Design Kompany | Brand Marketing by Graphic Design studio in Seattle

Be who you say you are.

That’s one of our biggest philosophies for authentic branding for your company.

So often people try to package themselves as something they’re just not. They try to conform to some invisible “standard” of what’s “supposed” to happen. Don’t do this. Just be who you are. Finding out what the very best you that you can be is, well, that’s our specialty here at DK.

How did I get onto this topic, anyway?

Last year, Design Kompany designed the conference program for Gnomedex, a Seattle conference just for bloggers. I just got word this year’s Gnomedex conference starts this Thursday, August 21.

Felt a little nostalgic.

So I wanted to tell you a bit about why we designed last year’s program.

The design challenge

Normally we stick to branding, brand messaging, and brand marketing. Graphic design piecewise is usually not our gig. But the challenge presented by the Gnomedex design was one that got us psyched.

Most of Design Kompany’s clients are people looking for a total overhaul of their brand marketing. Or they’re starting up, and know the importance of setting the stage up right. Stuff we do: naming, logo design, business stationery, websites. The total package is a brand identity.

But that’s not what we did for Gnomedex.

In the case of Gnomedex, we were working with folks who’d already established a name for themselves, and for their conference.

As the guys who write the ‘Made to Stick’ column in Fast Company would say, the “heavy legwork” of creating brand awareness had already been done.

Our job as graphic designers and artists? Harness that ambiguous “feeling” about who and what the thing called Gnomedex looks like.

If you believe first impressions make or break it, you’d agree with us that a conference program—the first thing you’re greeted with after paying $500 for a ticket—needs to match the idea you had about what this thing was going to really be about.

If it doesn’t, you’ve lost your customer’s trust. And if you’ve lost their trust, it’s bye-bye forever.

Check out the design for the 2007 Gnomedex conference program.