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!