Your logo is a visual sign that communicates your brand’s values, enterprise and culture. Your logo is your brand’s graphical representation of its brand. It is a potent marketing tool, which creates ownership and evokes your brand.

·      Embody your brand – While this might sound like a no-brainer, it is important for companies to ensure that their logos are not a little too ‘inspired’ by their competitors and larger companies.  Make sure your logo relates to your name, your brand and your industry.

·      Scalable and Balanced – Balance the colour, shape and ensure it is scalable to larger and smaller sizes.

·      Simple is best -  Simple logos are easier to recognize and are more compelling. Detailed logos are harder to recognise and difficult to transfer onto multiple mediums without losing its’ complexity.

If you are gearing up to brand your product, service or organisation, we have prepared 6 essential questions that you should consider before embarking on brand development.

·      1. What am I going to brand?

Identify the product, individual, service, or organisation you are going to brand.

·      2. What should I research?

Research everything in your market. Research everything relevant about your target market, research your competitors, research industry trends…research, research, research.

·      3. How is the product or service going to be positioned in the market?

Consider how the product or service will be positioned in the market. What needs are will it redress? What value to does it bring to the marketplace?

·      4. What does it offer? What does it do better? Why is it different?

Consider what the product or service you are branding offers. How does it do it better than its competitors? What makes it different? When people buy or support your product or service, what are the supporting and buying?

·      5. What should my name, logo and tagline convey?

What will your brand’s visual aesthetic say about it? How will your brand’s name relate to your brand? Does your tagline relay your brand’s value proposition? Is your logo a symbol that is relatable to your brand? 

·      6. How will it be launched?

How will you launch your brand? When you unveil your new logo or launch your new product, ensure that you keep your brand at the centre of your launch. Is championing technology and innovation central to your brand’s ethos? Ensure that your unveiling and launch incorporates technology and celebrating innovation. Is your brand championing a healthy lifestyle? Consider a fun run or a free healthy breakfast launch. Ensure that all your brand’s promotional activities are actively communicating your brand’s value and philosophy.

Have you considered running your business on the cloud? 

If you haven't, here are three reasons why you should start: 

It’s cost effective

Using the cloud ensures that everything is online and accessible at all time. You do not have to pay for hardware and expensive. If doesn't just save you money, it ensures everything is more accessible, making you more efficient. 

It’s secure

As your business grows, so does your data! Your client information, your presentations, bookkeeping, writing, designs and portfolio grow as your business grows. It becomes increasingly important to ensure that your data is secure as the loss of data could have catastrophic effects on your enterprise. Ensuring that you backup your data on the cloud protects your business.

It’s efficient

With the cloud, your business goes where you go! This gives you a greater degree of mobility and gives you greater access to your files across various devices. Sharing content and working on collaborative projects become easier when you work on the cloud.

If you want to ensure that your organisation is responsive to change and at the forefront of innovation in its field, it is pivotal to encourage your staff to innovate and think outside the box.

Here are some tips to help you foster an innovative culture at work:

Encourage productivity

“The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.” — Sergey Brin

In order to encourage your staff to generate and develop new ideas, it is important to create a culture that celebrates and rewards proactive thinking. This is a process and won’t happen over night. Incentivize proactive solutions, invest in training and ensure that your staff know that you are always receptive to new ideas. Make sure bureaucracy doesn’t stifle creativity.

Invite communication

“Colleagues should take care of each other, have fun, celebrate success, learn by failure, look for reasons to praise not to criticise, communicate freely and respect each other.” — Richard Branson, Virgin Group

Establishing open communication at work is critical to creating a proactive culture at work. Ensure that your team feels safe to critique workflow processes and always ensure that you reward open dialogue.

Hire passionate people

“No organisation ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.” – Seth Godin

Passion fuels progress. Hiring people who are passionate about their work is a great way to make sure that your team will be more likely to work harder to improve.