3 Key Components to a Good Logo Design

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Tara Ingalls
Good Logo Design at Tingalls Dzyn

Good Logo Design

If you’re considering replacing your company’s logo or you’re trying to come up with your first logo design, there are three key components to a good logo design that will help you find a logo that best suits your company image.

Simple Logos

In a very practical sense, a complicated logo isn’t easy to reproduce. What may look great on a sheet of paper becomes a bit more blurry when printed on a small business card and suddenly resembles a smudge when printed on a pen. A complicated logo is also more difficult for your customers, current and potential, to remember. Think of the most famous logos that instantly pop into your head; the Nike swoosh, Coca-Cola’s simple red script, McDonald’s golden M, Volkswagen’s VW in the blue circle, etc. All of these logos are simple, easy to recognize, and remember.

Appropriate Logos

A logo should be appropriate for the company it’s representing, this doesn’t necessarily mean it should be obviously tied to it though. Imagine the lettering used in the ToysRUs logo used by a law firm, not appropriate at all. And, although the ToysRUs logo doesn’t actually have any toys in it, it’s very appropriate for the company with its childlike script and bright colors. Examine your logo design to see if it conflicts with your company image or message in any way or if it’s complementary and appropriate.

Memorable Logos

And that obviously brings us to our next point. You want your logo to be remembered. You want people to see that logo and instantly know who you are. There is no question when you see the swoosh that it belongs to Nike or that the green mermaid is Starbucks. By sticking to the above keys of keeping your logo simple and appropriate you move much closer to achieving a memorable logo. After all, if your logo isn’t memorable then how will people ever associate it with your company and all that you have to offer?

Do you have a company logo? How about a logo guide? Tingalls Dzyn can help you come up with a unique logo designed specifically for your company and then we’ll provide you with a logo guide that you can always refer to so your logo never deviates.

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Outsourcing Can Increase Your Bottom Line

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Tara Ingalls
Tingalls Dzyn 5 Day Turnaround

Tingalls Dzyn 5 Day Turnaround

Have you ever considered outsourcing your marketing or design projects to a freelancer? Did you know it can actually increase your bottom line? By outsourcing, your business can continue marketing in tough economic times and avoid the expense and commitment of hiring additional staff.

Remember, the best outsourcing arrangements are partnerships. Ideally at Tingalls Dzyn, we work with you, not for you. It’s a win-win relationship for both of us.

As a business owner and/or decision-maker, consider the following benefits of outsourcing:

Controlled Costs
Cutting costs may not be the only reason to outsource, but it’s definitely a big one. By outsourcing, money is more readily available for use in other areas of your business. Often, small businesses don’t have the funds available for large expenditures or additional employees, yet the work needs to be done.

Increased Efficiency
When you hire outside professionals, you eliminate the need for employing regular staff to fulfill various roles including marketing, design, advertising, photography, and copywriting. At Tingalls Dzyn, we have the staff and/or resources in place to provide all the services your business needs.

Quick Turnaround Time
Outsourced professionals have the ability to complete projects in a relatively short amount of time. In fact, the experienced designers at Tingalls Dzyn usually turn around designs in five business days or less – Whoa! And, we also coordinate print quotes, proofing and delivery!

Variety in Creativity
When you have a basic idea, vision or message and just need someone to execute it, a freelance professional is the ideal solution. This is where Tingalls Dzyn shines the brightest! From creating a new logo to a tradeshow booth, businesses benefit from our fresh ideas and alternative perspectives.

Experience
Sometimes business owners have difficulty stepping back and being objective about their business. They aren’t able to easily see things from their customer’s perspective. At Tingalls Dzyn, we have the background and knowledge to ask important questions up front, such as: What is the goal of the project? Who is the target audience? How will the product be distributed? We use this information to effectively plan, create, and produce the perfect product to fit your needs.

In conclusion, take a step back and review the last year. Are you taking advantage of all the great benefits freelancer professionals can offer? If not, give Tingalls Dzyn a call and watch your bottom line grow!

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Link Architecture and Your Website

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Tara Ingalls
Link Architecture

Link Architecture

Link architecture is the way you link internally within your website.  If your goal is to create a website that is search engine friendly and easily found by people doing a search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing then your link architecture is important.

You may think the humans that visit your site would prefer a search box to navigate around your site, but the search spiders that crawl around your site do not stop to type in a search query. And ultimately you want those spiders to find your pages and rank them or you’ll never get human eyes at all. This means that your most important pages are either clickable right from the home page or very, very close.

It’s also easier for the search engine spiders to navigate through text links than some of the latest technologies. It may not be especially fancy or cutting edge, but your audience and the search engines understand what you’re trying to convey.

If you’re using text to embed links it’s important to do it in a way that is logical, informative and easy for humans and spiders to understand. Let’s say you’re selling lamps and you have eco-friendly ones you’d like to promote. You can say “Click here, to see our eco-friendly lamps.” and have the “click here” portion embedded with your link, but that’s not the best approach. A better way to embed that link would be to say something like, “We now carry eco-friendly lamps online and at our store.” In this bit of text you’d embed the link in the words “eco-friendly lamps”. And now your link is more informative, compact, and not repetitive, which the search spiders will love.

For all of your website design issues, contact Tingalls Dzyn.

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SEO Kernels of Wisdom from Tingalls Dzyn

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Tara Ingalls

SEO Kernels of Wisdom from Tingalls DzynSearch engine optimization (SEO) is a dynamic field designed to make your website more appealing to both human searchers and search engines. By following the guidelines listed below you’re website will establish a firm SEO foundation and help you tap into the power of the internet.

  1. Link building boosts your authority with the search engines.
  2. Base keywords/keyphrases on viewer search terms, not technical jargon.
  3. Don’t overlook your title tags – make every character count!
  4. Do you have a flash website? Recode to be found by search engines
  5. Images are invisible by search engines unless they are tagged.
  6. Ask clients to review you on Google Places.
  7. Add a blog to your website to continually refresh your content.
  8. Don’t subscribe to “Link Farms.”
  9. A good saturation level for important keywords is between 1-5%.
  10. SEO trickery can actually harm your website and can even boot you off a search engine.
  11. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
  12. Real SEO doesn’t happen overnight. It can take weeks to months to climb in search results.
  13. No one can guarantee continuous 1st page placement.
  14. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text.
  15. Fresh content will help improve your rankings.
  16. Be sure links within your site use your keyword phrase instead of “click here.”
  17. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by having another quality site link to it.
  18. When link building, think quality, not quantity.
  19. Use keyword rich captions with all your images.
  20. Understand social marketing. It will boost your website’s SEO.

Contact Tingalls Dzyn if you’d like to schedule an SEO Snapshot to review your site, see where you current sit with your SEO strategies and get site-specific suggestions that can help you grow on the internet.

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The Importance of Font

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Tara Ingalls
Importance of Font Selection

Importance of Font Selection

You put a lot of thought into your company colors, the images or icons you’ll use to represent your company, the placement of elements on your website and print materials, but did you stop to consider the font style you’d use to convey your message? Font selection is just as important, if not more important, than all of the other elements combined. The wrong font and your company message (or even the name) could be confusing, even downright unreadable.

Sometimes the font choice is pretty obvious, a construction firm won’t be represented well by a font that looks like a calligraphy master created it. Likewise, a wedding planner probably won’t want to select a bold and boxy font. But, beyond that, selecting a font can be a little more complicated. This is where professional graphic designers are an important resource. They not only have professional experience that guides them in selecting a font, they also know, through experience, how certain fonts are perceived by a general audience.

Also, it’s important to note that you’re not tied to one font. If you are the wedding planner above, your name may be very embellished with curlicues all over the place, but you certainly don’t want that in your text, it’d be impossible to read. Although, you may want to consider using a font in your text that is more sweeping and graceful than say, Times New Roman. All of these fonts can work together to help establish your website’s feel and your company branding.

The entire field of graphology is based on the belief that your handwriting says a lot about your personality and character, now that the world has gone digital it’s only logical that your font says a lot about your company.

At Tingalls Dzyn we have a huge font library at our disposal with 1000’s of fonts to choose from. But probably most valuable is our experience with fonts and the perceptions that are tied to them.

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Website Amigo vs. WordPress

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Tara Ingalls
Website Amigo vs WordPress

Website Amigo vs WordPress

We’ve had a few customers ask us what is the difference between Website Amigo and WordPress. Since this is a completely valid question we thought we’d blog about it and share the answer with everyone.

The main point to understand is that comparing Website Amigo to WordPress is not comparing apples to apples at all. Website Amigo is website content management software while WordPress is blogging software to which you can add static pages to create the illusion that it’s an actual website.

Many people do not want/need and will never use a blog which is the main selling point of WordPress. While we do highly encourage blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) reasons, some of our clients don’t like the idea of blogging or they don’t blog regularly, which means WordPress is not the right tool for them.

Also, WordPress websites do not offer custom website design. Our sites are built using software called Photoshop, which is a type of design software. We pride ourselves on our custom designed websites with their completely unique and eye-catching appeal. Every one of our websites is tailored to meet our client’s needs and to appeal to their customers, something you can’t get in a one-size-fits all template world.

Another difference is that Website Amigo is more user-friendly and more intuitive than WordPress. Amigo makes editing your website a pleasurable experience, not a hassle (some people even call it fun). WordPress has many features and bells-n-whistles that the average user had no need for which then become cumbersome to use and navigate around.

Finally, Website Amigo comes with a user manual and 24/7 support. WordPress only offers support through forums and relies on users having a basic understanding of HTML and coding to edit their pages effectively without “breaking” the templates.

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Separating the Amateurs from the Professionals in Graphic Design

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Tara Ingalls
Amateur vs Professional Graphic Design

Amateur vs Professional Graphic Design

Sometimes too much of a good thing is actually a bad thing. This can happen in a lot of places, but we’re particularly sensitive to it when it comes to graphic design. At one point everyone held a crayon in their hand and realized that they could color and draw. It was exciting, rewarding and you needed more. Eventually, you packed as many crayons as you could into your pudgy little hand and tried coloring with all of them at once, with varying degrees of success. This is basically what happens when some people discover graphic design, and we’re all for it. We want people to experiment and learn how to use the tools of our trade; we just don’t want professional websites to fall victim to a crayon novice.

Helvetica

Helvetica is like vanilla ice cream, sure it’s delicious, but wouldn’t it taste better with a little something added? What we’re trying to say is yes, Helvetica is a very popular font but try something else, you may find you like it better.

Learn Punctuation, Spelling and Grammar

Do you know the difference between prime marks, apostrophes, quotation marks and accent marks? Do you know when to use the words their, there and they’re? Spelling, grammar and punctuation are key to getting your message across and not losing the meaning of your words. Sometimes, just one of these mistakes will cause a reader to lose faith in all of your content.

No More Double Returns or Spaces

Back when a typewriter sat on every desk it was common to hit return twice to space out lines of type and to add a double space after a period, before a new sentence. Today that leaves gaps and odd breaks, so unless you’re using a typewriter, single returns and single spaces only

Embossing & Drop Shadows

These nifty little tools come with your software, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them. A website packed with embossing and drop shadows is one of the biggest tip offs that your website was designed by an amateur.

Underlining and CAPS

Underlining and using all caps are great ways to add emphasis if you’re handwriting a note, but if you’re designing a website then save the underlines for hyper links and use all caps sparingly. If you need to emphasize something try bold and italics instead.

Contact Tingalls Dzyn if you want to have your website handled by professionals in the graphic design field, i.e. Crayon Experts.

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Why Isn’t My Website #1 on Google?

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Tara Ingalls
Be #1 on Google

Be #1 on Google

This is a question that haunts many companies, the all important Google page rank, the standard by which all is measured in your industry. Or is it?

Let’s first clear up one misconception. Having a high ranking website isn’t the end-all-be-all-crowning-accomplishment of a website. Higher ranking websites on Google can bring you additional traffic, but if you have a bad website that doesn’t offer a good user experience you won’t get conversions anyway. The lesson here – focus on creating a great website with a good user experience that converts those viewers into customers.

That said – you still want that #1 Google position.

So why does your competition rank higher on Google than you do? Let’s first admit that you’re not the only company that wants that #1 position and only one company can have it at a time. If your competition is sitting in that position right now it’s probably because they’re making better use of search engine optimization (SEO) tools, or they have more inbound links, or their company name and domain name have keywords in them, or they’ve been on the web longer, or they frequently add new content. These are all areas that Google keeps track of and uses to determine rank.

Understanding that there are search engine limitations is essential.  Google cannot see the whole picture. Google is only capable of gathering a few puzzle pieces and making assumptions about the actual website. They cannot weigh the actual human user experience. But those puzzle pieces can be used as tools (SEO tools) and tweaked to give Google a better impression of your website. By learning how the above criteria is seen by Google and other search engines you can rise in the rankings and possibly even earn the coveted #1 position on Google.

If you’d like help with your website and to take advantage of the SEO tools available, contact Tingalls Dzyn about our SEO services.

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