design they know is better. If you have project goals and a budget do they respect that or do you always feel forced into a sales pitch?
3. Do they value customer service and share examples of guaranteeing their customer's complete satisfaction? It's a fact in life and business that you can't please everyone. However, it's important to earnestly try and communicate how the company will fix the problem and follow up on that promise in a timely manner.
4. Are they quick? In normal communications, do they return messages in a timely manner or when they say they will? Do they meet the deadlines they promise to meet? When producing a project's proof that may have revisions do they have a fast turnaround or will you have to wait 1 week at every step because each team member needs to put their 2 cents in?
5. Are they up front about the process and what you should expect?

Expertise

1. Does your design company use professional design programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Quark Xpress or do they insist Microsoft Publisher and/or an online photo editing program is more than sufficient? Often times it's actually companies who have their employees do in-house work with Publisher that run into problems at the printer for one reason or another.
2. Do they hold a degree and/or have a good number of years experience? If they've only been working for a year or two expect lower hourly rates and the designs to reflect it. There are always times you'll be happily surprised, but generally there are more bumps in the road in the whole process.
3. Do they offer you suggestions and tips of how to improve your company's image you hadn't thought of yourself?
4. Do they seem well versed in the industry and how neighboring industries work, at least to a degree? For example a designer working on a brochure should understand simple things like how to prepare the file for press with high resolution and campy images or more technical things like working with master pages for a multi-page document or implementing a spot color throughout the files.
5. Do they have external sources that warrant their expertise such as educational degrees, being published as "experts" in third party publications, design awards or as simple as testimonials from their clients?

If these questions were answered positively, you can be confident your company is giving you a quality graphic design service which is a great indicator of the professional company YOU are.

The 4 C's of Crystals:

I'm sure most of you are aware of the 4 C's of diamonds, cut, color, clarity and carat. It's an easy guideline to help the consumer select a high quality diamond. But have you heard of The 4 C's of Crystals? These are similar guidelines I developed to help businesses and consumers identify crystal clear graphic design. They are: CREATIVE, CORPORATE, COMPETITIVE and CHARMING. While I originally developed the 4 C's of Crystals to tie in closely with a play on words to my company, Kristal Clear Graphics, this is a helpful guide that can be used when looking for any graphic design company or similar creative professional.

Over the course of the next four newsletters, I'll explain each of these important qualities in depth, starting with CREATIVE. A graphic designer must be creative. They must be able to make eye-catching, professional looking, unique graphics that YOU like. But that's only half the battle. In order to be effectively creative, they also need to listen to their clients. A great graphic designer has a strong right brained creative side paired with a more analytical left brain that helps with problem solving and completing the task at hand accurately.

While it might seem obvious, a graphic designer should be creative. This word, like many parts of graphic design and art is subjective. Approaching a new project with a creative mindset to come up with a new look is equally important as the ability to curb their creativity to coincide with client parameters. Let's say you're in need of a new promo cover for your informational DVD you just had made. You have a set budget allotted for design time, decided it needs to have a youthful look using your company's colors, and you want it to be a single sheet, two sided. Depending on the CREATIVE thoughts of your graphic designer, you could end up with one of many scenarios. Here are a couple possibilities to watch out for.

1.             The designer creates a beautiful piece, very different and unique, but it's a multi-page folded piece instead of a single sheet because "the designer felt the larger size would be more dynamic and eye catching with their design. Maybe so, but the extra large dimensions cost you more money in design time and at the printer.

2.             The designer creates three options for you to choose from. You like one a lot, but have just a few minor adjustments. All seems great until you get the bill and see the designer forgot about your budget. The two extra concepts that got thrown out took up additional time you didn't allow for in the budget. If they had delivered just one concept at first, at least there would have been a chance not all three concepts would need to be created, AND you would have been aware that asking for an extra concept would probably mean extra time and money. Now there's nothing wrong with looking at more than one concept at once. That's sometimes very helpful for a client. Plus, from experience I know it can be part of my own brainstorming process. One concept develops into the next so it's easy to separate out and deliver multiple concepts. The problem comes in because the designer didn't communicate this presentation option to the client before hand and disregarded the budget directions.

3.             While the designer did use your company's colors, the concept, in your opinion, is anything but "youthful". Well, we have to keep in mind that "youthful" in this context is pretty subjective. The designer explains his reasoning for why his design is youthful, but you still disagree and don't like it. If the designer asks questions to pin point the problem and makes a new concept in a different direction, even if it's not exactly 100% on target yet, this is a good sign. However, If the designer continues to insist his first design was the essence of youth and subtly infers you don't know good art when you see it, this would be probably someone to steer clear of. They're probably a magnificent artist, but lack the left brain balance to take constructive criticism that their idea just wasn't what you, the client, wanted. In the end, you are the client and what you want is what you should get.

Overall, if a graphic designer has creative talent, but doesn't stay within the parameters you give them, you'll be wasting time and money that will need to be redone later. However, on the opposite end, you need to be careful that your designer delivers your project with a professional look and creative edge that screams, "This business is serious about what they're doing!"

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.

Expand Your Company's Image: Branding Across Social Media Platforms

If you’re in business, whether big or small or just thinking about getting started, it’s getting to be old news that you should have your company on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Then, once you’re set up, you should use it often to reach your clients and customers. But did you know that many of these social media platforms are great opportunities to increase your brand awareness and professional image? A great client of mine, Katie Felten who founded MKELive, gave me my first opportunity to execute this idea when I designed a social media campaign for her. I quickly discovered how valuable this marketing method was and how many more people should be taking advantage of it no matter what stage of business they are in at the moment.

So how does it work? Well, just as you brand your logo and design image on brochures, web site, advertising, etc. ... continue your look onto the social media pages you're using.

Instead of using generic or supplied backgrounds from the social media sites that have little or nothing to do with your business, use a custom background and/or profile picture that matches your company exactly. When anyone sees you on the social media page, they instantly recognize your company and you gain extra credibility as a more established, dependable business.

Not only do you have a professionally marketed look, but you can also include important information in the design that might have gotten missed otherwise. For instance, people won't always search your page to find out every detail in your profile, but if your phone number or slogan is smack in front of their faces and highlighted with a unique design they can't miss it. Either way, you'll be able to share your contact information, areas of expertise, or whatever facts you want people to know more easily and quickly.

Still a little unclear? You can see an example of some of our project on my web site http://www.kristalcleargraphics.com/gallery_web-social-media.html. In this case, Katie’s image consisted of her logo, which was an offshoot of MKELive, and the social media icons she used to build her business. Her twitter page resembled her YouTube page, which also stayed consistent with her about me page.

As life would have it, in the midst of designing a similar brand image for her facebook page, some new opportunities came up for her career and she decided to change the direction we had been heading. Even though this would mean redoing some of the pages, the good news was this was the Internet we were working with on free social media sites. We hadn’t wasted any money in printing, mailing or web hosting costs to reach her target market like we would have in traditional branding strategy methods.

Now I’m not advocating not using those older methods to brand your business, but realize those are just some of the ways we get our company’s image into the world. The more opportunities you have to touch your clients with your professional image the better.

Each avenue is important and has its own positives and negatives. This social media platform is actually one of the easier ways to brand your image since it's quick to produce and there are no costs for printing or web site hosting. Unlike print media, it has the potential to reach an infinite number of people in your target market at the same design cost similar to a web site.

Additionally, when your logo and background images are consistent with the rest of your company’s image, it shows the world that your company is modern and keeping up with technology and the times. You’re reaching the market segment that is getting most of its information from social media as a trusted, knowledgeable professional.

If you have any questions about how this works or you're interested in learning more about starting your own social media campaign, please contact me at Kristal@kristalcleargraphics.com.

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 atwww.kristalcleargraphics.com or like Kristal Clear Graphics on facebook atwww.facebook.com/kristalcleargraphicsllc.