Connecting The Dots!
Your business or professional environment is an important element of your marketing strategy! Your professional design team needs to know how you promote your business and what your marketing strategies are in order to make sure your interior design project connects with your overall image and style.
In the initial planning stages of your design project your designer will be asking a lot of questions that may at first seem irrelevant to the major focus of the project. However, all aspects of your business approach hold clues and information that definitely connect to the many choices and decisions that will come under consideration.
For instance, for the project at hand, you may want to extend and emphasize the colors that are featured in the existing company logo. Your designer may ask about that logo; how satisfied are you with it, and is there a plan to refresh or change that part of the company’s identity package in the near future.
In addition to color awareness, the style of the environment under consideration must harmonize with the character of the company’s promotional elements.
Often, when an interior designer learns that there are possibilities for change in the company’s identity, that designer may suggest a conference with your graphics professional to review your company identity portfolio. This is one of the important details that should be discussed in the beginning of your planning process.
When a business owner is considering changing the “style” of their environment (possibly from traditional to modern) it makes sense to look at the company’s entire presentation. Everything from printed materials to uniforms, from advertising specialties to logo and color schemes come onto the planning table.
Connecting the dots where your company or professional practice presentation is concerned involves all the critical players on your project team. Sometimes these decisions involve “significant others” whose opinions are respected and influential. Be sure that if major changes are being considered, that all involved in the decisions are available to participate.
Sometimes, when a design team detects indecision regarding the durability of factors such as that company’s historical color schemes, logo image and style, they will deliberately “probe” the issues. No one wants to make the investment of time, energy, talent and funds only to decide a year or so later to re-do a tired identity package and marketing approach.
Remember that if something your team asks or suggests seems “out of place” to the job at hand, ask them why they are concerned and what prompted them to pull another aspect of your business into the discussion! They will undoubtedly have a good reason.
Your physical business environment, after all, houses the tools, products and services that you offer your customers or clients. When those individuals can read an integrated connection between you, your initial contact with them, what they have read or noticed promotionally and the environment into which they just stepped, the message is one of balance and harmony.
It is often the case that your design team may put the finger right on something that has been bothering you, but that you did not see as part of the scope of concern and influence to the design project. When that happens, a worthwhile review of all the connected aspects of your business operation is an exercise you will not regret.
Photo Contributed by Robert Boccabella
Business identity is a coordinated family of elements. Be sure that your company logo, colors and style work together for promotional integrity.
© 2014 Robert A. Boccabella, B.F.A., Certified Interior Designer
www.BusinessDesignServices.com
Collaboration & Writing: Ms. Zoe Tummillo
WritingService@earthlink.net
