Good Cheer + Good Wishes

Stay in touch with clients, co-workers, and friends
during the holidays and the new year.
Whether it is a printed card, an e-news update, advertisement,
invitation, a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine:
we’ll design and communicate
the cheer and good wishes for you.

Designing Logos

We love the challenge of designing logos, synthesizing an idea, vision or concept and bringing it to life. Today's increasingly complex world of business communications makes creating an effective logo even more of a challenge. It is not just about designing a single mark, logo type or imprint anymore. Now a logo must meet many expectations, demands and applications. Think about it. The same logo must be equally clear and compelling on everything from Facebook, Instagram, or a website to a sign, a printed card or brochure, requiring multiple color and file formats.

To address these diverse needs, we focus on the process of discovery. We ask a lot of questions to get a deep understanding of the business—the story, mission, character, and goals—before we begin experimenting with permutations of the logo. We often explore multiple options before the logo ultimately reveals itself.

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Three recent examples of logos

1. Avenue
Our logo for a brand-new restaurant in Medfield, Massachusetts incorporates several distinct elements. These elements can be used in different ways and configurations, either together or separately. This approach allowed for flexibility and variety when designing Avenue's signage, menus, check presenter, matches and website. As we worked, we were reminded that designing for a restaurant is almost like designing for theatre: a restaurant is a show that goes on every night. A good logo helps set the pace and the tone of the performance.  

Avenue Logo variations, menu cover + check presenter

Exterior Signage: hanging lit sign, sign band and vinyl on glass

Avenue Website Design

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2. Good Collective
This new online shopping site, still under development, needed a look that stays fresh in the curated online retail market. Once we settled on the type solution, we created a bright and lively color palette that conveys the stylish, savvy personality of the business. The different colors also allow for change, either seasonally or to announce sales.

While researching fonts, we fell in love with many type styles. Rather than give them up, we used them as graphic images for site highlights.

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3. EVkids
After re-evaluating its organizational message and unifying its marketing strategy, this nonprofit realized it needed a new logo. The goal was a logo that was friendly, accessible, and emphasized kids while incorporating a new tagline to highlight their mission. The logo also needed to be simple enough for the staff to use and manage in-house. Having worked with many non-profits, we understood the challenges that EVkids faced and made the design process as easy as possible, and delivered appropriate logo files, Word templates and style guidelines.

More logos in the works. Stay tuned....

Small Businesses: A Sane and Simple Approach to Social Media

We get it. Updating social media can be overwhelming, especially when the basics of running a business are already time consuming. How do you prioritize creating blog posts and other website content? Or devote resources to maintaining a social media presence across multiple platforms? We get it because we struggle with the same issues.

Take heart. There are new, better resources for creating website content with seamless social media integration, enabling you to engage your online audience with minimal effort.

Bow Street Flowers, our favorite local florist, improved their social media presence overnight by integrating their website content into multiple social media platforms. Shelley, owner of Bow Street, initially contacted Fyfe Design to discuss updating the website. As we talked, we realized that it could be advantageous to review all of Shelley's online needs.

Our initial questions:
How do you want to use your website and social media and who is your audience?
How much time do you want to invest in updating your website and social media accounts?
If you don’t have any time, would you consider hiring out the work?

We found that Shelley hadn’t been writing many blog entries or updating her website very frequently, but she was posting a lot of captioned photos on Instagram. Shelley liked the ease of working with Instagram, but none of her posts were showing up on her website or Facebook page.

We felt it was important to link Shelley’s Instagram updates with her website, Facebook and email list. That simple move amplified her impact without adding any extra work, allowing to showcase her current work with her local and online community.

How we made it happen: 
First, we built a new website using a Squarespace template. This was a cost-effective solution and a time-saving one since Squarespace provides tools for seamless integration with most social media platforms. Now Shelley's Instagram photos automatically display on the home page of her website.

www.bowstreetflowers.com

Second, we linked up Bow Street's email lis and other social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter so that everything seamlessly shared the information she was posting.

Here is how it works now:

1.    Bow Street Flowers posts a photo to Instagram. Instagram automatically shares it with the Bow Street Facebook page and the Bow Street website's homepage.

2. Bow Street Flowers writes a blog post on the website. The website automatically shares the blog post with Facebook. MailChimp, an electronic mail delivery service, sees the new blog post and sends it to the Bow Street Flowers email list.

In the end, it is important to focus on what feels right (and feasible) for you. Automatic feeds between social media can make updating a website and sharing important information pain free.

If you find that your website or social media presence isn’t working for you, let us know. We are happy to help structure a system that makes sense for you and your business.