Branding is much more than a logo design and business card, it is the combination of an entity’s marketing, social media, sales, business culture, and more. Branding is the perception of your company or product which is the result of your execution of a brand strategy and brand identity. Following successful brand guidelines will attract and retain loyal customers.

Branding Experience

Branding is a critical component of any successful business. Design and branding are not just a business expense, when combined and done professionally they are one of your best investments. A successful brand strategy and execution will set the foundation for future success through brand recognition. Everything you do for your business will enhance, or detract, from your brand. The choices that are made, the employees that are hired, the marketing collateral , the web site – all of these will intertwine and become a part of your brand experience.

Over the years we have helped many of our clients build successful brands through consistent messaging, stunning visuals to support their brand vision, and execution of web and social media campaigns that support all of the other brand building components.

As a design agency we must stress that graphic design and branding are two unique, individual components of an overall branding strategy. We are experts at creating a visual identity, or a brand identity – these are visual cues that engage people to illustrate what the brand looks like on paper, signage, or other printed advertising material. Graphic design can be thought of as the bones of your business while the brand is the heart and soul.

Although design and branding are inevitably linked, an aesthetically pleasing design means very little without a solid brand strategy. Our goal is to help you create the brand strategy and then develop marketing solutions that adhere to this core value or purpose. This ensures that everything created, designed, developed, moving forward will help support consistent brand building efforts. Let Golden Creative help you create a better customer experience!

• Brand Design Services
• Brand Positioning Statement
• Brand Strategy
• Naming
• Brand Identity
• Brand Guidelines
• Brand Revitalization
• Logo Design
• Web Design
• Photography
• Copywriting

The brand strategy for your product or company is comprised of much more than visual assets and marketing collateral. Having a strategy to discover, develop, and deploy your brand is critical; it will set the tone for your brands personality and mission. The brand will take on a reality of its own, independent of the parts. Each part must be created with the same ideals in mind so that the personality of your brand is being nurtured by your branding strategy.

Brand Strategy Experience

While working with a high-end wine touring company in Napa Valley, we absorbed every detail about who their target consumers were, and then we scheduled several photo sessions around the valley, developed messaging and copy, designed strategic marketing collateral, mapped out keywords for an SEO campaign, and designed the web site. With everybody working towards the same goal and with the same vision, the brand came to life and we continued to support and develop new material that possessed the same strategy and purpose – attract affluent wine connoisseurs from both the surrounding area and from around the country.

Mapping out the Brand Strategy is something every brand owner should do, whether they hire a professional agency or do it themselves. The process of working through the brand strategy will help brand owners discover what it is that they see the brand becoming – and eventually, how to get there. As an example, if you are starting a job placement service you will want to know how to reach human resource managers. However, not every HR manager may be interested in your candidates so you start to create a brand strategy that accurately positions your company to appeal to the consumer that will align with what you are selling. From there you will need to work through where those individuals or companies “hang out” so you can target you branding and marketing to that audience.

• Brand Strategy Services
• Copywriting / Storytelling
• Art Direction
• Photography
• Social Media Strategies
• Keyword Phrase Analysis
• Competition Analysis
• Identify Differentiating Factor
• Video

Picking the right name for your brand is not something that should be taken lightly. If you want your audience to connect with your brand, they better connect with the name first. Brand recall is critical when the market is saturated with competition! Having the right name can help build trust with your target audience, it can make them feel confident in not only purchasing your products and services but will also make then confident in referring your brand. The right name can lend itself to the development of a unique and intriguing story, something that will lodge in the consumers mind and keep them coming back for more!

Naming a Brand Experience

It is important to research the competition and make sure you are choosing a name that is not only unique, but also engaging. Something that tells your audience what you do and why you do it. In some instances, the name of the brand can also translate into a great URL for your web site, although one cannot always be chosen because of the other. We do like to include the product or service in the URL for SEO purposes, but when helping a customer choose a name that is not a critical factor.

Our approach to naming a product or brand for a customer is to first create a matrix using the competition, service or product keywords, and relevant synonyms and adjectives. We like to leave no stone unturned in the exploratory phase, this way we can always come back to that initial study if we decide we need to backtrack and re-strategize.

Creating a unique name is a process that requires some critical thought and creative wordplay. Once we boil down the process and arrive at a handful of potential name candidates, we start to look at viability and trademarking. We prefer to hand this service off to one of our trusted partners who specializes in trademark registration and infringement. It is imperative that we ensure a clean trademark on the name so that as we move forward and start to strategize the branding there will not be any problems. This small insurance step can save a lot of wasted time and money!

Golden Creative has designed award-winning logos for many brands. Take a look at our logo work and you will see the incredible thought and creativity that goes into every mark. We are not swayed by trends or constrained by styles, everything is unique and designed to create a solution for the customer. Sometimes we like to design outside the box and use freehand drawing techniques to capture the personality of a product, or we may choose to use typography and customize a logotype. Logo projects have always been a favorite of ours, it is the cornerstone of branding and can endure the test of time when done right.

Logo Design Experience

The logo we design for each customer comes with a set of unique requirements. We provide logo design services for clients who understand that this iconic representation of their company, product or brand will be used on just about everything that is customer facing. In other words, this visual identity will often be the first impression that a potential customer sees when experiencing your brand. Do you want that first impression to be the last? Of course not, that is why we have been providing world class logo design services to companies around the globe, because we are very good at what we do.

Ultimately, our goal is to produce a logo or logotype that the customer is proud of. This mark must also represent the business or product and provide a creative foundation for the brand story. Every brand has a story and having a logo designed that sets the tone for the brand strategy is critical. A successful logo design will connect with your customers and create a pleasant, memorable experience. This memorable experience is a big part of why we design the logo to look a certain way. Your target consumers must be able to immediately understand the logo concept and be able to easily recall that logo when thinking of you product or industry. That top of mind awareness and positive association are what helps build the natural processes of word-of-mouth and referral marketing.

Those who choose to simply go online and use a crowd-sourced service or, worse yet, create your own logo service; will eventually realize that having a professionally designed logo would have been the better choice. Designing the logo is usually one of the first steps in the beginning of any business or product, and choosing to have this representation created by an inexperienced designer or clip art service is not a good business decision. We understand that money is also a concern at the beginning of any start-up, we do our best to create the best possible solution for any budget. If you’re considering a logo design please do not hesitate to call and talk to us before you make any decisions!

• Logo Design Services
• Unique Logo Design
• Illustrative Design
• Custom Typography
• Logo Files Provided in Various Formats
• Master File Owned by the Client
• Color Studies
• Brand Guidelines
• Business Systems

We want our corporate colors to be consistent and true regardless of the printing process or type of paper used, coated or uncoated. Brand Guidelines provide Pantone Matching System equivalents, RGB color codes for web, ink formulas for printing on uncoated stock, as well as process formulas. These guidelines ensure that colors match as close as possible – all the time, every time.

Brand Style Guide Experience

A Graphic Standards exploration and documentation is very helpful not only for managing color across various mediums, but also for establishing the “free space” your brand should be given when used in advertising. There will be scenarios when you brand is provided to an outside vendor and they will place it within their own advertising collateral. If you can provide a brand guidelines sheet along with your logo files it will help explain that your logo should not be placed over non-contrasting colors and patterns or right up against other design elements.

Brand Guidelines will also set expectations for your brand, both internally to your employees and also externally to vendors, partners and consumers. The components of the brand guidelines will become your resource for everyone who is going to represent your brand. A clean, consistent, well-planned identity builds strength around a brand. The more consistent and cohesive your brand is, the more perceived value you will build for your brand. Consistency with the consumer will make your business or product look professional, it will also increase your brand influence with your target audience.

Using the Brand Style Guide as a resource will help share a set of rules that will build a unified identity across multiple advertising and marketing opportunities. These branding guidelines are designed to help you maintain the integrity of your brand. Your brand integrity can be easily compromised, so look at the brand guidelines as the owner’s manual on how to use your brand. If everyone who touches your brand, internally and externally, has the manual, your brand essence and your brand integrity will be maintained.

It is important that we define enough rules to keep your brand consistent, but we also want to make the guide easy enough to use that your partners and employees can put the plan into action every time the brand is used.

• Brand Style Guide Services
• Stationery Systems
• Graphic Standards
• Color Specifications
• Pantone Color Choices
• Process Color Options
• RGB Color Codes
• Brand Spec Sheet