We received a roundabout question from a potential client the other day that we think would be good to address, and may help a lot of you feel more at ease with elevating your design standard and improving your business without feeling like you need a six-figure loan to get it done. Alice, we’ll call her, was hesitant to start anything because she felt like she couldn’t afford to do everything immediately. In other words, she wanted to do it all and was scared to start if she couldn’t. She wanted an updated logo and website, collateral, email newsletter template, brochures, adverts, Facebook graphics, etc. The list was long. And she feared that if we didn’t tackle it all at once, she may lose cohesiveness and her company would suffer.
Let the brand grow with you.
Although you sometimes see large corps roll out new branding campaigns that cover every possible consumer touchpoint and make all of us business owners quite envious, one of the benefits for a smaller, young company is that you can allow your brand to grow with you…and with the business. Although you may have a nice market carved out for yourself, you may outgrow that market, or you may move toward another market. The good news about not investing loads of cash to redo everything, is that you can tweak and adjust as you go along. Every brand evolves. Resolving to take care of just a few things that need to happen now will allow you to be flexible without going into the red. Tackle the most important stuff—the stuff that your consumers are using the most—and get to the other stuff when you can afford to do so. You may find those things you couldn’t do right away become obsolete anyway and don’t need to be redone at all. You’ll save time, cash, and a ton of headaches.
Good design is within reach
Once you’ve become comfortable with a more long-term, a la carte approach to your design needs, you’ll start on the path toward great design (and better business). That logo your college nephew designed when you were just starting out can be upgraded; your site can become a polished and accurate representation of the dream that started your venture; the cheap brochures you got produced at Kinkos can become a proper selling tool. All-in-all, just start, and begin giving your company the design standard it deserves.