When the godfather club approached us there were some reservations. Aesthetik working with a gentlemen’s club, how’s that going to look? Well, we think it (the website) looks pretty damn good.

The brief was ’sexy and classy’, take a look and see if we delivered godfatherclub.co.uk

Photographer Samantha Lee Noakes is fast gaining a reputation for growing one of the most creative and exciting photography studios in the South-West. In 2009 it was decided that the company needed to refresh their image and better communicate the quality and service they deliver. As part of the new strategy, they needed a website that could showcase their portfolio and better deliver their brand.

Design Tree were employed to develop the website from original concept, through to coding and launching the site.

Visit slnphotography.co.uk to view the new site and the exceptional photography from this up-and-coming studio.

We are all print virgins at one point or another and some first experiences are better than others. For me I went about it in completely the wrong way; completely void of any research I went to a local high street ‘print anything’ shop and asked for my 1000, A4 leaflets. Not knowing anything about print processes, or design for that matter, and not offered any choices other than “colour or black and white” I was firmly in their hands.

I had designed the leaflet in two Adobe Photoshop files and saved them as jpgs (I still have them as an embarrassing RGB reminder of where I started out). I was charged a ‘disk handling fee’ of £20 and £294 for the fuzzy, glossy, 80gsm, digitally printed, box of sub standard print.

Seven years on I look back and cringe at my naiveté and feel a little bit of anger towards the print shop that didn’t help me out when obviously a novice. The whole experience is a classic example of how not to approach this particular exercise.

That said, below are a few useful tips from the Aesthetik team when going it alone.

1. Do your homework

Google the following – Litho printing, Digital printing, CMYK/Four colour process, Pantone, Print ready artwork, bleed, Paper types – Coated/Uncoated, Paper sizes, Paper weights (gsm) and you’ll be on the right track.

2. The right printer

Choosing the right printer is important. The printer’s machinery denotes what jobs they can and can’t do efficiently, so select the printer who best meets your needs. How do you find this out? Well, for a start call them and have a chat with your potential account/sales manager, or even better pay them a visit and get a tour of the print room.

A good relationship with your contact at the print studio is vital. What your looking for is someone who can spend a little time and explain things to you. If you’re running a fair bit of print their way they should be more than happy to help you out. A good account manager will be able to point out potential savings and inform you of better practices.

We are Aesthetik – not your typical communications partner, we don’t gloss it up, we’ll tell you exactly like it is.

Aesthetik founded in 2008 (as Design Tree) is an independent creative consulting firm working with companies on projects relating to branding and identity.

Companies like us vary a great deal, so what type are we? We have our foundations firmly set in creative design, in fact our core functions are graphic design and website design. However, over the years we’ve found our selves more and more involved with brand creation and development; mainly because of our personal intrigue (brand development is a fascinating science) but it so happens we’re pretty good at it. So, what you get from Aesthetik is a good blend of design talent and strategy consultants.

Are we right for you? We won’t be a perfect fit for everyone, in every industry there’s choice, and we advise all potential clients to look around and do some research. Take a look at our articles on branding, graphic design and web design; view our recent projects, and if you feel good about what you see, get in touch.

However, in this piece, written from a rather different angle, I want to turn it on its head and look at corporate brand as the one of the most valuable assets a boardroom has in strengthening its control over every aspect of the business.

A brand is different things to different people. To a brand romantic: it can be considered the personality of any product, service or organisation. To the consumer on the street it might translate as a guarantee of quality. Ultimately it’s a rather complex entity in that it embodies both the large, important issues and the superficial/trivial issues simultaneously.

Let’s forget everything you know of brand and strip it down to understand how it can work for someone at the head of the company, be it a CEO, MD or equivalent. In essence brand can also be seen as a set of rules all employees need to adhere to and a way of further exerting your control over the business.

At this point it should be clear that brand is more than a symbol, a logo, a website or advertisement. These examples are communication devices that adhere to predetermined brand guidelines.

Brand creation is not in the realm of the marketing department but sits very comfortably in the boardroom. Largely, this is because your marketing team hasn’t got the top-level answers to the most important questions. Business strategy is dictated from the very top so the brand, your plan communicate to all of your audiences needs to be derived from an informed source. That said, a brand consultancy worth it’s salts will speak to personnel from all levels of the business and also selected sources within your marketplace when doing it’s research.

Brand affects every aspect of the company as branding is now a mainstream management activity. It’s simultaneously a marketing resource; a design resource, a communications resource and a behavioral resource in that employees are as much a communicator of the brand as the company literature. It is a coordinating resource in that it will bring consistency and coherence to all of the corporation’s activities.

Overall the brand will communicate with your audience, both internal and external, and help them grasp the essentials of what the company means and stands for. Remember that your company’s behavior in the public domain will effect recruitment, share price, acquisitions and every other aspect of corporate life.

Brands have throughout the years have been offered to us as a guarantee of quality, a product that did what it said on the tin laid the foundation of trust between the consumer and brand. Companies such as Rolls Royce, Aquascutum or Cadbury built their reputation by consistently producing quality products. The ‘sophisticated’ marketing and advertising followed some time later.

As long as there are companies with philosophies set on marketing budgets expanding and manufacturing budgets contracting, the shift in the focus to ’selling quantity’ over ‘production quality’ will continue and in turn have an adverse effect on the brand. Spending more time and money on promotion than bettering your products/services will often lead the marketing over-promising and the product under-delivering.

Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate the typical, formulaic, seduction driven approach to building brands. It’s important to not get carried away with the glamour: the funky logo, the typeface, the clever sales concepts, and the talk of ‘tone of voice’ and ‘visual guidelines’. It’s important remember that customer relationships are built on producing better products/services than your competitors. This could mean faster innovation, better service or superior craftsmanship; for example spending another million on developing a 120 mpg engine will do more for the Toyota brand than spending that million on a new advert.

Managing the expectations of the customer is hugely important in developing the brand, working hard to truthfully market your products and working hard to make that truth worth telling is the starting point. Your customers will not expect your company to be all things to all men, you cannot single handedly be the most innovative, provide the highest quality and deliver the best service. Dyson products are notoriously expensive, but Dyson doesn’t sell affordability. Dyson concentrates on Innovation.

It’s important for your brand to do the same; choose one thing to get right and put everything behind living up to that promise. Consumers whom that promise appeals to will buy into the brand and begin talking/blogging/recommending. After a while trust is built in your products/services and growth will be organic, that’s good, ‘old fashioned’ brand building.