//

You don’t need to be an accountant to start a company but you should become intimate with key accounting metrics.  Lack of financial literacy is the greatest threat to a global surge in entrepreneurship.  Most companies fail because their founders had little or no financial acumen. 

Such was almost the case with my first company.  Pockets filled with seed money, I worked hard on creating nice products and chasing down new customers only to be in deep trouble within a year.  The only financial focus I took was to deposit cheques and pay bills.  The only metric I looked at was my bank balance and as money ran dry.  The less I had in my account the more I looked at it. The disaster was avoided only after I brought in a great CFO and took classes on accounting. 

Here are the top 3 metrics that startups should pay attention to:

Cash Flow

This is the one metric that will puzzle most founders and yet it’s one of the most important aspects of your business.  Run dangerously low on cash and your entire existence will be focused on rectifying the situation. Run out of cash and the business will screech to a halt.  You can lose money for years and as long as you have cash, you can still operate. Yet you can be profitable on paper and still be out of business. It’s also the toughest part of the business to plan accurately; particularly in the early stages of growth. Miss payday while accelerating and watch your talent run elsewhere.

Yet it’s relatively simple.  Cash flow is cash in versus cash out.  It has little to do with sales as your product or service may take time to deliver, meaning that there is a delay between customers receiving goods and your business receiving payment. It has more to do with controlling how quickly you can generate deposits versus how late you can pay suppliers. 

The first step should be to create a financial model which lists every single expense and when it will be paid out. Remember that if you add people or need to move offices, capital expenditures will be necessary.  The furniture provider will expect payment fully even if your accountant will amortise the cost over time so be careful to properly assess needs and put realistic payment flows. Don’t rely on an outside firm for this. Building a model allows founders to get familiar with all the income and expenses of a company. 

A few tips in cash flow:

• Get paid as early as possible and pay out as late as you can, even if you have money in the bank.  Pay the very important suppliers first and in a cash pinch, pay unsecured creditors as late as possible.
• Have very aggressive payments terms on collecting from your clients.  Don’t think giving people more time to pay is a competitive advantage.  Be firm on these terms and drop the clients that linger in payments.  There is a reason they are not paying you; it’s likely because they have financial challenges. Nothing speaks of bad management like an accounts receivables list with clients over 90 days. 
• If you provide a service, demand at least 50% up front and 25%-40% halfway with the balance upon delivery. Don’t wait to collect until the end.  Too many things can change and you’ll be left holding all the costs.

Burn rate

This is the amount that you are burning in cash every month until you become ‘customer funded’.  This is especially important when you start a business that will have a lengthy lag in regards to revenue. Investors will want to know what your burn rate will be and how long it will take to extinguish, as money spent is their capital.

This metric is particularly important as you seek additional funds or move into other rounds.  This is a question I ask every single potential founder whose company we assess.  If they even hesitate, I end our discussions there.  Knowing what you are eating up in cash every month is very critical to the health of your company and shows responsibility in regards to your investors.

A few tips to control burn rate:

• Spend only what is necessary and not what is nice. Create a board or committee to help you determine how best to keep costs low.
• Keep your investors updated on the progress of the company and related burn.  No one likes surprises and especially when it’s their money.
• Review your costs every week.  They are like fingernails; they grow all the time and require regular trimming. Managing costs have made many companies prosper.

Margin

It’s surprising to me how few small business leaders have any sense of the margin they make on a product or service.  This is the percentage of the sale that is above your cost (gross profit).  As an example if you produce a widget for $10 and sell it for $15 then you margin is 33% (selling price less direct cost/selling price). 

It’s important you understand your margin because it will affect virtually every part of your business.   Keep in mind that the margin you create will pay for the costs of operating the business like rent, operational costs, administrative salaries and eventually be the cause of a profit.  Start early to place emphasis on your company and likely success will follow. 

A few tips about margin:

• Research what the standard margins are in your industry and don’t underprice unless you have figured out a way to provide a service cheaper.
• Take the time to calculate how much money you will need to pay for the running of the business and reverse engineer your pricing.

The post The finance metrics that matter most to startups appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1nxDSNR

//

Usually, when I am invited to speak about entrepreneurship, the focus is on young entrepreneurs who are ready to rule the world. However, you don’t have to be young to become an entrepreneur. I was in my late thirties when we started Queue-it, and I was actually the youngest of the founders.

Read more: Entrepreneurs, Startups, Advice for Entrepreneurs, Older Entrepreneurs, UK Tech, UK Tech News

from UK Startups on The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1WNtZY0

//

We recently saw email being named “the technology which has had the greatest impact in transforming how we work over the last ten years”, above smartphones. This trend isn’t going to slow down in 2016. As email evolves through cloud computing, automation, integrating into social and becoming more focused around mobile, we need to make sure we keep up in order to make the most of this medium as both a sender and recipient.

In this post, I’ve gathered a list of tools that’ll make sure you crush email (in a good way) in 2016:

Make your contact list go further. You work hard to acquire new email addresses from prospects and customers. By using something like Clearbit you can make sure the contact list you’ve built up goes the extra mile by being transformed into a CRM, populate with relevant information.

Get real time notifications from your personal email. Ever wonder if that intro email you sent to a prospect was ever opened? Well, wonder no more. Use a Chrome Extension like Sidekick to receive real-time notifications on personal and business emails. So next time you’re unsure whether to check back in, you’ll be able to gauge their interest by seeing whether they haven’t had time to read your email yet or they’ve seen it and are just subtly turning down your offer.

Consolidate all the information you gain from customers and utilise them for email marketing. Try out a tool like Segment.io and actually make sense of all the information you’re already collecting from your customer from different platforms. Then, use this data to hone your email marketing by sending the right message at the right time, to the right audience. Watch your conversion multiply!

[IMAGE 1]

Get smart when it comes to collecting email addresses. Are you looking to capture more email addresses from potential customers? When it comes to email marketing, nothing is more valuable than a good contact list. With a tool like SumoMe you can collect email addresses at the right time, on the right page of your website and have them saved on your Email Service Provider’s platform. This can increase the number of addresses collected and also make sure the contact list is populated by real prospects.

Don’t underestimate transactional email. Recent studies have shown that transactional email that includes personalised offers drive up to 20% conversion! If you’re already sending transactional email, then revisit your copy to see how you can utilise this strategy to increase your sales.

Automation is the future. Email and marketing automation have been a hot topic for four to five years. It’s only now reaching SMBs and enabling more casual users as it becomes more widely available, rather than being a ‘black magic’ tool only available by enterprise services. By using a service like SendWithUs & Mailjet, you can create automated trail of emails (drip campaigns) to be sent out based on user behaviour on your app or website, communicating with them at the right time with a specific and high converting message.

Manage everything from your inbox. “Built on everything we learned from Gmail, Inbox is a fresh start that goes beyond email to help you get back to what matters.” Inbox by Gmail is another testament to why email is the centre of our daily personal and business communication. With this new(ish) product, Google has created a tool to help you collate anything from to-do lists, to automatic flight reminders to set your alarm through your inbox. Now you won’t have to go on multiple apps to organise your life!

[IMAGE 2]

Are you using any of these tools or techniques for your email marketing in 2016? Is there anything we’ve missed here that everyone should know about?

The post 7 Ways To Crush Email In 2016 appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1nMvfPs

//

To ensure your home it well and truly protected from unwelcome guests, it pays to have effective home security devices in place. From cameras to alarms to lights, there are a whole host of innovative and intelligent gizmos you could use in and around your home to keep potential burglars at bay.

In fact, using such gadgets could help cut your home insurance costs. If you decide to compare insurance quotes, as part of the process, it’s likely you’ll be asked what your home security system consists of. The more measures you take, the lower your insurance price may be.

So, if you fancy slicing your bills and keeping your home extra safe, take note of these four must-have and alternative security accessories.

1. A siren padlock

Although regular locks can be sufficient to keep intruders from breaking into your shed, you could up your home security gadget game with an in-built alarm padlock. While these heavy duty devices can be locked and unlocked like a normal padlock, they also feature an alarm which is activated if the lock it touched or moved, giving potential thieves an unexpected fright.

2. A fake TV light

Whether you’re out for the evening or away on holiday, leaving your house empty and in complete darkness for a long period of time could attract unwanted visitors. To give the illusion someone is home, you could set up a fake TV light for when you’re not there. This clever gadget emits coloured flashes and glows, just like a real television. So, while you may be enjoying yourself elsewhere, this device will make it seem like you’ve got your feet up watching your favourite shows.

3. A barking dog alarm

If you own a dog, it’s likely you already have your trust in your furry friend to guard your home on your behalf. However, if you’re no pet lover, you could invest in a barking dog alarm. When triggered, this alarm produces a realistic and vicious dog bark, acting as an effective deterrent to help scare off intruders. Using radar technology, this device has the ability to detect movement through doors, walls and windows.

4. A dummy security camera

While it’s no secret that fully working outdoor security cameras can be highly effective when it comes to catching trespassers, they can be expensive and complicated to install. Instead, you could opt for a much cheaper, hassle-free option – a dummy version. Encased in a realistic camera body, these devices are made from aluminium and can act as a highly effective visual deterrent. They can be placed virtually anywhere and are a great alternative to the real thing.

It can be easy to worry about the security of your home. However, making use of gadgets and gizmos like these could give you peace of mind while keeping potential intruders at arm’s length.

The post 4 must-have home security gadgets for 2016 appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1ne0hz9

//

2015 was the year that blockchain made it big in the headlines, from government announcements to The Economist’s cover to overflowing conference rooms. But it pays to go a little deeper, because “blockchain” actually refers to several different things, the boundaries between which are still fuzzy in the minds of many.

First, there is the bitcoin currency, which coexists with the bitcoin blockchain. The start of 2015 saw its price bottom out at $200, as the promise of censorship-free Internet money failed to gain traction with the mainstream consumer. But 2016 begins at a more robust $450, and I think we’ll see a continued gradual rise as the year proceeds. What’s driving this recovery? Bullish sentiment, of course, but speculation is only part of the story. More interesting is the promise of bitcoin as a platform on which other applications can be built.

“Last year saw a drastic rise in metadata, from 80 to 1500 items per day, or 1% of all bitcoin transactions. During 2016 this number will rise still further, adding to the endless raging debate over bitcoin’s capacity and purpose.”

For just a few cents, anyone in the world can store some arbitrary “metadata” in a bitcoin transaction. This data is replicated thousands of times and timestamped permanently by the vast quantity of computing power wielded by bitcoin’s “miners”. As so we come to the second meaning of “blockchain” – an open and decentralised Internet database. Last year saw a drastic rise in metadata, from 80 to 1500 items per day, or 1% of all bitcoin transactions. During 2016 this number will rise further, adding to the endless raging debate over bitcoin’s capacity and purpose. This, I confidently predict, will remain unresolved.

“And here we come to the third meaning of “blockchain” – a repackaging of bitcoin’s technology to make it suitable for traditional enterprises.”

For these and other reasons, the corporate world will continue to explore “private” or “permissioned” blockchains, which are technically similar to bitcoin but independent of its infrastructure and currency. And here we come to the third meaning of “blockchain” – a repackaging of bitcoin’s technology to make it suitable for traditional enterprises. Private blockchains are not open to the public, but do connect organisations to each other in a new way, by enabling peer-to-peer databases. For example, a group of banks could collectively and safely manage a joint ledger of assets, without requiring a central intermediary.

Private blockchains saw a huge flurry of activity in late 2015, and I believe this will continue into 2016 and beyond. On the plus side, many more applications of these blockchains will emerge, whether as documentation audit trails or the foundation for “smart contracts”, i.e. decentralised computation. The basic premise is transformative: enabling a single database to be jointly run by a group of organisations, even if they do not trust each other.

“Bankers will conclude that the radical transparency of blockchains, in which all participants see all transactions, does not sit well with their desire to keep their activity hidden.”

On the other hand, I see some disappointment in the initial use case envisaged, of clearing and settlement of trades in the finance sector. Bankers will conclude that the radical transparency of blockchains, in which all participants see all transactions, does not sit well with their desire to keep their activity hidden. While advanced cryptography will eventually solve this problem, it won’t reach the level of maturity required for deployment during 2016.

The post Blockchain – The Outlook for 2016 appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1Pa4ONG

//

The gaming industry had a good year in 2015. A good number of positive expert predictions came to pass, making it a favourable year for big industry players.

Sony, for example, hit the 30-million-sold-consoles mark to further assert their dominance in the console domain, and Activision’s $5.9 billion acquisition of King highlighted a market still brimming with opportunities. What are the predictions for 2016?

Virtual Reality will be welcomed but not very warmly

Everywhere you look, Virtual Reality is a hot topic. Most of the big makers are launching their VR offerings in the first half of this year, from HTC’s VIVE to Sony’s PlayStation VR to Facebook’s Oculus Rift. Expectations are understandably very high. However, it is important to note that 2016 will not be the year when a billion mobile devices and a billion PCs will jump on the VR bandwagon; for two main reasons.

Firstly, unlike what is required playing standard PC games or playing mobile slots at this site , you need 7 times the processing power to use a typical VR setup.  This instantly puts a huge limit on the number of potential customers for VR.  Even Samsung’s Gear VR only works with the top most Samsung smartphones.

Secondly, pricing will be a prohibitive factor. After spending over $1,000 to get a computer system that can power VR setups, you will need a few more hundred dollars to buy the VR setup itself. It is estimated that some of the VR setups like Microsoft’s HoloLens will cost as much as a console.

Therefore, while the VR excitement will be worthwhile, widespread adoption may be 2-3 years away. This fact is an important consideration for startups in the VR environment if they are to stay in business long enough to become profitable.

Sony will continue to dominate

At the start of this piece we mentioned how Sony expanded their control on the console market in 2015. In 2016, they will take it even further. This will be aided by the launch of several big titles like Street Fighter V, The Last Guardian, Ratchet and Clank, etc. Throw in the launch of the PlayStation VR and rivals will have a hard time preventing more people from going the PlayStation route. Microsoft and Nintendo will not disappear completely, but they really do not stand a chance against Sony in this era.

New ways of reaching gaming consumers will grow ahead of traditional methods

A trend that has grown steadily over the last few years is social media influencers input on the success or demise of any particular title. These influencers are on YouTube and Twitch, showing live streams of games, offering tutorials, etc. You can be sure that games that get positive reviews from them will undoubtedly be treated favourably by consumers. In 2016, therefore, more game companies will pay attention to these channels.

Hardcore gaming on mobile will gain more ground

The casual gaming industry held monopoly of the mobile gaming for a long time but that’s about to change.  Mobile game publishers have done a good job with mid-core games but hardcore games will take off on mobile in 2016.  This is as a result of Konami, Nintendo and Activision showing more intention to fight mobile-first companies like Machine Zone, Supercell, DeNa, Gree etc. While some of the mobile first companies are looking for new ways to fend off competition, some like DeNa are going into partnership with the hardcore companies. We expect more of this to happen in 2016.

The Gaming Market in India and Brazil will gain more traction

Smartphone adoption in emerging markets like India and Brazil is on a steep rise. Mobile games are naturally becoming more popular after years of slow growth. Experts believe the Indian mobile-game market will grow from $200 million to $3 billion by 2019 and the Brazilian market will mirror such growth.

The post Predictions for the game industry in 2016 appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1QnRrdK

//

Publicate announce that over the last few months we have been working closely with Trello to create a Publicate Trello Power Up, and it is NOW LIVE!

Why is this big?

Well, any avid Trello user will tell you that Trello is a fantastic project management tool that actually helps you get stuff done, especially as a team.

With the Publicate Trello Power Up, collaborating around design, dev and marketing will now be even more efficient.

What would I use it for?

Publicate is perfect for curating lots of content together and presenting it beautifully as newsletters, curated embeds and resource hubs. Add Trello to this, and you have a tool that will help you and your team to plan, communicate, and manage the whole process of creating these beautiful Publications.

Lets look at some examples…

Marketing

As a team we create email newsletters, roundup blog posts and content hubs in Publicate. To create these Publications as a team there is a set process that we use, let’s look at it for an email newsletter;

• Firstly we create a Trello Card titled – Newsletter 21 Trello Edition – and give it an overall description of the goal, purpose and audience of this newsletter. This way everyone knows what they are working on and the objective.

• Then we will create a checklist of all of the tasks and processes that need to be ticked off for this newsletter to be completed, like;
  • Curate the relevant content and add it to the folder “Newsletter 21” in Publicate
  • Review curated content with team, make changes necessary
  • Brief design on the header and footer banner images, and any other design assets needed
  • Create the Publication – “Weekly Newsletter 21” and attach to this card
  • Review for final approval
  • Publish the newsletter on Mailchimp to list CHW subscriber list
• Then we finally set a complete by date, add the relevant people to the card and the work begins.

With the Publicate Trello Power Up it means that you can add a Publication directly to the card, easily view the latest version, and go straight to the editor to make any changes, all right from the Trello card.

Now all of the conversation, tasks, review and entire process, is all in the one place, making it much faster to coordinate the creation of great marketing assets.

Design and Dev

Just like the marketing example Trello is great for collaborating and providing feedback on design and dev tasks.

For instance, if we are redesigning the home page and have lots of examples and inspiration that we want to pull together for the designer to work from… The Publicate Trello Power Up is perfect for this.

First we create a card for the task, called Home Page Redesign, add some direction and pointers in the description, then curate all of the relevant content into Publicate and create a Publication – Design Inspiration Hub, and add it to the board.

Now the designer has everything in one place, the instruction and the inspiration, but best of all, is that when he has created some work for review, he just uploads them to the same card in Trello and the collaboration and review continues.

A further advantage of using the Publicate Trello Power Up is that before, where we would have added 20 links to the Trello card and struggled to make sense of the information, it is now all neatly arranged in one single Publication, and attached as just one link.

Who doesn’t love being organised and efficient?!

How to set up the Publicate Trello Power Up

To access the Power Up you will need to be a Trello Business Class user, which you can upgrade to in your Trello account. Just click on Power Ups in the menu to access them.

Once you have access to the Power ups, find the Publicate Trello Power Up and click “Enable”

Then when you open a card on that board in Trello you will see the Publicate button under your Power Ups. When you click the Publicate button you can add a Publication directly to the card, as shown;

Summary

• Trello is a fantastic tool for the project management of marketing, design and dev tasks. It brings all of the elements together in one place and enables conversation.
• The Publicate Trello Power Up makes this processes more efficient and more organised, with easy access to add any Publication to a card, and then the ability to view and edit the Publication, straight from Trello.
• Publicate and Trello together saves you even more time and effort.

There are endless use-cases that can benefit from this partnership, we’ve listed just two examples, what will you use it for?

We would love to hear how you are using the Publicate Trello Power Up, share your ideas (and publications) below.

The post Publicate and Trello partner up! appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1OFsF44

//

Recent estimates put the number of people without access to mainstream credit at around nine million in the UK [1]. The net effect is more and more people turning to high-cost loans from payday and doorstep lenders. Whilst the barriers to mainstream credit are varied, this article will set out to define four major categories, or as I’m calling them, “fallacies of consumer credit”.

Attainability

Perhaps the most obvious barrier to mainstream credit is a lack of attainability. The age-old “chicken and egg” problem still plagues first time borrowers. Credit Reference Agencies (CRA) consider a variety of factors when evaluating potential risk. Chief among these is historical repayment data, be it for a mortgage, loan, mobile phone contract or other forms of credit. No matter how much of a “good risk” you may be, lack of historical data very often works against you when applying for a credit product. This is compounded if you have borrowed from a high-cost lender as outcome data from doorstep/payday lenders is rarely considered by the CRAs, and carries far less significance.

Suitability

If it’s not attainability preventing borrowers from successfully applying for credit, often the suitability of product offerings can be the limiting factor. Alongside credit history, CRAs also consider “account turnover” data collected from partner financial institutions. This usually means an applicant’s bank account balance for a given time period. Whilst this can provide insight, it can also be misleading if the applicant does not receive income at regular intervals (think zero-hours contracts, freelancers and contractors, for example). At best this misjudgement may lead to applications being wrongly declined (false-negatives), or far worse, wrongly accepted (false-positive). This might happen if an applicant shows a “healthy” financial state during application but whatever reason is unable to maintain sufficient income required to meet the repayments. The latter example is further compounded by the inherent delay in data reaching the CRAs (records are often a month or more behind).

Transparency

“Credit scores aren’t a problem until they’re a problem,” a senior director at a large lender once told me. He was referring to the fact that most people don’t think about their credit profile until they get rejected for a loan. The “spot-check” model employed by CRAs is completely opaque. Few of us know what our credit score is, and fewer still actually understand the factors that come together to calculate it, not to mention the adverse effects of simply having the calculation performed. Whilst improvements in financial education will certainly help the situation, I believe a move to a participatory form of credit scoring is necessary if we are to buck the “head in the sand” attitude that is prevalent today.

Portability

Perhaps the elephant in the room, or, more precisely, the elephant in the head offices of most CRA’s, is portability. That is, the lack of a formal credit paper trail that crosses borders. I recently moved back to the UK having spent the first two years of my working life based in San Francisco. Despite having been in full time employment for the entirety of my absence I still struggled to pass CRA checks when signing tenancy agreements or applying for a mobile phone contract. This seems like such low hanging fruit, and yet there’s still no widely accepted solution. There’s no reason for my financial history in a given locale to be siloed.

So what is being done to address these major failings of the current system?

The Financial Inclusion Commission made a number of key recommendations in their March 2015 report [2]. Firstly, the Government should “enable the use of public sector and non-traditional data in credit scoring, with safeguards, to make access to financial services easier for excluded groups”. As well as this, the Government should “lead a collective effort with retail banks and others to promote wider data disclosure and to fill the low income credit gap which has been widened by departing payday lenders”. Both recommendations point to the need for innovation and change in the sector.

A number of new entrants are working to develop scoring products that leverage a much wider “non-traditional” dataset. Aire’s platform (currently in closed beta) will enable borrowers to contribute their own information in order to build a score through means of a mobile application. Self Lender (currently US only) helps borrowers build credibility with the existing CRA’s through a series of “credit builder loans”. Tools like ClearScore add transparency, giving users access to their Equifax score and providing advice on how to improve it.

There’s still much change yet to come, with many services still relying on CRA’s and borrowers playing second fiddle to obsolete algorithms when it comes to building credibility. The end of 2015 saw the Open Banking Working Group deliver their report to HM Treasury [3], laying the foundations for an open API standard in UK banking. Programmatic banking could provide the key to far richer analysis and scoring. Research has already shown the efficacy of using account transaction data to predict delinquency [4]. Pairing such methods with an appropriate permissions model to alleviate consumer anxiety is important. Trust will be required to invite borrower participation and provide a much needed change of course to address these four failings going forward.

[1] New Economics Foundation, 2009. Doorstep Robbery: Why the UK needs a fair lending law, London: New Economics Foundation.

[2] Financial Inclusion Commission, 2015. Improving the Financial Health of the Nation.

[3] http://ift.tt/1JeVYxG

[4] Amir E. Khandani et al, 2010. Consumer Credit Risk Models via Machine-Learning Algorithms.

The post FinTech focus: Overcoming the barriers to consumer credit appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1S1BXMw

//

from Business Weekly http://ift.tt/1V21rsm

//

It’s probably one of the first pieces of your business branding that you thought of, right after the name – but did you truly put enough into it? The role that your logo will play in the branding of your business is exponential. They have the ability to invoke an emotional response, effecting the way that your company and its offerings are perceived. The psychology behind the power of a logo can be undervalued, but some of the biggest brands we know, the shape, font, spacing and colour were all chosen for very definitive reasons.

Let’s begin with shape because it’s the most common aspect to be overlooked. Chances are, you probably had an idea of a shape that you wanted to go with – but do you know WHY? The truth is that the shape of your logo can project and reinforce a conclusive message to customers and prospects about the nature of your business, along with your values  and you should determine the shape of your logo and the brand image you want to portray.

Internet Psychologist Graham Jones explains further, “Shapes and designs have powerful psychological impacts. Much of the way in which we perceive any kind of shape is culturally dependent though – which is a problem for businesses. For example, in some African groups the concept of a straight line does not exist. Children are brought up in round houses and almost everything they have or see is rounded. That means if you were targeting them with a straight-lined logo you’d have problems.”

For instance, circular and oval shapes are often associated with family, a union, trust and relationships, forming a very trusting and loyal feeling – many brands associated with children or family life using circular shapes and curved fonts for this reason and these shapes often appeal to females. Triangles are used in symbols of power, authority and religion and tend to resonate more strongly with men, leading them to be used by brands offering masculine services and products, the same applies to vertical lines. Square and rectangular shapes are deemed to be professional and straightforward, implying stability and balance.

Graham continues, “Similarly, it rather depends on gender and personality as well. When you look at the doodles produced by men, they tend to use more straight lines than women. So, if your product or service is targeted more towards one gender, you’d be better off choosing appropriate shapes according to your market. Different personality types are also attracted by particular kinds of design. So, for a business, understanding exactly the kind of people you are aiming at is essential – otherwise your design of your logo or your choice of font could be off-putting.”

Richard LeCount from USB Makers talks to us about his experience in the recent changes in branding, “Being in the branded gadget industry, we have come to recognise the nature of the business that we are dealing with as soon as we see the logo. For instance, mummy bloggers and brands associated with children will always include bright, exciting colours and bold fonts with curved shapes– we also find this with many brands within the food industry. 2 evolutions that we have noticed more than others is the increase in brands shifting to blues and greens as the world becomes more eco conscious and the simplification of logos; brands are moving away from busy and dated images to ones with cleaner lines, less imagery and a  focus font and colour to convey the message”

It is a well-known fact that colour is incredibly stimulating when it comes to decisions and feelings, but it lesser known that it also improve reading, learning and comprehension – Kissmetrics actually wrote a blog about using colour to increase website conversions, referencing a statistic stating at least 62% of a customer opinion is determined by colour. Colour can be used to offset or tone down the impact of shape; if you have decided to go for a triangular shaped logo but want to decrease the masculine attribute then using bright and playful colours can alter the brands perception entirely.

Blue – Serene, Trustworthy, Secure

Yellow – Optimistic, Happy, Vitality

Green – Fresh, Natural, Active

Red – Passionate, Love, Bold

Purple – Luxurious, Indulgent, Creative

Black – Formal, Sophisticated, Authoritative

Creative Director of integrated creative and PR agency JAM, Dave Gee tells us, “A brand should encapsulate and reflect the ethos of the business, service, product or person it represents, and colours can perfectly emulate this.  Colour choices should be driven by the brand’s message and individuality, while keeping company’s target audiences front of mind. Consider the effect colours will have on people’s emotions and how well intended messaging will be conveyed through colour choices. Having said that, try not to think too literally about associations of certain colours; for example, red as anger or passion, or blue as regal or calming – colours should not be limited to their conventional meanings because they don’t always apply.”

There is an enormous amount of designers out there to choose from, and there is no denying their ability to put something together for you that you will find aesthetically pleasing and happy to accept – the issue being that it probably won’t be a true reflection of your brand on all levels.

Niall O’Loughlin, Marketing Manager at 99designs shares his expertise on finding a designer, “Finding a designer that possess the Industry knowledge and experience is imperative to the successful completion of your project. I would always suggest making sure you work with a designer who understands the environment your business operates in. This ensures your designer will speak your language and be able to convey your messaging, communication and brand effectively through your logo design. A great first step in doing so is to request a designer’s portfolio. Have a look at some of their previous designs and ensure that they are aligned with what you wish to achieve, allowing you to create a great brand your customers will adore.”

The post Fresh Perspective on Branding: The Logo appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

from The Startup Magazine http://ift.tt/1RG9Vru