Graphic Design Tips, Tricks, and Information from the NetMen Corp

The Role of a Logo Design in Social Media Marketing

Social media has always been an integral part of the Internet. Text-only bulletin boards were the earliest social media platforms where people could meet, exchange views and interact with each other. From bulletin boards came Internet Relay Chats, which were the earliest forms of the modern-day Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts. Social media evolved faster with the increase in Internet speeds, availability of faster computers and laptops along with the introduction of smartphones, tablets and phablets — and, of course, MySpace and Orkut were popular before Facebook entered the scene. The modern social media paradigm allows businesses to: Market products and services to a precisely-defined target audience. Engage with existing and potential customers on a real-time basis. Resolve queries and complaints through instant communication. Share updates, deals and offers based on the customer's past purchases, location and other variables. Collect big data for understanding customers better. Social media has evolved beyond imagination since the earliest bulletin boards and chat applications. Yet, one thing that all social media platforms have in common is the emphasis on visual content. Imagine Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or YouTube without any images, infographics, memes or videos! It's important to focus on your logo design and how it applies to social media outlets since it can serve as the basis for your branding strategy! Graphics and Social Media — a Fantastic Combination What is the most important language for any business or enterprise? Its customers' language! Your marketing and branding strategies won't succeed unless you convey your message in a manner that your target audience prefers. Relying on chunks of text when your potential customer is not interested in reading anything beyond 140 characters does not make sense. This is why you need to make smart use of graphic design on your social media pages. A well-designed image, photo, meme or even a video offers the following benefits: There’s an instant connect between your brand and all your potential customers. It’s easier to speak to an international audience without communication issues. You can convey different aspects of your brand like passion, commitment and innovation in a single image. You can cut through the clutter on social media and grab attention immediately. Images can be timeless, which means a single message can be used again and again. Visual media is a lot more versatile than boring text. Colors, shapes, lines, curves and patterns can all convey your message differently. Getting Your Social Media Marketing Logo Right While it may be difficult to rank different visual elements of your social media profiles in order of importance, there is absolutely no doubt that your social media marketing logo must be given top priority. Your social media marketing logo is something more than just an image. Your business’s logo is the visual or pictorial representation of your values and brand identity. For instance, Ferrari's iconic logo of the prancing horse represents energy and vigor, which is a subtle nod to the type of cars Ferrari manufactures. The Rolls Royce logo [...]

By Ignacio Galarraga|December 3, 2013|Diseño De Logo, Diseño Gráfico, Medio Social|

The Principles of Good Logo Design

Logo design is playing an increasingly vital role in the personalisation of companies, products, and services. As the cornerstone of brand identity, a good logo helps set the stage for the development of a successful and long-lasting brand. Designing an exceptional logo is time consuming and a lot of hard work. To be able to interpret a design brief and come up with a design concept that distills the very essence of a company takes a very unique individual. Aside from having a combination of raw talent, communication skills and a lot of patience (to name a few), it is essential that the designer develops an astute understanding of the basic principles of what makes a good logo design. A good logo should be; simple, distinctive, relevant, memorable, timeless, and versatile. Lets take a look at those principles in more detail. 1. Simple Example: Seven Network (Australia) Logo Designed by Ken Cato, in 2003 A good logo is simple in its construction, but not in its concept. Quite often to the inexperienced eye, a good logo may look so simple that it looks like it was put together in a matter of minutes. The vast majority of logo designs that are both simple and successful are backed by many hours of research and unused concepts that never made the cut. It is usually the result of an extensive and exhaustive logo design process. Another advantage of simplicity in logo design is that a simple logo is much more likely to align with the other five principles of good logo design: distinctive, relevant, memorable, timeless and versatile. 2. Distinctive Example: Apple Logo Original Designed by Rob Janoff, in 1977 A distinctive logo stands out from the crowd and will overall be unique in appearance. A logo that is unique will have an essence that somehow distinguishes it from the pack. It should be distinctive while also effectively portraying the clients business requirements. Given that there are millions of logos currently in existence, and hundreds, if not thousands of new ones being created everyday, it is increasingly difficult to design a logo that is distinctive. The ability to design distinctive logos on a consistent basis makes an exceptional logo designer. 3. Relevant Amazon.com Logo Designed by Turner Duckworth, in 2000 A good logo design will be relevant to the industry, the client and the target market. If you are designing a logo for a kindergarten, it should be fair to say that it shouldn’t look like it was designed for a bank, and vice-versa. To design a relevant logo the designer should not rely on the design brief alone. All clients and their respective industries are different, no matter how straight-forward they may seem at first glance. By conducting further research, it will help to create a relevant design that speaks directly to the intended audience. 4. Memorable Nike Logo Designed by Carolyn Davidson, in 1971 A well designed logo will be committed to memory at a single glance, and will be easily recalled by the viewer. [...]

By Ignacio Galarraga|November 16, 2013|Logo Design|

Principios de un diseño de logo perfecto

El diseño de logotipo está jugando un papel cada vez más importante en la personalización de empresas, productos y servicios. A medida que la piedra angular de la identidad de la marca, un buen logotipo ayuda a establecer el escenario para el desarrollo de una marca de éxito y de larga duración. El diseño de un logotipo excepcional es mucho tiempo y mucho trabajo duro. Para ser capaz de interpretar las instrucciones de diseño y llegar a un concepto de diseño que destila la esencia misma de una empresa toma una persona muy singular. Aparte de tener una combinación de talento en bruto, habilidades de comunicación y mucha paciencia (por nombrar algunos), es esencial que el diseñador desarrolla un entendimiento astuto de los principios básicos de lo que hace un buen diseño del logotipo. Un buen logotipo debe ser; simple, distintivo, relevante y fácil de recordar, sin tiempo, y versátil. Vamos a echar un vistazo a esos principios con más detalle. 1. simple Ejemplo: Seven Network (Australia) Logo Diseñado por Ken Cato, en 2003 Un buen logotipo es simple en su construcción, pero no en su concepto. Muy a menudo al ojo inexperto, un buen logotipo puede parecer tan simple que parece que se armó en cuestión de minutos. La gran mayoría de los diseños de logotipo que son a la vez simple y exitosa están respaldados por muchas horas de investigación y conceptos utilizados que no hicieron el corte. Por lo general es el resultado de un proceso de diseño del logotipo extensa y exhaustiva. Otra ventaja de la simplicidad en el diseño del logotipo es que un simple logotipo es mucho más probable que se alinean con las otras cinco principios de buen diseño de logotipo: distintivas, relevantes, memorables, versátil y atemporal. 2. distintivo Ejemplo: logotipo de Apple Original diseñado por Rob Janoff, en 1977 Un logotipo distintivo se destaca de la multitud y en general será único en su apariencia. Un logo que es único tendrá una esencia que distingue de alguna manera de la manada. Debe tener un carácter distintivo a la vez que retrata de manera efectiva los requisitos clientes de negocios. Teniendo en cuenta que hay millones de logotipos existentes en la actualidad, y cientos, si no miles de otras nuevas que se crean todos los días, cada vez es más difícil diseñar un logotipo que es distintivo. La capacidad de diseñar logotipos distintivos sobre una base constante hace un diseñador del logotipo excepcional. 3. relevante Amazon.com Logo Diseñado por Turner Duckworth, en el año 2000 Un buen diseño del logotipo será relevante para la industria, el cliente y el mercado objetivo. Si está diseñando un logotipo para un jardín de infancia, debería ser justo decir que no debe verse como que fue diseñado para un banco, y viceversa. Para diseñar un logotipo relevante el diseñador no debe confiar en las instrucciones de diseño solo. Todos los clientes y sus respectivas industrias son diferentes, no importa lo sencillo que puede parecer a primera vista. [...]

By Ignacio Galarraga|November 16, 2013|Diseño De Logo|

23 Clever Little Tactics For Online Lead Generation

There’s plenty of ways to generate leads online. In fact, there’s probably an infinite amount of ways to generate leads online. All it takes is a little creativity and an overarching strategy and you’ll be hard pressed to find that your work isn’t paying off in spades. If you’ve gotten the strategy down, here’s 23 ways to get the creative juices flowing… 23 Creative Ways to Get Leads Online 1. Landing pages are crucial to online lead generation. Make sure the pages where you capture your leads have all the elements of a great landing page. Most of the tactics on this page will require a landing page of some form or another where the potential lead will enter their email address. 2. Use strong calls-to-action to make every page on your website lead (eventually) to one of these landing pages. 3. Write a special report that provides a solution to a problem your customers have. The goal here is to answer a small problem within a big problem. The big problem should be solved by buying your product. Require and email address to read it. 4. Write a white paper that does basically the same thing as above. You might be surprised at the results of labeling it a “white paper,” though. Read Mike Stelzner’s book if you need help. Again require an email address. 5. Put together a few Squidoo lenses about issues in your industry that your customers care about. Make sure your Squidoo profile has a link back to your site…or better yet, a lead generating landing page. 6. Take some blog posts (or articles) about a high traffic keyword phrase in your industry and put them together on a page that’s optimized for that keyword phrase. Use Scribe (affiliate link) to optimize the page if you don’t know anything about SEO. Tell readers to subscribe once they’ve read the resource. 7. Use Gotowebinar to host a webinar that (again) solves a problem for your customers. Require an email to register. 8. Use WordPress to create search optimized mini-sites that dominate search results for keyword phrases in your industry. Have the mini-sites lead back to your main site and prospective landing pages. 9. Contribute to online forums in your industry. Answer questions, be helpful, and be generous. Make your forum signature link back to your site and/or landing pages. 10. Create a buyer’s guide to a type of product you sell. Make it honest and useful. Be confident enough to show your strengths and weaknesses in all their glory. Be objective about you and your competition. Give this one away to be shared for free in pdf format. You don’t need to require an email address as long as you make sure there’s a link back to your site somewhere in the document. 11. Make a powerpoint presentation, present and record it with Camtasia, then slap it up on Youtube or Vimeo. Use Youtube’s annotations to add links back to your site. 12. Start engaging with potential customers on Twitter. Again, answer [...]

By Ignacio Galarraga|November 6, 2013|Marketing y Ventas, Mercadeo En Línea|

3 Easy Ways to Master Your Facebook Presence

The latest stats on Facebook are staggering: more than 500 million active members and 500,000 interactive applications. The site says members are spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. For business owners, it’s clear you need some type of presence on the world’s number one social networking site. However, once you sign up, what’s the next step? First, you should create a Facebook “like” page (formerly called “fan” pages). It’s fairly simple. Just create your page, edit your information, and push it live. The real challenge with your page is to get people joining, and coming back for more. I’ve had an Amber Mac Like Page for many months, but it wasn’t until this year that I truly understood how to make the most of my presence there. Early this spring I sat down with a friend on Facebook’s strategy team. I asked him to spend an hour with me to demystify the page experience, and give me some insider tips for Facebook success. I learned a lot within these sixty minutes that changed the way that I approach my own Facebook Page. Here’s a summary what other businesses need to start doing now. 1. Fill the wall. Many companies spend time prettying up their pages, diving into the Info, Photos, and Notes tabs, but the truth is that very few people actually venture out to spend time on your page and within these tabs. In fact, approximately 90 percent of people communicating with your Facebook page are doing so from their own personal news feeds. In other words, only 10 percent of people are leaving the comfort of their Facebook home pages to check out your presence. Since most users are interacting with you via your updates, focus your Facebook strategy on writing compelling messages on your Wall. Facebook pushes these status notes to your users’ feeds (unlike other tab updates, which simply sit in one place). Ideally, you want to write something that encourages your friends to comment, like, or share your messages. This is how your Facebook page will become more popular. 2. Use rich media. While writing compelling messages is key to getting your feed into the hearts and minds of your online community, a picture is worth a thousand clicks. You don’t need to post a professional picture every time, but regularly attaching cellphone photos to your messages and trying to make your posts more visual is a must. Aside from photos, videos are also heating up on Facebook. The site is now one of the top five video viewing destinations online, so make it a habit of attaching YouTube videos to your messages to get more traction. 3. Get inside Insights. Facebook page owners can get free analytics with Insights, a tool that sits within your account. This information is an important part of your Facebook success since it will help you to understand who is using your page which includes demographic info such as gender and age (allowing you to post appropriate messages). Within this area [...]

By Ignacio Galarraga|October 19, 2013|Online Marketing, Social Media|

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