Upcoming: NWEN seminar on ‘brand essentials for startups’

DK’s been to a few of these seminars, but always the free ones since they’re more or less hit and miss. Check out our past writeups on NWEN.

This one’s not free, but I wanted to share the announcement from Northwest Entrepreneur Network about an upcoming seminar on branding startups.

Here’s the official blurb:

The shortest path between your business idea and being in business is a well-defined brand. Your brand will develop as your business develops—whether you choose to create and nurture it or not.

Making brand a central strategy of and within your foundational business plan.

At the end of this workshop participants will have the tools to develop a business plan around your brand and to communicate about it effectively to potential supporters and customers. —Northwest Entrepreneur Network

DK’s take on this

We definitely agree with the part about “Your brand will develop as your business develops.” It takes time and brand management, something that a great design alone can’t do.

A good example of how we’ve seen one of our designs flourish is Bonanzle, a startup that hired DK for a logo and has managed to build quite a bit of traffic for itself.

Tell us

If you go to this, definitely drop a line and tell us what you thought. I’m super curious. I recently attended a similar talk by some folks from strategy & marketing firm Pyramid Communications.

And I love to hear what other angles people come at branding.

At Design Kompany you’ve probably gathered that we have our own method, which fits our clients who tend to be small businesses and not big corporations.

(Even though I did try to pitch to Alaska Airlines. Their people still haven’t gotten back to me, but you know, I’m cool with that.)

Other creative agencies are different from us at Design Kompany; instead of interviews with our clients, we like to have conversations. We like to be more personal.

We like to get to know you and what your brand really wants to be well before starting any design.

Interestingly, our method of using a new sketchbook for every client reminds me a lot of what Microsoft usability expert Bill Buxton says about designing user interfaces. But that’s something I could tell you more about some other time.

Here’s what’s what for NWEN:

Brand Essentials for Startups and Early Stage Businesses
Thursday, December 6 :: 7:30am-12pm
Lake Union Crew, Seattle
$115 for nonmembers
To register, call (425) 564-5701