Even if you have no interest in design theory and fundamentals, for the sake of your business there is one point that should never be forgotten: the purpose of design is communication.

Communication Demands Relevance

Each industry has a unique audience, with unique needs & expectations. What works for a law firm website will not necessarily translate well to the design of a catering company website. In an industry flooded with generic templates and unqualified or (worse) apathetic service providers, this simple fact is often overlooked. For this reason, we present to you the first in a series of Web Design Anatomy articles. Motivated by the short and frustratingly familiar script referenced here, our first article will deal with Restaurant Websites.

Why Does a Restaurant Need a Website?

We’re not talking generalities here – in today’s marketplace just about EVERY type of business needs an online presence if they want to stay competitive. More specifically, we are asking the question: what is the purpose of a restaurant website?

The reductionist answer is twofold:
• To create an attraction between diners and your restaurant
• To provide the information they need to spend their money there

Attraction

This is the point that far too many restaurant owners get caught up in, at least superficially. It’s no secret that we are not supporters of Flash to the detriment of accessibility or functionality. How can you attract when you can’t be seen? It’s best to consider Flash as just one specialized tool in a very well stocked toolbox… it serves a niche function, comes with a ball of strings attached, and with advancements in the capabilities of JavaScript is quickly becoming obsolete.

It is important to present an impressive online image that represents everything great about your restaurant. But in order to make that impression, diners need to be able to actually VIEW your website. If they are out driving around, browsing for a restaurant on their iPhone, they will not be able to view your Flash website. At all. If they are using a search engine to find a restaurant, yours will likely be way down the list, as search engine optimization techniques for Flash sites are crippled, at best. There is also the issue of not being able to copy/paste, or bookmark individual pages. Statistically, Flash sites have an exponentially higher abandon rate than XHTML/CSS based sites.

Information

Following is a short list of requirements that every restaurant website should have in order to provide customers with the information they’re seeking:

• Restaurant Overview
  A basic introduction to your restaurant is a must. Even if you think the name of your restaurant is self-explanatory, people still like to see how you describe yourself. If you have any unique selling points (local-sourced or seasonal ingredients, fair-trade, vegetarian options, etc.) this is a great place to mention them.
• Location
  Diners need to know where you are, and how to get there. You don’t need to provide directions from every corner of town, but an address, basic map, and link to a direction-giving site like Google Maps is very helpful indeed. BONUS: include a photograph of the front of your restaurant, so first-time visitors will recognize it easily from the street.
• Hours
  Basic stuff, here. And this is very near the top of the list of priorities when a diner visits your website. Make them easy to find.
• Menu
  Your food is your business! If ever there were an influential and unique selling point, it would be a mouth-watering menu. Words paint a picture, here. Don’t just scan your paper menu into an annoying PDF file, either – invest in having a digital menu designed to complement your physical one. This is the page people will want to bookmark.
• Photos
  A picture surely does speak a thousand words. Show what you’ve described in your menu, and make the imagery so vivid that it elicits a Pavlovian response in your visitors. Show your food, show your restaurant, your staff, and your dining room. The food is the star, but the experience is the whole package.
• Reviews
  This is not a must-have, but it certainly is nice. Reviews are the first thing many people look at when considering a new restaurant to try. If your restaurant has been reviewed in print, you definitely want to boost the influence that press affords by including it in your website. If you’re not in print, patch in reviews from consumer sites like UrbanSpoon or Restaurantica, or any of the other dozens of options available in any given city. And if you’re brand-spanking-new, include a reviews page with a simple request and link for people to visit a chosen review site, and let the world know what they thought of their experience with you.
• Reservation/Contact Info
  This area can be the deal-closer in many cases. If you make it easy and painless for people to book a table, guess what they’ll be more likely to do? Provide an easy-to-find phone number, of course, but also consider bookings by email, or requests via a form on your website. You can even program in live reservations through services like OpenTable.

How to Annoy Your Customers

Some food for thought, straight from the horses’ mouths:

“I’m always taken aback when music emanates from my speakers when I’m viewing a site”

“Flash required. Biggest irritant of a restaurant website. Even more so if they have an “Intro” graphic/animation. Two of my fav places use flash for their sites and it’s very very annoying. Even more annoying with flash is not being able to copy/paste phone numbers.”

“Can’t stand it when a site starts with music or that stupid talking character/video. I’ve got my own playlist going already, thanks. I don’t want your music. And when I’ve opened a ton of tabs at once, skimming through to find a cool place to eat, it’s always a pain to figure out which ones are making the noise.”

“I have my windows set up so that everything is sized and positioned the way I want it. Nothing bugs me more than when a website takes over your browser and forces it to fill the screen.”

“Flash, flash, flash. I don’t care about your intro. I don’t want to watch a video of leaves unfurling. Atmosphere is nice, but I usually end up closing these sites before they’re even done loading.”

“Where’s the damn menu?! I scour the site for ages, then when finally find it, it’s a crappy PDF.”

Who Does It Right

Here are just a few examples of restaurants with websites that walk the walk in terms of design, attractiveness to their own target customer base, and serving their purpose through the provision of convenient, easy-to-find information.

Each of these sites has a design that appeals the demographics the restaurants are trying to attract. They look great. They work the way they should. And information is very easy to find.

The central lesson in all design, whether it be for print, digital distribution, or the web, is that (the right kind of) communication is king. The goal for any company’s website is to sell a product, service or idea. Obviously you want to look good doing it, but dressing up for a job interview will do you no good if you can’t communicate with your prospective bosses. And let’s face it… the customer is the boss.

Providing exceptional design is not the full picture of what our company does. For a professional firm, quality of design should be a given. What keeps people coming back is the combination of high quality work product, and excellent customer service. And the same is true with any business.

Last week, my husband scheduled an appointment for me at my favourite spa. I’d been working such long hours that I hadn’t had time for a haircut since last Canada Day. I had forgotten how unbelievably nice it is to walk into a quiet, warm, lovely smelling room, have the receptionist stand up, take my coat, welcome me by name (AND pronounce it correctly) and get me a nice hot tea. And my hairdresser is not only genuinely friendly but also exceptionally talented, so it provides the full experience for me: quality plus service. As a result, I didn’t mind too much when they last raised their prices.

So what does this have to do with your business?

Simple. All other things being equal, great service standards give you a key point of differentiation from your competitors. You just need to commit to it, and make it an integral part of your organizational SOP.

A Few Things You Can Do…

Share the Love
A great service experience starts with consistent affirmation that your client made the right choice. It does little good to make a big fuss over prospects, only to forget about them once they become customers.

Create a Comfort Zone
People are resistant to change, and working with a new company makes people nervous. You can get rid of any ambiguity or uncertainty by explaining what your clients should expect. This simple act of letting your clients know how things work is called “Future Pacing”. Through knowing what to expect in working with you, your clients will have a higher level of comfort and security in their decision.

Be Predictable
This follows from future pacing. If you know what you’re doing (and you should if you want to stay in business) you’ll have a set of proven processes in place, to ensure consistent and predictable results for your clients every time. Your processes reflect your professionalism. Promoting your processes fosters trust in your abilities, and respect for what you do.

Take Nothing for Granted
I wrote another article about this not too long ago. The little things all add up, so don’t neglect them. The more consideration you give the small details in your service experience, the more valuable you will be to your clients.

Up Sell
Clients come to you because they have a specific need. As they work with you, they’ll likely realize that they have other, related needs you could also fulfill. You need to make it easy for your client to purchase other services from you. You don’t need to give them the hard-sell… doing your job well and providing excellent service does that for you. It can be as simple as a sell-sheet that lists all of the services you provide. Something for them to keep in mind, just in case.

Better to have it and not need it…
than need it and not have it. My mother’s favourite saying when we argued about bringing umbrellas to school on a sunny day. The reality is, problems happen. A smart business person will anticipate them, and have a plan in place should things go wrong. Let your clients know what to do when they have issues or concerns.

Be There
Service providers are busy, even when they’re not. In the minds of clients, this could be construed as being flaky, inaccessible, or apathetic. Make sure your schedule allows for peak service periods, and that you are both accessible and engaged when your client needs you. Be organized, and come to meetings fully prepared. Connecting with your clients means just that.

Embrace Client Reviews
Don’t fear the social media machine. Feedback, reviews and testimonials hold far more weight than any advertising campaign. Ask for feedback after each project, both positive and negative. The positive will help you establish credibility, and the negative will help you improve.

Eliminate Surprises
You need to be fully transparent in your work. This includes billing (which is very important for clients). Your invoices should be timely, itemized, and free from hidden or unexpected upcharges. There’s nothing that irks me more than having a waitress ask if I want a particular side dish with my dinner, then being billed extra for it at the end. It’s not the extra dollar or so that bothers me, it’s the sneaky factor. And the result is the dissolution of trust. If something is not included, tell your clients beforehand.

Mind Your Manners
The phrase “thank you” is simple, it’s free, and it has the potential to have a profound effect on your business. Be genuine, and thank your clients often. You are fortunate that they are choosing to work with you. You are not simply entitled to anyone’s patronage. Voice your appreciation whenever you can.

Creating an exceptional service experience makes your business more profitable, and infinitely more referable. There is no advertising quite so effective as a base of loyal, satisfied customers.

Thanks to Michael Huggins for the blog-fodder.

Solid yet fragile, simple yet versatile, and clean yet primitively natural – the feel of glass gives an instant impression of quality.

We designed the labels for the line of spices in the photo above. There were some limitations placed on us, but in the end the design turned out quite nice, and as you can see, the concept favored a lovely clear glass bottle. Regrettably, these glass bottles were never to be. Instead, the client’s print house produced an oversized, soft plastic bottle that sucked in on itself under the pressure of the seal, and whose material caused the spices to adhere thickly to the inside, making the bottles look permanently dirty.

When the final samples arrived, I was more than a little disappointed – not with the spices (which were actually great) but with the poor quality of the package production. I wanted to strangle whomever was in charge at their production house overseas. I’ll be honest, if I saw those misshapen, dirty looking plastic bottles in a store, I would pass them by without a second thought. Good design is only the beginning… production has to finish the job.

Which brings me back to glass. This article was inspired by some research findings published by the University of Oklahoma, which essentially confirmed that people in my demographic prefer to buy products packaged in glass. The survey was conducted in conjunction with Newton Marketing Research on April 14, 2009 (with a Margin of error of +/- 3.7%).

It was a brief survey, but it’s a brief topic. They simply asked respondents which material they preferred (glass, paper, plastic, or metal) based on six criteria: maintaining quality, environmental friendliness, purity, healthiness, preserving shelf life, and maintaining a food’s true flavour.

Here are the numbers:

While this is simply a consumer opinions survey (so the numbers represent a sampling of the population’s impressions on each topic and not any actual performance related data), it is still worthy of our attention. The people surveyed in this study are among the most influential buyers in one of the fastest growing markets in North America today. And what they think determines whether they pick up your product, or that of your competitor.

However, before bidding a polite but firm “goodbye and good luck”, I do try to impart a little knowledge and foresight. Because in the end, these people actually end up paying more for a vastly inferior product – and that’s not good for anyone.

A True Story

I’m not going to bore you with the vague old “you get what you pay for” adage (oh wait, I just did). Rather, I am going to ask you to read through a short, true story. Trust me, you don’t want to learn this lesson the hard way.

Jon* is a 15 year old high school student, hoping to build his portfolio so he can get into a design program. He lives with his parents, has no staff or overhead, and is teaching himself how to use a copy of Adobe Creative Suite that he ‘found’ online. He’s had no actual clients, and his only business experience was a summer job at the snack bar at the local ball diamond. He built a small website for his freelancing business using a free (but very nice) WordPress template. His portfolio has three very nice but unverifiable sample pieces featured.

Jan* is a 30 year old university graduate, with specializations in consumer psychology, research and graphic design. She has over ten years experience creating a myriad of different design solutions for businesses around the world, an expansive portfolio of work, and dozens of testimonials from satisfied clients. She runs a full time design business, supporting a small team of painstakingly selected, experienced designers.

Obviously, the names have been changed… but it should be pretty easy to guess who Jan really is. As for Jon, he had submitted the winning bid for a project we competed for early last year (and I always check out who beat me when the opportunity presents itself). After I contacted him to ask about his background, he sent me his resume and the information above.

An excerpt from the client’s email to me last year:

Fourteen months later, the same client approached me out of the blue, asking if the previous quote was still valid.

It turns out they had spent nearly double the quoted amount with Jon (bringing them well above my quote), who not only turned in more than thirty “terrible” logo concepts, but who was impossible to get hold of between school and his social calendar. They never even got to the brochure, corporate collateral and website that were part of the original RFP.

But that’s not the worst of it.

When the client finally got fed up and decided to “settle” on one of his logo concepts, the graphic used turned out to be a copyrighted trademark belonging to an established multinational company. They are incredibly lucky their secretary stumbled onto the plagiarism before the copyright owners did.

I have to admit a small sense of satisfaction in hearing their story. Not because I revel in the misfortune of others (quite the opposite), but because I was vindicated. On the flip side, I hear too many stories like this one. These experiences sour people on the whole profession.

Yes, our hourly rates are quite a bit higher than Jon’s. But what you should be thinking about is what you actually get within that hour.

It’s also important to note that I only know about Jon’s status as a student with no actual clients or experience, because I bothered to ask him. These are not things that people advertise on their sales collateral. So do your homework when choosing a designer. And always, always read their terms of service in full. If they don’t have any, then my advice would be to run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

As for the prodigal client, I agreed to take on the project at last year’s price. They’re now very happy, and a little wiser for the experience.

The issues are alarming, to say the least.

On the one hand, we have the dime-store design trend chipping away at the integrity of the industry, and the amateurs passing themselves off in the marketplace as legitimate professionals, who happen to think that $100 is a fine price to charge for a thoughtless, conceptually barren logo, assembled from clip-art on stolen software. This is all exacerbated by the actual professionals who succumb to pressures to lower what was a fair market price, in order to compete with contenders whose qualifications, process, and quality of work are not nearly in the same league.

And at the other end of the spectrum, we have the monolithic “big boys” who pad their rates so egregiously it would make Donald Trump cry. I’ve heard far too many stories and anecdotes about companies who have paid six figures for a finished product that wouldn’t pass mustard as a first draft coming from a junior designer here. And of course, we’ve all heard about a certain governmental organization paying over a million dollars for a slight logo redesign.

In the middle, we have the rest of us: the quality-driven, honest design companies trying to fight the damaging effects of these two extremes.

Most recently, the website for the State of Wisconsin’s Campaign Finance Information System was brought to my attention.

It was brought to the attention of others too, but not principally due to its outrageous price tag. An article in the Dec/08 Journal Sentinel casually mocked the site for featuring a photo of the wrong city on its homepage. But though the article claimed the site cost the state’s taxpayers “nearly a million dollars” to build, documents obtained by Open Records Request showed the actual price to be more than twice that.

Let’s take a look at this fabulous, two million dollar site…

Really?

Putting aside the student-level design for a moment, I thought, maybe there’s some ground-breaking, reality-defying technology going on under the hood. But no, it’s your run of the mill, standard build.

Thanks to Dan Cody of Wisconsin (who made the ORR), we were able to take a closer look at the actual proposal data. For a rather standard website with an already well-defined plan and set of criteria, the awarded firm quoted such numbers as the following:

• 120 hours to write their own project plan
• 280 hours to code MSWord document upload/download functionality
• 1900 hours for project management

And obviously, this is just one slice of the pie. What I’m left wondering is, who was responsible for making the decision to hire this firm? And where is the oversight?

What’s truly upsetting here is the fact that had the company not used the wrong skyline image, this would likely have never come to light. Honestly, this is only one example of many.

The quoted cost for this specific website should have been a fraction of what it was, but the dishonesty of one vendor combined with what can generously be assumed to be the incredible lack of knowledge on the part of the client has resulted in a situation of which both parties should be ashamed.

In general, you do get what you pay for… but only up to a point. Beyond that, you’re just a chump. Corporate services is very much a buyer-beware arena, in which not many buyers are as aware as they should be.

More often than not, consumers associate brand-speak with trickery, exaggeration, misdirection and outright deception. The sad thing is, I don’t blame them. A lot of brands are disingenuous. What those brand managers don’t realize is that tricking someone into buying once is far less profitable than earning customer loyalty and trust over the long term.

Investing in your Brand for the Long Haul

Branding is so much more than just looking good. You need to pick up where we leave off.

Good branding requires ongoing maintenance. But unfortunately, too many companies slow their branding efforts to a near-halt after unveiling the new logo and website.

In a number of ways, rolling out your new visual identity is really just the beginning of one of your most important branding endeavours… that is, a long-term and focused investment in building trust.

“Investing in brand development is increasingly important to build credibility and differentiate,” says Cynthia Round, executive vice president of brand strategy and marketing at United Way of America, which recently rolled out a completely revamped brand campaign. “People are making purchasing decisions based on how closely aligned their values are with an organization and how much they trust what that organization is providing.”

Your brand platform should accurately and honestly represent your organization’s core values, but it is equally important that your actions and business practices follow in line. Trust and personal connection are at the foundation of employee and consumer loyalty, both of which have a significant and direct impact on your bottom line.

Brand Trust: as Simple as Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Building and marketing a good base image is only step one. If I’ve heard of you, I’m more likely to trust you at the outset. But trust is built over time, accrued from a consistent collection of experiences and perceptions. To get to level two, you need to do what you say you are going to do. It seems easy, but it’s a step that so many fail to reach. Finally, customer trust and loyalty are confirmed and reinforced when you simply repeat step two at every opportunity.

Deliver on your promise in a consistent way, and you’ll never lose business due to a lack of credibility.

Free Advertising: it Goes Both Ways

If your brand promises gold and delivers bronze, you’re finished. Bad news travels fast and far. So in failing to live up to the image you’ve created for yourself, you’ve not only alienated one customer, but have also lost out on potential business from all of the people your single unsatisfied customer has complained to. You may be able to hold your head above water for a while with this strategy, but it won’t last.

On the other hand, if you’ve planned your brand strategy on a basis of sustainable and honest values (i.e., you can and do deliver what you say you will) then what you’re reinforcing is a lasting impression of quality, value, and credibility. Good news may not travel as far or as fast, but the ROI (considering your investment is nothing more than doing what you do anyway) can be immense.

Approximately 80% of our new clients come to us via direct recommendations from former or existing clients. That’s a significant amount of advertising that’s being done on our behalf, at no expense to us.

Honesty and Authenticity = Tangible ROI

The bottom line is, every company wants measurable, tangible returns on their investments. This is especially true when it comes to branding strategies. Trust is a tricky thing to measure, but when the United Way undertook a campaign to determine investor and donation motives in 2003, they found that a strong brand was 67% of the reason people chose to invest in the organization.

Often, it’s the smaller daily interactions that illustrate how your brand is working for you. And that’s precisely what you want. Small actions (both positive and negative) build upon one another, impacting the experience your brand provides, and acting directly on its strength.

Once you’ve built the visual aspects of your brand, success is as simple as delivering consistently on what you’ve promised. People will pay more for, and choose more readily, the experience and peace of mind that a healthy brand provides.

Features are the properties of a product or service. The features of a car might be anti-lock brakes, leather seats, or rear-window defrost. Benefits, on the other hand, show how those features will actually be of benefit (hence the name) to the user. Anti-lock brakes keep you safe if you have to stop quickly. Leather seats are more durable and luxurious than cloth. In copywriting, benefits are much, much more important than features.
Let me show you a real-world example.

Stainless Steel Shaft or Priceless Cooking Tool?

Have you ever read a product brochure or Web page that sounded something like this?

The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender offers a 200-watt motor, stainless steel shaft, five-blade chopper attachment, and aerator head.

How do you feel when you read that description of the hand blender? It’s not very exciting, is it? The thought of a stainless steel shaft doesn’t really get your heart pumping and instill the thought that you need one of these hand blenders. That’s because the copy above focuses on the “what” of the product. Now read this version:

The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender has a powerful motor enabling you to chop, whip, puree and blend with lightning speed. Its stainless steel shaft holds up to years of use without bending or breaking. You’ll create delicious meals with ease and be out of the kitchen in record time.

The first example focuses on the “what” of the product… the features. It simply lists the nuts and bolts of what the physical product offers. However, the second copy example focuses on the “how” of the product… the benefits. These benefits show the reader how this product will make his/her life easier or better.

Focusing on the “what” and not the “how” of a product or service is a common mistake novice writers make. It is also a deadly mistake that can cost you sales. But how exactly do you create benefits out of features? Easily!

Five Easy Steps to Creating Powerful Benefits

Here’s my five-step process for turning boring features into eye-popping benefits. Let’s use the example of a marketing e-book for this practice session.

1. List the features of your product or service. (Created in PDF format, information on e-mail marketing, search engine optimisation, PPC ads, etc.)
2. List the concerns or needs of your customers. If you don’t know… ask them. (Finding affordable ways to promote their websites to bring in the most qualified traffic and increase sales.)
3. Ask yourself, “Why does this feature matter to my customer?” Write your answers on the list. (PDF format means both PC and Mac users can view the e-book. Search engine optimisation is one of the most effective, highly targeted tools there is… and it costs nothing once you learn how to do it.)
4. Take it one step further. Ask yourself, “What problem or concern can this feature address?” (Getting more qualified buyers to the reader’s website so they can buy)
5. Write down the benefit and you’re all done!

So, instead of writing copy about a marketing e-book that reads like this:

Move It or Lose It is an e-book for beginners that was created in PDF format. It covers the details of e-mail marketing, search engine optimisation, and PPC ads in order to bring you affordable marketing tools you can use.

…you can write copy like this:

Move It or Lose It was created especially for new online business owners and covers – in great detail – everything you need to know about the three most popular, economical, and effective marketing methods:

• Search engine optimisation: one of the most effective, highly targeted tools there is… and it costs absolutely nothing once you learn how to do it.
• E-mail marketing: extremely targeted… this marketing method brings in consistently high returns on investment.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: not only inexpensive, but also quick and easy to set up.

Move It or Lose It is available for immediate download as a PDF file, meaning both PC and Mac users can take advantage of this powerful information.

Which one sparks your interest more?

When it’s time to write your next piece of advertising copy, take some time to develop a solid list of benefits. Focusing on the “how” instead of the “what” will practically guarantee a better response and more sales.

Guest Article written by Karon Thackston. Karon is owner of Marketing Words, and a professional advertising and search engine copywriter. Check out her online e-course at the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course.

We designed their old site some years ago, and changing with the times, they graciously decided to come back to us for an overhaul.

Their old site worked, but originally it didn’t have much to offer apart from the standard “this is who we are”, “this is what we do”, and of course an online shopping platform. And it didn’t expand well… being a forward-thinking company they had added a few features on their own over the years (like the useful but not-so-pretty translation options at the bottom), which just didn’t work visually.

The New Site

In addition to a complete visual overhaul, we’ve also worked in a few treats like a video blog with discussion and high quality full screen capabilities, an easily updatable news section that feeds the latest straight to the homepage, an expansive knowledgebase design, live chat skins, and a media vault for things like customer downloads, press kits, and whatever else they decide they want to offer down the line.

Plus, it’s gorgeous. If I don’t say so myself.

The only thing we didn’t turn on it’s head is their old online shop platform, which they’re keeping as-is for now. Watch that space…

A lot of the work I do is button-down corporate, which I love, but it can’t help but get a bit bland at times. It’s projects like this one that renew my love of design, and clients like Steve who allow me to push the envelope a bit to get the best possible result. There are a few things about this site that are a bit edgy, and certainly not standard, and I’m thrilled that ER is the sort of client to let me run with it.

I love my work.

See the live site at http://intotherainforest.com

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.

Rebranding, whether a product or an entire brand, is a serious endeavour. The overall need for rebranding is based on the basic premise that just as people change their style of clothes, hairstyles and home decorating, so brands need to keep up with the times and changing market and consumer dynamics. At the same time, rebranding can be undertaken to fix errors made earlier in a product’s development, to create new consistency across products, or conversely, to take advantage of the benefits of product differentiation and market segmentation.

Rebranding and brand revitalization are not tasks to be taken lightly, and should be backed by legitimate reasoning – and no, simply becoming bored with your logo is not a good reason.

Some of the better reasons to rebrand include:

- modernization, if a brand has become old-fashioned and is in danger of stagnation
- differentiation, due to fierce competition or a fast-changing environment
- blocking or outmaneuvering competitors
- handling increased price competitiveness
- addressing the needs of brand globalisation
- addressing a brand merger or acquisition
- improving competitiveness by creating a more unified identity
- testing new markets or products
- countering declining profitability or consumer confidence
- signaling a change in direction, focus, attitude or strategy
- capitalizing on new opportunities or mediums

Whatever the catalyst, just as your customers should come to you for the specialist product or service you provide, so should you engage the services of an experienced brand design firm when undergoing or even considering a brand redesign or revitalization campaign.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.