Thoughts on Designing Identities for Small Companies

This evening, during a visit to the HOW Forum, I was pointed to this terrific post at the Ideas on Ideas blog about designing identities for small companies. As a designer who has been doing a LOT of that kind of work lately, it was great to hear how another studio handles the ultimate challenge of creating identity work for the smaller company, and it gave me a ton of ideas for what I'd like to ultimately provide for the zen kitchen's clients.

A quick excerpt from the post:

Some may argue that the points above are hardly any different from what would be applied to a larger organization. While this may be true, you will find that small companies rarely have marketing and communications experts at hand to implement such efforts; thus, the designer’s role often expands to meet their needs.

Small clients have a particularly hard time remembering that their brand assets play an important role in their growth. As such, you need to reinforce brand-focused thinking. Encourage them to see their identity as more than a “one-off” project. Their brand must remain central in their operations and decision making; likewise, their identity must be implemented consistently in order to reinforce the organization’s nature.

So, so true.

I'll likely have more thoughts on this as time goes on; however, at the moment it's important that I get going.