Jeffrey Martin

Over the past six years I have worked with a number of small businesses and start-up companies. I have done a wide array of designed pieces from short runs of business cards to large scale advertising. Every new business I work with tries to carve out a different niche, but the one consistent need across every new company, partnership, or sole-proprietorship is the need to get their name out effectively. Doing this with competency and consistency helps new businesses establish their legitimacy and create interest in what they offer.

There are a few elements that every new business needs at they begin to establish themselves in the marketplace.

A CLEAN PROFESSIONAL LOGO

Why? Every organization needs a consistent, iconic piece as identification and to distinguish themselves from their competition. This mark can used throughout all the different pieces of named or "branded" material that a business uses from business cards and invoices to advertising and marketing pieces. 

Your logo should be clean, consistent, and scalable. It should be able to have as much impact on small sticker as it does on a large billboard. Most importantly, it needs to be transferable. This means that as your logo gets used, it needs to be clean and legible in every application.

A USEFUL BUSINESS CARD

Why? Even if you plan on building your business on word of mouth, you need a way for clients to reach you after they meet you. 

Think business cards are dead? The business card still remains the standard in primary client contact. While technologies exist that can digitally replace the card, consistent deployment of a technology is never 100% guaranteed across any potential client base. A small, well-designed piece with all your necessary contact information that you hand to a potential client with your services is. Be creative, use creative materials or items with your contact information, use balloons instead of cards, just provide something tangible as a reminder of your meeting.

A WEB PRESENCE

Why? 92% of consumers research a product or service online before purchase according to Google testimony. If you are not talking about your business online, chances are someone else may be, or a competitor may be primed to take that business. 

Fortunately, building websites and creating a web presence is easier than ever. Social media provides a quick and easy outlet to begin, monitor and respond to marketplace chatter. At the same time, there are a number of hard working designers and developers ready to provide a myriad of useful and affordable solutions to getting your business online. Monitoring and measuring your web presence will help drive business and provide valuble return on the time and energy you spend promoting your business.

Want to learn more, shoot us an email. 

The logo design game has changed. Moreover, designing for business has changed considerably over the past ten years. Print has traditionally driven many design and marketing choices, but with the advent of social media, web-based design has driven most design strategies for marketing, promotions and development. Visual components of "a brand" have become more adjustable, flexible and dynamic. At the same time, the basics of logo design; creating a simple, bold, transferable mark, have remained the same. 

Start-ups and small businesses are especially tuned in to these changes. The days of locked-down, consistent visuals as your brand have given way to more maliable ideas of what your brand can be. While the design of your logo can be much more, the importance of having a clear concept and defined ideas is still important.

You can check out more of my thoughts in Christina DesMarais' article at Inc.com. Still interested in the development of logos? Check out this short documentary featuring logos and their development throughout time.

I have lived in the Twin Cities for nearly half my life. I moved here in mid-90's to attend the University of Minnesota and never left. I met a girl, got a job and have worked to settle in ever since. While the Twin Cities are substantially different from my hometown of Milwaukee, it's where I call home. 

It's easy to find things to love here in the Twin Cities. Nature, cultural influences and creative energy abound. Metro Magazine put out their list of some of the top 100 things we love about the Twin Cities, and a few we don't. I thought it was a pretty good list, heck I even learned a few things, but I thought they missed a few. Below is my Metro post on nine good things, and one evil, that was selected for their November 2011 publication.

Good

Art-a-Whirl: Art-a-Whirl in Northeast Minneapolis is the nation’s largest art crawl. Few art crawls have the talent or the patron support that Art-a-Whirl exhibits, not to mention the lack of pretension. The energy and momentum of Art-a-Whirl is so great that it has spawned other events and festivals in Northeast Minneapolis on the same weekend. 

Theodore Wirth: Theodore Wirth planned to locate and design parks so that every household in the city of Minneapolis would be no more than 6 blocks from green space, a vision that Minneapolis residents reap the benefits of today. Exceptional elements of park design like the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, the Rose Garden, Minnehaha Falls, the Chain of Lakes and Victory Memorial Drive are all a testament to Wirth’s grand vision.

Public Art: We have a lot of it, and a lot of it is good. From the statue of Abraham Lincoln off Victory Memorial Drive to the Mississippi Guardian Birds in Upper Landing Park, the Twin Cities has a wealth of public art on display. Bronze lumps sponsored by cable networks don’t count.

Trees!: Both St. Paul and Minneapolis are Tree Cities, along with dozens of other cities in the metro. Minneapolis alone has a tree canopy that covers more than 25% of the city. Organizations like TreeTrust help ensure that Minneapolis & St. Paul will have glorious canopy to shield us from the evil, evil sun for years to come. 

Nicollet Island: A quick spin around this island with it’s Victorian-era houses, wooded lots and quiet streets will make you forget that you are mere feet from downtown Minneapolis. Not to mention Satan’s Cave is a great piece of urban folklore. 

Lakewood Cemetery: Lakewood is a grand cemetery in the heart of the city. It serves as the final resting places for many local politicians, civic leaders and celebrities, and its spectacular upkeep exceeds that of many other urban cemeteries around the country. 

Twin-ness: St. Paul is like a tiny vacation for people from Minneapolis! Minneapolis is where people from St. Paul can experience big city life!

Smart People: We’re smart. From rankings on lists like America’s Most Literate Cities to regularly topping the list of highest ACT scores in the nation we’re smart and everyone knows it. 

Proximity to Wisconsin: When it’s Sunday and you forgot to buy beer for your Memorial Day BBQ, Wisconsin is always there to enable your forgetfulness. Not to mention that many ‘Sconies have taken up residence here and some do contribute to our society in positive ways.

Evil 

The Alberta Clipper: Our northern latitude should do enough to keep the snow on the ground during the winter months. But a few times every winter, the Alberta Clipper seems to come down from Canada with the jet stream just to make our winter a little worse to punish us for all glorious nature, civic participation and civilized events we have.

I've never been a big believer in luck, probably because I have rarely ever been the recipient of any true luck. As a result I believe more in the theory that luck favors the prepared mind (a derivation on Louis Pasteur's 'chance favors only the prepared mind'). In my experience, putting in the work to meet a goal is the only way to ensure any success, luck just becomes the icing on the cake.

That understanding is the basis for my latest submission to Six Word Stories Every Day, an online project for creatives to express themselves in very simple ways through images and words. My submission, titled Your Own Luck was featured in October. Check out other submittals and creatives at Six Word Stories Every Day.

On June 21, 2011, Mayor R.T. Rybak declared #NEMPLS day in Minneapolis thanks to the work of local journalist, Dan Haugen and community booster, Greg Isola. To commemorate the event, we designed Tweet Northeast t-shirts. We have been distributing them around Northeast Minneapolis and we even got one on the mayor. To learn more about what is happening in Northeast Minneapolis, you can follow me, Dan and Greg on Twitter, or simply follow the hashtag #nempls to join the conversation. 

I love social media, I really do. I go pretty deep into a number of social media services. I've been lucky to build real relationships, get work and participate in cool projects because of social media. But with so many social media outlets, it's easy to spend far too much time on 'social' pursuits that can turn out to be, well, kind of antisocial after a while. 

I've decided to make each Tuesday Twitter free. I'm doing this to not only free up more time during the work week and concentrate more, but also to pull back and gain a little more perspective on what social media outlets really provide value versus the ones that only fill space with more noise. 

I'm curious to know if anyone else has done any social media "fasting." Did it work? What did you learn? I would love to hear your story. Shoot me an email. You can also hit me up on Twitter @martinize, any day but Tuesday, of course.

I am offering a limited number of prints for a short time at my 30-second sketch store for $15. Proceeds from each sale will go to Art Buddies, a program of Creatives for Causes in Minneapolis.

This June I am participating in the 2011 30 Days of Creativity. This project is a social initiative encouraging people to create stuff each day for 30 days. For this project I am doing 30-second sketches each day. The purpose of a 30-second sketch is to help you see subjects quickly and trust your hand to execute a realistic representation without overthinking.

You can check out more 30-second sketches at my Twitpic feed or at 30 Days of Creativity on Pinterest or find them on Twitter @createstuff.

This is a chart based on information from the City of Minneapolis illustrating this year's budget based on revenue from taxes, aid, fees and more and how those funds are used throughout the city. The 2011 Budget in Brief report illustrates the major components of the budget in relation to overall dollars. "The Public Works Department makes up the largest part of the City’s budget (22.8 percent, $310.3 million). The main tasks of Public Works include the following: offering safe transportation to residents by maintaining streets, bike paths and sidewalks; offering high-quality drinking water to residents and visitors by managing the sewer and water system, and facilitating the collection and disposal of garbage and recycling."

44% of the overall dollars for these items comes from property taxes. The remaining portion comes from the State of Minnesota, licenses, fees, special assesments and more. For a detailed look, please consult the complete report [pdf] from the City of Minneapolis. It is an interesting and useful way to help understand how your taxes get used in Minneapolis.