Design with Greenery

Ahh... Greenery! You can almost smell the freshness; so uplifting. It's Pantone's new Color of the Year for 2017. Just like the first days of Spring, Greenery is symbolic of new beginnings. It's a fresh, bright green that evokes nature, hope and fresh beginnings. 

Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, states that "greenery bursts forth in 2017 to provide us with the reassurance we yearn for amid a tumultuous social and political environment. Satisfying our growing desire to rejuvenate and revitalize, Greenery symbolizes the reconnection we seek with nature, one another and a larger purpose." It reminds us of bamboo or green smoothies, plants in our garden and it certainly makes us cogitate on bright ideas for the new year. 

What is the color of the year?

The Pantone Color Institute is the global authority on color. Each year, they assemble a panel of industry professionals to select a color of the year. This panel examines influencers from the design world — graphic design, textile, digital, fashion, etc. — and study what's been happening in the arts & entertainment fields, popular travel destinations, pop culture, and socio-economic conditions. The color of the year is a choice proposed to capture the mood of our times. And for those of us who are in the design world, it's a guide that may influence design projects of all kinds, from print to web and everything in between.

What does this mean to your business?

Now may be a good time to reconsider your brand colors. Whether Greenery is a choice color for your business or not, every so often, it's a good idea to review your brand and consider a fresh approach. For example, Greenery would be a popular choice for food or spa companies. Brands that want to express strong environmental characteristics will also use colors like Greenery. On the contrary, it would be a more modern and bold choice for traditional corporate businesses — industries like financial or insurance type services — who quite often use hues of blues (say that 10x fast!). For those who work in those sectors and are looking to stand out, without losing any meaningful perceptions like trust or significance, Greenery would be a great choice for the new year.

Feeling Inspired?

Ready to make a fresh start and bring new life to your business? Let's explore how we can breathe new life into your brand and create some dynamic stuff!  Contact us today! 

Mario's Early Toast Website Launch

Over the summer, we have been working diligently to market and rebrand a local restaurant, Mario's Early Toast. We're happy to announce the launch of Mario's new website!

In addition, 829 Design is also handling all of their social media platforms for their Facebook Business page and Yelp accounts on a monthly basis. Visit www.mariosearlytoast.com today.

Some of the cool aspects we've integrated is online ordering to their site, Facebook Business page and YELP accounts to make it easier than ever for customers to get good food fast and easy. That's right... when you're on the FB page, you can order online and pick up at your convenience. Same with Yelp. Gotta love technology!

If you're local to this area, come check out Mario's place and enjoy some of the area's finest specialty mimosas and great grub! Two locations serving Granite Bay and Folsom, CA.

Rebranding Project

Today, we have the pleasure of rolling out a new identity for a local restaurant. For the past several weeks, we have flushed out dozens of ideas and comps for a new logo design for Mario's Early Toast. Helping our clients raise the bar with their branding is what we love to do the most. This is going to be a complete rebranding solution which includes website, social platforms and store signage.

Be sure to check out their brand new website we developed at www.mariosearlytoast.com

Aloha Heating & Cooling website launch

We're excited to announce one of our client website redesign projects has been launched. Working with Debbie Stephens at Aloha Heating & Cooling to achieve her business goals was a real pleasure as we had full creative license. The site was created using the SquareSpace platform along with customized graphics, organic SEO keyword integration and content creation. 

And if you're local to the Sacramento and Placer county areas and require an affordable, honest and trustworthy HVAC company for your home air quality needs, give Debbie at Aloha a call! Considering we are one of her many satisfied customers, we certainly endorse their services and can highly recommend them.

Small Business Marketing Tools for Building Your Brand

Whether you own a catering business, a vintage clothing shop or a service business such as a spa salon, you cannot mail a simple postcard, have beautiful packaging or tweet your latest promotion and call it a day. Marketing a small business requires consistency and strategy. Your overall business and marketing—everything from your logo to website to how you advertise, and reach out on the social web—should all come together to send a consistent targeted message. This includes your choice of words, the nuances of design, layout or color schemes and basically your overall visual communications to the consumer. These are your basic ingredients for good design.

Well-planned approaches combined with proper channels of marketing will not only promote a rewarding outcome – more sales and customers – but also reinforces your brand in the eyes of the marketplace. Without this consistency, you will not get people emotionally attached to your brand and you’ll end up creating confusion in the consumer’s mind. So why is it important to create these emotional attachments to your brand? Well, just as in human relationships, brand relationships evolve over time.

Generally, these can be divided into three stages:

1. Most potential customers do not know the company, product or service.
2. Customers may know the name or logo of the company or product, but they don't really catch what the company or product can do for them. 
3. Some customers may already know the company and what the product can do for them, but they have no emotional connection to the brand. 

So take into consideration and establish which stage of relationship your business is in with regard to your consumer audience. In order to build a successful brand, you'll want to define these three things:

1. Brand personality—what are your business values, services, ideas, attitudes?
2. The relationship with the consumer—do you understand the needs and wants of your customers? 
3. Icons, symbols or other illustrative representations. 

Over time, with a consistent effort in your small business marketing, you will begin to build relationships with your market audience. In so doing reinforces and triggers recognition of your brand and sequentially creates customer loyalty. After all, your brand is the foundational piece in your marketing communication – a connection to a promise for your consumer. And this is something your small business does not want to be without!

disclaimer: this post was written by Linné Garrett and originally posted on bMighty2.com in September 2012.

LoCo Eats! website launch

We are pleased to announce the launch of one of our recent client website projects —LoCo Eats! An Annual Benefit Celebration of Food & Wine!

The Restaurant at Patowmack Farms approached us to help them with their marketing efforts for the upcoming inaugural event in Lovettsville, Virginia. We designed their event logo, website and social profiles for Twitter and Facebook. And are currently assisting them with additional promotional marketing collateral.

To learn more about the event and see our lovely creative design, click the link below:

LoCo Eats! An Annual Celebration of Food & Wine

So, if you are in the Loudoun County area in Virginia … come on out to show your support for local farmers and bring the entire family to the event. We promise it will be a feast to delight your senses and palates with fun activities for everyone.  Enjoy exquisite cuisine prepared especially for you exclusively by the best chefs of the region – all perfectly paired to complement with a variety of wines.

Foodies and wine aficionados of all walks will be in heaven! Now, who can resist that?! ​

The Politics of 829

I get a lot of inquiries as to the name 829 Design. What does that stand for? What does that mean? What's 829? And what do you design? 

Back in the late '90s when I decided to spread my wings, step out in faith and launch my own graphic design business, I called the business Garrett+Associates. For quite some time thereafter it just didn't seem to resonate with me very much nor did I feel was very indicative of my career field. It just wasn't "cool" enough. It sounded stuffy and not too "designerly". It sounded more like we were a stodgy legal firm than a hot rising design studio. You know us designer types ... we're the ones who have this uncontrollable need to wear black all the time, we love to kern and can name that font in 20 seconds or less. We like to play in multi-colors and color outside the lines. We specify color in PMS and usually are always on trend with the color of the year. We can be eccentric and irrational when it comes to form following function. Oh, and how we LOVE to design! 

As a student of the late, great Philip B. Meggs, author of The History of Graphic Design and perhaps one of the most influential and important historians of graphic design of our time, one of the many lessons I learned was the importance of expressing the zeitgeist of our times by inventing new forms and new ways of expressing ideas. I wanted to take this theory and apply it to my business and with that — a fresh new look and feel — a new brand. So, on one hot summer August day, the 29th to be exact (which just happens to be my birthday), and after much reflection, thought and pensive research in my design library, it dawned on me to just keep things really simple. I wanted something that expressed not only pieces of myself but also a distinct historical design movement that has had profound effects on my career and my design theories: De Stijl & The Bauhaus and the New Typography.

é voilá: 829 Design. It's a combination of my birthdate with a nod to this modernist style of design. The latter being another interesting blog topic for discussion to come.

So, on this August 29th, 2012 we wish 829 Design a Happy Birthday!