Type is present in essentially all marketing communications. Other than color, perhaps no other visual element plays a more crucial role in building a consistent presence across multiple forms of media. Yet, type is something few businesses use effectively, with even large established companies continuously making arbitrary choices with type. Those choices undermine their long term ability to differentiate themselves and detract from the professionalism and credibility of the materials they create.

As is common for our industry, part of Shew Design’s branding process is building a type palette in much the same way as a color palette, usually a combination of typefaces designed to work with one another for years to come.  As designers, our tools and processes put us in an ideal world of sorts – one that makes it easy to follow our own guidelines. Not so with others, and with good reason: technology and the marketplace create so many barriers to managing type easily and effectively.

Here are some strategies we’ve used to help clients harness type to create an effective brand presence.

Documented standards that are accessible, understood, and observed

Standards can address which typefaces to use and how to use them, but standards are useless if they can’t be easily accessed, people don’t know how to follow them, or if no one is responsible for enforcing them. As a general rule, we encourage a division of labor where people who create content are different from the people who approve content.  We always make standards available online, through printed manuals, and when appropriate, as stylesheets in programs such as Microsoft Word.

The PDF format

Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) can embed most fonts, allowing people to deliver documents with branded typography without requiring the viewer to purchase fonts [???]. In addition, form fields can use specific fonts and can be used to make templates for report covers, CD labels, and similar pieces that can be modified by anyone without requiring a purchase or special skills. These templates can be combined with preprinted materials to create attractive materials that are completely branded and easily changed using free software.

discounts on type purchases

If cost is the primary reason against using type consistently, savings can be built into the branding process by selecting type families that can be purchased in bulk or by buying cheaper versions of established typefaces. As with most things, you get what you pay for but there are deals to be had. For example: older versions of Freehand and Illustrator would often come with hundreds of type families free. A person who is willing to invest a little time could purchase several hundred dollars worth of type for only a few dollars.

Consistent use of default type

A two tier type strategy could use more interesting branded type solutions for marketing applications while using standard type (i.e. Times and Arial) for everyday use. The disconnect between the two materials can be softened by using assets such as logos, preprinted materials, graphical headers, style sheets, etc. to maintain consistency.

An attitude of restraint

Given the wealth of free decorative fonts and effects available, it’s possible to endlessly tinker with designs without significantly improving them. Before beginning the process of exploring type, we recommend you considering focusing more on content and less on formatting, picking simple solutions will hold up for multiple projects. Simple choices almost always work better for long term solutions.

yearning - by William Steig

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring a powerful tool that has exerted a subtle but profound influence on my professional life. Google Insights has become a backdrop for our strategic work, and truth be told, a bit of a fascinating toy as well.

On a technical level, Insights is a free search engine analysis tool, and it’s extremely easy to use. It breaks down search engine results by time and location; it also provides feedback about trends related to the terms you query.

In terms of my own use, I think of Insights as a window into the desires of the Internet’s hive mind. Its obvious uses are powerful indeed. One client, for example, provides a service available from multiple sources in our community but with limited availability in BC, just north of their location. Insights pinpointed one community – Surrey – in which this particular service saw over 5,000% growth. Wow.

I challenge you to invest 30 minutes exploring terms related to your own business or occupation without experiencing a shift of perspective. In time, you can sculpt your queries to ask very nuanced questions. I recommend paying particular attention to the related terms that appear on the bottom of the search.

Its less obvious uses are even more fascinating to me – particularly as they relate to the viral quality certain ideas, words, and behaviors have. I’ve been exploring slang, jargon, pop culture, and misinformation of all kinds. Climate change vs. global warming vs. global warming hoax? Even our collective shift from coughing into our hands to coughing into our elbows play out in interesting ways in Insights.

Where even I wouldn’t claim that this information is always useful, I can’t help but think that use of this tool has given me a new perspective on marketing and a new insight into the ideas that are top of mind, both today and yesterday. If you’re in the business of capturing minds at any level, I think you’ll find that it’s an indispensable tool.

A recent survey by ExactTarget indicated that 70% of Facebook users don’t want marketing to be incorporated in social media applications – even when they opt to become fans of a particular business.

Of course. Given the choice, few people would claim they want to be marketed to, ever – regardless of the medium. It’s a bit like asking if they want a headache or a pebble in their shoe.

Yet, Facebook is obviously filled with people cheerfully engaged in all sorts of marketing activities – downloading coupons, answering polls, signing petitions, benefiting from discounts, playing games, earning badges. Companies are providing many of these activities, and of course they are marketing themselves.

It’s a matter of how a word is perceived. “Marketing” as the hard sell, the interruption, the phony friendliness, the lackluster product with a glossy polish is clearly not what Facebook is for. This is how many people perceive marketing today.

“Marketing” as an envolving form of communication – a free resource, a clever idea, an insightful observation, and the occasional promotion, gimmick, or self congratulation – is clearly at home at Facebook.

I’m curious to see what comes next. Facebook will eventually be replaced, almost certainly because the commercial aspects of it will overwhelm the other content. Will our perception of the word  “marketing’ shift as well? I wonder if it will always have a negative ring to most people, and if it will be something whose obviousness makes it seem a thing of the past. Most importantly, I wonder what will replace it.

I think it’s an exciting trend to watch and participate in, and with Facebook’s 300 million users, the effects are going to be far reaching indeed.

Some people separate risks into different categories – physical, social, monetary, etc. – where others think in terms of high or low involvement.

A low involvement choice is a product like detergent, gum, or paper towers.  These sorts of decisions are quickly made on the basis of cost,  convenience, recognizability, and familiarity.  There is little risk involved.

Low involvement marketing materials don't involve a lot of trust or risk. Standing out is hugely important for the success of these products.

High involvement choices evoke  a higher decision process because of greater of risk. The decision is much more thought out, possibly more emotional, less subject to being driven by  price,  convenience, or similar considerations.  For obvious reasons, health care is almost always considered  a high involvement message.

High involvement marketing is much more reliant on trust and understanding, and a brand  functions to create a connection between the organization and the client.

When developing high involvement marketing materials, we often use inclusive language (”we,” “you,” “us,” etc.) to address a relationship, and we respect the audience by providing them with  the information they need to a make an informed choice.  We position our client as the organization that helps solves the audience’s problems , relieves an anxiety, or creates an opportunity.  Design in these circumstances is minimal and uncomplicated, created to calm and frame content without competing with it.

The excessive formatting of this ad is just one of the things about this ad that make it untrustworthy to modern eyes.

If your proposition is high involvement and  your materials are cluttered, busy, or inconsistent, you may want to consider the corrosive effects these qualities have on your audience’s ability to extend their trust.  The perceived need to “stand out” is usually the culprit, taking a potentially simple message and ornamenting  it with extraneous formatting, effects or clipart.

Better to focus on a simple message  that differentiates you, use creative concepts that speak to that message.  It’s been my experience that focusing on a message opens the door to more interesting, creative concepts because they were born out of a real need and won’t change every time there’s a new project.  Over time, these choices will make it easier for your audience to understand, value, and ultimately trust you.

Self expression emerges from the individual point of view of the artist – unearthing a person’s interior thoughts and feelings and building connections with other people through the work.

Problem solving is based on thinking about the function in more objective terms – communicating a idea to particular audience, emphasizing one thing while downplaying another. On the surface, it’s not really about the creative person at all.

Years ago, I went to a presentation where the speaker said he views his job as a communicator like that of a plumber, charged with the task of moving water from one location to another. The person who said it was a master at his craft, using marketing communications to grab attention and communicate value.

I was struck by the concept of comparing  traditionally “artistic” elements such as illustrations, photography, and writing with laying pipe and wondered if accepting the garb of a trades person made it easier for people to accept the scenario he presented, in which success or failure could be objectively proven in such a straightforward way.

In my mind, it defines the single most important characteristic of excellence in marketing – the discipline of sizing up and solving a problem by seeing it through a different set of eyes but, paradoxically, still trusting in your own intuition and creativity to evaluate the work honestly and accurately. It’s a perspective that I try to cultivate in myself and with my clients, and I encourage you to use when thinking about your own marketing work.