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Rebuilding
an Identity
Changing
the name and brand image of
your company is a course of action that should not be taken
lightly. The benefit of a different name is that it can
increase business by appealing to a wider audience.
The risk for companies that have been
in business as long as Rich
Duncan Construction is the possibility of losing
current customers if they’re unable to recognize the
new name and branding materials.
Rich Duncan Construction is much more than a one-man operation, so they
wanted to adjust their identity to better reflect the scope of their abilities.
After considering several options for a new company name they decided
that “Duncan
Construction”
would continue to be familiar for their existing
customers and would also help convey the fact that they're a much larger company
than the original name implied.
Our job was to integrate the new company name with a new identity which had a
modern feel, but didn't become unrecognizable to their existing customers.
We decided to focus on the original elements of the identity and modernize each
one while keeping the same overall structure of the identity.
The primary visual element of the new logo is the mountains. These existed in
the previous logo, but were much more abstract, and were often mistaken
for rooftops. Our solution was to enlarge them and add more detail
to better communicate what they represent. The color palette was adjusted slightly
to introduce a truer blue. We also changed the font from a hand scripted serif
font to a cleaner, bolder, more modern typeface to suit the new style.
The new logo is sturdy and rigid in construction, indicating strength and reliability.
Finally, we removed the wide blue bar and replaced it with a more subtle gray
bar that doesn’t
draw as much attention away from the name.
Rather than abandoning the old name altogether, the decision was
made to keep “Rich Duncan Construction Inc.” as the tagline. This
goes a long way to eliminate any confusion for Duncan Construction’s
existing client base and serves as a transitional element. Eventually, as Duncan
Construction becomes more recognized by their new name, the tagline can be
removed or revised without harming the integrity of the overall logo.
Once the logo was finalized we moved on to the rest of their marketing materials.
Business cards, brochures, and the website had to be brought up to date. The
resulting materials reassure previous customers that this is the same company
they've grown to trust, and present a brand identity to new clients that
inspires confidence in the capabilities of a very experienced
team at Duncan Construction...
A sampling of new materials created for Rich Duncan Construction... |
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Logos
You Would Normally Never See
For every logo
that makes it into the public eye there are many more that don't
make the cut. We take great care with all the logo options we develop
for a client, and we often can't help but pick favorites. It isn't
uncommon though that our favorite logo isn't our client's favorite.
We thought it might be fun to showcase some of the logos we loved
that never saw the light of day... until now.
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We’ve
Got You Covered
Here are a few recent titles we've done for Baker
Publishing, Georgetown University Press, Messianic Jewish Publishers,
and Presbyterian Publishing...
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Matching
Game: Classic Rides
With all the cool cars and trucks to choose
from our past, it's hard to nail down which one each
of us would love to have parked in our driveway today. They
say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep
and the car that they drive. Dig a little deeper into our personalities
by making the matches.
Roll over each Classic Ride to see our favorites.
(
SINCE YOUR EMAIL BROWSER DOESN'T SUPPORT THE ROLLOVER FUNCTION, CLICK
HERE FOR THE SERVER-SIDE VERSION )
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The
Wonderful World of
Gaia
We have
an exciting new addition to our web design toolbox. (Actually,
it’s becoming more of a tool shed but that doesn’t
flow as nicely.) We want to introduce you to Gaia.
Gaia is a new system that greatly enhances Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) in
Flash websites. Through a variety of technical wizardy, it mirrors all the pages
of a Flash website with xml files, that are then 100% readable by search engines.
As an added bonus, Gaia also creates a unique URL for each and every page of
the Flash website so you can send someone a link to a specific page, not just
the main page of the site as you would normally have to do with a Flash site. It
also adds support for the use of your browser's forward and back buttons.
As is our custom, we decided to experiment on ourselves first and rebuilt our
page with the Gaia framework. Now if you do a Google search for “Salem
Oregon Graphic Design” we are number two on the first page! That is a big
improvement for us, as we used to be number “I don’t want to talk
about it” on page “I’m not sure.”
Gaia takes some extra development time to implement but it appears that for sites
that rely heavily on SEO it will give them the visibility and discoverability
of an HTML site with all the animation and interactivity of a Flash website.
We are building several new sites with the Gaia framework behind them, and we
are looking forward to seeing the results!
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Factoid:
Digital photos are bitmap graphic types,
no matter what format the image is saved to. That means they are
made up of individual pixels with each pixel representing
a single color. If you zoom in on one of these images (see example
at left) you'll be able to see the individual squares of color.
What this means in relation to printing is
that these types of images are resolution-dependent.
In other words, the quality of the print and the size of the printed
image is limited by the number of pixels in the image. You can't
increase one value without effectively decreasing the other. Therefore,
a photo or graphic intended for use on a website would not be
useable for quality print reproduction.
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Introducing:
We recently had the opportunity to create a logo for The
Islander Bar & Grill,
a local startup restaurant boasting authentic Pacific Island food,
setting, and hospitality.
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