Creating a Personal Brand

One question I'm often asked by entrepreneurs is how to create a "personal brand" to better market oneself to others.

What you're basically asking is how to "productize" yourself. Meaning, if I went to a supermarket, and found a picture of you on a bottle, would I buy it? And furthermore, would I drink from the bottle?

Find out what makes you, you. What makes you unique. Mitch Joel, a marketing guru I've had the pleasure of listening speak, would dare you to find your "it" factor. What makes you stand out in a crowded room of billions of people asking the same question, all trying to make a buck.

Why is that only a handful of people in the world have procured the most wealth the world has to offer? It's because they've found out what it takes to unlock that something magical and get people to believe in what they're all about.

Getting Noticed in a Crowded Room

Red Dream Studios recently completed the design for a full-page advertisement spread that will appear in the upcoming edition of the popular bridal magazine, "Let's Get Married," which features a plethora of ads and editorials covering all the components of a wedding. With this catalog getting bigger and bigger every year, designing an eye-catching ad that distinguishes you instantly from the rest of the competition is the greatest challenge.

Our loyal client, Arrt, the company name for the make-up duo comprised of Anna Montesi and Rina Patel, retured to Red Dream Studios to create the most compelling story of their service offering with the least amount of rhetoric possible. We chose to push a minimalistic approach with very little verbiage, focusing more on the allure of the photo, the vibrant company logo, and of course, the make-up.

The end result, a fresh advertorial that distinguishes itself from among its competitors who typically rely on straight-forward boxiness and designs that are anything but en vouge.

Branding Ink Blot Design

I've blogged before about customer loyalty and how one of the most important factors in a prosperous business is to maintain excellent service and safeguarding your integrity among existing clients. No truer is the case with one of our clients, Arrt.ca, a pair of extraordinary make-up artists who typically apply blush to blushing brides and bridesmaids.

One of the founders of Arrt.ca, Anna Montesi, decided to launch another venture, pursuing a longtime passion of hers -- creating and design custom event and party invitations. Anna returned to Red Dream Studios to help her develop a corporate identity for her new company, Ink Blot Design (and yes, we will be producing the website as well). With the company name alluding to all sort of inherent designs, Red Dream Studios produced the following corporate identity and developed a series of business cards in a mere couple of days. Talk about drive-thru entrepreneuring...

With this logo, we obviously played upon the ink blot connection and modified a typeface that we found on the font website DaFont, called The Great Thunder. The background splatter is a composite of several paint splatter brushes that we obtained courtesy the Photoshop resource website Brusheezy.

Promoting your Business with Google Maps

Google has a great (free!) feature that I just recently learned about and have exploited to gain rank within Google searching. Within the Google Local Business Center, you can enter the name, coordinates, hours of operation, and other interesting tidbits about your business to help customers find you on Google Maps.

Here's how it works:



Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop.

When all the information is filled out, you will get a confirmation postcard from Google in the mail (how cool is that?!?) with a PIN number to confirm that you are who you say you are. Finally, searching for your company on Google Maps will present a wonderful listing about you and your company. There's an an option to post reviews of your work, which will hopefully help to solicity even more clients to your door.

For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Executive Class for Place Versailles Apartments

Red Dream Studios recently completed one of its nicest site deployments to date (or at least we think so) for Appartement Place Versailles, a large apartment complex in the heart of Montreal, right next to the best shopping center in all of Quebec (Place Versailles).

For this website, we used an executive approach for the design to accentuate the prestige of the building and the units available for rent inside, with a burgandy red, beigy gold, and light gray colour palette. To give the website an unfettered look, the content is relatively sparse, to the point, and clean overall - after all, the main point is to showcase the photos of the building and to drive visitors to apply for a lease online.

The site features bright photos and enlargeable floor plans of all the unit types available for rent.

Having had ownership of the building for over 30 years, we convinced the proprietor that it was certainly about time to showcase the property online in order to start branding it as a successful business.



For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Red Dream Studios featured on LogoDesignLove.com

Red Dream Studios received some surprising news today as its blog banner was featured and short-listed in the award category for "Best Design and Photography Blog Logo Designs." I'm not exactly sure what the overall prize is, but it's sure flattering to be nomiated with 19 other designs from among hundreds of original entries.

Sensational Branding

Another company got its image courtesy of us at Red Dream Studios today, with Sensational Bites benefiting from sensational branding. Shant Kancachian is the proprietor of a gourmet baked goods emporium who wanted to convey freshness and pure goodness in his image rather than blatant baked goods icons such as cookies, brownies, and so forth.

With a sleek and clean interpretation (and with a great colour to boot), the cherry was chosen as the icon of choice which spoke most to Shant's inner self. We chose a handwritten font as the main script for the company name to highlight its whimsical nature, alluding to the fact that Shant's work appeals to your every "sense." The tagline was then written in a bolder, more classical script with a bright orange colour such that it pops from the rest of the logo.

The business card design is shown below:

For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Branding Sara Kurtz Photography

Sara Kurtz is an up-and-coming event photographer who met with me because she loved the work Red Dream Studios did on another event photography, Dominic Fuizzotto. Not only did she want a complete redressing of her portfolio website, but after some talk, it was agreed that a new corporate branding would bring a measure of prestige, professionalism, and freshness to her image.

In talking with Sara, we determined that while it was important to convey that her company provided photographic services, we didn't want to overkill the point with a photograhic icon. We therefore made the logo "her own" by incorporating a dragonfly -- an insect that for her represented grace, beauty, and wonder. I naturally agreed to this because for me, injecting personal flavours into a brand is what makes the company adhere to the imagery the most.

In order to get the classical, professional look, we used a very scripted font, and in the end, placed the dragonfly along the path of one of the letter's loops to give the illusion that the dragonfly had traced the path of the lettering. In this manner, we were able to tie together the script with the icon -- one of the hallmarks of good logo design.

Sara's new logo is shown below:



For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Anatomy of a Corporate Identity

As a graphic and website design company, Red Dream Studios is often charged with creating most, if not all components of a Coporate Identity. This begins with finding the most effective way to brand one's company. Designing a corporate logo is one of the most challenging aspects of our work, as it involves creating an image for someone who you've most likely just met, or have spoken to only briefly over the telephone.

How does one convey the essence of the company or person when that person has had years of experience being who they are?

This time around, Red Dream Studios was fortunate enough to work with Michael Greenspan Films, the film company spearheaded by the award-winning Los Angeles-based director, Michael Greenspan. Michael is a one of my first friends, so having known him for about 30 years, the task of creating a new image for him wasn't necessarily as daunting as with some other clients. But the pressure was there to knock his socks off...

Michael, much like the films he creates, is bold, classical, yet simple. He knows what he wants. So the idea behind designing his identity was to convey a prestigious film company, harkening to the glory days of the silver screen. And of course, it had to be simple.



From a pure graphic design sense, the logo comprises all the elements: contrast in both colour and font, and simpicity. The contrast is used to draw attention to Michael's name and what he does. "greenspan" is brighter and bolder than either the "michael" or "films". We also chose to use an all lowercase style that is more stylistic and contemporary.

The business card is all black, which in itself makes a statement. With minial text, you can't help but read what's written there. We also opted for a double-sided card in order to minimize the amount of copy you'd see when looking at any given side. In order to immediately distinguish Michael's venture as a film company, we subtly added a stock photo of some film on the front side.

For more information, visit us at Red Dream Studios.