A logo and a company’s brand are completely different aspects of a company’s persona. Simply adding your logo to your company’s materials does not create a brand. If you devote all of your resources and energy to only creating a logo that you love, you are still missing many pieces of the much larger puzzle…
I’m a bit past my 10-year mark as a professional graphic designer. According to Malcolm Gladwell, that means that I should have just about met the 10,000-hour rule and I should be a “Master” at my profession. But I don’t feel like a master quite yet. Evolving trends and new technology are big parts of…
How do you communicate what’s most important on your website? Did you know you can use design concepts to do this? An essential task of a graphic designer is to present visual information in an organized manner. Well executed visual communication leads a viewer through content in an intended order of importance. Content can consist…
I’m the first to admit that I’m a people pleaser. When Hot Dog Marketing was in its infancy, giving time away was an easy decision because most of the time it made for happy clients and really, that’s all I cared about. I didn’t really care about what made for a good design process. I…
Hot Dog Marketing won a 2015 MarCom Award for its branding and graphic design project for the Kappa Delta Chi Sorority, Inc. (KDChi), a national organization. MarCom Awards recognize outstanding creative achievement by marketing and communication professionals. There were over 6,500 entries from throughout the United States, Canada and 15 other countries in the 2015 competition….
We have a lot of experience working with clients who are just stumped on how to help us help them build a better website. Outsourcing your web design to professionals can relieve a lot of stress, saving you time and ensuring the design and set-up are done well. But it can be daunting – how…
By Jessica H. Scanlon Small business owners are in a crowd all their own. Unlike CEOs of large corporations, small business owners often wear many hats. Whether you’re a partner at a 50+ employee company or a solo-preneur, the challenges you face with marketing your business most likely won’t get delegated to a high-paid marketing…
“Mass advertising can help build brands, but authenticity is what makes them last. If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” –Howard Schultz (Chairman & CEO of Starbucks) We are in the Digital Age and with that comes a completely new set of challenges and opportunities for…
A common misconception about branding is that it’s simply the graphic design process behind developing your marketing materials or the logo design. While a majority of the branding work Hot Dog Marketing does for clients is related to developing that print and web “look” that supports the right message, there’s a deeper level we can…