Love the Logo Competition – Why give away 12 logo designs?

9 years ago, on a cold February Valentines day in 2003, armed with a very sketchy plan, a battered old G4 Apple Mac, two blunt scalpels, some redundancy money and a massive leap of faith, I setup Attenshun – the name and moniker for my freelance graphic design work and music promotion projects.

Acting like I knew what I was doing, and with no clients to mention, I set about the most important part of setting up a new venture. Nope, not to write a business plan, nor opening a business bank account or start thinking about where the hell I was going to get paying clients. No siree. No, what really needs to be done first is vital. I set about designing my logo. That’s right, right?

Now this may sound ridiculous to forgo the basic planning of a business, but as a graphic designer, I just couldn’t help myself. It felt like the most important element those first few days. It’s the part of my job that I love getting my teeth into above anything else, and in hindsight, I think was the most important task for my new venture on the day I started.

It helped me think about how I wanted Attenshun to be perceived. What market I was going to approach. And most importantly, how it looked on a tshirt!

Joking aside, your logo will be at the heart of any collateral that your customers interact with. From the business card you hand them, the first advert or email campaign you send out to the website you just uploaded and icons on Social Media.

It will communicate your business character, it’s personality and importantly what you stand for and what you sell. All in one nicely formed mark.

Attenshun is 9 years old – a reason to reminisce and take stock

After 9 amazing years of trading, I’ve been looking back at my graphic design work and the great clients I’ve been fortunate to work with, reminiscing and wanting to mark the milestone with something a bit special.

With looking back over the past 9 years, it’s made me feel like it’s time to streamline my services and decide which areas of graphic design I enjoy the most, and which areas offer the best results for my clients.

It was a no brainer! I absolutely fricking love the logo design part of my business!

It’s a craft that takes an enormous amount of patience, time, research and love! And almost always one of the first things that start ups or failing businesses purchase and should consider.

So, with one year to go until the 10th birthday of my company (on February 14th 2013 attenshun is officially 10) I will be offering one lucky business per month, some logo love. How romantic.

That’s right, every month up until the Attenshun 10 year anniversary, I will be offering a charity or start up business/project the chance to receive a logo design, logo usage guidelines and a business card design to boot, all out of the love of my heart!

Awwwwww.

To enter the competition to win a logo design, click the button below.

Lovenskate is an independent skating institution. Starting life as a skating zine and turning into a independent owned skate clothing, screen printing business – main man Stu Smith needed a website to update and keep in touch with the many Lovenskate followers. So we stepped up and delivered a powerful website utilising the WordPress blogging tool.

RTM Snowboarding, a small independent snowboard instruction company based in Courchevel and Meribel asked us to create their promotional flyer for their winter schools.

One of my favourite music venues ran a competition to design their logo, I entered and luckily won. The venue alongside its sister bar The Tin Angel in Coventry play host to some of the best independent and alternative music in the UK.

It seems increasingly, that businesses of all sizes, from start up to national blue chip are fine tuning their marketing and trying to reach audiences that are genuinely interested in their products and services. Well, why waste the time and money speaking to people who would rather pull teeth than hear what you have to tell them huh?

Perhaps this is why so many of my clients are looking into or are already using HTML Email Marketing tools. The question is, which is best suited for your needs?

Email Marketing – The Early Years.

I’ve been working with Email marketing now for about 6 years, and quite early on after discovering the medium did some research of the limited tools that were available at the time.

Some of those older tools are now defunct, buried in the data black hole that so many of those early Email Marketing developers unluckily fell into. Once I had decided which was going to be suitable for myself and my clients I partnered with Sign Up To. Great customer service, great analytics to help build and develop subsequent marketing campaigns and of late (the past 2 years) great social media integration and API functionality.

But something happened – MailChimp.

Don’t let the cute name fool you. This is a serious tool, that like many of the Email marketing tools on the market started out life as an open source developed piece of kit. But why so in love with this tool? Primarily cost. My former Email Marketing partner only offered first 50 subscribers free. An out dated pay structure. And increasingly a glitchy back end editor.

Secondly. MailChimp offers the incentive of your first 2,500 subscribers being entirely free. Something a lot of my smaller clients love. That’s right. You can speak to 2,499 of your subscribed customers for free. See when they opened the email you just sent them on your new product, or offer. What items they showed real interest in by the clicking of your links. And if your marketing campaign was a success in real time.

Thirdly. The tool is a pleasure to use. Some of my clients use the tool themselves without any support bar customised, branded templates that I create. Others leave their entire Email Marketing management to me. Either way, its great to have a tool that is easy to use. Has great analytics. And that all important amazing subscriber incentive.

If you are looking to reach new audiences and target your customer base more intelligently then please feel free to get in touch with me. I am more than happy to talk through what may be the best solution on price and tools.

A renovation and construction company focusing on high end luxury conversions and renovations of older properties across the Cotswolds region.

I was asked to create an brand identity for start up business Revive Therapies. They needed it to be simplistic, clean and easily applied to their shop front and promotional literature.

New venture BPA Clinic, a Coventry Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic based at Coventry Rugby Football Club wanted a logo and simple holding page for their launch.