Consistent branding looks professional, saves on design time and helps guests and prospects remember you.
Starting with the logo
Maine Stay Inn and Cottages (Kennebunkport, ME) offers modern comforts in their historic home and guest cottages. Innkeepers Judi and Walter Hauer knew their web site needed an update and chose InsideOut for the redesign. But they had no logo or established branding.
After exchanging ideas with Judi, InsideOut designer Jim McCauley created a logo that conveys the accommodations’ traditional yet contemporary appeal. The logo is legible at both large and small sizes. And because it’s a vector-based* electronic file, graphic designers can quickly and easily work with this logo. Beth Logan had no trouble incorporating the new logo into her web site design.
Business cards
With the look and feel established by the logo and web site, designing the business card was a snap. Maine Stay decided to list all the staff with a check box next to each name. In this way, they saved the cost of printing a set of cards for each person. InsideOut created the design and took care of the print management for fuss-free printing and quick delivery.
E-newsletter
The logo and branding also transferred seamlessly to the e-newsletter designed by InsideOut. Now anyone on the Maine Stay team can publish e-newsletters with an easy-to-use template that also provides email list maintenance tools and statistics on open rates, bounce rates, etc. Their branded e-newsletter gives them an excellent way to reach out to guests in a targeted, low-cost way.
Consistent branding counts
By establishing a branded look first, Maine Stay has saved hours of design time. Their marketing materials also express the quality of their accommodations in a consistent way. This consistency makes the brand more memorable and avoids jarring discontinuities: e.g., the web site makes the place look great, but the rack card makes it look so-so. In Maine Stay’s case, prospective guests see the same experience as they go from business card to e-newsletter to web site to blog. A good first impression is backed up by repeating that impression, instilling the brand into viewers’ memories.
*Vector-based logos can be enlarged endlessly with no loss in image quality. Non-vector logos have strict limitations on how much they can be enlarged. Designers also use up valuable time cutting them out from their backgrounds since non-vector logos usually do not have transparent backgrounds.