How to Create a Logo

With a well-designed logo, potential clients can instantly discover how your business can serve them. 

Your logo is a visual representation of everything your company stands for. Think of McDonald's golden arches or the Nike swoosh-these two impressive logos embody these companies well. But many companies still skimp on developing this key identity piece.
Ideally, your company logo enhances potential customers and partners' crucial first impression of your business. A good logo can build loyalty between your business and your customers, establish a brand identity, and provide the professional look of an established enterprise.
Consider Allstate's "good hands" logo. It immediately generates a warm feeling for the company, symbolizing care and trust. With a little thought and creativity, your logo can quickly and graphically express many positive attributes of your business, too.

Logo Types

There are basically three kinds of logos. Font-based logos consist primarily of a type treatment. The logos of IBM, Microsoft and Sony, for instance, use type treatments with a twist that makes them distinctive. Then there are logos that literally illustrate what a company does, such as when a house-painting company uses an illustration of a brush in its logo. And finally, there are abstract graphic symbols-such as Nike's swoosh-that become linked to a company's brand.
"Such a symbol is meaningless until your company can communicate to consumers what its underlying associations are," says Americus Reed II, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who's conducted research on the triggers that lead consumers to identify with and become loyal to a brand. But building that mental bridge takes time and money. The Nike swoosh has no inherent meaning outside of what's been created over the years through savvy marketing efforts that have transformed the logo into an "identity cue" for an athletic lifestyle.
Growing businesses can rarely afford the millions of dollars and years of effort required to create these associations, so a logo that clearly illustrates what your company stands for or does may be a better choice. Even a type treatment of your company's name may be too generic, says Placitas, New Mexico, logo designer Gary Priester, principal of gwpriester.com, the Web arm of design firm The Black Point Group. Priester believes customers should be able to tell what you do just by looking at your logo.

Getting Started

Before you begin sketching or learning how to design a logo, first articulate the message you want your logo to convey. Try writing a one-sentence image and mission statement to help focus your efforts. Stay true to this statement while creating your logo.
But that may not be enough to get you started. Here are some additional tactics and considerations that will help you create an appropriate company logo:

• Look at the logos of other businesses in your industry. Do your competitors use solid, conservative images, or flashy graphics and type? Think about how you want to differentiate your logo from those of your competition.

• Focus on your message. Decide what you want to communicate about your company. Does it have a distinct personality-serious or lighthearted? What makes it unique in relation to your competition? What's the nature of your current target audience? These elements should play an important role in the overall design or redesign.

• Make it clean and functional. Your logo should work as well on a business card as on the side of a truck. A good logo should be scalable, easy to reproduce, memorable and distinctive. Icons are better than photographs, which may be indecipherable if enlarged or reduced significantly. And be sure to create a logo that can be reproduced in black and white so that it can be faxed, photocopied or used in a black-and-white ad as effectively as in color.

• Your business name will affect your logo design. If your business name is "D.C. Jewelers," you may wish to use a classy, serif font to accent the letters (especially if your name features initials). For a company called "Lightning Bolt Printing," the logo might feature some creative implementation of-you guessed it-a lightning bolt.

• Use your logo to illustrate your business's key benefit. The best logos make an immediate statement with a picture or illustration, not words. The "Lightning Bolt Printing" logo, for example, may need to convey the business benefit of "ultra-fast, guaranteed printing services." The lightning bolt image could be manipulated to suggest speed and assurance.

• Don't use clip art. However tempting it may be, clip art can be copied too easily. Not only will original art make a more impressive statement about your company, but it'll set your business apart from others.

• Avoid trendy looks. If you're redesigning your old logo, you run the risk of confusing customers-or worse, alienating them. One option is to make gradual logo changes. According to Priester, Quaker Oats modified the Quaker man on its package over a 10-year period to avoid undermining customer confidence. But don't plan to make multiple logo changes. Instead, choose a logo that will stay current for 10 to 20 years, perhaps longer. That's the mark of a good design. In fact, when Priester designs a logo, he expects never to see that client again.

Watch Your Colors

One thing you need to be careful of as you explore color options is cost. Your five-color logo may be gorgeous, but once it comes time to produce it on stationery, the price won't be so attractive. Nor will it work in mediums that only allow one or two colors. Try not to exceed three colors unless you decide it's absolutely necessary.
Your logo can appear on a variety of media: signage, advertising, stationery, delivery vehicles and packaging, to name just a few. Remember that some of those applications have production limitations. Make sure you do a color study. Look at your logo in one-, two- and three-color versions.

Hire a Designer

While brainstorming logo ideas by yourself is a crucial step in creating your business image, trying to create a logo completely on your own is a mistake. It may seem like the best way to avoid the high costs of going to a professional design firm, which will charge anywhere from $4,000 to $15,000 for a logo design. Be aware, however, that there are thousands of independent designers around who charge much less. According to Stan Evenson, founder of Evenson Design Group, entrepreneurs on a tight budget should shop around for a designer. "There are a lot of [freelance] designers who charge rates ranging from $15 to $150 per hour, based on their experience," he says.
But don't hire someone just because of their bargain price. Find a designer who's familiar with your field . . . and with your competition. If the cost still seems exorbitant, Evenson says, "remember that a good logo should last at least 10 years. If you look at the amortization of that cost over a 10-year period, it doesn't seem so bad."
Even if you have a good eye for color and a sense of what you want your logo to look like, you should still consult a professional designer. Why? They know whether or not a logo design will transfer easily into print or onto a sign, while you might come up with a beautiful design that can't be transferred or would cost too much money to be printed. Your logo is the foundation of all your promotional materials, so this is one area where spending a little more now can really pay off later.

Using and Protecting Your Logo

Once you've produced a logo that embodies your company's mission at a glance, make sure you trademark it to protect it from use by other companies. You can apply for a trademark at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site.
Then, once it's protected, use it everywhere you can-on business cards, stationery, letterhead, brochures, ads, your Web site and any other place where you mention your company name. This will help build your image, raise your company's visibility and, ideally, lead to more business.
Creating a logo sounds easy, doesn't it? It can be. Just remember to keep your customers and the nature of your business in mind when you put it all together. In time, you'll have succeeded in building equity in your trademark, and it will become a positive and recognizable symbol of your product or service.

Why CIOs can’t sell enterprise collaboration tool

 

Collaboration platforms offer the promise to eliminate unnecessary meetings, phone calls and other time-consuming interactions. However, to succeed those tools have to perform better than the incumbent, which for most people is still email.

 Enterprise collaboration is a dubious pursuit. You can almost sense its impending failure the minute it gets introduced to a workforce and becomes just another tool that employees are supposed to use.
It doesn’t help when CIOs downplay the value of collaboration tools by simply procuring something that meets the lowest common denominator and enables them to check another item off their to-do list.

“There’s a lot of failures in enterprise collaboration, loosely termed, because people don’t really know what they’re aiming for so obviously they don’t hit it,” says Joel Confino, CEO and founder of the enterprise Q&A platform Haydle.

The promise of collaboration is to replace face-to-face communication, but if the implementation isn’t well-planned, it can’t become something extra that people have to do, Confino says. Collaboration also has to perform better than the incumbent, which is email for most people.

CIOs must lead by example

CIOs can’t merely launch a tool and tell employees to go forth and collaborate. The C suite needs to lead by example and use these new tools to accomplish meaningful business objectives.
“The majority of these implementations are underperforming and plenty of them are just outright ghost towns,” says Confino.

Why these tools are failing to supplant a technology as static as email is a question vexing the minds of countless IT managers. The reason for enterprise collaboration is still so hazy that relatively few CIOs agree on what challenges lie ahead.

CIOs and other IT decision makers face a host of challenges in their pursuit of enterprise collaboration, some of which are ingrained into the culture of their companies. Resistance to change is the obstacle facing CIOs at most companies and the reasons could include anything from workplace culture to perceived cost and complexity, says Scott McCool, group vice president of IT and CIO at Polycom.

Collaboration continues beyond office walls

One of the biggest challenges is determining how to implement enterprise collaboration in cross-functional manner, says John Abel, senior vice president of IT at Hitachi Data Systems,
“Teams are pretty good at communicating within their own group but when it comes to integrating across departments silos tend to happen, which ultimately becomes problematic when each team needs to align on certain campaigns or key topics,” he says.
NetScout’s CIO and Senior Vice President of Services Ken Boyd says the landscape of collaboration tools available today makes it difficult to pick the best ones for a specific workforce.
“Locating a collaboration tools provider that can offer the right balance for the needs of our enterprise users can be a significant challenge,” he says. There are many point solutions for voice, video, chat and document collaboration, but splicing together those solutions from multiple vendors isn’t always the most productive or cost -effective method.
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CIOs should pick tools that address specific needs

Landing at the best solution requires critical thinking and planning, and time to investigate, assess, negotiate, evaluate and integrate, says Boyd, adding that it’s important for CIOs to pick the right provider from the start.
“There is an atomic shift taking place in how the enterprise operates, and so the CIO and CIO's team must decide whether [on-]premises and cloud-based collaboration tools can and will address the needs of the enterprise users -- anytime, anywhere, and on any device -- plus smoothly work between business and consumer applications,” says Boyd.

CIOs must also navigate and please the different age groups, says Chris McKewon, founder and CEO of the managed services provider Xceptional Networks

Millennials are more comfortable with video, short messaging and have embraced newer collaboration tools like Slack and HipChat while older execs are still trying to master WebEx and GoToMeeting, and unfortunately there’s no common ground, McKewon says.
“CIOs need to shift their mindset, strategies and projects to be more inclusive and collaborative,” says Shamlan Siddiqi, vice president of architecture and application development at the systems integrator NTT Data.

The biggest challenges, according to Siddiqi, are organizational buy-in on major transformational decisions, employee adoption, sustainable engagement, security, content quality, standardization and tool selection.

Collaboration drives results with impact

Brian Pillar, IT manager at the software firm TechSmith, agrees that adoption is a major challenge. Enterprise collaboration tools rarely come cheap, so making sure the organization rallies around the new platform is key.
Organizations will never realize their return on investment for collaboration until individuals or teams stop creating workarounds to avoid an enterprise collaboration tool altogether, says Pillar.

Ruven Gotz, director of collaboration services at the IT solutions vendor Avanade, says collaboration is about helping people work together to achieve more meaningful and impactful outcomes.
As such, the biggest challenges lie in approaching collaboration with the right mindset, he says.
“Technology is an amplifier of human touch and interaction. Its effectiveness in enabling collaboration is entirely dependent on achieving results with methods that make sense to the way people actually accomplish work,” says Gotz
“You really have to understand the true nature of the business results you seek to achieve,” says Gotz.
If you can’t see the business result you seek to achieve, take the time to stop and find it. If you can’t rationalize a process that is simple to understand, don’t try to automate it, he says.
“Understand what the tool imposes on the experience,” says Gotz. “Don’t let the tool bind natural human interaction.”

 

Researchers find no significant change in smokers' habits after smoking ban

Smokers have become accustomed to stepping outside at bars and restaurants. But has the change in rules governing enclosed public places inspired enough of them to smoke less behind their own closed doors or maybe even quit altogether?

These questions were posed in research recently published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, in which a team that included Sylvia Kairouz of Concordia University found no significant change in home habits in the aftermath of a ban. But the measures could have an impact in more complex ways.

"What distinguishes people who restrict smoking at home is the presence of a non-smoker," says Kairouz, an associate professor in Concordia's Department of Sociology and Anthropology. "The social network seems to be more of a factor than the law."

With advance knowledge of a smoking ban in Quebec, Canada that took effect in May 2006, researchers were able to collect data from a representative cross-section of the population a month ahead of time. They then followed up a year and a half later.

Naturally, growing awareness of the health impact of secondhand smoke contributed to the stricter laws, although a number of those who kept puffing at home claimed to be trying to reduce nicotine exposure to others, even if those strategies for quitting are generally futile.

"The popular belief is that opening windows or doors to blow out smoke makes it OK, when that's not the case," Kairouz says. 

"People might be sensitive to the issues, but there was a lack of information about how the effects of second-hand smoke are transmitted."

Greater inspiration to kick the habit likely comes from having friends or family who set an example by giving up cigarettes themselves. 

But trends over the past decade suggest a much broader range of factors have reduced the number of nicotine addicts beyond simply forcing smokers to huddle outdoors more often.

Top 10 London Attractions ~ things to do

Top 10 most popular tourist attractions, based on  visitor numbers. 

 Top 10 London Attractions video From the modern London Eye to the historic Tower of London, below are London's most visited tourist attractions. 

 Many of London's top 10 attractions are free, making them affordable places to soak up some culture – you can book to visit others via the buttons below.

Whether you prefer history or modern art, you'll find it at one of these must-visit spots.

The list below is in order of popularity based on the latest available visitor numbers.

1. British Museum

The world-famous British Museum exhibits the works of man from prehistoric to modern times, from around the world. Highlights include the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures and the mummies in the Ancient Egypt collection.

2. National Gallery

The crowning glory of Trafalgar Square, London's National Gallery is a vast space filled with Western European paintings from the 13th to the 19th centuries. In this iconic art gallery you can find works by masters such as Van Gogh, da Vinci, Botticelli, Constable, Renoir, Titian and Stubbs. 

3. Natural History Museum

As well as the permanent (and permanently fascinating!) dinosaur exhibition, the Natural History Museum boasts a collection of the biggest, tallest and rarest animals in the world. See a life-sized blue whale, a 40-million-year-old spider, and the beautiful Central Hall.

4. Tate Modern

Sitting grandly on the banks of the Thames is Tate Modern, Britain's national museum of modern and contemporary art. Its unique shape is due to it previously being a power station. The gallery's restaurants offer fabulous views across the city

5. Coca-Cola London Eye

The Coca-Cola London Eye is a major feature of London's skyline. It boasts some of London's best views from its 32 capsules, each weighing 10 tonnes and holding up to 25 people. Climb aboard for a breathtaking experience, with an unforgettable perspective of more than 55 of London's most famous landmarks – all in just 30 minutes!

6. Science Museum

From the future of space travel to asking that difficult question: "who am I?", the Science Museum makes your brain perform Olympic-standard mental gymnastics. See, touch and experience the major scientific advances of the last 300 years; and don't forget the awesome Imax cinema.

7. Victoria and Albert Museum

The V&A celebrates art and design with 3,000 years' worth of amazing artefacts from around the world. A real treasure trove of goodies, you never know what you'll discover next: furniture, paintings, sculpture, metalwork and textiles

8. Tower of London

Take a tour with one of the Yeoman Warders around the Tower of London, one of the world's most famous buildings. Discover its 900-year history as a royal palace, prison and place of execution, arsenal, jewel house and zoo! Gaze up at the White Tower, tiptoe through a medieval king's bedchamber and marvel at the Crown Jewels

9. Royal Museums Greenwich

Visit the National Maritime Museum - the world's largest maritime museum, see the historic Queen's House, stand astride the Prime Meridian at Royal Observatory Greenwich and explore the famous Cutty Sark: all part of the Royal Museums Greenwich.

10. Madame Tussauds London

At Madame Tussauds, you'll come face-to-face with some of the world's most famous faces. From Shakespeare to Lady Gaga you'll meet influential figures from showbiz, sport, politics and even royalty. Strike a pose with Usain Bolt, get close to One Direction or receive a once-in-a-lifetime audience with Her Majesty the Queen.

Key Benefits of a Party Plan Business

Many men and women are looking for easy ways to add additional income into their homes. 

Whether it is a second job or a part time position that a mum can do from home on the side, a party plan business really is the perfect type of business that will work for most people. 

If you are thinking about adding a side job or a small business, why not think about opening your own party plan business?

Let's look at some of the key benefits to why a party plan business will work for you:

* Flexible Hours - Work when it's convenient for you and your family. You can set up your work schedule to work only on specific days and times of the week, if necessary. This will allow you to take care of your children and to be there when they need you. Or you can choose to work your business around another job that is outside the home.

* Small Investment - Most direct sales companies charge a small fee for an agent’s start-up business kit and/or the lease of a web site. It is an affordable way to start a business.

* Generous Compensation Plan - Most companies pay their agents a generous commission of 25 to 50% plus additional bonuses.

* Multi-Level Compensation Plan - You can earn commission on your downline team sales which varies greatly from company to company. This is an added income stream to the product sales that you generate.

* Quick Return on Your Investment - Since you are making a small investment into the business by just purchasing a consultant start-up business kit and perhaps leasing an online agent web site – your store front - from the company, you can quickly earn back your investment and be making a profit fast.

* Childcare Costs - Most stay at home mums choose to do direct sales so that they have little to no childcare costs. Many mums only do their home parties when their significant other is around to babysit or they have another family member watch the children when they need to conduct their business. This lowers your outgoing expenses so you can make more money.

* No Stress - Since you won't be working in a retail or office environment, many mums find that a party plan business is the way to go when they don't want professional work environment stress in their lives. Be your own boss!

* More Profit - By having a party plan home business, you won't incur the costs of commuting to a job location every day, won't have childcare costs, will save on purchasing lunches, beverages and workplace attire because you will be working from home. This means that more money that you make will be staying in your pocket instead of going out for work-related expenses.

It almost sounds too good to be true! But these key benefits are why the party plan business is such a good fit for mums and families all over the world. Is a party plan right for you? Do you have more questions about the business? Ask us!

Rita Ora wears the SAME plunging 'The One Show' suit for star-studded Tom Ford event

She famously caused an uproar when she appeared on The One Show in a plunging suit jacket.

And Rita Ora did it again as she attended the Tom Ford Autumn/Winter Womenswear presentation yesterday.
 The singer dared to bare in a the racy white suit jacket which was teamed with matching tailored trousers.
 While her outfit was very unfussy she decided to add some serious drama with very heavy eyemake-up and her short blonde hair slicked back.
 Rita, who is in LA ahead of the Oscars, was joined for the event by a whole host of famous faces including Miley Cyrus and new mum Scarlett Johansson.
 But like many of the stars who attended, it was an early night for Rita ahead of a very exciting weekend.

She famously caused an uproar when she appeared on The One Show in a plunging suit jacket.
And Rita Ora did it again as she attended the Tom Ford Autumn/Winter Womenswear presentation yesterday.
The singer dared to bare in a the racy white suit jacket which was teamed with matching tailored trousers.
Flynet Rita Ora arrives at The Tom Ford show Rita turns heads at The Tom Ford Show
While her outfit was very unfussy she decided to add some serious drama with very heavy eyemake-up and her short blonde hair slicked back.
Rita, who is in LA ahead of the Oscars, was joined for the event by a whole host of famous faces including Miley Cyrus and new mum Scarlett Johansson.
But like many of the stars who attended, it was an early night for Rita ahead of a very exciting weekend.
Getty / Flynet Rita Ora arrives at The Tom Ford show Look at those dramatic eyes Before heading to bed, the 24-year-old shared a picture of herself which she captioned: “Last minute pic till I have to go wash it all off early bed time for me! But wait a minute....”
The pretty blonde will be taking to the stage at the prestigious ceremony on Sunday evening to perform Grateful from Beyond the Lights.
It is one of the five tracks nominated for the best song award at this year’s ceremony. Rita previously told fans she was “excited” about singing at the show.
While the ceremony’s producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said: "The mixture of her incredible voice and glamour makes a perfect combination for our show.”

Dangerous Creatures Playlist

The new Dangerous Creatures novel arrives in 2 weeks! And if you plan on hanging with Caster rockers you're gonna need to learn the music. Listen to the official Dangerous Creatures playlist on Spotify here, or download the songs below on your favorite player.

DANGEROUS CREATURES

The #1 New York Times bestselling coauthors of the Beautiful Creatures novels, are back to cast another magical spell. Dangerous Creatures hits bookshelves May 20th.

 

Lena Duchannes

Plot

In Gatlin, South Carolina, Ethan Wate awakens from a recurring dream of a girl he does not know. In voice-over narration, he describes his enjoyment of reading banned books, his despair of his small-town existence, and his dreams of leaving for college. Arriving for his first day of junior year, Ethan notices newcomer Lena Duchannes, who resembles the girl he has been dreaming about. The other students do not take kindly to her and spread gossip regarding Lena's reclusive uncle, Macon Ravenwood, and suggest that her family includes devil worshippers. Overhearing these whispers, Lena tenses, and the classroom windows shatter, amplifying the fears and suspicions of the class and the townspeople at large that she is a witch.

On a drive home, Ethan nearly runs over Lena, whose car has broken down. He gives her a ride home, and the two bond over their shared love of poetry and having both lost their mothers. Ethan drops Lena off but later finds a locket and returns to the mansion to give it to her as a present. Touching the locket triggers a shared flashback to theAmerican Civil War, after which Ethan awakens at his home. Macon disapproves of their love and fondness of each other, and conspires with Ethan's family friend, Amma, to keep the two separated. However, Ethan continues to pursue Lena until she confesses that she and her family are "casters" capable of performing magical spells that change the weather or create illusions. On her sixteenth birthday, Lena's true nature will steer her towards either the light or the dark; Lena fears the latter, as it entails being consumed by evil and hurting those she loves. Ethan insists she is responsible for her own choices and reassures her that she is a good person.

Matters are complicated by the arrival of two immensely powerful dark casters who aim to push Lena to the dark: Ridley, Lena's provocative cousin/childhood friend, and Sarafine, Lena's mother, who has possessed Mrs. Lincoln, the mother of Ethan's friend Link. Sarafine foresees that Lena will become an even more powerful caster and intends for Lena to use her newfound power to purge the Earth of humans, leaving casters to rule in their wake. Lena and Ethan use the locket to re-experience the whole flashback, which reveals their ancestors, caster Genevieve Duchannes and mortal Confederate soldier Ethan Carter Wate were in love. Ethan Carter was shot in battle, and Genevieve revived him using a forbidden spell that caused her to go dark and curse all the Duchannes family's women. They consult with Amma, who is in a seer/keeper of a caster library beneath the town library. The most ancient of these books, the Book of Moons, reveals the secret to undoing the curse: someone Lena loves has to die. Unwilling to take Ethan's life, Lena has a final moment together with Ethan in which Lena makes it snow and then erases all his memories of their time together.

Ridley seduces Link and gives him a bullet to use in an upcoming Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill which will take place on Lena's birthday. During the reenactment, Link and Ethan agree to "kill" each other so they can ditch the reenactment. While at the ceremony for her 16th birthday, Lena feels the shock of the curse being broken and runs off to Ethan, clutching his dying body as Ridley and Sarafine encourage her to surrender to grief and accept the dark. Lena lashes out in anger, sending lightning strikes through the crowd of reenactors until Ethan transforms into Macon, who had previously disguised himself as Ethan to become the needed sacrifice. His dying words encourage Lena to "claim yourself"; she then causes the moon to disappear, so it cannot claim her for the dark. Lena allows Ridley to flee and pulls Sarafine from Mrs. Lincoln's body, using her power to seal Sarafine's spirit away.

Six months later, a still-amnesiac Ethan stops by the library to visit Amma before leaving for an NYU college tour with Link. He apologizes to Lena for not having gotten to know her during their time in Gatlin. When he inquires if a "banned book" by Charles Bukowski (which she had shared with him when they first met) is any good and Lena asks him to define good (the same reply she gave the first time he asked), Lena then presents it to him as a "getting out of Gatlin present". As Link drives away, Ethan reads a passage in the book that he had earlier associated with Lena, while Lena is revealed in the caster library to be a half light/dark caster. As they drive past the town line, Ethan glimpses the town's burned welcome sign and remembers everything. The car skids to a halt, Ethan gets out of the car and yells Lena's name. She hears him call, and is freed of her dark side before the screen fades to black.

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