Color is a crucial element of a brand identity. We immediately
associate skype with blue color StumbleUpon with green, Yahoo with red. Website color
scheme can make us to leave immediately or to stay for a minute if it
looks appealing. Color evokes positive associations and thus forms initial opinion of the brand. The choice of your brand color can thus
stand for:
your new visitors’ enrollment and participation (by attracting their attention);
your brand awareness (by sticking into memory);
your brand positive or negative associations (by boosting memories of what people like/dislike).
As another calendar year passes by, it’s time to look around your site
and clean out the cobwebs. Here’s a list of maintenance items to think
about from monkeycmedia.com:
1. Don’t let your URL expire, make sure you know when to renew your account. Not sure? Look it up here: www.whois.net
2. Is your copyright up-to-date? People will often see if your site
is updated and current by checking your copyright date. If your stuck
back in 2004, your audience may wonder if you are still in business.
Your audience will take you as serious as you take yourself.
3. Are you blogging? Make the commitment. Once a week is enough to make a world of marketing difference.
4. Bad Links: dead-links.com; not only do bad links annoy your
readers, but they stop the search engine crawlers dead in their
tracks—when a crawler hits a bad link they back out of your site on
m
... Read more »
Taken from http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html and http://monkeycmedia.com/blog/?p=61
Red
Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy,
war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire,
and love.
Red is a very emotionally intense color. It enhances human metabolism,
increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure. It has very high
visibility, which is why stop signs, stoplights, and fire equipment are
usually painted red. In heraldry, red is used to indicate courage. It
is a color found in many national flags.
by Cameron Chapman http://mashable.com/2009/03/16/design-inspiration/
Finding inspiration is not always as simple as it sounds, whether
you’ve been designing for years or only weeks. Below is a collection of
100 great web resources to find inspiration and direction on your next
project, whether it be online or in print.
These range from galleries of graphic and web design to online
magazines and a few unconventional sources of inspiration. Keep reading
to see our recommendations and then share your favorite sources of
inspiration in the comments.
Online Galleries
Veer: Ideas - A
huge idea gallery from stock photography company Veer formatted as a
blog and including news and updates from
... Read more »
Awareness of the five forces can help a company understand the
structure of its industry and stake out a position that is more
profitable and less vulnerable to attack. After watching the video about Porter's Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy, I became very interested in the issue and started searching for more information. I found this article in www.mindtools.com which explains the Five Forces in more detail and gives examples.
Porter's
Five Forces
Assessing the Balance of
Power in a Business Situation
The
Porter's 5 Forces tool is a simple but powerful tool for understanding
where power lies in a business situation. This is useful, because it
helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive
position, and the strengt
... Read more »
Starting from scratch isn't the only way to get started. Buying an
existing business can help you hit the ground running. Here's what you
need to know to find a great deal.
This appeared on the social networking blog mashable.com the day before yesterday. The 10 ways:
1. Twittering headlines
2. Buying social media networks outright (mentions Gannett and Ripple6)
3. Creating online forums to attract readers
4.
Amassing and monetizing user-generated content (Cincinnati Inquirer
created a photo-sharing site and sells the top photos as books)
5. Story-based communities. People talk online about news events
6. Collaborative outsourced news sources.
7. Customized delivery: "Denver-based MediaNews Group,
publisher of such major dailies as the Denver Post and Oakland Tribune,
has announced plans to test a “customized news delivery service called
‘I-News’ or ‘Individuated News” which would allow subscribers to choose their news from various parts of the country and on various topics.
8. Branded communities. St. Louis P
... Read more »
I was thinking a lot about what brand to discuss and decided to stop on Google. Google is the company I admire, mostly because of their clever business style, which allowed them to become the most powerful media company, in spite of the fact that they were not pioneers of the search engine business.
So, as for their brand... At first, the name itslef is a good finding for a search engine. "Google" was created from "googol" - the number represented as one followed by 100 zeros. The style of the logo is very simple, but bright. Simpicity is what attracts me when I'm looking on their logo and web-page. Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo says that instead of having the pattern go
in order, the decided to put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the
idea that Google doesn’t follow the rules.
One more attractive thing is the different logo styles Google makes for different oc
... Read more »
Red
