There was a pretty interesting article at Entrepreneur.com on how to create a logo. The article touches briefly on what a logo is to your business and why it’s worth spending both time and money on. It isn’t advocating blindly throwing cash at a logo, either, it’s about what considerations should go into your new logo design.

I think anybody who is starting a business or ready to take their business to the next level should give the article a read. It’ll only take about five minutes to read, so click the link above and check it out.

There were a few items in the piece that I thought were important enough to warrant a mention here.

Many companies skimp on logo creation. Nowhere is this more true than with small businesses. Throughout the region, I’ve seen thousands of business cards and signs and I can tell you who spent money on a designer and who didn’t. In this area, you see a lot of businesses who try to do it themselves or let their sign company design their logo. Bad letter spacing, poor font choice, use of clip art—these all give potential clients cues as to what kind of business you are running.

A great example of this is a restaurant I know. Their logo was clearly put together by a sign shop or a nephew or something. The typography on the sign is horrible. Poor font choice, poor use of the poor font, weird spacing, etc. I happen to really like this restaurant, but this sign is a great indicator because good as the food may be, the service is often pretty bad. You can sit waiting for service for 30 minutes when there are only two other tables in the place. Just horrible, sloppy service. And that’s exactly what their sign promises—sloppy and not thought out.

Planning and research in logo design is critically important. Whenever I design a logo for a client, I ask a lot of questions, but before I even meet with them I want them to do some of the legwork for themselves. Sit down and really articulate what it is you do, what you want people to think of when they think of your business and stuff like that. If you can’t tell me what you are, how can I tell anybody else?

I also highly recommend looking at other logos in your industry (websites, too, for that matter). Not to steal anybody’s logo, but to get a feel for what others are doing in the field. Maybe your initial idea is a cliché or maybe it’s too abstract. A logo doesn’t have to be a picture of what you do, but it is very hard for a smaller company to make the associations between abstract logos and their company brand.

Hire a professional designer or, at the very least, consult with a professional. Of course I am going to recommend this. Yes, it’s self-serving advice, but it is also solid advice. They give price ranges from $4,000–15,000 for logo design, but I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never had a $15,000 logo design project. If anyone has an extra $15K laying around, though, I promise that I will design you a SUPERKICKASS logo.

The truth is you can have a great logo designed for less than $4K, too. Every job is a little bit different, so don’t let those numbers scare you off from talking to a designer. There are a bunch of talented designers in the Tri-Cities, so you have a lot of people to choose from. Beware, though, because for every good designer there are at least three or four hacks masquerading as designers. How do you tell the difference? Look at their past work. Look at the logos they’ve designed. Look at the clients they have worked for.

If you have very strong ideas for your logo, most designers will be happy to work with your ideas. Mostly likely you are going to need a designer’s expertise anyway because you probably don’t have the skill set needed to create your logo in the formats you will need for printing. And if you give a designer your ideas, maybe their experience will give them a couple of ideas that you didn’t think of.

Don’t think of a logo as a one-time cost. A logo is designed to last for years (this article says it’s a minimum of 10 years, but I think it’s closer to 7 years because things/times/businesses change and grow and you have to allow for that). The point is, though, that you are not using your logo one time. It’s the one thing that everybody sees on  your signage, your ads, your business cards, your vehicles, etc. Think about the cost of logo design as being amortized over the life of the logo…5 years, 7 years, 10 years…whatever. It is a big check to write at one time, yes, but if you take the time to do it right, it will serve you well for years.

A well-designed logo tells potential customers who you are, serves as a visual reminder of what you do, and helps solidify your top-of-mind position. Logo design is one of the best investments you can make in your business, whether you’re just starting or if you’re due for an update.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and, seriously, read the Entrepreneur article, too. It’s a good piece.

Today’s lesson comes from the pages of one of America’s great creative minds—Woody Allen. Sure, his best days are behind him, but that’s only because his early work (read: Annie Hall) was masterful.

Woody Allen was quoted once as saying, “80 percent of success is just showing up.”

Often when I am speaking to high school or college classes, the question of how to be successful designer comes up. And more often than not, I quote Woody’s wisdom because it is an absolute truth that applies not just to filmmaking and graphic design, but just about any other path in life you choose to follow.

The best example of not showing up is something that happened recently in my attempt to have a print project quoted by a printer. I am not going to name the printer, but I will tell you that it wasn’t F.P. Horak, McKay Press or QRP. Those are the three printers I use most often and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m talking about them.

This particular project, I thought, was a good fit for another printer in the region. The printer in question threw up every single roadblock they could come up with along the way. Honestly, it was as if they didn’t want my work.

My first step was to find their website to get contact info. The Google search took while because I wasn’t 100% sure of their name (they have gone through some ownership changes). With the correct site located, I clicked through to look for contact info and trouble ensued.

Their site is a wide-awake nightmare. I couldn’t find the information I was looking for, contact info was buried, sales department names and e-mail addresses weren’t available, etc. I didn’t want to fill out a form to wait for a response because my experience with these forms is that response time tends to be slower.

I was able to locate a phone number, though, so I called which led me to a pain-in-the-ass phone tree. If you don’t know the name of the person you are trying to reach, you’re directed to a general mailbox. Since I couldn’t find any sales rep names online, I would be stuck in the general mailbox which often isn’t much better than filling out the online form, where response time is concerned.

I call back and hit zero a few times and get through to a live person. I explain that I need a quote and she isn’t sure who she needs me to get to. After some confusion on her part, I just ask for a customer service rep and says she’ll connect me to the person I need to talk to. The call goes through to an extension which promptly hangs up on me. I call back again and ask if I can speak to a living, breathing customer service rep, but because I don’t have an account manager, she can’t direct me to a CSR.

Finally, in frustration, I give up. The job was a perfect fit for them and it will be printing elsewhere. It isn’t the hugest job in the world, but it would probably be somewhere between 5–10 grand every month or two. How many jobs like this do they lose in the course of a week? There were several opportunities along the way for them to save the interaction, but they managed to miss at every step. All they had to do was show up, but they phoned it in and missed out on a decent, little revenue stream.

There is actually a humorous postscript to the story, too. About one week after being unable to get a quote, I actually get a call from the sales manager wanting to sell me on doing my printing with them. I told him that I was surprised to hear from him and told him all about what had happened the prior week. He is both grateful for the candid input and assures me that is not the way they do business. He asks if he could send me some material to look at about them and maybe set up a meeting. I understand that every business has bad days, so I tell him to send the info and we’ll get together after that.

Five weeks later and guess what…nothing ever showed up.

Chuckleheads.

A few more versions of the new AOL logo. Er…make that the Aol. logo.

Have you heard that Simpsons matriarch Marge Simpson will be the first-ever cartoon to grace the cover of Playboy? In addition to the cover, she is given a few pages inside the book complete with data sheet and a two-page centerfold. You can read more about it at NPR.org.

Personally, I think it’s pretty funny and it’s a GREAT promotional coup for The Simpsons, who are celebrating their 20th anniversary on Fox this year. Thing is, it sounds like it wasn’t Fox’s idea. Sounds like the idea came from Playboy who wanted to try to draw more 20-something readers to the magazine, whose readers have a median age of around 35.

Why Marge Simpson, though? The Simpsons is still a solid enough performer on Fox, but the series is decidedly in decline. And I can’t quote viewership statistics, but my feeling is that the younger readers they are trying to appeal to aren’t necessarily Simpsons fans. My guess is that if they watch the Simpsons, they only do it to kill time until Family Guy comes on.

Family Guy skews much younger and with it’s edgier humor would seem to be a better fit for what Playboy is going for. Maybe the problem is that Playboy’s folks are skewing a lot older themselves and can’t be bothered to stay up past 9PM. Or, worse yet—and more likely—they’re too busy watching Desperate Housewives.

I like the idea behind the cartoon cover and giving a few pages on the inside—I’m even sure that the novelty will give Playboy a nice, one-issue sales bump—but I think those buyers are going to be in the 30-45 age range. If anything, the median reader age may go up for an issue.

Overall idea: B+
Probability of giving the magazine a short-term (one issue?) sales increase: 80%
Probability of achieving stated goal of drawing younger readers in: 15%

Overall grade (for Simpsons): A

Overall grade (for Playboy): F-
I would have given a C- because it is a fun idea and will result in a temporary sales bump, but they kind of botched when it comes to drawing in the younger crowd.

Author’s note: This is something I started to writing, but couldn’t finish, a few weeks ago. It isn’t quite as timely as I would like it to be, but I still wanted to put this out there. In the interest of full discloser, I do some work for the Saginaw Spirit, the Ontario Hockey League team which Garber  owns and was instrumental in bringing to Saginaw. Even though I do some work for the Spirit and we have exchanged hellos at a couple of games, we have never actually met and I’m sure he doesn’t know who I am.

Author’s Note #2: I did not take the above photo, I found it online and borrowed it.

Anybody living in the Tri-Cities can speak firsthand about the effects of the economic downturn and the rapidly eroding job market. It’s really been pretty brutal in this part of the state. Largely due to a decade-long trend of auto-industry job losses, Saginaw’s unemployment rate is over 20%, which is pretty insane.

We’ve all heard about the federal government’s bailout of the auto industry as well as the cash-for-clunkers program. Love these programs or not, they gave the auto manufacturers a chance to reorganize their business and rethink their business practices. As part of their reorganization, GM decided to eliminate many of its dealerships across the country, which does make some sense. There are markets in the nation with multiple dealerships within just a few miles of one another. The dealership closure was a big part of their plan as GM headed into bankruptcy court. What baffles me is what the criteria were for closing a dealership.

Garber Buick is an icon in Saginaw. Established in 1907 by the Garber family, Garber Buick had survived the Great Depression, two World Wars and several economic downturns throughout its 100-plus year history. At one point early in their history, the Garber family—who have long been very closely associated with GM—helped Buick make its payroll when they were short on cash. Currently, even with the economy in Saginaw being pretty rough for years and years, Garber Buick has remained one of Buick’s top-selling franchises. On top of all of that, they receive consistently very high marks in customer service. In short, Garber Buick is a model franchise.

So when the news came that GM was going to cut Garber Buick from its franchisee list, people in the area got up in arms. Buick was planning on cutting off one of the top performing franchises in the country. How does a move like that make even an ounce of sense? With decisions like this, it’s really easy to see how GM got themselves into their current predicament. Ouija boards could probably produce better results than GM’s bloated-and-out-of-touch management structure.

As I said, people around here got pretty fired up and started a letter-writing campaign to GM and I was one of the many who took the time to write. Even though I don’t know Dick Garber personally, I know a lot about him and the way he runs his business. it doesn’t take a genius to see that this was a stupid decision and I wanted to let GM management know what a bunch of disloyal jackasses they are (I didn’t actually use the word ‘jackasses’ but I did lecture them about loyalty). I don’t know how many people took the time to write, I only know that I was one of many.

Very often, when people see someone who has more than them get taken down a peg, they take a certain amount of satisfaction in it. This schadenfreude (isn’t that a great word?) is a kind of sick spectator sport—taking pleasure in the suffering of others. But that’s not what you saw in this case. What you saw was a community come together and instead of snickering behind his back, they rallied behind him. Even if the letters fell on deaf (and very dumb) ears at GM, the outpouring of support was something special and unique to the Tri-Cities. We do take care of each other and we showed our true colors here.

Congratulations to Dick Garber, all of the employees, friends and relatives who are stakeholders in the Garber organization, and to the community of Saginaw which could ill-afford another gut-punch like this.