Let’s use one of those happy clients as an example of how the process works. Enter Batts Morrison Wales & Lee, a CPA firm that works exclusively with nonprofit organizations. They came to us looking to redesign their existing logo to better represent their firm and the services it provides. From its colors and fonts to the guard they selected as their brandmark, BMWL’s logo looked very outdated and in desperate need of an upgrade. So they turned to Covenant to make the magic happen. Here are the steps we took to develop the perfect signature (magic wand and cape optional):

Step One: Brandstorming

We kicked-off the signature design process by sending the client a logo questionnaire, which we asked them to bring to an in-person brainstorming session to narrow in on what they were looking for. When it comes to signatures, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Everything we design is tailor-made for each client.

Step Two: Design

A signature rarely remains the same from its inception to the final delivery. For that reason, we gave BMWL several options to choose from, so they could either pick one that they liked best, or combine different elements from a few of them to create a revised signature concept. After we presented the initial signatures, we had the client narrow it down to three they liked best, and asked that they send us a list of their revisions to the artwork.

Step Three: Revisions

At this phase, Covenant takes the client’s revisions into account and incorporates them into a revised signature design. From here, the client reviews the updated concepts and provides additional feedback. By now, BMWL’s signature was very close to complete, and they had only a few minor tweaks to fine-tune it to near perfection.

Step Four: The Grand Finale

After incorporating the client’s final revisions to the signature, we sent it back for one final review. Upon approval, we delivered a Signature CD to the client, which included all the final formats of the signature, in color, black and white and grayscale.

After receiving the finished product, the clients were thrilled with the new look, and we proceeded to help them strategically launch the brand, both internally and externally, and also to incorporate it into new marketing collateral.

A well-designed signature can launch your brand to the forefront of your industry, and help you to better connect and stay relevant to your audience. That has definitely been the case for BMWL, whose signature now reflects the high quality of services they provide to the nonprofit industry nationwide.

Who they are:

Orlando Health is a private, comprehensive, not-for-profit healthcare network based in Orlando, Fla.

Why they came:

Orlando Health wanted to create a series of videos that would educate the community on different health topics, and generate awareness of its services and offerings. Our goal for the videos was to help humanize the organization, and to give the community an authentic feel of who the organization is and the quality of care they provide to patients.

What we did for them:

In just three days of filming, Covenant shot footage for more than 70 high-definition videos. Covenant worked closely with the Orlando Health physicians and team members to address health topics that included everything from stroke treatment to obstetrics. The videos all featured real medical experts and team members from Orlando Health with first-hand knowledge on the subject matter. Some videos addressed warning signs for a condition, others looked at medical processes and what patients should expect to experience. This will be especially useful to new patients, to help ease their anxiety about an upcoming treatment or procedure.

These videos have contributed to Orlando Health’s overall social media success, providing useful resources and tools to the more than 6,000 people who are a part of its social media network. They are displayed throughout Orlando Health’s website and its social media platforms, such as Facebook, and have been an excellent resource used by physicians, staff and patients. And they also provide Orlando Health with the opportunity to speak directly to their audience and gain feedback, to help keep them on top of their game and a step ahead of the competition.

Check it out for yourself at facebook.com/orlandohealth or youtube.com/orlandohealth.

Covenant Kickoff #1 from Covenant Communications on Vimeo.

1. The client had a lot of copy and logos to go into the design, and they also had an idea of what they wanted the postcard to look like.

2. A couple ideas came to mind when beginning the process of designing the house of hope postcard: Fashion week, fashion magazine layouts, 1950’s fashion illustrations and femininity.

3. After thinking over which direction to go and playing around with a couple of different designs…

I realized that I wanted to try to make the type the center piece of the design, so I started to explore and stack different typefaces. I used some of the elements that I found in the example pieces given: such as the bold headings, dotted lines and the pink and black coloring.

4. I wanted to find an illustration/photo that conveyed “fashion” and reflected the inspiration pieces given. I also wanted to suggest a youthful feeling since the show was being put on by young adults.

5. Designing the back of the postcard was a little more challenging and went through the most revisions. I didn’t just want to list all the information that was given, but somehow carry over the illustration used on the front of the card. I found similar illustrations that would help characterize the sponsorship donations.

6. Luckily for me, most of the revisions that were made to the postcard were to adjust the information/logos given by the client.

7. The final renderings of the illustrations were dropped in and the sizing was adjusted a bit… and voila!

Project Insider: Bishop Beale from Covenant Communications on Vimeo.

We can apply this law in principle as it relates to driving brand interaction. From a consumer perspective, there comes a point when the more products there are in the marketplace vying for our attention, the less impact those products have on us. For instance, if there were only two automobile brands in the global marketplace, the marketing messages of those two companies would have a pretty sizable impact on us as consumers, because there are only two.

Alternatively, if there are 20 automobile brands in the global marketplace, we as consumers have exponentially more to process. The return of an individual automobile’s marketing message is much less with 19 competitors than it would be with one.

With more than 6,000 marketing messages bombarding us every day, the Law of Diminishing Returns is definitely in effect. So it’s important as business owners, brand managers and marketing directors to continually drive our customers to interact with our brands. We can build it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will come.

Granted, a successful brand will usually attract consumers on its own accord—that’s the whole point of doing brand development. But we can’t rely solely on the attractiveness of our brands. We have to be intentional to invite and encourage interaction—because that is what builds lasting relationships with users.

So how do we drive brand interaction? Well, first, we must understand how consumers are interacting. And this is changing rapidly with the advance of social media platforms. We also must understand how we should position our brands in light of these changes.

This is an excerpt from our new E-Book “Social Media Matters”. Click here to download for free.

A locally owned and operated commercial real estate advisory firm, BishopBeale specializes in the Central Florida market, offering its clients decades of local experience and honest advice.

Why they came:

Combining 40 years of experience, Billy Bishop and Mike Beale joined forces last year to offer Orlando local expertise, unrivaled customer service, and successful strategies to take their clients’ commercial investments to the next level. But they needed a marketing partner who could help them do the same for their own business. Enter Covenant. As a full-service marketing firm, we set to work, scoping out the details of a marketing plan that would develop their brand, message and website, and the individual elements of each that would be used to best deliver them to their target audience.

What we did for them:

We kicked off the project by meeting with Mike, Billy and their marketing director, Caroline Miller. We asked them thought-provoking questions to determine what they were looking to accomplish, how they planned to do it and how they wanted to be perceived by the public. They wanted a logo and brand identity design that would establish them as the one-stop shop for all of their clients’ realty needs. Although they wanted to maintain their strong local roots, they also wanted to show that they have the expertise to branch out on a national level. So we set out to do just that through the development of the following:

• Brand Identity: Before beginning the project, we asked Mike and Billy to fill out a creative brief, with a series of questions that would help us narrow in on what they were looking for. They wanted something contemporary and current, but that would still look professional. We met with them in person to discuss their answers and to make sure we were heading in the right direction. From there, we were able to present them with 20 logo concepts, from which they chose one to make revisions to. After arriving on a final logo, we incorporated it into a brand board, so that the client could see how it would look built out into several of their key pieces, like a brochure or a realty sign. Next, we built out stationery and e-signatures, so that the look and feel of the brand would be used consistently in everything they sent out to the public. We then outlined all of these pieces in a brand book, to assure that the brand rules are followed company wide and put everyone on the same page.
• Message: Now that we had the look and feel of the brand established, we still needed to nail down a message that would explain clearly and concisely who they are and what they do. And who better to answer those questions than the principals of the company themselves? So we conducted interviews with Mike and Billy, asking them questions that would define why BishopBeale isn’t just a real estate advisory firm in Orlando. It is the real estate advisory firm in Orlando. After coming up with a clear message that everyone was happy with, we turned this basic information into a one-page sales sheet that they could hand out to current or potential clients.
• Web: We started by thinking through the navigation, and creating a blueprint of what we thought the architecture of the site should look like. We reorganized the content, placing the “Properties” page first, since selling and leasing properties is the driving force behind their business. For each property, users can view an image, description, PDF, and a map of where it’s located. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the user, we wanted to put all of the information they’d be looking for right at their fingertips. Since a homepage is the doorway to any website, we wanted to set a good first impression right from the start. So we created cool features and effects, like making the “b” icon in the logo bounce when you mouse over it. Or adding a “b” symbol in the navigation that indicates which page you’re on. And, to make sure the content never gets stale, we added a featured property and testimonial section that would generate new content every time you hit refresh.

To solidify BishopBeale as a leader in its industry, we wanted to take things one step further. So we created a map that could be viewed from the homepage to show users the location of every available property by category. It even gives users a short description of each when you click on a pinpoint.

Check out the live site at http://www.bishopbeale.com

Design

Serenity Towers turned to Covenant Communications to create a custom website design to market its 55+ residential community overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. We wanted to incorporate the warm, inviting flavors of the beach and the Florida lifestyle to the site while also ensuring that relevant information was easy to find. The Serenity brand has great colors and a great style, and we wanted to incorporate various aspects of the brand identity into the site design. Additionally we wanted to incorporate a typeface that meshed with the overal look and feel, and chose the Neutra type family which is both contemporary and formal.

Our initial two comps were very different, one which was very open and featured lots of beach elements, and another which featured more “island” elements. The client appreciated both styles but chose the first concept because it displayed more of the Serenity brand elements and brand ideas. We went through a couple of rounds of revisions, and worked to simplify content and elements as much as possible to ensure optimal usability and visual design.

User Experience

The Serenity Towers website serves as both a marketing tool and information resource for its residents. We paid special attention to the user-experience for this older audience, providing plenty of visual space so that information was easy to read and easy to access. We wanted to ensure that the client’s target market was able to experience life at Serenity Towers while also having enough information to make an informed decision.

Marketing for Results

At Covenant, we design websites from a marketing perspective. So through visual design and through optimizing user experience, Covenant’s goal was to help Serenity Towers bring affordable living to more seniors while increasing occupancy and profitability for Elevation Financial Group. Care was given to incorporate strategic keywords and tags for search engine optimization. And, the installation and monitoring of Google Analytics equips the King brothers to get daily views of their return on investment.

Covenant Project Insider: Serenity Towers Web from Covenant Communications on Vimeo.

Project Info

Creative Director: Justin Ramb
Account Executive: Kristin Davis
Lead Designer: Jason VanLue

History

Over a half-century ago, there was a major shift in how we experienced media and information. The average American family went from listening to their household radios to watching television. The shift from radio media to television media was a significant event, so much so that many years later the average person still consumes the bulk of their media diet through their televisions. Over the last decade we’ve seen the percentages decrease as more and more access information through the internet and more recently through phones and mobile devices, but for the last six-plus decades TV has been king.

If we look at the history of media, one form that hasn’t changed a whole lot in the past 100 plus years is print. Though production technology and visual design has advanced significantly, newspapers are still very much the same as they were a century ago, books still require the turning of a page to read further, and magazines share the same general format. It stands to reason then, that the print medium is long overdue for a radical shift, and that is exactly what is happening.

The next 3-5 years will be the tipping point for E-Print media, and just as the shift from radio to television changed the game for publishers, advertisers and consumers alike, the same will hold true in the print industry.

What It Is

E-Print media is interactive published content, accessible through the web on mobile devices. This content can include e-books, e-magazines, e-newspapers, and interactive applications. Just like traditional print media, we’ll be able to “touch” and interact with the content, though in much more advanced ways. You may be asking yourself what’s the big deal? You may prefer to hold a paperback in your hands, rather than read an e-book, or flip through a newspaper instead of reading stories through an RSS feed. So if we can interact with traditional print media already, why should we make the shift to E-Print? It’s a valid question, why should we care?

Here are 5 key components of E-Print media that will help show us why we should care:

Why It Matters

1. Interactivity

I’m the kind of person who still likes to hold a book in my hands or flip through a magazine. There’s just something about being able to turn the page, make notes in the margins, and paint mental images of what you’re reading. So it would take a lot to get me to change my habits. One element that would get me to change is the interactivity factor. The biggest shift from traditional print media to E-Print media will be how much more interactive E-Print content will be. Check out this example of a new Alice and Wonderland app/book to get an idea of what I mean. No longer will our interaction be between our minds, our eyes, and the printed page. We’ll be able to use our hands, our fingers, manipulate the content, watch embedded videos, play games, and view ads all in an interactive environment that stimulates our senses more than ever before. This is huge. We are an “entertain me” culture, and E-Print will bring more entertainment to the once mundane actions of simply reading a page.

2. Design

We see, experience, and make decisions with our eyes. Visual design is one of the most important elements in print media. Most of the time we, as average consumers, don’t realize what “good” design is, but put something that is poorly designed in front of our faces and we’ll be turned off before we can blink. That’s why book covers are so important, it’s why newspapers spend so much time on typography design and layout, and it’s why magazines have entire departments dedicated to art direction. E-Print takes all of the creative talent, skill, and strategies and opens up literally a limitless medium in which to work and play. Up until this point designers were limited by the printing press – now published content can be designed without worrying how it might look on paper. Moreover, E-Print brings other creatives to the table, such as website designers, application developers, animators, videographers, and programmers.

3. Integration

One of the most profound elements in E-Print media is the ability to integrate multiple forms of media into one application. The video below from Wired magazine showcases how this is done. Notice how the reader interacts with several different forms of media, from the written word to design elements to video. And how cool is interactive advertising? This alone is a huge game-changer – instead of just having a car ad with a static image on a page, imagine if you were able to turn the car 360 degrees, or push a button and the car turned into an interactive video. This ain’t your grandma’s advertising anymore folks, E-Print opens the door to incredible user experience through multiple streams of media.

4. Aggregation

Okay, so up to this point, everything I’ve said sounds pretty cool right? But at the end of the day, just because something is really cool doesn’t mean it’s practical. I mean, take the Segway for example…it’s cool, but we all know how much that caught on. The next two elements deal with practicality. The first is aggregation. Devices such as the iPad allow for a very practical aggregation of content – essentially allowing us to pull all of the content we’re interested in into one place. Now we don’t have to carry around a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a phone, a computer, etc…We could literally carry around one or two devices that would aggregate all of that media for us, making our information consumption that much more enjoyable. This technology will only get better as the years go on, and it will do wonders for our overall print media experience.

5. Mobility

In my last article where I described the iPad as a game-changer, I covered the mobility element. As our information consumption becomes more centralized it also has to become more mobile. We won’t put up with sitting at our desktop to read the news anymore. We’ve solved the mobility issue in large part with the technological advancement in phones. I can do quite a lot on my iPhone. So is a device like the iPad necessary? Yes, and here’s why.

My iPhone is small.

Mobility and portability are essential, but so also is a good experience. The experience on the iPhone is awesome, but I’d rather surf the web, watch movies, and read books on a larger screen. Wouldn’t you? It doesn’t just have to be the iPad – it could be the new HP Slate, or one of the myriad of other tablet devices that are sure to come out in the near future. But the bottom line is the E-Print media means we become much more mobile which much more content, and that is a big deal.

What to Expect

So where do we go from here? The iPad and other devices have started to cover some ground, but we know it’s not ideal yet. But the rise of the E-Print medium fostered in large part by these new devices will begin to change the way we interact with and experience print media. Here are just a few ways this is happening and will continue to happen:

A) Interactive Books – as we saw in the Alice in Wonderland book example, books will become much more interactive through E-Print. Words will literally jump from the page, we’ll see more design and interactive elements placed inside books, and publishers will be able to integrate various forms of media such as video. In addition to just simply being really cool, this will heighten the user experience and allow authors to share more of what’s in their hearts and minds.

B) Interactive Ads – a couple of weeks ago Apple came out with a new advertising platform called iAds which allows advertisers to create interactive ads to be placed inside applications designed for the iPhone and iPad. As we saw in the Wired video, this type of platform and technology will allow advertisers to create ads like never before. Ads will become literal applications, mini-websites, or video productions designed to draw the user in. This opens up a world of change, creating new niches for designers and developers, advertisers, brands, and consumers. This could be the tipping point for online advertising.

C) Better, Smaller, More Mobile Devices – E-Print won’t be a flash in the pan. As a result we’ll see companies embrace this technology and strive to produce better devices on which to consume E-Print media. Just like today’s computers are worlds better than those even a decade ago, tablet devices five years from now will be worlds better than the current iterations today.

It will take time to make the shift from traditional print to E-Print, and just like radio is still around today, I think we’ll always have traditional print in one form or another. But just as television surpassed radio, look for E-Print to do the same. And the results will be overwhelmingly positive.