MODULE COMPLETED.....

module completed...at least for the purposes of college, the challenge of keeping Kramers Designs and Signs Limited fresh and exciting remains.

Our latest (and first) press ad...

In support of a very lovely client of ours. This advert appeared in an 8 page colour supplement in the Halifax Courier on 28th March 2008.

Vehicle leaflet...

I designed an A5 flyer to promote our vehicle lettering service.
In order to intrigue people, we came up with the question,

"Are you driving naked?"

Revamp in 2007...

We wanted the new business cards to be a distinct departure from the ones we had been using. There were practical reasons for this as I had neglected to include our email and postal address on the current cards! Doh!

By this stage we had also made the move to refresh and update our website and saw this as a great time to combine both media into a unified identity. Joanna Flynn, who had created our first website, agreed to do our new one.

Our new look needed to be a departure from the black based previous one - a radical and dramatic departure was our intended aim. As we are involved in graphic design and print, and because we each wanted our own cards to be instantly recognisable as "his and hers", I chose to make use of two colours from the CMYK colour range - CYAN (boy) for my cards and MAGENTA (girly) for Sarah's. Well, I thought it a good idea!

We also wanted to introduce some simple, bold images that would be a great way of easily indicating the services we offer to clients. The images I chose were sourced and purchased from iStockphoto.com. The orange image was chosen to be a vivid image against the cyan and magenta backgounds and to signify our "fresh" approach to our work. Also, Jo would be able to cleverly turn its segments into buttons to navigate our website.

In our experience of the sign, vehicle and graphics industry, many companies have very traditional and, dare I say, boring approaches to their own corporate identity. Ours needed to be vastly different from the ones that our cllients were used to seeing.

As KramersDesigns is a small operation, just myself and Sarah, if we got this design wrong we would be able to react to any customer feedback very quickly. Any costs we might incur by a further redesign would not be too prohibitive as our print runs are small.

The new cards have been in use since late June 2007 and many people have been impressed by the vibrant design. My portrait has also been well received and has not traumatised too many clients - yet!

The new look website went live on July 1st 2007 - our second anniversary - and has been very well received by many people who have been impressed with its clarity, content and ease of navigation. I am very proud of our site and am delighted that visitors seem pleased with it. This is all down to Jo's hard work and expertise.

My cards - front and back

The face of Kramer...

During the early part of 2007, I had visited a trade show, SignUk, and had been introduced to a Dutch company that dealt in sign components. This particular company had business cards that displayed a photograph of the staff member in question.

I liked this idea but did not think that I would be very photogenic and thought that any shot of me that I might use on my cards would have the effect of scaring away prospective clients! Not good for business.

As we now needed to have cards for Sarah, my wife and business partner, I felt it was a good time to experiment with amending the design of our business cards. I used Illustrator to create a portrait of my face that I could use on the new cards. That way, any person who had met me and been given one of the new business cards, would be able to recognise my image and remember me quite easily. That is the plan anyway.

As I have a shaved head and wear glasses that are quite striking, I felt that the portrait I created would be much better that any photo.

Early designs of "Kramers" face...

I showed this design to a focus group - family and friends - to get their feedback. It was mostly positive and people really liked this simple, yet oddly accurate, representation of me. Following some suggestions, I amended the beard into a point rather than the rounded style of this original design.

The face of Kramer - final design

Christmas cards 2006...

Towards the end of 2006, we had to think of a new design for that years Christmas cards. As we had increased our customer base and had become busier as a result, we had less time available to design our own items. So, for 2006, we only produced the one design of card.

As with the prevous years, the design was done using InDesign and Illustrator with the PDF file being emailed direct to our printers to run. We decided to retain the same format - A6 double sided postcard style - as in 2005, but we went for a much more vivid colour scheme whilst still retaining extensive use of our logo.

Christmas cards - 2006

Fire...

We were asked to be co-sponsors of the West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue "Red Hot Dates" calender for 2007. As all proceeds were to go to the Fire Service National Benevolent Fund and to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, we were more than happy to become involved.

West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue - calendar advert

Banners - web and PVC...

Other items that we designed and produced were banners - both the physical, PVC type that can be displayed on walls and the type that is used on websites to advertise companies.

The PVC banner was 160" x 26" in size and was positioned on a wall that one of my clients kindly allowed me to use.

Website banner ad

Other stuff...

With only a (very) small budget to work with - every penny spent has to be earned by the business we can generate - we had to get some other items with which to publicise KramersDesigns.

We wanted some postcards and A6 sized notepads that we could leave with prospective customers along with our business cards. Also, to put onto signage and product wrappings, we wanted some small stickers. These items were designed using InDesign and the PDF files we produced were then outsourced to our printers.

Postcard - front and rear - A6


Notepad - A6


Labels - 68mm x 20mm

Our very first press release...

I emailed these to the local newspapers to get them interested.

Local press coverage...

And it worked as the Halifax Evening Courier interviewed me and ran the following article.

Christmas cards 2005...

We wanted to design our own christmas cards for 2005. Keen to utilise our logo as much as possible, we decided on simple designs - very much in keeping with our uncomplicated logo - that could easily have our roundel incorporated. In brainstorming the concept we came up with four strong ideas - "Deck the Halls", "Scrooge"' "Good King Wenceslas" and "Frosty the Snowman".

Unable to decide which was our favourite, we chose to go with all four and make them part of a "Christmas by Kramers" themed set. We felt that this would reinforce our brand to our customers and would help to portray a professional image to them.

To keep our costs as low as possible, they wer designed as double sided, oversized postcards and were printed with a high gloss finish to the face. The reverse side, with the greeting printed on, was left as a matt finish to allow for handwriting the customers names. We did not want to spoil the cards by having the ink smudge on a glossy surface!

This style had two benefits, the cost obviously, and that they looked different to the other standard cards with the traditional fold along the top or down the edge. We felt this would make us stand out a little and reinforce our name with clients. We try not to miss an opportunity!

Our brochure...

Once we had been in business for a short while, we had built up a portfolio of jobs that we were able to show in a leaflet.

The leaflet took the form of an A4 tri-fold printed double sided. I designed it using InDesign and used Photoshop to adjust the images. We used the technique of asking several questions - "Who are we?", "What do we do?" and "Why use us?" to prompt people to read the information we wanted to present.

In keeping with our corporate identity - sounds a grand term when used to describe a very small business, but that is how we view our logo - the designs were done on a black background with the bright text to lift the words from the page. We have found that many of our clients really like our style as they think it is sleek, professional and confident.

The leaflet was illustrated with images showing a variety of the services we offer - vehicle livery, banners, window graphics, signage and graphic design. We used testimonials from our current clients to get across the quality of our products and services and our customers satisfaction.

Brochure - A4 trifold, double sided

Genesis of a brand..!

I decided to begin my own business at the start of 2005. The original idea was to research and plan for self-employment in the next 12 to 18 months, before making the leap.

However, once the initial idea had formed in my mind, I was determined to forge ahead with things as soon as I could.

By the summer of that year, I was eager to become my own boss.

The first thing required was a name. This was probably the simplest decision I had to make as I had a name in mind for a while at that point, Kramers Designs. I had been using the name “Kramer” for a long time; originally as a pseudonym for writing that I had published in a football fanzine and then, in various formats, as email addresses.

Kramer came from the name of a character, Cosmo Kramer, played by Michael Richards, in the best comedy show ever to play on US television, “Seinfeld” (1989-1998).

Earlier, I had thought about freelancing as a graphic designer and, with that in mind, had designed some business cards in case I went down that route.

This initial card used a photograph that I took at Twickenham in December 2003 when England, newly crowned as World Champions, played the Barbarians. I spotted a little girl at the front of the crowd, she had a Union flag painted on her face and was happily waving a flag. The shot was too good to miss.

I "photoshopped" the image and turned it into a black and white image, with the idea of tightly cropping it and using it for the background image of my design.

I then decided to incorporate a splash of colour to offset the monochrome image by adding a vibrant rose. Then came my business name and contact details. At the time, I was pleased with the final look and had 500 cards printed.

This card was used for the first few weeks of our trading until one of our friends asked, "Why have you got a Lancashire rose on your cards?"

As we are based in West Yorkshire, the realisation that people were confusing our English rose for the Lancastrian rose was a shock. A new image was required.

This was quite a relief really as the design, which seemed great when I designed it less than a year earlier, had started to grate with me.

Our decision to move faster than originally planned meant that we had to get our infrastructure organised. Part of this was the need for our “identity” to be designed very quickly. We wanted a black background as the basis for our logo and my wife liked the idea of vibrant, “fruity” colours. I was determined to keep the design simple and uncomplicated, as I wanted to ensure my logo appealed to the market that I was aiming at; namely builders, plumbers, joiners and other tradesmen and small businesses. I felt that these types of clients would not be overly impressed by a fancy, complicated design and that such a design might compromise their confidence in me.

Also, I had designed a logo for my previous employers – a company in the same line of work as I was about to set up in – in which I had utilised icons symbolising different aspects of their trade; brushes to represent the traditional sign writing skills, computer mouse to show our use of new designs software and a scalpel to indicate our precision and skills. I had no desire to replicate this in any way and felt that a simple text based logo was the way forward for my business.

Also, a major consideration was too keep the costs of reproducing the logo in printing, vehicle graphics and signage as low as possible. As a new business with an uncertain future – would I be a success or would I struggle to bring new clients in - I had to manage my start up costs very carefully.

I decided, therefore to go for a simple “roundel” comprising of our name encircling the "KD", initials of our business name that I linked together and place at a jaunty angle. I felt that this could be viewed as a stamp -hopefully a stamp of quality and approval!