Starting a new business can be a fun and exciting venture living “The American Dream.”

One of the most important details new business owners tend to overlook is a professionally designed logo and corresponding marketing materials. The initial lack of customers and cash flow often causes owners to postpone designing a professional logo and marketing materials until they are able to generate customers and income. In today’s market, we see an abundance of “Do it yourself” options that offer fast and CHEAP services for logo development, marketing materials, websites, and more. When launching a new business, many entrepreneurs choose to design their own marketing materials in an effort to save money. This seemingly “small piece” of a business can make or break your company.

So here are my thoughts:
Analogy #1 — Would you try to fill your child’s tooth if they had a cavity by following a “Do it yourself” video, but you were not a dentist?

Analogy #2 – Would you take your 2010 BMW to get an oil change at a place where their building was a car port? With a sign stuck in the ground that advertised $5.99 oil changes for all foreign vehicles?

While you maybe chuckling over my analogies and saying to yourself – What does that have to do with the importance of a well designed logo & marketing materials? And my answer is EVERYTHING. People excel in different things and become novices in their profession. We trust our health in our doctors and physicians because they have spent years of studying in school to become the professionals they are today. The same goes with marketing and design. While you may experiment with fonts, columns, spacing, etc in a word processing software, if you do not have a good sense of what you are doing, you could cause more problems than what you solve.

There are several important factors that a designer must take into consideration when crafting a winning design. (I have listed a few examples below)

• Software being used to create the design — Illustrator is a vector based program that is the industry leader in developing logos and other print materials.
• Proper Document Resolution – 72dpi for web and 300dpi for print
• Document color profile – RGB for web and CMYK for print.
• Logos should remain their clarity when resized small or large. For that reason designing a logo as a vector image is the best option. Vector images are made up of geometrical lines and shapes allowing them to be resized without losing clarity. Raster images on the other hand are made up of tiny colored squares called pixels. A photograph is a raster image.
• Color Aesthetics, typography, and much more.

A few good points why NOT to hold off on a professional designed logo and marketing materials.

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• Your business will appear “cheap” and unpolished

Customers may get the impression that you do not care about the way your business presents itself. This may cause them to think you don’t care about the quality of your products or services. (For example: using flimsy paper for business cards and other printed materials.)

• Your business will look unprofessional and untrustworthy

Using materials that are not professionally designed makes your business look unprofessional and might indicate that you cannot perform to or meet the standards required. (Examples include using clip art for your logo and images you find in Google to add to your website.)

• Your business will appear unstable

Starting with your “Do it Yourself” design and then switching a few months later to a different logo and then perhaps a year later doing it again creates confusion for clients. Is it the same business? It can also give the appearance that your company is indecisive and can’t make up its mind.

If you’re thinking that you cannot afford to spend a little extra to have your logo & marketing materials designed professionally, consider the outcome! How can you afford not to?