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Creating a new identity for your organization is never taken lightly. When Jeanette Soucy of the Star Center came to us, we knew that an NPO that does so much for kids with Autism (and other learning disabilities) deserved a brand that helped them shine.

Not for profits–and especially a school for special needs–often make important decisions by consensus. And designing a logo, an identity, a brand, requires an inclusive process that allows a group of decision makers to take part in the creation. Longbow’s Eric Needle, has been doing this work since 1990; It’s their forte. Rather than have someone dictate or limit your options, we work with you to refine your image. Our inclusive process makes it easy to build a logo that everyone can be happy with.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Often, tech companies have a hard time explaining what they do. One niche we often find ourselves filling is distilling or refining a complex message into visuals that wider audiences can understand. Engineers sometimes communicate what their companies do, rather than showing the need their products can fill. Illustration and animation tell the story.

DxTech has been busy inventing new diagnostic tools for the healthcare world. Just as diabetics now find it common place checking their own blood sugar levels, new products and systems promise to change the way we do lab work.

Sell sheets are quick, focused collateral that you can hand to a prospect at a trade show or after a sales pitch. Often product identity and marketing is the last thing we think about as we prepare for that big event. Here a little strategy goes along way.

Many of our clients need illustration and more often and not, it’s in a rushed scenario. Though photoshop and raster image editors are great in a pinch, the power of vector drawing is worth the extra energy.

Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand and Corel Draw have long been valuable tools in the artist’s quiver. The value and reason for making vector art, though, is in the application.

Many organizations and businesses face great challenges when it comes to continually keeping their sites fresh. Community-based NPO’s and groups of faith are among those who need to keep its members up to date. Whether it’s big events or small group meets, the people who most need all this updating often just can’t justify the expense.

So often, brochures and printed materials are made at great expense, but do not work towards your overall goals. Each document that comes from your organization are opportunities to reinforce your brand, your message and the vision of who you are.

With any new client, our job is to discover who you are and where you want to go. Defining your positioning is critical. Position describes your market, the segment you live in, and identifies not just you, but everyone else who occupies that space; Yes, the competition. Often we have preconceptions or misconceptions about our competition. Knowing your competition allows us to build upon your strengths and differentiate them. While some of this goes beyond the scope of a print project, it’s all relevant.

The word branding has become commonplace, yet few organizations really tap into the full potential of their brands. Branding is really a very simple practice. Ranchers of the American frontiers marked their cattle with a distinctive mark, a brand, to be able to tell them apart at a crowded marketplace. Today, your brand is no different.

We mark our company, our products and our services with a brand. We call these ideas about visual icons, logos, styles and cues–your identity.

Messaging quickly communicates, grabs and keeps your attention, and is a critical factor is the way to speak to your audiences. Headline news is the de-facto standard in our over-communicated society. To be seen, message needs to be concise, to the point, and simply worth reading.

Who is ATD? We began work with Automated Trading Desk, (ATD) with illustration that distilled down the technical process upon which their business is founded. How can you compress the intellectual property, genius, and thousands of man hours into one picture? It’s a daunting task, but one that proves the adage, a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s what ATD needed–a way to quickly communicate why they were so innovative. In addition, we helped wordsmith their content throughout the process, culminating in their tag line, “ATD is technology for smarter trading”.

The printing industry flys under the radar when you think about big business. Where do you think they rank?

Who is the bigger employer in the United States, the printing or the automotive industry? If you guessed printing, take a bow—an $83+ billion bow. Yes, believe it or not, in the US, printing isn’t just big business, it’s the biggest. Printers employ nearly 1 million people across the country, placing the meager 780,000 in the auto industry a distant second. Sounds pretty outrageous until you stop to think about it. In a society that’s constantly in search of access to information and literally obsessed with record-keeping, it stands to reason that printing is ubiquitous.

WEDI, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, came to us for an image update. Past experience in both the healthcare and data spaces dictated clean and concise design. Our inclusive design process and over fifteen years of working with logo and corporate identity, helped forge a versitile logotype that could easily translate to many diverse audiences.